Comparisons

Kay Stratton - 5 Nov 15

Parenting a child with “special needs” or a disability or long term health problems, has its obvious difficulties & stresses, but I want to try to put into words some of the unspoken truths.

From the moment that blue line appears on the pregnancy test, you may not realise it yet, but you have begun a new life, filled with comparisons. Which mum-to-be had the worst morning sickness or heartburn. Whose waist thickened the most, or whose odema left them with the largest cankles. And so it progresses. Of course, the nightmare birth (horror) stories – was their tear worse than her episiotomy? Does 36 hours constitute a long enough labour to boast of? Did you manage drug-free or go hell for leather, straight to the epidural?

And once you’ve brought home your beautiful progeny, the next stage begins – who smiled earliest, who said “dada” first? The sitting, the “cruising” (no, not that), the first tentative steps on Bambi legs. It’s all a competition, the best, the worst, the first, the biggest (poos feature highly, so brace yourself).

For the most part, you will probably hate it, but secretly fist pump when your child beats your friend from NCT’s little one at sleeping through the night.

But, parenting a child with differing needs & abilities, you feel adrift in this sea of milestones & checklists, willing your baby onwards, yet biting back that sinking feeling that they never got out of the gates. Will they ever? How late will they be? Will they catch up (you’ll hear that a lot)? You will never be prepared for the burning vitriol you feel towards the mum’s gushing about their baby’s latest achievement.

I hated a lot of people in those early months. Years. I hated their children too. I didn’t get as far as wishing they shared my son’s struggles, but I bloody well screamed inside “why him?” The unfairness of it, the random lottery of genetics. You rail against it all. And you feel an overriding, overwhelming guilt. You grew this precious, innocent being inside you, therefore any “defects” or anomalies must be a direct result of either something you did, or didn’t do, or just because you’re a fucking useless mother.

You grieve, for the life you had fantasised for your baby, and it tears at your heart seeing other children gaily bounce towards it.

You feel anger, rage, in fact, towards well-meaning friends, parents of children without these needs, doctors, God, and yourself.

You feel a failure. Everyone else left the hospital with balloons & an entourage & a perfect baby. Your shiny new life feels tarnished by the harsh new vocabulary of medical diagnoses.

As much as you love your child, and I could not imagine loving my son more fiercely than I do, you feel ashamed. I willed my son to speak earlier than all the other babies, as he lagged behind so obviously with the physical milestones. When he was a late talker too, I took it as a personal affront.

Being a mother has been the most precious gift, the toughest challenge, the most fulfilling journey and the most exaggerated of emotional rollercoasters. Being a mother to a child with the complex medical history my son has, has been all that, full volume, non-stop, white-knuckling all the way.

There have been horrifically dark times, and looking back I don’t recognise the woman who battled through them, but I’m glad I gave up on those comparisons, except of course, for my son being, hands down, the greatest human being who ever lived.

Kay Stratton

Single mum to disabled son. Writer, blogger, Twitter addict, recovering alcoholic (sober date 28/4/09)

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