Reggie Sorensen tells Monique Butterworth that, despite her health dramas, motherhood is nothing but a joy with baby Lucas.
Cradling six-week-old baby Lucas close, Regina "Reggie" Sorensen, is taking in every precious moment.
After an ectopic pregnancy that brought her close to death 18 months ago, the 2003 Big Brother winner and her husband of two years, Dale, are delighted with the boy they were both convinced was going to be another girl.
"He was a total surprise," admits Reggie, 35. "I thought I was having a girl."
"We were absolutely over the moon when we saw the big appendage come out!" adds 37-year-old firefighter Dale.
The couple — who met in January 2006, married in October 2007, and have a two-year-old daughter, Mia — both shed a tear when Lucas Dale was born.
"Dale's face was so lit-up," recalls Reggie.
"I was so happy he was a boy," says Dale.
Reggie's health woes haven't been confined to her ectopic pregnancy. Ten months before that, she was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) — a degenerative condition that affects the retina, the light-sensitive part of the eye.
Affecting around 1 in 3000 Australians, RP's progression varies from person to person. For Reggie, it's an unknown matter of time before she completely loses her sight.
It's this condition that will make dealing with a newborn and a tearaway toddler all the more difficult.
Reggie is classified as legally blind (meaning you cannot see at six metres what a person with normal vision can see at 60 metres, or your field of vision is less than 20 degrees in diameter, rather than 180).
Ever optimistic, Reggie, whose sight has diminished more since she was diagnosed, is getting on with life.
"Lucas arrived by caesarean like clockwork," says Reggie. "They got the epidural needle in first time. With Mia it took three goes."
