Share your Story Saturday

I would like to introduce you to Holly. She is a mother of four and has the most delightful blog, Holly's house....not a perfect mom's blog. I read her blog all the time and LOVE IT! 

I contacted her to write a guest post about her and her daughter Brooke, here is their amazing story:


By the time I became pregnant with my fourth child Brooke, I thought I could do this whole motherhood thing with my eyes closed, with one hand tied behind my back, I figured I could mother four kids in my sleep.

I figured wrong.  Brooke changed the rules on me.  Brooke took the rules I already had and pretty much crushed them.  She took them in her tiny chubby fist and ripped them, then scrunched them, and finally tossed those rules into the trash.

Brooke was born with Down Syndrome.  And a pretty severe heart defect; a complete AV canal defect.  We found out for sure when I was 23 weeks pregnant and from that point I knew raising her would not be the same as raising the previous three.

Not to say that raising Brooke is harder, it's just different.  Very different.

I'm pretty relaxed, I'm a mellow sort of mother, but now with Brooke I can't just play with her.  I have to be mindful of how I'm holding her and try to make her use her core muscles.  I have to try and play games with her that incorporate her occupational therapy skills.  But at the same time I can't overdo it, I have to let her just be a baby exploring the world on her own.

Brooke has physical therapy once a week for an hour at a time.  Currently, it's a very long hour seeing as hour my child screams for the first 40 minutes before finally giving in.  We also have an Infant and Toddler Developmental Specialist come in twice a month.  That appointment's not too bad, she just plays with Brooke and checks where she is developmentally compared to her peers.  And I try not to jump down the ITDS's throat every visit, asking where Brooke is on the chart.  Because it's not important, and really, I don't care (all that much), but still, I think every parent wants to hear their child is a rock star.

Having the two therapists right now isn't too overwhelming, but at one time for a period of about five months, Brooke had a feeding therapist come once or twice a week since my little angel decided she never ever wanted to chew real food.  Nope, baby food was good enough for her.  Brooke would just mash her little lips together and flat out refuse.  This was really hard for me, perhaps even harder than when she went through open heart surgery.  Surgery was the only answer to her heart defect and we had a timeline of when she would be better.  This was a shot in the dark.  This was a crap shoot.  This made me feel like a failure as a mother.  Surely, I thought, there could be something I could do to persuade Brooke to just eat the damn noodle.  But my worrying was for nothing, eventually we convinced her that solid food is the way to go, and unless she has a new tooth bothering her, eating isn't an issue any more. Phew!

So as you can see, having a child with Down Syndrome isn't necessarily harder, it's just different.  A good kind of different.  There are milestones that Brooke hits that I never noticed with the previous three.  We celebrate all of the little things, we take nothing for granted.

Brooke has made us slow down and appreciate what we have, and what our children can accomplish.  And I wouldn't change her for anything.

Thank you so much for sharing Holly!- Kimberly