Loving my Christmas Girl Born disability congenital CMV
Waiting for our second child, due to come on Christmas Eve 1989 was a fantastic experience. What Christmas present! But when Elizabeth was born on 18 December. I had a staff of anxiety. My immediate thought was, "The head looks so small – so marred." Before he was twelve hours, I discovered why.
When the neonatologist came into my room the next morning, he said, "Your daughter has profound microcephaly – her brain is damaged through. If his life,will never turn around, sit or feed himself. "
He concluded that Elizabeth's birth defects caused by congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) – a virus without symptoms for the mother, who is known as a virus "silent may have, or even suggested a mild to severe flu-like symptoms.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has determined that about 8,000 children a year are born with or develops permanent disabilities due to congenital CMV. E '# 1 cause of viralBirth defects – more common than Down syndrome.
How and why did I get this virus that I had just heard? I read the literature CMV. He said that the women who works with children at greater risk of arrest because they often shed in their saliva and urine. Pregnant women should stop them kissing on the mouth and the sharing of towels and tools to eat with them. Wash hands thoroughly, especially after the cattle, runny nose, changing diapers and picking up toyswhich is in the mouth of a child.
While I was pregnant with Elizabeth, I am not a child of mine, Jackie, but also education of a nursery school license at home. I felt sick with the words of my lack of knowledge has done for my child. In milder cases, children with congenital CMV experience a gradual loss of hearing, sight, or some struggling with a mild learning difficulties suffer. But if Elizabeth was not a smooth.
"My life is over," I thought. I asked God toit healed, but because he had not, I have prayed for me and begged to be crushed to death in an earthquake or struck by lightning. I just could not raise such a child with, period. While child is presumed to be a blessing, I felt far from blessed – I felt devastated.
Fortunately, the love of my husband Jim for Elizabeth caught her pain removal. He said: "He needs me. I want to be protected from this cruel world, is born." It was like Charlie Brownwith the Christmas tree pathetic.
"O God," I asked, "Please help my love Elizabeth too.
Initially, when I looked at Elizabeth, my heart burst with new eyes. I could see beyond his prognosis is. The prognosis was more of a person like Elizabeth, also – it was a living being tortured without mercy on me.
If I ever come forward and find happiness again, I knew I had to stop dwelling on issues that kept popping into my head like, "What would beinto the future? "" Why did my OB / GYN warned me of this? "and" Why did God let me catch CMV? "
In these days after the birth of Elizabeth, was all I could do and cut the Psalms to read. Before Elizabeth was born, I can not really relate psalmist. I thought, 'Wow, people are very depressed! "Now I have found solace in their bitter questions like" How long must I bear pain in my soul, and pain all day? "I know not the only desperateLife made me feel less alone.
E 'Elizabeth was a few months finally discover where my face was, but then one day he looked straight at me and smiled, we finally had the connection! Gradually he began to think: "If you do not like that she is severely mentally retarded, and, apart from a miracle, will never walk or talk because I'm sorry?" Perhaps Valium speech was reassuring, but the idea to my note, even when I no longer need to "Mother's little helpers" toget me out of bed and showering.
Finally, it has focused on disability Elizabeth, but on his ability, his appreciation of what life was like for one. Although he could not hold his head high and punched in the annex next to move to a toy to reach, you could see and hear at least a little '. He could not sit alone, much less wanted, but she could sit for hours deep satisfaction in my lap and studied my face with her big blue eyes surrounded by long dark lashes. When I smiledto her, that would break into an ear to ear smile in return, let me know that my happiness with her, was all he needed to be met in this world.
It 'been about a year, but eventually I stopped praying that a bomb will fall on my house, so my overwhelming concern about the conditions of Elizabeth could escape. Life has a good contact again. We finally managed to go ahead as a happy family "normal." Even foreigners play a role in the elevation of my drink. One afternoon, faced withElizabeth wheelchair through the mud of the state of New York County Fair, I feel a wreck into a depression, because children were watching my daughter who could not wait for the head. "They look funny," he told the children it is difficult to embarrass their parents'. In the midst of my dark thoughts, a heavily tattooed man who seemed as if Carnival had been drinking for many years, ran from behind his game and came directly to me. My alarm clock broke down in tears of gratitude when he gave me aBig Bear Teddy Brown from his hiding place awards and said: "I am your daughter wants."
In the long annoying problem, however, began the day my oldest daughter, Jackie, asked: "Can I have a dog?"
The small. The dreaded day is here, all the children can ask for one. And why should not they? Dogs features films such as Lassie from burning buildings and keep warm when you're lost in a blizzard. But the time that adults have learned the truth about them, they pee on yournew wall to wall carpets, digging holes in their pockets to hide their bank Rawhide bones, and bite the son of a neighbor.
"No, you have a dog," said I prepare for the old argument. "We can not risk a dog is not your sister." I hated to admit it. I wanted to blame Elizabeth for not being so fragile. But the care of Elizabeth was a job bad enough without the addition of a dog can choke on his legend.
I know! I give Jackie the lip "cutting story."Convince her that you can not get a dog of his sister.
"When I was 13," I began to speak: "I am the grandmother and grandfather at the end of me, a Weimaraner. His name is an abbreviation of trucks-Humphrey Bogart, and had a pair of scissors. One day , my niece Suzannah two years, was playing on the floor under the table with a Popsicle stick into his mouth. troll broke his foot and bit his lips on my grandmother had her lip from blankets and wrap it in a paper towel to take hospital. Butit can not be sewn on the back. A surgeon makes Suzannah fixed, but when we got home, my mother Laster in the back of the car and took him to the vet. I never saw him again. Had long-term, "as they say in Lady and the Tramp film has got."
I had stopped, so Jackie could do horror of the event sink kg
But all I wanted to know was: "Where is Suzannah lips now?"
"Gosh, I do not know!" The last time I felt her lips were set for the buffer had seen, all the wrinkles andMummy-like in the library of my grandmother. But it is irrelevant, you can not see how dangerous an exhibition could be your sister? She can not speak, what they call us, as it was in another room, and the dog was bothering her? "
If there is a Lassie-like dog out more of Elizabeth you can use one, but I could just not the kind of a shot at an animal that can live for 13 years.
After many tears and arguments, I finally made Jackie a promise:"If God brings people to our door, you can get. How are you?"
"Really?" He asked, a smile spreading over his face.
"If a man looking at our doors, I suppose that is a sign of God which is a special dog that will soften about Elizabeth."
"Mom, I love you!" She threw her arms around his neck and kissed me on the cheek.
I feel bad all you really had a little 'hope. Jackie actually thought that a dog appears.
Perhaps there was a leveling off of a dog?There must be an animal out there that Elizabeth would not hurt. A goldfish? I believe that apart from a bizarre incident, how to make out his bowl and save the face of Elizabeth, it does not hurt her. A hamster? Are fun, driving around in a hamster wheel with no idea of what is not going anywhere. Elizabeth May enjoy a hamster too. She was not able to maintain, but you can find amusing to see them running in its wheel.
Perhaps a spinHamster Jackie would forget a dog as my parents thought that my bogey would help me forget the boys …
Of course, what happens next is a different story!
Lisa Saunders
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