What are the odds that baby will be disabled/brain damaged/very special needs?

[Flum]

I am expecting third baby and feel I am worrying overly that there will be a problem with this baby. It is as if I am trying to come to terms with it in advance (impossible I'm sure). I am worrying about how it would affect rest of family and worse still and am so sad and ashamed to admit this - that I would regret having third child.

Is there a website that actually lets you look at the true odds of things going wrong with babies in the womb/during childbirth, so I can get my head around the actual facts. Perhaps it would make me worry more though......

Yes that's it Fio. I don't really care that someone would terminate for DS (and presumably my son if a test was available as he has greater LD's than the vast majority of kids I've met with DS). I just don't have any wish to know that. Especially when they're not even pregnant so there really is no need to share that bit of info with me.

I do find it crass.

And yes people's attitudes to ds1 have changed. A non-talking 3 year old who was passive and cute and cuddly is different from a non-talking 9 year old who is far from passive and more crushy than cuddly.

Tinysocks - that was what I was thinking but kept getting interrupted by dcs and losing train of thought.

I think sometimes I forget that I haven't always known a life involved with special needs. When I see the way my younger children talk to their older brother and they just seem to get how to speak to him (and get answers!) and yet that's something I had to learn and not that long ago. Sorry rambling - have to go and find sandals....wipe bottom...etc

My best friend has an 8 year old ds with Autism and other disabilities. I have to admit that I saw the challenges and hard work involved and honestly didn't think I could cope a child with SN. However guess what? I now have three children with SN. DS1 and DS2 have Autism and DD has hearing impairment - it's too early to know whether or not she has Autism too obviously. You DO just get on with it. They are your babies and tbh if they're born with their SN you don't have any experience of them being any other way than they are so it's just every day life really.

People ask me how I manage - tbh I've not known any different and I have a very supportive hands on DH. It's just my life, they're my children and I love them and would do anything for them.

Glitter - That's the same for me, my eldest has autism and I didn't know any different, I don't think I'd even held a baby before I had him! It wasn't until ds2 started talking etc. that I realised what it was that ds1 should have been doing. I found it quite difficult when hv etc. asked questions because for me everything he did was 'normal' because I knew no different.

Thing is, plenty of disabilities simply cannot be diagnosed antenatally or are the result of things beyond anyone's control - illness or accident, for example.

I think a lot of today's prejudices towards people with LD or SN come from society's expectation that everything has to go well or somehow you've been shafted and it's not right or fair.

I mean, to me at least, it seems silly to get worked up in pregnancy because what will you do if your child is born, like mine, with an LD that can't be picked up? What if your child gets meningitis and becomes SN from that? Or in an accident? Or develops autism?

What then? Well, you have to deal then. You don't have any other option (excepting the Julia Hollanders of this world, of course).

Same thing as, what do you do if your parents or spouse gets something like Alzheimer's or Huntington's Disease or the like?

Do you just street them?

I'm probably not making much sense here.

Yes snap. I had no idea that children just did things like drink out of cups until ds2 did it at 6 months. I thought it was normal to have to teach your 18 month hand over hand to drink from a cup - and for it to take 3 or 4 days! ds2 was a revelation to me!!

"I think a lot of today's prejudices towards people with LD or SN come from society's expectation that everything has to go well or somehow you've been shafted and it's not right or fair."

God yes, it's everyone's 'right' to never have to face up to difficulties.

Oh, the drinking out of cups rings a bell here too. we had to teach dd1 how to do it, slowly and painfully (and not very successfully, obviously, as she still has issues drinking!) - the only advice I ever got when asking around hvs etc was "have oyu tried using a straw?"

since my query was how to get dd1 to understand that she had to suck to get anything out of a sippy cup, then that was not very helpful really

dd2 has done it all as a matter of course...

EXCEPT - I still mostly spoonfeed dd2 (18 months) as she gets very frustrated and can't do it herself. Then, blow me down i came into the room this morning to find her scooping up lentils and feeding them, with a spoon, to her giraffe (we have been working on pretend play with dd1) - methinks dd2's easy ride at mealtimes is now over

on the disabled child front, I agree that you just get on with it as day to day life.

