The six-year-old’s computer is, in fact, a ring binder which, once opened, reveals a keyboard drawn in crayon He then produces a Millennium bug made out of an egg-box. These are just the start of a string of creations he proudly brings to show me
Malachai is understandably proud of his new laptop. The six-year-old’s computer is, in fact, a ring binder which, once opened, reveals a keyboard drawn in crayon He then produces a Millennium bug made out of an egg-box. These are just the start of a string of creations he proudly brings to show me.
Sitting with him is his mother Gill Hickman, 44, who helped him make them. The love the former head teacher has for her only child is palpable. The kitchen walls in her London home are covered in photographs of him.
She called him Malachai because it means “Little Angel”.Ms Hickman decided to have a child despite knowing she is HIV positive. But what will be even more difficult for many to comprehend is how this intelligent and devoted mother declined to take an anti-viral drug during pregnancy to reduce the risk of passing on the infection to her unborn child.In the UK, 612 children are known to have been infected with HIV by their mothers, 155 of whom are reported to have died. Drug therapy has been shown to reduce transmission by about two thirds.”People will say this is blind optimism, but I just had this faith in my body’s ability to nurture a baby and not pass on this virus,” says the mother, who is fed up with people commenting on how well she looks.Ms Hickman discovered she was HIV positive in 1989. She decided to be tested after contracting a serious viral infection following unprotected sex. Just 33, she was head teacher of a London nursery school.”It’s the worst thing that anyone can ever tell you As far as I was concerned my life was over The pits lasted about three months.
On the journey to and from work I just thought: ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die’ I thought about suicide a couple of times I only told my sister. In society then HIV was shrouded in secrecy, shame and guilt. I thought I would lose my job.”The infection was a result of a casual affair which lasted two years. The man, who had always denied being HIV positive, died in September 1990 Ms Hickman married two years later. ”I told my husband I was HIV positive when I met him, but he always held it against me, particularly when he was drunk,” she says.Despite the problems in their marriage, after 18 months the couple decided to have a baby ”I was 38, and loved children very, very much.
The hospital said I had a one in seven chance of having an HIV- positive baby. Some people think that those odds are extremely worrying, but for me it was brilliant I thought: ‘Great. It’ll be OK.’ I’m naturally optimistic.”Ultimately it’s my reproductive right to have a child if I so wish to, whatever the state of my body and whatever I might pass on to it. I have been called selfish, but I just really, really wanted a baby. I had lived for five years with the virus and I was having a great life – it was actually getting better because of the realisations I had made through facing my mortality. There are a lot more irresponsible mothers out there – young girls looking for love who don’t use a condom and end up pregnant and not able to support the baby.”As the couple practised safer sex, Ms Hickman used a turkey baster to facilitate conception She became pregnant within three months. Doctors, who were supportive of her decision to have a child, offered her AZT, a common anti-viral drug But she refused to take it.