Life Ain't Always Beautiful

I live my life day after day to the same reoccurring nightmare. This is my life as I have come to know it. There are days when I don't want to wake up, when I wish certain issues would just disappear. I've been through a lot and yet many people fail to take a moment to begin to understand before they dish out their harsh criticism and judgment. I have made mistakes in my life as we all do. But I feel that saying "God doesn't give people more than they can handle" is a complete lie in my opinion. I ended up pregnant at 17 to the biggest loser in this nation and having our daughter 2 months before I graduated high school. I was still a child myself and now I had a child of my own. I gave up college to take care of this child as I didn't have a support group of family and friends that doubled as free baby-sitters that many girls have who find themselves in my situation had. We lived with my mother who worked all the time, and crazy hours too that I couldn't schedule anything around. I felt so alone, so lost at times yet I managed. The father was a total deadbeat and his mother didn't care either. I filed for child support when she was 3 months old and he had the nerve to embarrass us with saying that he needed a paternity test. Until that time he never bought one thing for our child. Of course the results came back with what we knew all along. I was stuck dealing with his absence in raising our child and failure to pay child support regularly for the next 18 years. As my child grew she fell further and further behind in development of a certain area and I realized that something was seriously wrong. Her pediatrician told me to just wait until her next check up and if no progress was made she would refer us to a specialist. Call it mother's instinct but I knew something was seriously wrong and we couldn't wait. My child would not talk and didn't seem interested in sounds. Early Intervention became a part of our lives. The initial misdiagnosis of her condition thanks in part to a total ditz at the hearing center at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh made things even more frustrating. It wasn't until months later that we had the proper diagnosis. I was only 19 and being told that my child had severe to profound hearing loss in both ears. I remember I started feeling light headed, dizzy as the room started spinning and my chest became tight and heavy making it difficult to breathe. My heart was pounding very fast. I felt like I was going to pass out so I sat down as quickly as I could as I had one of the many anxiety attacks that come from this heartbreaking situation. They tried hearing aids, but those were a big joke. The only function they served were huge, hideous earrings that didn't help my child to hear. Things were worse then n I could have imagined. I was beyond depressed and hopeless. It was hard enough being a teen mom with a typical child and now I had to deal with this. It just wasn't fair. My child had to miss out on having a father and on top of that have a disability. Life was anything but fair.I thought the situation out from every angle and figured out that I thought the best decision for everyone was to put my child up for adoption. She had needs that were out of my reach. I didn't have the means to provide the best care she deserved. I wanted the best for this child whom I loved. This wasn't me looking for the easy way out or being selfish. This was me trying to be responsible and caring. I figured that an older, stable couple would be able to give this child a much better life that I ever could, especially the anxiety and depression that situation brought me that prevented me from being the mother I dreamed of being. I told my mother of my ideas and she wouldn't hear of it. She threatened to disown me and all she could do was sob like an insecure child and say things like "you're not giving her up for adoption, that's MY grandchild." Acting like she had a say so in this matter, when all she was doing was thinking about herself and all the selfish reasons of holding this child back from having the best life she deserved. I tried to be the good mother I dreamed of being, but it was too hard for me. I would take my daughter to playgrounds and Chuck E. Cheese, pumpkin patches, and the mall. I would see all these happily married mothers with their typical children taking for granted all their blessings as they communicated verbally with their children. I developed a lot of anger among other feelings. I felt so alone trying to take care of my special needs child while the rest of the world had their lives go perfectly it seemed like. Therapists from Early Intervention would come to our house and work with my daughter a few times a week. It helped to develop her concentration skills and teach her some basic signing, but the results weren't even close to the goals we had hoped for. I researched cochlear implants and I knew that it would be the best decision for my daughter, in hopes that she might be able to hear and someday speak. It was heartbreaking taking her to a specialist and being told she was the perfect candidate for a cochlear implant, being tested by audiologists to determine how extreme her hearing loss was, the trips driving down to Pittsburgh with a screaming toddler strapped into a carseat in the backseat, walking through parking garages into a hospital or doctor's office. Finally in the beginning of December of 2004, when she was a little over 2 1/2 years old, she had surgery and had her cochlear implant. I was 21 when I had to sit in a waiting room while my toddler had surgery while other people my age were sleeping off the night before. The C.I. wasn't a sudden solution as some may think. It took a few weeks after surgery to heal, and when we they were going to turn her processor on for the first time an infection was discovered and forced us to wait another few weeks. She was scared and refused to wear her processor for a long time. She gave us more trouble than they've ever seen a child give in resisting wearing the device.