It won't surprise anyone reading this to know that there were quite a few. Despite all of us turning into super smiley childrens' entertainers; grinning, singing and generally fooling around Tom did not smile at 6 weeks. In fact, it took 6 months for our efforts to be rewarded. During this time his sight and hearing were both thoroughly checked but no he could see us and hear us he simply could not smile.

We spent months holding him in a sitting position, propping him up with cushions and bean bags and tried all kinds of seats but he did not master sitting up unaided until he was around 18 months old.

Rolling and crawling didn't happen spontaneously and took a lot of effort from us and his physio.

The house filled up with equipment and specialist toys (lots of other toys as well - we were constantly thinking this might be just the thing to spark his interest).

We instinctively knew walking would be a real challenge as would speech and feeding himself.