Can someone point me in the right direction....

[nikkie]

I am looking for the poem? about life with a child with sn.The going on holiday and arriving someone where completly different .
TIA

[nikkie]

bump

[eidsvold]

you mean welcome to Holland??

Welcome To Holland
by Emily Perl Kingsley (following the birth of her son who has Down Syndrome.)
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved.


I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."


And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

[theheadlessgirl]

Ah, this brings back memories Eidsvold, someone gave it me when my girl was born with DS. Along with a lovely little pamflet of photos, called "Just Kids". Whenever I see the poem, or the pamflet it takes me right back to that time 6 years ago. I was full of a mixture of emotions - still proud at my beautiful new girl, but afraid and very sad I'd not gone "to Italy".
Now i can't imagine family life with DD3, and feel a bit amazed that I went through all that, with that baby, who turned into my lovely girl