My Baby Rides the Short Bus: The Unabashedly Human Experience of Raising Kids with Disabilities - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604861096 ISBN 13: 9781604861099

Verlag: PM Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

In lives where there is a new diagnosis or drama every day, the stories in this collection provide parents of “special needs” kids with a welcome chuckle, a rock to stand on, and a moment of reality held far enough from the heart to see clearly. Featuring works by “alternative” parents who have attempted to move away from mainstream thought—or remove its influence altogether—this anthology, taken as a whole, carefully considers the implications of parenting while raising children with disabilities.

From professional writers to novice storytellers including Robert Rummel-Hudson, Ayun Halliday, and Kerry Cohen, this assortment of authentic, shared experiences from parents at the fringe of the fringes is a partial antidote to the stories that misrepresent, ridicule, and objectify disabled kids and their parents.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Jennifer Silverman is an optimist in a pessimist’s clothing. She lives, writes and agitates in NYC, where she is raising two boys, one of whom is autistic. Jennifer has most recently been published in Off Our Backs and Hip Mama, but has written for a variety of parenting publications and community newspapers. She has spoken about her experience raising her son while being an activist at conferences in Washington DC, Minneapolis, Providence and New York with m*a*m*a, a now defunct collective of radical mothers.

Sarah Talbot has been raising an autistic deaf punk-rocker since 1994. She and the other five members of her family reside happily in Seattle, Washington where she makes a living as an Assistant Principal at a comprehensive High School. She has come to be comfortable embodying contradictions--pleading for more services while recognizing progress, advocating for inclusion and protecting teachers, being the mom and being the writer. Sarah has been published in Breeder: Stories from the New Generation of Mothers, and Best Books For High School Students, among numerous alternative periodical publications.

Yantra Bertelli is the mother of four children and an unlikely pet owner. She lives and works in Seattle with her wife and family and thinks up different ways to manage transitions 250,000 times a day. She tends to nudge her children a bit softer than she pushes herself and she always stays up until they have finished their homework or they finally succumb to sleep after putting them to bed over and over again. Yantra was one of the founding publishers of Rag Magazine, was a moderator for Hip Mama website, and has essays published in Breeder: Real Life Stories From the New Generation of Mothers and The Essential Hipmama: Writing From the Cutting Edge of Parenting.

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My Baby Rides the Short Bus: The Unabashedly Human Experience of Raising Kids with Disabilities

By Yantra Bertelli, Jennifer Silverman, Sarah Talbot

PM Press

Copyright © 2009 Yantra Bertelli Jennifer Silverman and Sarah Talbot
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60486-109-9

Contents

Cover, 
Title Page, 
Copyright, 
Foreword, 
Introduction, 
The Other Combat Boot Drops, 
Enough Acronyms To Make Your Head Spin: Navigating the System & Advocating For, 
Seen, Heard, Respected, and Believed, 
How Do We Do It?, 
Families: When the Balancing Act Induces Vertigo, 
Righteous Resources, 
Acknowledgments, 
Girls Are Not Chicks Coloring Book, 
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, 
Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World, 
Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, 
Friends of PM, 
About PM, 

CHAPTER 1

The Other Combat Boot Drops

"There's something wrong ..." Three words that no parent wants to hear regarding their child.

Some of us knew it during pregnancy. Others found out at birth, during an adoption process, or months or even years later. For some of us, the process is ongoing. All of us find ourselves parents to kids with "special needs." Regardless of when we learned about these "special needs," most of us went through the same emotions trying to process the information: fear, confusion, anger, sadness, and hope. We met clueless (and some helpful) doctors, trudged through mountains of books, and turned to the Internet. We found some — but definitely not all — of the answers we were searching for. In the process we found our voices, symbolically put on our combat boots, and channeled our inner mama and papa bears to become advocates. But the learning curve has been steep, demanding, and often isolating.

With the exception of our one Canadian author, these writers joined the parents of the reported 17 percent of children in the United States with special needs. Marginalized by their own disabilities, liberal parenting philosophies, anti-consumerist lifestyles, and interests that set them outside conventional culture, many of these parents found it harder to be taken seriously by the professionals leading them through the diagnosis process.

