vancesmommy
04-26-2006, 12:26 PM
This was posted on the baby center birth defects board, and I wanted to share it with all of you! It is very touching, and very true! :adore :hugg
Some Mothers Get Babies With Something More
written by: Lori Borgman
Columnist and Speaker
My friend is expecting her first child. People keep asking what she
wants. She smiles demurely, shakes her head and gives the answer mothers have
given throughout the pages of time. She says it doesn't matter whether it's
a boy or a girl. She just wants it to have ten fingers and ten toes.
Of course, that's what she says. That's what mothers have always said.
Mothers lie.
Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother wants
a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose,
beautiful eyes, satin skin and straight feet. Every mother wants a baby so
gorgeous
that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly.
Every mother wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those
first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart on
page 57, column two). Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump
and fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball
out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire ballet
class.
Call it greed if you want, but we mothers want what we want.
Some mothers get babies with something more.
Some mothers get babies with conditions they can't pronounce, a spine
that didn't fuse, a missing chromosome, a palette that didn't close
or a tiny crooked foot or two. Most of those mothers can remember the time, the
place, the shoes they were wearing and the color of the walls in the small,
suffocating room where the
doctor uttered the words that took their breath away. It felt like recess in
the fourth grade when you didn't see the kick ball coming and it knocked
the wind clean out of you.
Some mothers leave the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months,
even years later, take him in for a routine visit, or schedule her for a
well check, and crash head first into a brick wall as they bear the brunt
of devastating news. It can't be possible! That doesn't run in our
family. Can this really be happening in our lifetime?
I am a woman who watches the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing
finely sculpted bodies. It's not a lust thing; it's a wondrous thing. The
athletes appear as specimens without flaw - rippling muscles with nary an ounce
of flab or fat, virtual powerhouses of strength with lungs and limbs
working in perfect harmony. Then the athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles
through the contents and pulls out an inhaler.
As I've told my own kids, be it on the way to physical therapy after a
third knee surgery, or on a trip home from an echo cardiogram, there's no
such thing as a perfect body. Every body will bear something at some time
or another. Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or
maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication
or surgery. The health problems our children have experienced have been
minimal and manageable, so I watch with keen interest and great admiration the
mothers of children with serious disabilities, and wonder how they do
it.
Frankly, sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that child in
and out of a wheelchair 20 times a day. How you monitor tests, track
medications, regulate diet and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists
yammering in your ear.
I wonder how you endure the clichés and the platitudes, well-
intentioned souls explaining how God is at work when you've occasionally
questioned if God is on strike. I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy pieces
like
this one -- saluting you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know
you're ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn't volunteer for this,
you didn't jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, "Choose me,
God. Choose me! I've got what it takes." You're a woman who doesn't have
time to step back and put things in perspective, so, please, let me do it for
you.
From where I sit, you're way ahead of the pack. You've developed the
strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a
daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July,
carefully counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule. You can be
warm and tender one minute, and when circumstances require, intense and
aggressive the next. You are the mother, advocate and protector of a
child with a disability. You're a neighbor, a friend, a stranger I pass at
the mall. You're the woman I sit next to at church, my cousin and my
sister-in-law. You're a woman who wanted ten fingers and ten toes, and
got something more. You're a wonder.
Some Mothers Get Babies With Something More
written by: Lori Borgman
Columnist and Speaker
My friend is expecting her first child. People keep asking what she
wants. She smiles demurely, shakes her head and gives the answer mothers have
given throughout the pages of time. She says it doesn't matter whether it's
a boy or a girl. She just wants it to have ten fingers and ten toes.
Of course, that's what she says. That's what mothers have always said.
Mothers lie.
Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother wants
a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose,
beautiful eyes, satin skin and straight feet. Every mother wants a baby so
gorgeous
that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly.
Every mother wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those
first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart on
page 57, column two). Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump
and fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball
out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire ballet
class.
Call it greed if you want, but we mothers want what we want.
Some mothers get babies with something more.
Some mothers get babies with conditions they can't pronounce, a spine
that didn't fuse, a missing chromosome, a palette that didn't close
or a tiny crooked foot or two. Most of those mothers can remember the time, the
place, the shoes they were wearing and the color of the walls in the small,
suffocating room where the
doctor uttered the words that took their breath away. It felt like recess in
the fourth grade when you didn't see the kick ball coming and it knocked
the wind clean out of you.
Some mothers leave the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months,
even years later, take him in for a routine visit, or schedule her for a
well check, and crash head first into a brick wall as they bear the brunt
of devastating news. It can't be possible! That doesn't run in our
family. Can this really be happening in our lifetime?
I am a woman who watches the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing
finely sculpted bodies. It's not a lust thing; it's a wondrous thing. The
athletes appear as specimens without flaw - rippling muscles with nary an ounce
of flab or fat, virtual powerhouses of strength with lungs and limbs
working in perfect harmony. Then the athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles
through the contents and pulls out an inhaler.
As I've told my own kids, be it on the way to physical therapy after a
third knee surgery, or on a trip home from an echo cardiogram, there's no
such thing as a perfect body. Every body will bear something at some time
or another. Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or
maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication
or surgery. The health problems our children have experienced have been
minimal and manageable, so I watch with keen interest and great admiration the
mothers of children with serious disabilities, and wonder how they do
it.
Frankly, sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that child in
and out of a wheelchair 20 times a day. How you monitor tests, track
medications, regulate diet and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists
yammering in your ear.
I wonder how you endure the clichés and the platitudes, well-
intentioned souls explaining how God is at work when you've occasionally
questioned if God is on strike. I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy pieces
like
this one -- saluting you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know
you're ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn't volunteer for this,
you didn't jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, "Choose me,
God. Choose me! I've got what it takes." You're a woman who doesn't have
time to step back and put things in perspective, so, please, let me do it for
you.
From where I sit, you're way ahead of the pack. You've developed the
strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a
daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July,
carefully counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule. You can be
warm and tender one minute, and when circumstances require, intense and
aggressive the next. You are the mother, advocate and protector of a
child with a disability. You're a neighbor, a friend, a stranger I pass at
the mall. You're the woman I sit next to at church, my cousin and my
sister-in-law. You're a woman who wanted ten fingers and ten toes, and
got something more. You're a wonder.