Years ago I watched a film about this girl with a disability on TV.

It starts with a woman giving birth and the doctors realise something’s wrong straight away when she’s born and they start doing all these tests on her with needles and stuff. I remember a scene where they’re rubbing this brown glue looking stuff on patches of her skin while she’s on a cold looking operating table thing (as a baby) and it just seemed like a very cruel thing that was happening.

One scene after is when she’s still a baby sat at the kitchen table crying in her high chair with the rest of the family eating at the table and her mom is on the phone trying to hear what the other person is saying over baby, one of her siblings gets up and turns on the radio and baby immediately goes quiet. Dad tells sibling to turn it off because mam’s on the phone and the kid is like “no it stops her crying” and it’s like a revelation; next scene baby is wearing headphones.

As baby gets older she has more tests and experimental cures and stuff done on her and she can’t speak a word or move well, she rocks a lot and her hands are almost always in fists, the family can’t communicate with her well at all but they try. They get a helper (I think she was a black woman) who tries to teach the girl maths and stuff and when she’s counting eggs in the chicken hutch with the girl she realises girl is counting along, she grabs a white board and writes a bunch of numbers down and asks the girl what 2 + 2 is and the girl smacks her fiat against the number 4 (or something like that) the woman asks a few more questions until the girl swings her fist at the empty space beside the board where the next number in line would be; it’s very exciting and this leads the family to realise that she can understand them even if they can’t understand her.

I forget the rest but the end scene is her lying in bed with her mom cuddling her and this projector night light thing lighting up the room blue with stars or water or something and her mom says blink once for no and twice for yes (or the other way round) and asks her if she wants to try more tests and experimental cures and the girl blinks for no and I remember thinking she was going to die but I can’t remember if that actually was the case or not.

I think it was set in the 80s or early 90s, but it was 90s-2000s when I saw it.

So! Anyone got any ideas?