This is Holland, and I love it.

Welcome to Holland is a poem that my mom sent to me during our NICU stay. It was and still is perfect and always brings me up when it's been a rough day. All of our friends have "typical" children. They all gave birth, started nursing then went home. No special doctors appointments, no walking hospital hallways at 2am because they couldn't sleep. It didn't seem fair that I had done everything "right" during Mel's pregnancy and yet there we were stuck between those pastel colored, sterile walls. So here is the poem, I pray that if you are currently or have in the past experienced a different than "normal" birth this will help bring peace to you!

Welcome to Holland
By: Emily Perl 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, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's 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 stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important 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's slower-paced 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....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they'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."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend 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.

 

Yesterday my husband and I were talking. He said that someday he would like for Mel and I to take a trip to Paris. I have dreamt of going to Paris since I was young. Don't get me wrong I would still love to visit Paris but my new dream trip is to take Mel to Holland. To see the tulips and the windmills, to buy her a pair of wooden shoes.
Having Mel has changed me, everything about her coming into this world from her pregnancy, birth and up until now has shaped me into who I was always meant to be. And I thank God for her every single day.

Well now that I'm crying I'm going to go cuddle my sweet little tulip and say a prayer!

Love until another day,
Shelbi