When you parent a child with special needs and any type of medical needs, you often hear people say, “I don’t know how you do it.” Most of the time I just shrug it off because I don’t always know either, but as a parent, you don’t think about it, you just do it.
However, in the past two weeks, I’ve started to question our sanity a little bit. Instead of enjoying the down-time now that Lily is in school all-day, we decided to up the chaos and introduce a new family member: Lola the Frenchton!
We weren’t going to get a dog. I have never felt more terrible then when we decided to re-home Gus and that was even while knowing that it really was the absolute best thing for him. Between 2, 1.5-2 hour walks a day, he still had so much more energy left in him and it was obvious that he needed a working home, somewhere that would let him run to his hearts content, and while I knew our decision would allow for that, I also felt incredibly guilty, as I had never “given up” on a pet before. And when we made that decision, I truly did believe that it would be the end of pets in our home. But a year went by and we started to miss having an animal around. Lily started reaching all of these amazing milestones and she started to really become interested in the environment around her and especially when she was around animals, she just became fixated on their every move. The discussions started and we talked about what type of dog would work best, which was a bit of a change. Both Jess and I love big dogs – the bigger and the furrier the better, and in my head I was thinking about a Bernese Mountain Dog or at least a Goldren Retriever. As we discussed though, we realized that for now, a smaller dog made far more sense. It would give Lily a chance to have a playmate that was more on her level, and smaller dogs are a little less intimidating for any children who may eventually come into our home. And then, in a twist of fate that I’m still not sure Jess didn’t create, a friend posted that her Frenchton (Boston Terrier/French Bulldog) had just had puppies. We spent a couple of days talking it over, but as soon as we walked into her house and laid our eyes on Lola, it was sealed. We had to wait about a month to bring her home, but that was actually a small blessing in disguise. It gave us a month to get ready for her at home, but also gave us the chance to visit and let Lily play with her so that she could get used to a little puppy. Lily is incredibly sensitive to noise, which we thinked is linked to her vision – when she hears loud, unexpected noises, especially higher pitched ones, she gets really upset and can only be calmed once the noise has stopped. If we were worried about any part of this decision, the noise factor was our biggest concern – we know from experience that it can be a bad cycle: a dog barks, Lily starts to cry, the dog barks more because you’re not paying attention to them, and then Lily cries harder. To our incredible surprise though, right from our first visit, she adapted really well to the noise and we’ve only had a couple of hard moments since then. It’s certainly challenging at times: back to multiple trips outside during the night, crate-training during the day with a puppy who hates being away from her people, and the crazy puppy antics that seem to happen at 9:30pm every night just when we want nothing more than to settle into the couch for an hour of TV. But it really has been a much better experience than even we thought it might be and now, two weeks later, it does feel like Lola has just always been here with us.
So of course, once we decided to get a puppy, we thought long and hard about how to make our lives more challening and our basement renovations have finally begun in earnest. There’s been destruction and hammering and sawing, and a trailer on our driveway to take away all of the glorious wood panelling, gross bathroom fixtures and all of the other debris that the guys have created. We are incredibly lucky though and the guys who are doing the work for us have been incredibly respectful about naps and bedtimes and just keep trucking through no matter what. If everything goes according to plan (and please keep your fingers crossed that they do), we should have a haven of bedrooms finished in the basement just before school lets out for the summer and we will hopefully start filling it with a child/children sometime before the end of this year. I haven’t let myself really think about the possibility of having another child in 2015, it just seems surreal to some point, but it’s starting to edge itself in and I’ve found myself thinking about morning routines in September….
I’ve also had some amazing opportunities to brag about Lily in the past few weeks. We were approached in January, to take part in a speakers panel during a Toronto Children’s Aid PRIDE course. PRIDE is the program that all potential foster/adopt parents must complete, to be eligible to have a child placed with them. You need to complete the course regardless of what type of adoption you are considering: domestic, international, private or public and Jess and I remember our course fondly. We actually were incredibly surprised at how much we enjoyed it, and the panel session was actually one of the best peices of our course, so we were very excited to be asked to participate. In the end, Jess couldn’t make her work schedule fit with the course time so it was just me and it was terrifying. While they had given us a general outline of what they wanted us to cover in our talk, I still wasn’t sure if I had gotten it right. And then, once I arrived, I found out that each speaker had 30 minutes(!) to go through their journey. Now luckily, I am my father’s daughter, so in the end I was able to stretch out the 10 minutes I had prepared and I think that it went incredibly well. I was blown away though by the other panel members: an adoptive single-mother raising a 6-year old girl who had been through some incredibly horrific situations and had gone through 4 different foster placements by the time she was 3 years old, and a foster/adoptive mother, who currently has 10 children at home with her – a mix of her own biological children, her adoptive children and her foster children! She and I started talking at the end of the session, because her home is liscensed to take in children with special needs and between her and her social worker, I think that I may have found Jess and I at least our next 3 children! Joking aside though, it was an amazing experience to be able to share our families adoption experience and to see that experience accepted by, not only the people in the room, but the other panelists and social workers as well. Adoption is such a unique experience and it was so validating to sit with peers who share such similar experiences. I’m really hoping that I will get a chance to sit on another panel again someday and share our experience with some others.
Before that though, we’re actually going to be sharing some of Lily’s story on a bigger scale very soon. On the day that we were lucky enough to meet Lily’s paramedics, we were introduced to an incredible woman, Kim McKinnon, the Superintendent of Public Information and Media for Toronto Paramedic Services. She was just there that day to take some photos for their internal newsletter, but she and Lily became fast friends! At the end of our time together, we were sad to be saying goodbye – we felt like we could have easily just brought her into our life as a new friend. Fast forward to about a week ago, when Kim emailed me out of the blue to ask me about an opportunity that she thought of us for. Global TV news is doing 4 weeks of “Medical Magic” segements in March, that are going to focus on kids who have come through some incredible medical challenges and the team of people who have helped them. When Global approached Kim about any stories that she may know of, she automatically thought of Lily and forwarded our story to the segement producer for consideration. I didn’t really think anything of it; it was so incredibly kind of her to think of Lily, but I honestly thought that would be the last we heard. Then, on Monday night, Kim emailed me to let me know that the segement producer loved Lily’s story and they were hoping to feature her, and our family, in an interview with Susan Hay. It has all happened so fast and we’re going to be filming the interview this week. It’s going to air on either March 18th or March 25th, but the first segement is actually showing this week (Wednesday between 5:30pm and 6:30pm – it’s actually a CHD/heart story, so we’re excited to watch!).
I’m more nervous that I had ever thought was possible. I’m going over all of the things I could possibly say to try and avoid laughing my nervous laugh on camera, and trying to figure out how I can make myself look absolutely adorable next to Susan Hay. Plus it means that Lily obviously has to get a new, “I’m going to be on TV” outfit, so there’s time sensitive shopping to take care of as well! So please, on Tuesday, think of me and sending me all of your, “don’t make a fool of yourself and babble too much” thoughts. And please, even more than that, send me all of your, “let Crystal do a great job so that we can really communicate how thankful we are to Toronto Paramedic Services” thoughts. More than anything, I just want people to really see how thankful we are every single day to them for the gift of Lily. That’s one of the main peices of this story, is that even though the cardiac arrest happened and there have been so many challenges since then in relation to that experience, she’s still here and she’s kicking ass and everyday is a victory, a milestone, a miracle, and she’s incredible. I just want people to know that they shouldn’t pity us, or look at Lily with any sadness, because there is no sadness to this story – it’s all giggles baby!
