Moving to Denmark

Last August Mette and I visited a nursery that caters for children with special needs in her home town of Vejle in Denmark. We booked the visit just out of curiosity to see what services they could offer Lilian. At the time we were looking at properties to buy south of London. What we were shown blew our minds. We left Denmark with plans to live south of London cancelled and a new project of moving to Denmark instead.

In the UK Lilian has over twenty different medical teams dealing with her various issues. Some we see yearly (heart and growth), some quarterly (oncology and brain) but most are monthly and some are even weekly. It's hard work. Really hard work. It doesn't leave much time for the important stuff like enjoying family life. Working hours in the UK can be long and with the daily commute thrown in time to spend with family is often short lived. Mette and I also have to perform Lilian's therapies at home. Lilian's two main issues are her extreme lack of muscle strength (she is almost completely immobile and cannot walk) plus her lack of ability to feed (hence the tummy tube). Mette and I have to perform daily therapies to help this. Such as physio exercises and stretching. We also have to feed her via the tube and "train" her how to eat herself. This takes a few hours a day. It is extremely tiring and can be very upsetting for both Lilian and us. To help with the burden we have also funded private care for feeding, physio, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy. All this effort works okay but it's extremely hard work, doesn't leave much time for fun stuff and it disrupts our family life too much.

In Denmark most of these therapies would be catered for at Lilian's nursery. More than six hours a day five days a week. Their principle goal is to for the nursery to take the burden of the therapies away from the parents leaving us time to enjoy having a family life. It's an amazing attitude towards care and is such an amazing opportunity for our family we'd be stupid to turn it down. Being based in the picturesque town of Vejle which just so happens to be where Mette's family live is too good to be true.

The view from the rear of the rented flat in Vejle.

We sold our property in East Dulwich over Christmas. We then moved into the granny flat at my parents house. We've rented a three bed flat on an old farm in Vejle with the aim to buy something more substantial later in the year when we've settled into Danish life. Mette has secured a job at Lego working in business intelligence. I'm going to play house husband for a month or so then look at securing an IT role. We move in late June.