AIBU to hate the word choice

[2shoestrodonalltheeggs]

I am fed up that this word is used so much(yes a fred about a fred, but I haven't given up in norm land) I get so angry when told that I had a choice.
so what choice, your baby is born disabled...what choice, oh I suppose you could do a JH, but surely that isn't a choice.

I got this a few times. My answer:

"Well, I've been dealing with it since 18 months old, I'm kinda used to it."

Wish people understood more sometimes but meh, besides making them look at the sun for a few hours, there's not a lot I can do.

I read an article by JH and initially thought she sounded selfish and cold. However, I think many parents who find out their babies are severely disabled are profoundly traumatised at a particularly vulnerable time. I certainly was.

We spent ds's first week of life in hospital resulting in a 'dx' of some unnamed syndrome, followed by the news that he would be profoundly, multiply disabled and the punchline was that he was completely blind. Wham bam. For a while, I thought it would have been better for us if he died, and I didn't want to spend my life looking after a severely disabled child. I remember thinking 'I will never be happy again'. Maybe if someone had givem me the 'choice' then to offload him onto a loving, 'better' parent, I would have taken it and I almost certainly would have had an abortion if I had any warning of what was to come.

Now of course, it is a different story and I am a changed person with a very different value system thanks to the very steep learning curve my ds has taken me on. But it took me a good few years to heal and accept and value him properly. Even now it occasionally feels too hard to bear, but luckily that is a rare thought on the rare bad day.

Perhpas JH never gave herself the time to get over the shock, adjust and accept her child's disability. Maybe it felt the only way out of deep trauma at the time, but I can't imagine she escaped scot free no matter how articulately she explains herself.

On a different tack - and probably about to be controvertial (SP??) but i HATE 'learning disabled' as opposed to 'learning difficulties' which implies that learning can be done, but it is a bit difficult, not impossible.

just my opinion.