My book club just finished reading this book by Kelle Hampton, the author of the popular blog Enjoying the Small Things.
It's all about her story of giving birth unexpectedly to a little girl with Down's Syndrome. The book was amazing, powerful and challenging. You have got to read it, okay, maybe I mean read and cry your way through the book... :)
My friend Donna Loy asked me last night at book club why I liked it so much and I think the answer is because I understood everything that she felt in the beginning and I am ashamed to admit my reaction would probably have been similar to her's... fear, uncertainty, dashed hopes for what you imagined your family would be like. But there was redemption in the book... she showed us how she is overcoming the stereotypes of DS and paving a new way for her family. I want to much to be someone who will teach others to do that. It made me think that if God ever blessed us with a child with DS (the doctor's all thought Drew had DS or something else while he was still in utereo) we would still be the luckiest parents. Life would be more difficult than we imagined. But it would still be good. And we would grow in ways we never could have without that.
Kelle made comments throughout the beginning of the memoir about wanting to go back to pregnancy where there was no DS diagnosis, where there was still the hope of her two girls growing up and being best friends and I thought of how all the time I wish I could go back to pregnancy... but not for those same reasons. I wish I could do it all better. I wish I wouldn't have been such a baby about being sick. I look back and feel like I was in a state of shock where I couldn't quite absorb the amazingness of being a new mom, maybe for the first six months, because I was really scared. I felt like I was so out of my element and that everyone would be a better parent than I. But now I realize it's not true. Of course I was scared. I was clueless!!! If we have another child I'll be far more the way I wish I was because I get it now... Obviously not any baby is identical but I at least have a smidge more experience than I did pre-Drew.
All right, enough about my thoughts... you've got to read the book, it's a super quick read, and drink in all her amazing photographs (she is a photographer).
Have you read any good books lately?
I just finished the most beautiful book called To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal. I stayed up insanely late to read the last 250 pages!
ReplyDeleteI found your blog on Pinterest and think it's darling. I don't read much but if I do I always think it's way better if crying is involved. This book looks like summer reading for sure. I'm a new follower and all that jazz. Nice to meet you...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review! I've been wanting to read Bloom - love Kelle's blog (and yours, of course)!
ReplyDeleteI think most of us have felt the way you did when you were pregnant...after all, as a friend of mine is fond of saying "babies are the only thing you get that don't come with an instruction manual."
ReplyDeleteThank you for the book review...I'm going to add this one to my list. One of my children was diagnosed with DS during my pregnancy (AFP and then an amnio) and the most difficult part of it was the reaction of my close family and friends, which was very different from our reaction, to love and care for this child whom God had entrusted to us. Julia was born a few days before Christmas in 1990, perfectly healthy. While we were overjoyed that the doctors were wrong, I was also angry at what the misdiagnosis had put us through. (Dealing with emotions due to our families' "advice", inability to birth with a midwife (genetic disorders are "high-risk" so we had to deliver in a hospital), standing our ground about accepting our baby no matter what, etc.) It also makes me angry and sad that these misdiagnoses happen and that some people use this information to terminate their pregnancies. Oh, this is an emotional button for me! Anyhoo, I think I'll go download this book to my kindle.
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