They are a special group – born on the same day that Barbados celebrates its nationhood. They are the Independence Babies and throughout November, the NATION will be taking a look back at Independence Babies through the years. Do you recognise anyone you know?
This story was originally published in 1998.
Danielle Greaves-Jackman is four, little, tender, but old enough to know she was born on a special day.
Bright, shy and joyful, the smart Independence baby knows the National Anthem and all the other fun songs crafted around the season.
She can sing God Bless The Morning Of Independence Day, Beautiful Barbados, Gem of the Caribbean, I love Barbados as well she can sing Happy Birthday.
It doesn’t matter if she chooses to sing with a towel covering her face. It’s just because she doesn’t know you as well she knows her mummy, aunties Nadir and Todney. Even then, she won’t miss a word or stop singing until she has gone through all the lyrics.
Mum, Jacqueline, is happy her little one is growing.
“Doctors told me she will be slow, but there’s nothing slow about this ‘hard-ears’ little girl,” a joyful Jacqueline says, gathering her into her bosom.
“Danielle is special, very special, extra special,” she keeps repeating.
She is an Independence Day baby. But that’s not all that makes the little lass special or “extra special” as her mother prefers to say.
Danielle is Jacqueline’s pride and joy – her victory over three painful miscarriages and fears about childlessness. She is also her proof that premature babies cannot only thrive but can also do well.
It was four years ago, at 5:30 a.m. on Independence Day, to be precise, that she gave birth to her first baby, weighing only four pounds.
“It was my third try,” she recalls with more fun than sadness. “My water broke the Sunday, then they were trying to see if they could make her stay a few more, two weeks more, to let her develop some more.
But that wasn’t to be, she wanted to come out. She was born the Wednesday morning after being there for three days without water.”
It was a difficult pregnancy.
“At 13 weeks I had to get a suture put in if not she’d have dropped out like the rest. Even with the suture the water still broke. I had to lie down and keep quiet most of the time.
I couldn’t work; I had to stay home, stay off my feet. I could do nothing for myself really because the slightest jerk or anything would make the child come out.”
Her baby was due January 15 but came two months earlier on November 30 – a double joy, she admits.
“I’ve always thought that independence was something we should all look forward to and appreciate more than some of us do now. And that’s what I always try to instil in her.
“I try to tell her what independence means. And instead of saying I was born November 30, she usually says I was born on Independence Day. She only says November 30, when she’s prompted.”
Danielle, her mum and little auntie Nadir 12, have big plans for today.
“Usually, we get up and we open presents, sing happy birthday and, of course, all of us sit down in front of the TV at 9 a.m. and watch the parade.
“But this year now she’s four and I know she can understand what’s going we went to the Garrison. And later to the East Coast Road so she could sing and dance with Patrick Gollop,” Jacqueline said.
Danielle, who loves to sing and dance, goes to school at the Emmanuel Baptist nursery near her Alkins, Eagle Hall, home. There, too, she has impressed her teachers with her intellect.
“The director told me that Danielle is an intelligent little girl, that I must help her keep it up.
She said that I shouldn’t just send her to school and don’t help her at home so she can make something of herself . . . She learns well and is usually quiet in class . . . at home what she says sometimes make me wonder.”
Danielle is now four. She will grow stronger and stronger like the nation whose birthday she shares. (NATION ARCHIVES)
