The Great Gift of a Child

Back a few years when I was medical writing, I got a call from a woman who was very excited about a new public outreach program and she wanted me to write about it. And it was pretty wonderful. So, as it turned out, was she.

Back then, Fort Worth had a State School for the Mentally Retarded, which has since been closed. But it was open then and started a community outreach program where therapists would come to the home to work with the families each week.

This family was in great need. Their third child was born with only a little more than one-third of her brain. She was so profoundly retarded she had no ability to suckle her milk. She had to be taught, and she did learn, and survive. She was also hydrocephalic. Her head was easily twice normal size, with a shunt leading down the side of the head to the neck to drain off some of the excess water. For all this, she was a pretty baby, with a healthy, well-nourished body and a pretty face even through all the swelling.

The team came weekly to work the baby through a full array of motions and exercises designed to stimulate and strenghen, and they taught the mother how to do it the rest of the time. She was so excited. She was learning so much about child development that she never knew before. She loved helping her baby work to strengthen and grow.

When I saw her, the baby was about nine months old. She couldn't hold her head upright yet, but her mother said determinedly that she would. She could lft her heavy head off the mat for several seconds now when lying on her tummy. She worked every single day to strengthen her back and neck muscles. And she was responsive. She smiled when her mother picked her up. She wriggled happily when tickled. She seemed to notice the brightly colored toys around her and would reach out with a hand when her mother moved one closer.

"I don't know why she was born the way she was," her mother said, "but she's been such a gift. She has taught my whole family so much."

She said in the past, for Christmas she would have bought her two older girls dolls, perhaps, and some plastic toys, but "not this year! I'm learning to think about what enriches them, too." They got the dolls. They also got some books and educational toys she thought would have a good effect on their growth. "I never used to buy books. Now I read to them every night." She said they all, her husband included, had learned more about patience and gentleness.

She and her husband had married almost right after high school. They lived in a comfortable older house in a shabby-genteel part of town. Their lives had been satisfying and quite ordinary up until this baby's arrival. It was no longer ordinary. But it still seemed long on the satisfying.

As I was leaving, she told me,"One day, she will sit up. She will learn to talk. You'll see."

About three years later, I was saddened to read the obituary of this special little girl.
The shunt had developed an infection, always a danger in such cases, especially back then, and she had died.

But my heart lifted at one of the final paragraphs. She had been attending half-day nursery care, where she had learned and could say the names of her classmates. She attended sitting up in a small motorized wheelchair. She could count to five. And she had lately started on her ABCs.
Sad her life ended so soon. But all told, in four short years, quite a success story.

And I'll bet her family still remembers her as a precious gift.