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, November 7, 2010

Baby Professor

Nothing in this world is funnier than a baby in glasses.....until you have to try keep the dumb things on his face. Last week we visited Dr. Richards, a pediatric ophthalmologist, for Luke's 6 month NICU follow-up. The good news was that there was no damage from him being on oxygen at birth, but the bad news was that he needs glasses, and possibly surgery.  We've been noticing his eyes crossing for the past few weeks, and the doctor said the only way to help is with glasses. Then, we'll re-evaluate in about 6 weeks and if there is no improvement, Luke will have that little outpatient surgery that they do on babies. Keep your fingers crossed the glasses work. More importantly, keep your fingers crossed that we can keep them on his face.

6 comments:

  1. KellyNovember 7, 2010 at 9:16 PM

    I want to see more pictures! That is SO CUTE!

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  2. Kristin CarlsonNovember 8, 2010 at 9:39 AM

    I Love It! He is the cutest ever :)

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  3. The ShortsNovember 8, 2010 at 1:11 PM

    OH my gosh. that is the cutest thing ever!! haha He does look like a little professor in that picture! Good luck keeping those suckers on his face!

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  4. Ronnie and SuziNovember 8, 2010 at 4:12 PM

    MEMORIES!! Love his glasses. Hate that you have to have that fight with him on a recurring basis ;)

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  5. UnknownNovember 10, 2010 at 1:26 PM

    Try some gorilla glue. That keeps lots of things together. But seriously I didn't think my little lukeypoo could get any darn cuter and then he goes and gets those glasses that make him looke smarter than his mom and me put together.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownNovember 10, 2010 at 1:26 PM

    p.s. the spelling error was not intentional but rather funny speaking of me being smart

    ReplyDelete

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