The children of the parents in this chapter span eventual diagnoses from cri du chat syndrome to autism. Along the way, their parents learned as much about their kids' conditions as the "experts" — and became the best experts possible on their own kids. Their stories here and throughout the book are alternately funny, challenging, triggering, and sobering. The humor and honesty in these tales of parents living on the margins and learning about their child's special needs sets them apart from the status quo.

Rebirth

by Emily Zolten

I have heard new mothers say time after time that they felt like they were reborn on the day that their babies were born. This has been true for me after the births of all three of my daughters. What was unexpected was the version of myself that would emerge after the birth of Lucy.

I had experienced labor twice before and so I thought that I knew exactly how I gave birth. That's why I was so surprised when my water broke late in the evening three weeks before my due date. My water did not break with my other children until right before they were born. There were many things about this pregnancy that were different and it was hard not feeling like something was wrong. As a midwife, I saw this all the time — women having their third baby and feeling like they had been so lucky before that their number was surely up. Things were bound to go wrong this time.

When my water broke, I jumped up from the couch in shock. I realized what this all meant, how things would change for me, and the pain that was about to begin. I told my husband and my daughters what was happening and what to expect. They were all so excited. We cuddled up with a book about having a new baby sibling and read our bedtime story. We all knew, but no one said, that this was the last time we would be this family of four sitting here together.

I woke up in the morning surprised that labor hadn't started yet. The kids got dressed and we headed out for a walk. It was the perfect Vermont spring day. The dirt road was a combination of hardened mud and hollowed out gravel filled with puddles. The air was heavy with mist. I walked while doing nipple stimulation to bring on labor, waving at my neighbors, and laughing as they looked at me with raised eyebrows. I knew that this walk we were taking together would bring us our new baby. As we reached the top of our unbelievably steep driveway, I knew that there was no turning back. I walked into the house, threw off my clothes, and got in the shower. I did a dance between inviting in the pain and trying to back away from it. It was time to call Gabe, my husband, home from his trip to the supermarket.

Shortly after labor had gotten serious, I knew that it would soon be over. I lay in the 250-gallon horse-watering trough that sat in my living room filled with warm water. It was a gray day outside the windows and my daughters hung on the sides of the tub encouraging me. I reached down and felt her head pushing into my palm. The baby and I began the work together as a team.

When Lucy was born I immediately noted her small size (5lbs 14oz) and her even smaller voice. She sounded just like a baby kitten. She had a herniated umbilical cord. Her ears were slightly low set, but barely. I had seen so many newborn babies in my experience as a midwife and I knew that there were things about Lucy that were different, but I explained away these things by her early arrival. It wasn't until the day the geneticist handed me the lab results that I knew how truly unique this little girl was. We had hit the genetic lottery. Lucy had a syndrome that occurs once in every 50,000 times a baby is born. The funny thing was, when the proof was there that something about her was unusual, it struck me that she was the same baby that I had been holding five minutes earlier when there was no diagnosis.

In that moment, I knew and continue to learn every day, that I am a different mother than I ever thought that I would be. Some days I am a better mother than I was before: I participate so fully in Lucy's therapy, I make excellent lunches for my other children, and we talk about all of our feelings and about Lucy's disability in such a mature way. Other days, I snap at my girls for the simplest of things because I am over-tired from not sleeping for nearly three years and my shoulder is bruised from Lucy banging her head all night. I snap at Lucy for banging her head, despite the fact that I know she would stop if she could. Sometimes I am not completely compliant with the things that the specialists and doctors have told me to do with Lucy. She refuses to wear her glasses, and I don't force her to. Lucy does not wear her orthotics for the entirety of her day. I love babies with bare feet. Worst of all, after years of making parenting choices that seemed so in line with nature and how I thought natural parenting was supposed to happen, I have made the decision to medicate my toddler so that she might sleep for even a few consecutive hours at night.

I am a mother who knows that each one of my children will have her own story. I know that all of the things I have hoped for them are only in my imagination, they will be exactly who they are meant to be. I often remember that moment when I was pushing Lucy out into the warm...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PM Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1604861096
• ISBN 13: 9781604861099
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 364
• Herausgeber: Silverman Jennifer, Talbot Sarah, Bertelli Yantra
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland