Our Babies

Our Babies
Luke and Claire

"Welcome to Holland"

By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987. All rights reserved.


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 guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo 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 guide books. 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 may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Daddy's Little Boy

This is Patrick again. Melissa is asleep so I jumped on the blog to say a few things.

We have an announcement to make! It's not that Luke is going home soon, or anything like that. It's much much bigger.....

Luke has a favorite parent. You would think, dear reader, that being with his mother for 9 long months would endear the two together.

Apparently, you would be wrong.

You see, Luke is still in the hospital with just a bit left to ween down on his Oxygen. When his blood oxygen levels go down below 90% all of these alarms go off and the nurse comes in to check to see if everything is ok. Well, when Melissa holds him all he does is set off the alarms! She must make him nervous or something like that. On the other hand, when I take the little dude and hold him, he stays deep in sleep but his breathing increases and his oxygen levels up to 100%! The nurses all tell us that he doesn't go below 90% when we aren't there, so it's just when Melissa holds him, much to her dismay! I ensure that she won't ever forget who he loves more! Haha!

Melissa's mom is in town and today, after we went to the hospital to see the little dude, we drove up to the base to see the airshow. Pretty neat, even the Thunderbirds were good. They didn't fly their entire show and at times it gets boring but I tell you what, when they sneak one of the planes going in afterburner right over the crowd while their attention is elsewhere, well.....let's just say that someone almost peed their pants. And no, it wasn't me! Hell, even our friend's 6 month old slept through the show so it wasn't THAT scary!

Well, off to evening church before we try some wonderful looking eggplant parm from a very good friend. By the way, she still owes me and my mom the recipe for her sausage penne!

4 comments:

  1. UnknownApril 25, 2010 at 9:15 PM

    I'm sure Melissa will appreciate this blog Patrick. All I can say is I hope he doesn't learn how to clear the room like his dad ;) Very exciting to hear he is keeping above 90% O2 blood levels!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MelissaApril 25, 2010 at 9:38 PM

    We can only hope, Blair :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ronnie and SuziApril 25, 2010 at 11:56 PM

    LOL! The recipe is coming...will put it on my list to scan into an email tomorrow! As for the oxygen, are you sure he's not just SOOOO comfortable in Mommy's arms that he forgets to breath deep?! ;) So happy he's making progress....baby steps, right?! Can't ask too much out of the little dude...even though his cheeks are big, his feet are still little!

    ReplyDelete
  4. KarenApril 26, 2010 at 7:29 PM

    Patrick! This is your Mother! I know I taught you better than to brag on yourself! I am sure Melissa is just waiting to muster enough strength to let you have it! I am holding my breath, too (for Baby Luke to get home!) Can you believe I figured out how to read your new postings!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)