Hard labour, as a lifestyle choice, has more to recommend it than I could have guessed. From those first few hours of holding Sophia, my firstborn, curled on my forearm learning to breastfeed, to the most recent round of pre-breakfast Ride a Cockhorse, bouncing two “fine ladies” on my tired knees, I have been a fan.

But I always knew that parenting would present different challenges for me, compared with more mainstream mothers because I have been blind since 1997.

The practicalities of bringing up children without eyesight are not, for the most part, nearly as hard as you might think. Changing nappies isn’t especially difficult if you’re used to doing everything by touch. There’s no mystery about it. I don’t explore faecal matter with my fingers, neither do I leave my baby half-cleaned. I simply use a combination of touch and smell to determine how cleaning is progressing, and if it gets out of hand and I begin to lose the will to live, well, 10 minutes suffices for a bath and change of clothes: foolproof.

Feeding is also achievable, if slightly more exciting. In the early days of weaning, I would collect a spoonful of food with my right hand while lightly resting my left hand on her right shoulder. In this way I could monitor the position of her head and use my thumb to assess the in (and especially out) flow. I didn’t aim the spoon directly in but used my fingertips to detect her mouth and its degree of openness.

Next would come the lightning transition from obliquely hovering spoonful to precisely administered tasty mouthful without jabbing the gums, touching the soft palate or twanging the lips or tongue.

Running my household is more complex, yet still not impossible. Recently, for instance, while sorting laundry, I flicked the corner of a duvet cover into Sophia’s abandoned water cup, tipping it on to the floor. I reached for the kitchen roll and knocked over a brand new bottle of multi-surface cleaner which, defying its “sealed” status, sloshed its contents liberally over the kitchen’s cork tiles.

Source for complete article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/08/blind-motherhood-disability