Prior to Sonzee, I honestly never really considered that we would
have a special needs child. Being in the field of speech language pathology,
I was not even really fearful of having a child who might require additional
attention, but then again I had never heard of CDKL5 prior to April 17, 2015.
When I was pregnant with Sonzee, we thought for sure she was a
boy. We had two girls already and only one boy, so obviously this baby
was a boy. I spent an entire eight months envisioning a "girl’s
room" and "boys room". It only dawned on me a month before
she was born that this baby could very well be a girl. I nearly had a
panic attack trying to figure out how we would be putting three girls into one
bedroom. (I suppose I should thank G-d for solving that problem).
When we were asked if we would have more children we would joke
and say "fourth and final". I wanted to put that on a sticker
for my maternity pictures, but Sam said, "Don't do that, because what if
we have another and then that child thinks he/she wasn't wanted".
(No, I am currently not expecting, but I suppose that was some decent
foresight).
Prior to Sonzee being born I think I was undecided if I would
"want" a fifth child, but I was fairly “certain" that we would
be good with four kids. Six is a nice solid family number, four is an
even number of kids, and it would be the "perfect" family. Now
we have Sonzee and three other amazing children. Yet when I am asked,
"are you done?" my reply is not so straightforward. "Undecided" is my typical response.
I know I do not owe anyone an explanation as to why we would or
would not want another child, but I often struggle with what people would think
since we already have four kids and one is special needs. Would our
choice to have a fifth make people think negatively of us? Shouldn't we
just be happy with the kids we already have? I struggle internally as
well. There are so many positives to having another child, but also so
many unknowns.
I personally do not worry about whether another child of ours
would have a CDKL5 mutation, anything is possible, but it is not a hereditary
genetic disorder in our case. Could another child have a disability? Sure, they could, but that would obviously be
what was in the cards for us. Are we crazy? Well I would say yes since we have chosen to
have four kids on separate occasions. (Insert
stick out the tongue face).
Usually I wonder about my older kiddos, but they have mentioned to
us about wanting to have another sibling on multiple occasions. Would Sam
and I get a chance to be better "first time parents" in a sense? (There would be nothing taken for granted
that would be for sure). What if Sonzee had a bad year the same time a
new child was born? So many questions to siphon through, so many answers
we might never get. Nevertheless, since everything often circles back to
Sonzee, what I have been sitting here meddling with is maybe becoming a big
sister is something we need to add to her adventure list?!

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