Before I had children, I was frightened of the idea of having
my own. I never babysat. I was an only child. I never dealt with
babies.

And I mean frightened. I had a nightmare where, if I set a baby
down, its head fell off. I thought that I had to keep vigil over my
baby's well-being in a constant state of readiness, and I
thought no one would want to help me out. On discipline, I was
also afraid I would be one of those mothers who let my
children walk all over me.

My first child taught me differently. To deal with the fragile-
baby issues, I took parenting classes pre-birth. Admittedly,
some of that was frustrating: no one could tell me precisely
when a child could hold their own head up or when their soft-
spot closed (see nightmare above). I realized I was just going
to need to support my baby's head till he let me know
otherwise. Button-up shirts were helpful, too, because that
avoided my whole up-over-the-head issue.

My husband helped me realize he was here to parent, too, and
since we had no family around, we also decided to hire a
babysitter to help me out. That took awhile to build confidence
in, too. The media bombards us with news about child
predators, and I had to work my way up to leaving my son in
the care of someone else.

I hired a neighbor teenager to come watch him while I did
projects around the house, kind of a mother's helper, so I
could see how she responded to different behaviors. She was
trained in CPR and child care at high school for a baby drop-in
center. After several visits, I was ready to leave them alone
together.

As for discipline, that was the easiest: I have no problems
saying, "No." As I see it, we parents are the first defense
against self-destructive and future criminal behavior. As a
parent, our job is to prepare them for all kinds of situations and
society in general.

Ok, so my fears seem a little pedestrian so far (okay, maybe
except the head-falling-off-nightmare-thing), so let me confess
my big fears. Would I be able to love a child with extreme
cognitive disabilities? In this world full of horrors and war, can I
keep my children safe?

My second child won the genetic lottery. There is no all-
encompassing diagnosis. She is missing her corpus callosum
(agenesis of the corpus callosum), and her brain is smaller
then her skull (micrencephaly). The doctors have told me that
the smaller brain size can contribute to severe retardation
(their word). Her medical issues made her a child who could
stop breathing at any moment.

After greiving for the idea of a child I never had, I went to my
core beliefs. One of the main purpose and points to being
alive is to know love. As a family, we have an endless supply
of that. So no matter what happens or could happen, both of
my children will live everyday knowing they are wanted and
loved. As far as protecting them from the world, I realized that
wasn't really my job. My job is not to keep them from
experience, but, to help them develop coping mechanisms for
whatever the universe throws at them (It's not what happens to
you; it's how you handle what happens to you).