I’ve lost another baby. I was due June 3, two days after Rowenna’s third birthday. The pregnancy had been relatively uneventful. I had some morning sickness and some pretty intense fatigue, but I was grateful to be spared the hyperemesis gravidarum I had with Rowenna and I was starting to make plans for a big […]
About Melissa
Mom, writer, advocate, knitter.Author Archive | Melissa
My Heart
Sometimes I wonder if I’m rubbing off on Rowenna at all. She is so much her daddy’s girl. I see it all the time – a certain gleam in her eye, her ability to problem solve, her mellow, laid-back personality. Given a choice, she’ll happily sit with her dad. She is definitely not one of […]
Guest Post
I’m guest-posting over on With a Little Moxie today. It’s week 4 of the Down syndrome awareness blog hop, so be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the post and read other entries in the hop. Lots of good stuff there! In Rowenna news, things are going well. She attends the full morning […]
Loss
Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Why is this important to me? Over the summer, I had a miscarriage. Only 2 people knew I was pregnant – we hadn’t even told my family or hubby’s family. I was scared to tell anyone because we weren’t feeling all that confident about our decision to […]
If I Knew Then
Blog-hopping with the T21 Writer’s Alliance today. Check out With a Little Moxie for the others participating in this week’s hop. The prompt for this week is “If I Knew Then What I Know Now.” This is something that comes up a lot in disability world, especially as we try to help families understand a […]
A Month In
Today was Rowenna’s fourth week of preschool. Something happened after our first school visit back in August – the visit I thought had gone wonderfully well. I got a phone call from Ms. T, and by the hesitation in her voice I knew she had something to say I wasn’t going to like. She told […]
Heart Day
Two years ago, I handed my daughter over for open heart surgery. We choose to celebrate this day because while her birthday is the day she left my body, today is the day she started to live. I’ve had people raise an eyebrow at this choice to celebrate, and it recently dawned on me that […]
No Ordinary Boy
A friend sent me her copy of No Ordinary Boy, a non-fiction personal narrative about a mother raising a child with a complex disability. It’s a slim volume, so while Rowenna took a long nap, I settled down to read. It’s a beautiful book – heart-wrenching without being overly sentimental, spare prose offers you a […]
The Rosy Picture
I recently had a brief but thought-provoking exchange with a fellow mom-and-blogger about the curious phenomenon of painting a rosy picture of Down syndrome. Then I read this blog post and wondered how many scared, sad, or lonely parents there are out there. I realized that painting a rosy picture may be doing some damage […]
A Leap of Faith – But Not Really
We’ve made a choice for Rowenna that has been controversial for some and a non-issue for others. I want to talk a little bit about our choice and how we came to this decision. Please bear in mind that these are my personal opinions, and by no means expert opinions, nor are they a judgement […]
