I’ve been told I’m selfish for having a baby as a disabled woman, but it’s my greatest achievement

At the age of 19, Amelia Peckham was on holiday with a group of friends who decided to explore on quad bikes.

As she was riding, the quad bike hit a pothole, causing it to slide down the side of a long hill. Peckham had to jump off the quad bike, but as she hit the hill, her hips caught on a rock and her upper half continued to roll.

Unfortunately, Peckham quickly realized something was wrong. Thinking she had broken her foot, she asked her friend to take off her boots.

“My friend said to me, ‘You’re not wearing boots,’ and I realized I had no feeling at all from the waist down,” Peckham shared.

After the accident, Peckham, co-founder of Cool Crutches and Walking Sticks, was bedridden for six weeks before undergoing surgery to take a bone graft from her pelvis and use it to fuse three vertebrae in the centre of her back, allowing her to begin rehabilitation sooner than expected.

Despite her recovery, Peckham knew her life would never be the same and the fear of not being able to have children set in.

Peckham explained that as she recovered from the accident, thoughts swirled through her mind about whether she would be able to have children: “I carried that worry inside me silently for years.

“Every time I went on a date, I wondered if I should tell the guy that I wasn’t sure I could have children.”

For Peckham, her twenties passed without knowing whether she would be able to have children. It would simply depend on the symptoms she would have when the time came and the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth.

When Peckham finally fell pregnant at 31, doctors warned her that it would be a difficult experience for her and that, because she had chosen it, she felt she had to cope with the worst by “taking it.”

But it was hard for her. “I had never experienced such exhaustion and the pain was more intense than in my everyday life,” she explains.

During the last trimester, Amelia struggled to walk and even ended up in hospital at 35 weeks due to the pain she was experiencing, which left her bedridden for the rest of her pregnancy.

When it came time to give birth, Amelia received conflicting medical advice, which left her anxious: “I didn’t get a definitive answer about the birth for a week and I wasn’t told until the day of my C-section that I wouldn’t have an epidural.

“I was very relieved that I didn’t have to have an epidural because it wasn’t safe. So the doctors opted for a general anesthetic. But it wasn’t pleasant to spend 9 months worrying about the birth and the potential risks.”

Two years later, Peckham discovered she was pregnant with her second child, but unfortunately developed a uterine inversion during her second caesarean section, leaving her unable to have any more children.

Although being a mother is Peckham’s greatest achievement, she revealed that people often assume you can’t cope, that you won’t be able to do as good a job and sometimes that you are selfish for choosing to have a disabled baby.

“The interest in whether I could, wanted or should have children was intense almost from the moment I had my accident.

“At only 19, I didn’t care about it personally at the time, but people around me, whether friends, family or strangers, would often ask me about it. Sometimes people were bold, other times it felt like it was the elephant in the room, but I would say there was an unusual level of interest.

“For my loved ones, the interest was whether I would do well and whether it was safe for me, but for outsiders, the question was unfortunately whether the baby would do well with a disabled mother like me. Was it right to have a baby when I was disabled? The idea was that a physical disability would automatically compromise my ability to be a parent, let alone be a good parent.”

When you consider that there are over 14 million disabled people in the UK, it is disconcerting to think that disability is seen as something that would inherently prevent someone from being a parent.

Peckham added: “I think the preconceptions were that I wouldn’t be able to cope with the physical demands, that I was perhaps weaker than most and therefore more at risk in my parenting abilities. Which would mean that choosing to have a baby might be selfish.”

“It’s not just about you when it comes to having a child,” one person told me. While I recognize that there are considerations to be made when you have a disability and health implications, having a disability does not automatically mean you can’t, shouldn’t, or don’t want to have a child or parent, like people without disabilities do.

“I really struggled with my physical strength and endurance after giving birth, I had a c-section under general anesthetic which took a lot longer to heal due to infection etc which really meant I was limited in the physical activity I could do for 8-12 weeks versus the 6 weeks I was aiming for.

“Due to the nerve damage to the lower half of my body, I lost a lot of physical strength for most of the year (also factoring in the pregnancy). It took a lot of physiotherapy and exercise to rebuild that and I wish I had some support to give me time to heal, rebuild and rest.

“I went back to work four months after having my first child because I wasn’t entitled to maternity pay (ironically, I was so worried about the pressure to return to work that I left my job to go on maternity leave, which cost me maternity pay), so I think if I had stayed and had maternity pay I would have been able to take longer off work, which would have helped me enormously.

“Unfortunately, financially speaking, I needed to work and I think it took me even longer to get back to normal physically.”

“Becoming a parent is the best thing I have ever done. The worry and anxiety I had before giving birth was a big deal and I firmly believe it was due to the social stigma surrounding disabled parents – the noise was deafening and I am sad to say I listened to it.

“I love my children, they have changed my entire life for the better and have made every aspect of my life infinitely better. They have given me a family unit of my own, filled with inexplicable love and adoration. They have given me direction and purpose in my work and I have built a new life with my family in the country which has been a game changer for my health.

“I honestly think the only thing the doctors told me that worried me a little bit was the possibility of not having children.

“I was desperate to address the issue of not being able to walk, the internal impact of my injury and the long-term consequences on my physical health, but the possibility of not being a parent weighed on my mind for a decade.”

With that in mind, Peckham offers advice to people facing similar obstacles:

“With dogged research from doctors (don’t trust just one opinion) and the incredible support of my friends and family, (parenting) was totally doable.

“I would always say don’t dismiss everything, but talk to as many doctors as you can about all the risks, pros and cons and make a decision based on what’s right for you.

“Trust your instincts and remember that you are more resilient than most people!”