The Good sister

Ok,
So my sister Endre wrote about guilt, and not having any when her son was born. (This is why I tiltled this blog, "the good sister". Totally joking of course. My sisters are great moms...:)) I on the other hand, felt a ton of guilt when jack was born. I felt so responsible for giving him this disease. I panicked at the thought of what his life might be like, the pain he would feel, the teasing he might have to endure;or even what he might miss out on. I soon realized (after a few infusions) that i could feel sad for the pain he might be feeling, but this was his life, and i needed to change my attitude about it. I could do more good for him than anyone else. I could help him get comfortable before his infusions, I could educate him about his disease, and teach him how to live with hemophilia, but not let it define him. So yes, I felt tremendous guilt...at first, but not anymore. In the end, everyone copes differently with a newborn with hemophilia. We all progress in stages. So whatever you experience its cool...life goes on.

awny (sister #3)

Guilty

We went to our HTCs First Step conference a couple of weeks ago.  One of the activities was a round table discussion of our personal experiences with hemophilia including family histories, how we found out that our children were affected/effected (I can never remember that one) with this disease, treatment paths we might be choosing, etc.  What I learned from this is that I am a bad, bad person. A bad, bad, guilt free person.

Apparently, as the mother, I am supposed to feel some kind of remorse that I messed up my kids genes.  Sorry son, but I am too busy working on building a respectable list of  therapists to address the damage that I'm pretty sure I'm doing by allowing your brother to dress you up in a Yoda hat so that I can have a funny picture to put on the blog to feel bad about one more thing.

I'm not saying that the women out there that feel guilty about this x-linked disease (like a couple of my sisters) are wrong.  I don't get to tell anyone else how they should feel, but I figure, I don't blame myself for my daughter's complete inability to do multiplication (what the heck did they invent calculators for I say) or for my son's affinity for weaponry (just a heads up - don't sit in front of us in church unless you want your family to become a target for an imaginary flame shooter), and I'm not going to blame myself for something that (unlike those first two things) I can't do a thing about.

If there comes a day though when my son needs someone to blame, I'll look him right in the eye and tell him what I need to tell him... "you got that from your father."