Why I'm Thankful We Didn't Know About My Daughter's Disabilities Before She Was Born

If I knew then…

that Ashlea would need a kidney transplant…

that she would have multiple disabilities…

that our lives would never be the same…

would we have done things differently?

I’m sad to say that we may indeed have done things differently. If we’d been told before the girls were born that Ashlea was going to have cerebral palsy, a vision impairment, an intellectual delay and kidney failure, we would have assumed she would have no quality of life and we may have requested she not be resuscitated at birth. If we’d found out that same information in the first few days of her life, we may have decided to withdraw care (I know this is a contentious issue, but when our baby required full life support and was in complete renal failure, it was presented to us as an option.).

But we didn’t know.  

Thank God we didn’t know.

What we didn’t know is how wrong we were to assume that someone with a disability would have no quality of life.

What we didn’t know was that having a child with serious disabilities would be a blessing.

That we would love Ashlea just as she is…

that she would help us see what is really important in life…

that we would be OK with not getting the fairytale ending.

What an eye opener it’s been to live with Ashlea and her disabilities. If we’d known, we possibly would have made different choices. But we would have robbed ourselves of the joy and the delight that is Ashlea. We would have robbed ourselves of the chance to have our eyes opened, to see what is really important in life.

Even if someone had told me back then that I would have a child with severe disabilities and that I would be OK with it, it wouldn’t have helped. Because I wouldn’t have believed them.

Some things you have to learn by experience.

Thank God we didn’t know.

This post originally appeared on Thinking of Starting a Blog.

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