Week 7

This week I read for about 4 hours. I finished the boo, Lock and Key and started the book Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives. So much happened in Lock and Key. Ruby and Nate were sort of dating for a while. They weren't official, but they met every night by the pond and spent any spare time with each other. Ruby found out that Nate's father was hitting him and yelling at him all the time and tried to help. Nate wouldn't let her help and kept saying he was fine, so Ruby ended things with him. Later she realized she needed to be there for him and went to talk to him but found out he had run away. She ended up finding him and he gave in to telling someone. He stayed at Cora and Jamie's house until he left to live with his mom in Arizona. When he left, Ruby gave him her key that she always wore around her neck to help him remember her. Ruby graduated and got accepted to the U, which was a college near by. The book ended by Ruby describing what a family is, now that she really experienced having one. Gifts is a book that consists of letters that mother's write about their child who has Down Syndrome. It is amazing how parents' feeling towards Down Syndrome change once they have a child who has it. Most of the stories start with the day they found out their baby had or would have Down Syndrome. All of the parents cried when they found out but now realize that it was a blessing. In a lot of the stories the doctors recommended patients terminate their pregnancy if they found out before birth. I was really shocked by this. I think that is a decision for the parents to make and that nurses, doctors, and others should not try to influence those decisions. One story even said that the doctor who did the sonogram informed the patients OBGYN that they wanted to terminate when the patient never even said that. I would be so mad if that happened to me. I really hope that when I am ready to have kids that I will have kids without any complications or disabilities, but I think reading this book may help me accept any problems a little better.