Worth a post....

So I haven't been around much as we had to fly to Newfoundland due to the death of Danny's grandmother. It has been a busy summer!
Anyways, I am reading "Having Your Baby Through Egg Donation" by Ellen Glazer and Evelina Sterling and thought this passage was worth a post on the blogger site. The author is a mother who became pregnant and her child was born with Down Syndrome. This essay however is a close example of someone who has struggled with infertility and has built or plans to build their family with the help of ovum donation.

"Welcome to Holland"
By: Emily Kingsley
"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability-to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this....
When you're going to have a baby, its like planning a fabulous vacation trip-to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. Michelangelo's David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It is all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The steardess comes in and says "Welcome to Holland". "Holland?" you say. "What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy! I am supposed to be in Italy. All my life I have dreamed about going to Italy!"
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and you must stay. The importnat thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It is slower than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland even has rembrants.
But everyone you know is busy going to and from Italy and thy're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
The pain of that will never ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spent your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland".