So Grace is finally here, and we have made it through our first month together. It's been busy, we have been to the doctor numerous times for non Down Syndrome related items...figures. Grace has been battling jaundice since she was three days old. I think doctors are just taking more precautions with her, so for almost 5 days straight we were at the doctors office daily checking her bili levels. The ladies at Methodist Labratory know us by name and have seen us more than I would have liked. I still dont think the jaundice is 100% gone but we are apparently out of the danger range. Then we had liver issues, weight gain concerns, and possible heart complications...but since then everything has cleared up and worked itself out.
Talk about a tired mommy. Ripping and running and recovering myself from a c-section. But you gain strength to do things you wouldn't expect that you could do. We are finally having a chance to sit back relax, and enjoy our bonding time together.
Now that we have been blessed with Grace for an entire month, I find myself thinking of Down Syndrome less and less, and just celebrating the fact that we have a little girl. I really expected for this experience to be different from my other kids, but the only difference is that I get to dress Grace up in cute girly outfits and take lots of pictures. Yes, she still has Down Syndrome, but more important she is our LITTLE PRINCESS and a very special baby Girl!
So to sum it up...we are enjoying our first month in Holland.
Welcome to Holland
Parenting a Special Needs Child
By Emily Perl Kingsley
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this:
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans: the Coliseum, Michelangelo's David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills – and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy ... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you many never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
