My first child was only a week old when I noticed that her neck was stiff and her head was drawn to one side. I began to consciously try to understand more of the spiritual identity of the child as God's perfect idea—the child of our only Father-Mother God.
I spent that night in prayer (I don't believe I slept at all) and by morning I had a deep feeling that all was well. I called the Christian Science practitioner who had so lovingly helped me through prayer during the difficult pregnancy and delivery and told her of the apparent birth defect. I also told her of my conviction that it had already been healed, even though the physical condition had not changed. She reinforced my faith by helping me to see that nothing could change the child's perfection as Love's spiritual idea.
The practitioner was aware that my husband was not a Christian Scientist, and when she learned that I had not yet informed him of the difficulty, she encouraged me to tell him. My husband immediately made an appointment with a pediatrician, who examined the child and pronounced that her neck had been damaged during the birth and that she would never be able to turn her head in a normal manner—her neck would be stiff for the rest of her life. He said, in a hopeless kind of way, that we might try exercising her neck by turning her little head with our hands, and see if that might help the situation.
