When You're Done at One...

This post is lovingly dedicated to my long distance friend, Lucy... It was written in November 2005 -  a year before Danielle was born.  You never know how things will work out!

Before we got married we talked about everything – where we’d live, what we’d do, how many kids we wanted.  We had decided to wait for 5 years before starting a family.  That would give us time to get established in our careers, buy a house, and have some fun.  Five years came and went.  Every year after that we told ourselves, next year there will toys under the Christmas tree.  Next summer we’ll have a little one crawling across the sand at the beach. 

After another frustrating five years our daughter was born.  Tiny and beautiful, to us she appeared perfect in every way.  After all we’d waited so long for her – more than ten years – what go wrong now?

Well, anyone reading this knows the myriad of things that can go wrong.   Early intervention, hospital trips, therapists, and specialists you never knew existed all became regular parts of our world. Although there were toys under the Christmas tree now our daughter didn’t seem to notice or care about most of them.  She had so many sensory issues that the beach was a nightmare for her.

 Still, we wanted more children.  The doctors had told us that once I was able to conceive and carry a child full term subsequent pregnancies should be easy.  That wasn’t the case with us.  For years we suffered through miscarriage after miscarriage, always hoping that this would be the one that would last.

My 40^th birthday came and went and still we held out hope.  We loved our little girl, but we had dreamed of so many things we would do with our children and she couldn’t do any of them.  Not that we would trade her for anything!  She is the center of our world.  We’ve learned more about unconditional love than either of us knew was possible.

Slowly, I’ve let go of the dream of a “normal” family.  I was torturing myself around holidays always hoping that this would be the year she understood Santa, wanted to open her birthday presents, would actually eat the cake I’d spent hours baking and decorating.   I’ve settled into holiday traditions that work for all of us.  I still want a Christmas tree even if she never looks at it.  I still bake her big elaborate birthday cakes even if she only tastes the frosting.  However, I don’t make her open her own presents or even play with them.

Amanda, Christmas 2005

I do most of these things for myself.  I want her to have everything any other child would have even if she doesn’t seem to care. I would hate to think that someday she might look back on her life and wonder why she never had a birthday party or an Easter basket.   And I’ve let my dream babies go.  While my husband still won’t let me give away the crib, it’s disassembled in the garage.  As holidays approach I’ve stopped dreaming of Normal Rockwell moments... 

 Thank you, Kevin, for keeping that crib! I love you.