The first time I heard the term hypotonia, it didn’t even register. I focused on the shots and answered questions at that checkup when our pediatrician uttered a word I never heard before. I must have missed it. After all, humans do that. We use context clues, and if the word doesn’t seem too alarming or concerning, we tend to assume the meaning and move past it. My husband heard it, and he must have started to do research and
The world stood still for a moment as the freeways were silent, the skies empty of any planes, and the sidewalks were bare of any people. The uneasy calm mixed with fear in the air was a feeling I had known all too well. It was the feeling I had when we got our diagnosis. I was in a pure daze during that phone call. The world lost all sound, and it felt as if I was all alone, even
One night I was sitting on the floor near my son as he rolled around chewing on a book, and I realized the rest of my family was laughing and having fun at the kitchen table. It was the odd moment where my life sort of flashed by, and I realized I always was the one to step back to “do the right thing” so others could enjoy themselves. I was the one who left early to get a child
Community Submission by: Anonymous It’s 8:00 a.m. and I am awakened by the sound of J, my youngest son, kicking the wall next to his bed. I am so very tired. I feel like my actual soul is exhausted. I unzip J from his special bed, which keeps him safe at night. His whole room smells like pee. I sniff his sheets. Despite the fact that I washed the bedding days ago, it all needs to be washed again. J, age
Community Submission by: EllieEllie is a lawyer living in Baltimore with her husband Mark. They are parents to six year old Molly and two year old Lila, who has Lamb-Shaffer Syndrome. To follow her story, sign up for Ellie’s newsletter. To the mother of the two year old, worrying about whether to have a second baby… I see you. I see how worried you are, about having a second kid and what if that child isn’t healthy? What if they
What kind of friend am I? I am always busier these days. I have children, so I can’t do anything for myself during “normal” hours. I’ve moved three time zones from one set of friends, two from the next, and I somehow need to make new friends where I live now in the middle of a pandemic. I don’t want to be a bad friend, but the deck is stacked pretty high. I am busy, stressed out, my life consists
Community Submission by: Leslie Mehta Leslie Mehta is an attorney. She lives with her husband, Tarun, and two daughters, Brooke and Blair, in Richmond, Virginia. You can follow her advocacy journey at www.prettybrooke.com, on Facebook at pRETTy Brooke, and her YouTube channel of the same name. I met Tarun Mehta in law school. Five years and several bar exams later, we married near my small North Carolina hometown on August 11, 2007. Rarely did we discuss having children. We were
Community Submission by: Kelda York Kelda York is married with three children and lives in NH. She is a pre-school teacher, an avid cook, and enjoys a good novel. My son has always kept us on our toes, even before he was born. There were concerns over a heart arrhythmia, which was detected at 16 weeks of gestation. He decided to join us 6 weeks early and spent weeks in the NICU to fix some lung development issues (his heart
I used to think that when people had children with severe disabilities, it would be something detected in the womb, or shortly after birth—that it would be obvious that something was wrong. But this was not at all the case with our son, Asa. Asa is the third of three boys. He was born after a mere two hours of labor, a big healthy baby weighing 10lbs exactly. I remember a hospital staff member saying, “Congratulations—you have a toddler!” For
I am not going to sugar coat it. No one in this world loves my son more than me. No one in this world gets hurt by my son more than me. He pulls my hair, sometimes clumps in his hand. He kicks me, punches, and throws his body with no care forcing me to strain my muscles to the limits while also covering me in bruises. But the thing he does that has caused me the most pain and
