Birth Memory

Written By: Sharon Randall

My oldest son turned five today, and a few days ago I began to relive the events leading up to his birth. Memories of anticipation, excitement and the joy of welcoming a new baby into our lives warmed me this entire week. I reached into my mind for the details of exactly how the day transpired, and I watched the clock this afternoon as 5:40pm passed…..the moment of his birth. I absolutely cherish these memories and relive them as vividly as I can on each of his birthdays. I know many mothers can relate.

But what happens when the memory of a child's birth brings only remembrances of fear and grief and confusion? When there's not one joy to look back on, and it's only a shameful memory, if one is not gentle on oneself.

For me, and some I know who also have had babies born unexpectedly with Down syndrome, the birth memory can be very difficult. The stories we tell around the births of our other children - stories filled with joy and anticipation and celebration - don't have much in common with this experience.

And now, years past the event of my second son's birth, there are feelings of sadness, regret and shame. Sadness that I couldn't lift beyond myself to rejoice in the new life with which we were blessed; regret that I inadvertently robbed myself of happy memories that I would have carried with me for a lifetime; and shame, when I look into the eyes of my beautiful son, now the absolute joy of my life, and cannot say to him, "you were welcomed with joy."

Our children are a constant source of acceptance and forgiveness, having been spared all memories of our shortcomings at their birth. We are perfect mothers in their sight. But we are burdened with our own memories of our shortcomings.

So we have to forgive ourselves. Know that we did the best in the moment that we could. That without time to process and reflect, due to the whirlwind of unexpected information coming our way, trying to keep afloat while we tried to be strong for others, all the while tossing around on the stormy waves of emotion, we couldn't do much more.

To recompense for our sins, some of us work hard to sow seeds of joy with families who have recently joined us on this journey. We reassure those who find themselves as we did - too numb to experience joy, too confused to celebrate, too fearful of the future to embrace the happy moment. We celebrate for them, since we couldn't celebrate for ourselves. And we truly believe now that these children are cause for celebration … as they say, if we only knew then what we know now.

Our current reality is that the joy that we didn't experience at birth we experience ten-fold now. We appreciate our children more since the news at the beginning was so frightening; some of us didn't think our children would make it to be toddlers. We have fallen in love with our children, often falling into a long, slow deepening love across the first couple of years. The intensity of the feelings at the birth is still there - but it is intense joy, intense love, intense pride, intense acceptance. And it is acceptance not only of our children, and of our reality of being a family with a child with special needs, but a genuine acceptance of ourselves - as full human beings, mothers who have risen from despair to joy, from weakness to strength, and from fear to love.