Kids Like These

[Guest guest]

When you're going to have a baby, it's like you're planning a vacation

to Italy. You're all excited....seeing the Coliseum, The angelo,

the gondolas of Venice. You get a whole bunch of guide books, you learn

a few phrases in Italian, so you can order in restaurants and get around

the town. When it comes time, you excitedly pack your bags, head for

the airport, and take off... for Italy. Only when you land, your

stewardess announces, " Welcome to Holland. " You look at one another in

disbelief and shock, saying " Holland? What are you talking about...

Holland? I signed up for Italy. " But they explain that there's been a

change of plans and the plane has landed in Holland, and there you must

stay. " But I don't know anything about Holland. I don't want to stay

here, " you say. " I never wanted to come to Holland. I don't know what

you do in Holland, and I don't want to learn. " But you do stay, and you

go out and you buy some new guide books. You learn some new phrases in

a whole new language, and you meet people that you never knew existed.

But the important thing is that you are not in a filthy, plague infested

slum full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in another place, a

different place than you'd planned. It's slower paced than Italy, less

flashy than Italy, but after you've been there a little while and you

have a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that Holland

has windmills, Holland has tulips, and Holland even has Rembrandts. But

everyone else you know is busy coming and going to and from Italy, and

they're all bragging about what a great time they had there. And for

the rest of your life you will say " Yes, that's where I was going;

that's where I was supposed to go; that's what I had planned. " And the

pain of that will never, ever go away. And you have to accept that

pain, because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan, is a very,

very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact

that you didn't get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very

special, the very lovely things about Holland.

I have been trying to get my charts and forms back together to resume my

midwifery practice and I came across this poem/story that I always kept

in case I ever had a Mom who had a baby with a birth defect. A lot of

you have probably already seen it as it's been around a long time.

Someone might even know the proper reference for it, all I have is that

it's by Perle Kingsley and is called " Kids Like These " .

I never dreamed it might apply to myself. ~ Karin in Holland