She Rises

The excellence of Kate.

I am taking a blog to talk about this rockstar!

Kate, or as we call her, Kiki (key-key), is seven. She is my fourth baby and second girl.

My pregnancy with her was incredibly traumatic. At my eighteen-week scan, they found nine choroid plexus cysts on her brain. I received the phone call citing the news but then had to wait seven weeks for confirmation. " Don't Google." I accomplish the impossible daily, but that was an impossible I did not accomplish; I turned to Dr. Google immediately. Trisomy 18 was the highest possibility, which meant her body would be incompatible with life. The second possibility was Down Syndrome.

Within those seven weeks, I was pushed and prodded to get the amniocentesis, which I refused profusely. Regardless of my refusal, the nurses and doctors continued to push for it. I continued to decline. The statistical chances of it causing a miscarriage were high, and regardless of the outcome, she was my baby, and I was going to carry her to term.

We did find out via blood test mixed with statistics that she did not have Trisomy 18; however, the possibility of Downs remained.

The remainder of my pregnancy was under high alert and monitoring. I underwent test after test and numerous ultrasounds. " We can't give you a guarantee by ultrasound alone if you would just let us do the amniocentesis."

" No."

They really did not want a baby to be born with any health concerns. A "perfect" baby or nothing. Well, she was perfect to me, with Trisomy 18 or 21. I held my ground, and no amniocentesis occurred.

During her delivery, for the 5896 time, the nurse said, " You do know there is a possibility your baby has Down Syndrome, right?"

“Just give me the damn epidural!!”

They whirled her away like a tornado to do testing on her immediately post-birth while my OBGYN checked my vagina for need of stitches.

They brought her to me.

Nurse: "She is a perfectly healthy baby girl. She does not have Down Syndrome."

Me: "If she did have an extra chromosome, she would be a perfectly healthy baby girl."

Fast forward.

The year is 2022; she is about to start Kindergarten when, one year before, in 2021 she watched her Dad get handcuffed on the front of a cop car. She became what they call a " skirt hugger," and she struggles with separation anxiety. She has a great fear of people she loves leaving, never to return.

With her first year of school approaching just one year after one of the most traumatic events in her life, I worried greatly about how she would adjust, learn, grow and make friends.

Last night I attended the parent-teacher interviews of my children, and Kiki was the last of the lot. She is in grade two this year, and with a beaming smile, her teacher said, " She is achieving at grade levels higher than two. She reads at a grade 4-5 level, and her writing is exquisite. She writes with complete sentence structure and is bubbling over with ideas. Her spelling is immaculate, her penmanship is beautiful and her teacher told me that Kiki is more than capable of incorporating adverbs and verbs into her writing. Her feedback was to bury her nose into those grade 4-5-6 level books so she could use and bring the verbiage she reads into her writing. And math, well, with excitement, her teacher showed me the latest math text she wrote, and her mark was 49/50!! Regarding her social life, she is a butterfly and is invited to all parties, boys and girls.

“Whatever you are doing, keep doing it. You have amazing children.”

My concerns, I mean, what concerns?

This girlie continues to rise. No mountain is too big to climb for her, and she doesn't just get the job done; she aces it.

I'm one hell of a fucking proud mama, and even though not one of my five children looks like me, I have a mini-me... in intelligence and perseverance.

Go Kiki Go… in dirty tights and all. 😉