Family | Lessons from my daughter

No no…. I am not thinking about having another baby. Emily will be 15 in 2 weeks….. I am done!

Seeing my friends get pregnant and seeing their babies reminds me of my pregnancy.

We wanted a baby and tried for a couple of months before we got a positive result. We were sooo excited and Jon told everybody he knew way before the safe time… You know the so many weeks you should be waiting for before you tell… 🙂

Quite early in this process I ended-up at the hospital with major cramps, because of the pregnancy, we had ultra-sounds done and the hospital staff was ready to terminate it all as they couldn’t see the fetus in my uterus. They assumed it was in one of my fallopian tube. They couldn’t see it anywhere but the bloodwork said I was pregnant. That day I learned that we were probably a good 3 weeks less advanced than we though.

I told the doctors that until they could prove that my life was in danger, they were not going to terminate my pregnancy. We scheduled a follow-up ultra-sound…

2nd ultra-sound! – they can see the fetus in the uterus but their is no “c.f.” ….. don’t you like it when doctors are talking about you but don’t want you to understand??? So, I asked, what’s a “c.f.”? The conversation was in French at the time and a c.f. stands for coeur foetal… my fetus’ heart…

From the previous ultra-sound, we knew I was at least 3 weeks behind the original delivery date but it wasn’t changed anywhere… so again I asked, is it possible that it is not formed yet? The answer was yes but we shouldn’t take a chance, we should terminate your pregnancy…. Wait what??? No!!!…. We should not terminate anything…. we should schedule another ultra-sound and see if the c.f. is there …

3rd ultra-sound! – here it is…. my fetus is in my uterus and has a tiny beating heart!

What a relief! We were so happy!

Emily arrived a couple of weeks early when comparing to my original delivery date but when factoring in all the ultra-sound, she was born at least 5 weeks early and she was really tiny (5lbs 6oz). Should my delivery date had been changed, we would have been transferred to another hospital, Emily would have been considered premie… Maybe she would have been diagnosed there…. But that didn’t happened…. we were sent home with our perfect little baby!!!!

The rest is history.

Fast forward a couple of months after Emily was diagnosed…

Someone at work had the …. audacity??? to ask me if I regretted not letting the doctors terminate my pregnancy at the beginning when I had all those ultra-sounds going on…

I can’t remember exactly what I said but it must have been something like …. WTF??? You did not just ask me that….? Emily is the love of my life regardless of what is going on now!

Even in my sleepless full of stress state of mind, I never one second thought I should have terminated my pregnancy. I am not opposed to terminating a pregnancy under certain circumstances… I think it is a decision to be taken between you, your spouse and your consciences…..

At that time, Emily had already taught me the importance of love, care, patience, repetition, …. and more! She had taught me to slow down and not turn into a workaholic…. she had taught me that a cuddle is worth more than anything….

How can someone felt it was ok to ask something like that?

How would you have answered that question?

Emily was 7 when we moved to our current location…

Once we knew where we were living, Emily started school and daycare…

…..

There was a boy at the daycare… let’s call him Josh… Josh was one grade ahead of Emily at school and was being picked-up by the daycare van at the same time as Emily.

Everyday, when I picked Emily up at the daycare, she would say bye to Josh and he never ever answered her! He didn’t matter if he was on his own or if his parents were there, he ignored her and his parents did the same! Many times I felt like saying something to them but didn’t want to embarrass Emily…. For months even years, Emily kept saying “Hi Josh” and “Bye Josh” but he kept ignoring her.

I told her to stop, that he wasn’t worth it. I probably called him some not really nice words but she kept at it! Nothing I said worked.

A couple of years into this strange routine, Emily and Josh were in the same class as it was combined class (2 different grades in 1 class).

He just kept ignoring her until one day, the teacher decided to sit Emily and Josh next to each other. The whole class was sitting 2 by 2, Emily had been sitting next to other kids without any issues. When I saw that she was sitting next to Josh, I voiced my concerns to the teacher. I wasn’t going to let that little piece of sh… bring my daughter’s self-esteem down. The teacher promised to keep an eye on them and to make them work together…

Josh had to interact with Emily at school but never did he acknowledged her outside the classroom.

And she never gave up on greeting him and saying goodbye to him! I still don’t know why she never stopped trying to make him acknowledge her or even just see her!

Eventually we moved Emily to another daycare than in 6th grade she moved to a different middle school so we don’t see Josh anymore.

From where I stand, I am happy that he is out of the picture.

Ignoring someone the way he was ignoring Emily is a form of bullying! The fact that his parents saw nothing wrong with the way he was behaving speaks louder than words…

Should I have said something to them? Would you have said something?