The Internet's One-Stop Resource for Parents with Disabilities
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Part 3,
Excerpted from Marie Claire
(USA Edition), February 1998
by Lauren Lipton
My biggest hurdle has been society's reluctance to accept me as a mother. I always wanted to have a baby, and it never occurred to me that I couldn't. Disabled people do have sex, and many are physically able to have children. But there are people who say we shouldn't, who think, "We don't need another one like you." After I'd been married for two years, I told my gynecologist that I was ready to get pregnant, and wanted to stop taking the Pill. He said, "You'll probably need a C-Section. We don't know what's paralyzed down there." It was like a slap in the face. I'm not paralyzed, and I couldn't believe that my doctor, whom I'd been seeing for eight years, didn't understand the specifics of my disability. His ignorance stunned me. I had to look really hard to find an obstetrician who had experience dealing with women with disabilities. It took me more than five months. I called hospitals and asked people I knew for referrals. No one was any help at all. When I finally found a doctor, through a newsletter for disabled people, she worked out of a hospital I had already called. I conceived fairly quickly, which was a relief. I had had endometriosis and an ovarian cyst that resulted in the removal of an ovary and fallopian tube when I was 21. I had a very difficult pregnancy, and developed a condition called pre-eclampsia. I was on medication, and my doctor insisted on total bed rest for my last month. I was planning on having a vaginal delivery, and was in labor for 37 hours. After all that, my doctor had to perform a C-section at the last minute. But it didn't really matter. The day that Diana Michelle was born was the happiest of my life. There were also outside pressures. Total strangers presumed they had the right to ask if I could care for a baby. Instead of asking, "How do you feel?" they demanded, "How will you manage?" I didn't have all the answers, but felt a responsibility to come up with them. No one thinks twice when a nondisabled parent has an uncooperative, screaming child. But I worry that someone who thinks I can't handle it will call Social Services; this has happened to disabled mothers who've asked the wrong person for help. It's always in the back of my mind. I've had to make adjustments. We had Diana's crib custom-made, and her changing table was adapted to accommodate my chair. And though I have full mobility in my hands and arms, I'm not very strong, so when Diana is 4 or 5, she'll be too heavy for me to lift. But having this baby feels like what I was born to do. All Diana knows is that I'm the one who hugs her and kisses her and sings her lullabies. I feed her and take care of her when she's sick. I make the decisions that will influence the kind of person she becomes.
Trish Day and her husband, John, have started an Internet site for disabled parents, called, http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Trish_and_John. (Editor's note: since the publication of that article in 1998, that website has morphed into this one, Parents with Disabilities Online.) |
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I'VE HAD CEREBRAL PALSY
since birth, and have used a motorized wheelchair to get around since I was old
enough to walk. My disability hasn't stopped me from doing anything--I went to
college, I work full-time, I dated and am now happily married to a man who is
not disabled.
Sometimes, as I'm
tooling through the supermarket with Diana in my lap, with our cheeks pressed
together, somebody will ask, "Is that your child?" I hate for her to hear that
she doesn't understand why they're questioning her mommy. That it's different
that I'm in a wheelchair has never occurred to my daughter, and if it doesn't
matter to Diana, then it really doesn't matter at all.
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