I too, had never held a baby before i had dd1. She arrived and was, of course beautiful and perfect. And then, slowly, day by day, it appeared she was, apparently, not so perfect after all. Tiny things, like not holding her bottle as a baby. Not picking up her cup. Not reaching out for a lot of her toys. But she was still my beautiful dd1. who giggled when she was tickled, who loved maisy books, who could practically knock you over at 10 months old in her enthusiasm to get to a slide. She just didn't conform to accepted child development. But that didn't change her personality, or the fact that we loved her.

Andnow, having dd2 (NT as far as we know) doesn't mean that I love dd1 any less, just because I have a "normal" child. It just means that I can see all the more clearly the things that should have come naturally to dd1. they are both my girls, and they are both doing things in their own way, at their own pace. Just as they should.

Dh and I recently went to London and saw 'Hairspray', which as you probably know is about racism and how it is wrong to exclude people because of their colour etc etc. Obviously no arguments with that. However I was saddened when one of the characters was called a 'Spastic' in a way that was meant as an insult. I know the actors just say the lines that are written for them but surely if they had objected then it could have been changed. It was one word, I very much doubt if anyone in the audience would have known if it had been changed to something else. The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that the word was left in, is that nobody in the cast saw anything wrong in it.

can I just say that I love reading about everyone's children

After the morning I had with DS1 (called DH in the middle of his conf call to tell him I am walking out of the door and never coming bac ), it's good to come here with a cup of tea for a couple of minutes

..that's it, tea break over

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. I don't have much to add to the excellent posts already here. JimJams you are a star and a genius.

I didn't post initially as I was rather taken aback and upset by the op. But I am glad the post has generated discussion.

I was thinking yesterday, but didn't post it, that while some of us initally thought that the OP was being insensitive in posting here, maybe she came here to hear exactly what so many have said, that it IS "all right" in the end, that even though it may be not we would have chosen, we still love our children, we still do the best we can for them, and life in no respect is "over".

Even if she doesn't want to post anything else here, I really hope she is reading all these posts...it's really helped me (still coming to terms with the SN world and that fact that it isn't always all fair and OK...)

I had a bit of a eureka moment myself this year.

It was when ds1 started doing moor walking (I think). I may have constructed some of this in my memory- so it may be pieces of memories.

But we'd walked up to Roos Tor and stopped to have a snack. We were the only people around and ds1 appeared to be enjoying it as much as me. And I realised despite his profound autism and severe learning disabilities he was having pretty much the same experience as me. He was enjoying being in that beautiful place ever bit as much as I was. It was perfect.

And I then realised that life is about experiences. And who am I to judge his experiences any less worthy than my own. His life and experiences are equally valid. I've found it quite life-changing in a way to realise that. HIs severe disability really doesn't make his life any less important or valid than my own.

Well put jimjams

Really good thread...

'I think I may well have been pretty dreadfully shallow without ds1.'

Ah but here's the rub - you would never have known that you were shallow!

Fascinating.

Manny perhaps I still am

COuldnt agree more Jimjams and what a great thread for one I thought might have ended up a bit pear shaped....!

It still could lourobert....

I was in asda today and saw a man I knew was an athlete when I worked the special olypmics...this was in 1997, he walked up to me shook my hand and said...'hello Ruth, I havent seen for you ages' I cant believe he remembered me and it made my day. As we walked off the friend I was with said 'no wonder you're single if thats the kind of man you attract, first I was that she would say something like that but then I thought you know what I would much rather have spoken to him today than anyone else in the shop.

This man also went on to tell me that he went to watch Pompey in the charity sheild at Wembley, his carer was apologising for him being a nuisance but he that couldnt have been further from the truth.

I loved his honesty and you could see the joy as he relayed his day at Wembley to me, he had no agenda and it made me think of my own ds in many ways.

It ben a bumpy road but were gettig there