Kylie was diagnosed shortly after birth. When she was born she had very swollen feet and no toe nails, so we knew more or less instantly that there was something wrong and they asked to do some tests and it was about 24 hours later that they came back and confirmed that they were 99% sure she had Turner's Syndrome. I had never heard of Turner's Syndrome and my first reaction was, would she be mentally retarded. So I was told that she might have some learning difficulties but most girls with Turner's Syndrome have a normal IQ and that she would be short and that she would need growth hormone injections, that she wouldn't go into puberty and that she wouldn't be able to have any children. What they didn't tell me was that she would receive oestrogen treatment, therefore she would go through puberty and that she would be able to have either egg donation or adopt and I think that's the only thing that disappointed me about the diagnosis - they gave me all of the problems and none of the solutions when in actual fact there are quite a lot of solutions around.

What happened was, we were told about 6:30 pm and visiting time was at 7 so Peter and I had only had twenty minutes to talk to each other before all these visitors were to arrive. So we had to make a decision, should we tell them or should we find out more information, so we did tell our family - that was my father and Peter's mother. And my dad said, 'she's here now and all she needs to be is to be loved', and that was very much what I needed to hear. Unfortunately Peter's mother said, 'there's never been anything like that in our family', and that's not what I wanted to hear. And that was difficult and that just shows you the different personalities, different reactions and everything. I wasn't prepared to hide something or pretend that it wasn't there and I told people and the reaction I got from people was wonderful and the best thing I ever did was share it, and I felt better for it and Kylie has luckily grown up with the knowledge of her condition and she's quite calm about it, very strong, a very practical young girl and I think I take a lot of my strength from her.

Well I always used the word about her, even when she was a baby and we always said Turner's Syndrome and we always said that she would need to take injections when she grew. So there isn't a date in Kylie's life when she learnt about Turner's Syndrome because she's just grown up with it, but probably... well certainly by four, she knew the full extent of Turner's Syndrome, she knew that she would need injections till she was sixteen or thereabouts, she knew she would start from around four and a half, she knew that she would need to take tablets to bring on her breast development and give her periods, she knew that she wasn't able to have a family of her own, she knew that she didn't have the eggs. And we had adopted dollies when she was little and my Aunt doesn't have any children and we know people that have adopted so it's really just about normal life and not really treating it any different, and she seems to have grown up and accepted that and she's very grateful that there wasn't a day that she can turn to and say that's the day that they told me I had this terrible thing, because it's just not like that for her, it's not a terrible thing.

What happened was that we were told that growth hormone would be to start at approximately five years of age or when the growth starts to tail off. So we had prepared Kylie that she would have to take growth hormone injections and we actually got to a stage where she was about four and a half where she was becoming impatient - she wanted to start them because she recognised that she was smaller than other children. So we started the growth hormone injections and the first couple of weeks we had to hold her down and we had a star chart and if you got so many stars you got a video or a DVD or whatever and it worked very well for her and probably within three to four weeks it just became routine and she accepted it and she's probably six inches taller than we even anticipated so we are delighted with the growth hormone treatment. Best thing.