Handicapped

Life with a handicapped child is very different from life with a "normal" child. Katrina was my first. Because of this, I didn't really know what was normal until I had other children. I have often been asked how I dealt with it all. To be honest it snuck up on me. It started with not seeing well, to seizures, to delayed motor development, to multi-handicapped. Many different doctors, saying many different things. Some were right, some were wrong. Some gave hope, others despair. I look back on it all now and wonder how I didn't let it get to me. We really didn't know the extent of her handicaps until she was about 4-years-old. Even then, things developed as she got older. But my wish here is not to give you her story, but give hope.
Katrina was extremely handicapped. She could not talk, walk, feed herself, or do the basic toiletries. She could drink out of a straw, and bring sunshine to anyone she came into contact with. She couldn't do much, but what she did was wonderful.

Nothing can prepare a parent for having a baby born 'not right'. The day you find out you are pregnant you begin to envision what life will be like. You imagine having a baby, it grows up, graduates from school, gets married, has a family making you a grandparent. When the baby is born with something really wrong, you not only loose what you expected in that baby, but all the things that baby was to grow to be. In many ways it is like the child has died, but not really.
Once a friend asked me to talk to someone they knew, a mother of a 7-year-old boy who had fallen into a pool and literally drowned. They brought his body back to life, but not him. I told my friend that I would happily talk to the mother, but I really couldn't relate. You see, I hadn't lost a 7-year-old child. When a child is born into the handicap you don't know anything else. You did loose the dreams, but not who they were.