Special mummies for special babies. Yes that one. I've mentioned it before in my first blogpost. That phrase that I advised you not to use within my earshot.
People using it frequently believe that it is a compliment they are giving you. It comes coupled with sentences such as 'You are so fantastic with him' and particularly 'I could never do that'. When I object against the phrase it is frequently seen as me being too modest, and that is totally missing the point. It makes me angry because it suggests that I somehow have special gifts that make it 'ok' for me to have a child with extra difficulties. No it isn't and no I don't. I was pregnant just like you, had dreams just like you and had a baby just like you. I didn't come prepared, I didn't get extra training and no I am not a specially nice or patient person. There is nothing in me that makes me specially qualified to look after my SN child except the fact that he is my child, I am his mum, and I love him to kingdom come and back. And that is why you could do it too, if you had to. And to be really harsh, you may still have to.
There is also a deeper level on which it makes me unhappy and restless. The idea that God somehow picked me to look after Nathan because Nathan was going to be disabled suggests that God deliberately made Nathan disabled. After all he grew in my womb for approximately 8 months and 3 weeks before coming to grief. And no, I do not believe in a God who makes children disabled. I believe that ours is a fallen world in which many things go wrong, including illness and disability (and earthquakes, hunger, wars, sexual abuse, addiction, broken relationships...) because we as a world have turned away from God. God didn't make Nathan disabled. God longs for Nathan to be whole and will one day make him whole. Why he has not already made him whole in this life is another question, and one to which I have no answer. But the long and short of it is that I do not have special God given skills to look after a disabled child. It is God who helps me through, who gives me strength day by day, but that is another matter.
Special babies make special mummies, that much is true. You never know how much of an obnoxious battleax you are until that side of you is called upon to make sure your special sprog gets what they need, fighting your way through lack of services, upsetting formfilling (DLA forms anyone? Such easy extra money according to some newspapers. All you have to do is write a 40 page form about all the things your child can't do and submit lots of medical reports and then you hope for the best) and funding cuts by a vindictive government whose prime minister should from own experience know better.
But the only true special one is my special son. I bow to his sunny nature despite everything, and his stubborn bloodymindedness which comes from having to fight so hard for what others take for granted. I'm dead proud of him.
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