welcome to holland

a friend of ours passed this on to me and i told her that i wanted to pass it along on my blog because i loved it.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

my dream for an easy birth and breastfeeding are not longer. WHO CARES. it will be wyatt's birth story, not lawton's.

my dream for an easy first year are no longer. SO WHAT. we will get through it and it will make all of us stronger.

my dream for my children to never have surgery and have a medical team surrounding them is no longer. I WILL HAVE TO GET USED TO THAT ONE. but he will be in good hands.

i am really starting to get excited about my Holland. it will be a totally different trip from Lawton.

i will never compare these brothers and that gives me some relief. they will go at their own pace in life.

i truly believe that wyatt is going to surprise me in more ways than i can dream of and i am so excited to be his mother and watch him grow into a healthy young man.

thank you merrit for passing this along to me...