What’s the hardest thing you have ever had to tell your children?

Quora- Rosemary Ward

I gave birth to a child - my 4th - and was told by this country’s best pediatric neurologists that he would not survive. He was born with MMPSI - Malignant Migrational Partial Seizure Disorder of Infancy. He had extensive testing done just 2 days after birth, because he was born having intractable seizures.

My other three children were ages 9, 7 and 4 at the time. When I finally came home from the hospital without him (although he was 8.5 lbs, he was too unstable to come home) I had to explain to my other children that our new baby would not be home from the hospital for a long time and that his prognosis for survival beyond 6 months to 1 year was very, very low.

My husband and I were walking through a cloud of grief, shock, and fear at this time. We told them. It was not easy. Our three children were quiet. Then they cried. But rather soon after (that same day!) they wanted to know when “our baby” could come home, so they could help care for him. They wanted to “cure him”. Their sweet naiveté and their desire to fix him….well, that broke my heart a little more.

The thing is, they made good on this determination and hope to fix the baby. When he did come home, they held him constantly. Sang to him. Read to him. Played music for him. Fussed over him. Called 911 when he wasn’t breathing after a particularly long seizure, or watched over him when I called 911. We have home educated our kids, so they were together almost all of the time in the year that followed.

His name is James.

He got better.

The doctors were wrong.

By 18 months of age, his seizures slowed to almost none, he started to try to sit up, move, and crawl. By age 2.5 he was walking with some support. By age 3 he was running.


Above, James comes home from hospital and James today; he is second from left.

It broke my heart to give my kids such sad news about our newborn baby. Whether they worked a miracle with their love or not ~ who knows. I choose to believe it.

The hospital records were officially changed and his diagnosis was changed when he was 10 years old. Today, James is 16 and is in the Balkans on full scholarship for study abroad.

huh?