Read it and weep for the baby - for all the babies. And for the parents - any parent tonight who is contemplating this decision.
While I have no doubt there can be joys and victories in raising a mentally handicapped child, for me and for Mike, it's a painful journey that we believe is better not taken. To know now that our son would be retarded, perhaps profoundly, gives us the choice of not continuing the pregnancy. We don't want a life like that for our child, and the added worry that we wouldn't be around long enough to care for him throughout his life.
For some reason, I expected our baby would look like Mike -- sandy-colored, silky hair, hazel eyes. I hoped he would inherit Mike's personality -- mellow, an antidote to my not-so-mellow.
One night, a few days after we learned of the diagnosis, I dreamed that I saw our baby: he had black hair like mine, but it was long, like a hippie's, the way I'd seen Mike in yellowed black-and-white photos from the '60s. In the dream, we were in a bookstore, the three of us. I heard gunfire. Then, the baby crawled away. I woke up missing him, mourning the child we wouldn't have.
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