Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant Read Online Free
Author: Daniel Tammet
to bristle with emotional ambiguity even thirty years later.
My father had been devoted to my mother from the time he had first met her, through mutual friends, and following a whirlwind romance they had made a home together. He had little to offer her, so he had thought, but his devotion.
As a child, he had brought up his younger brothers and sisters single-handedly while his mother, divorced from my grandfather, worked away from home for long periods at a time. At the age of ten, my father had taken it upon himself to look after them when the family moved into a hostel for the homeless. There had been little time for school or for the usual hopes and dreams of childhood. He would later recall the day he met my mother as the happiest of his life. Though very different people, they had made the other feel special and, for all the difficulties in their own upbringings, they had wanted nothing less than the same for me.
Days after their emotional conversation, my mother went into labour. Arriving home from work that evening, my father found her wracked with pain. She had waited for him, afraid to go to the hospital without him. He phoned for an ambulance and, his clothes still caked in oil and grease from his sheet metal work, he rushed with my mother to the hospital. The delivery was swift and I came into the world weighing just under six pounds.
It is said that the arrival of a baby changes everything, and my birth certainly changed my parents’ lives forever. I was their first child, so it is perhaps natural that they had invested so much of their hope for the future in me, even before I was born. My mother had spent the months leading up to my birth eagerly combing the advice columns of popular women’s magazines for baby care tips and together with my father had saved specially for a cot.
Yet my mother’s first days with me at the hospital were not as she had imagined them. I cried constantly for hours at a time. It didn’t seem to matter that she held me close to her, stroking my face gently with her fingers; I cried and cried and cried.
The flat where my parents lived was small and I was to sleep in a cot in the corner of their single bedroom. After my arrival from the hospital my parents found it impossible to lay me inside it; I would not sleep and I continued to cry incessantly. I was breastfed for the next eighteen months; not least because it was one of the very few methods my mother found to help quieten me.
Breastfeeding has long been known to be good for babies, helping to enhance cognitive development and sensory skills as well as the baby’s immune system. It is also thought to be beneficial to the emotional development of children on the autistic spectrum, providing a special opportunity for close physical and emotional contact between mother and child. Research indicates that autistic children who were breastfed are more responsive, socially adjusted and affectionate than their formula-fed peers.
Another means my parents found to relieve my crying was to give me the sensation of motion. My father regularly rocked me in his arms, sometimes for more than an hour at a time. It was not uncommon for him to have to eat his meals with one hand and hold and rock me with his other arm. He also took me in a pram for long walks in the street after work, often in the early hours of the morning. The moment the pram came to a stop I began to bawl again.
It soon didn’t matter whether it was day or night, as my parents’ lives quickly began to revolve around my crying. I must have driven them to distraction. In their despair they often put me in a blanket, my mother holding one end and my father the other, and swung me from side to side. The repetition seemed to soothe me.
That summer, I was christened. Even though my parents weren’t churchgoers themselves, I was their firstborn and they thought it was the right thing to do. All manner of relatives, friends and neighbours attended and the weather was warm
My father had been devoted to my mother from the time he had first met her, through mutual friends, and following a whirlwind romance they had made a home together. He had little to offer her, so he had thought, but his devotion.
As a child, he had brought up his younger brothers and sisters single-handedly while his mother, divorced from my grandfather, worked away from home for long periods at a time. At the age of ten, my father had taken it upon himself to look after them when the family moved into a hostel for the homeless. There had been little time for school or for the usual hopes and dreams of childhood. He would later recall the day he met my mother as the happiest of his life. Though very different people, they had made the other feel special and, for all the difficulties in their own upbringings, they had wanted nothing less than the same for me.
Days after their emotional conversation, my mother went into labour. Arriving home from work that evening, my father found her wracked with pain. She had waited for him, afraid to go to the hospital without him. He phoned for an ambulance and, his clothes still caked in oil and grease from his sheet metal work, he rushed with my mother to the hospital. The delivery was swift and I came into the world weighing just under six pounds.
It is said that the arrival of a baby changes everything, and my birth certainly changed my parents’ lives forever. I was their first child, so it is perhaps natural that they had invested so much of their hope for the future in me, even before I was born. My mother had spent the months leading up to my birth eagerly combing the advice columns of popular women’s magazines for baby care tips and together with my father had saved specially for a cot.
Yet my mother’s first days with me at the hospital were not as she had imagined them. I cried constantly for hours at a time. It didn’t seem to matter that she held me close to her, stroking my face gently with her fingers; I cried and cried and cried.
The flat where my parents lived was small and I was to sleep in a cot in the corner of their single bedroom. After my arrival from the hospital my parents found it impossible to lay me inside it; I would not sleep and I continued to cry incessantly. I was breastfed for the next eighteen months; not least because it was one of the very few methods my mother found to help quieten me.
Breastfeeding has long been known to be good for babies, helping to enhance cognitive development and sensory skills as well as the baby’s immune system. It is also thought to be beneficial to the emotional development of children on the autistic spectrum, providing a special opportunity for close physical and emotional contact between mother and child. Research indicates that autistic children who were breastfed are more responsive, socially adjusted and affectionate than their formula-fed peers.
Another means my parents found to relieve my crying was to give me the sensation of motion. My father regularly rocked me in his arms, sometimes for more than an hour at a time. It was not uncommon for him to have to eat his meals with one hand and hold and rock me with his other arm. He also took me in a pram for long walks in the street after work, often in the early hours of the morning. The moment the pram came to a stop I began to bawl again.
It soon didn’t matter whether it was day or night, as my parents’ lives quickly began to revolve around my crying. I must have driven them to distraction. In their despair they often put me in a blanket, my mother holding one end and my father the other, and swung me from side to side. The repetition seemed to soothe me.
That summer, I was christened. Even though my parents weren’t churchgoers themselves, I was their firstborn and they thought it was the right thing to do. All manner of relatives, friends and neighbours attended and the weather was warm
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