[blparent] Child Protective Services & blind parenting

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

I completely agree that taking the baby care and childbirth classes at the 
hospital is a good idea.  That will give you a chance to meet some of the 
nurses and other staff members so that when you arrive to deliver the baby, 
you'll already be a little familiar to them.  Besides, you might learn a lot 
in the process.  *Smile.*

Because I had trouble with some in my family who wanted to raise my baby 
themselves, I went a step further and made an appointment with the hospital 
social worker.  I asked her to check into the policies at the hospital and 
find out if there was any official reason I should be concerned about my 
blindness as a possible issue.  The social worker found no official hospital 
policies that could get in my way--if she had, I would have changed 
hospitals--and she sent out an e-mail to the director of the obstetrics 
unit, saying when I would be delivering and that the hospital wasn't 
concerned about my parenting abilities, so none of the nurses should be, 
either.

Jo Elizabeth

"How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, 
compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of 
the weak and the strong.  Because someday in life you will have been all of 
these."--George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, American scientist

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Angie Matney" <angie.matney at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:31 PM
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [blparent] Child Protective Services & blind parenting

> Bridgit,
>
> Congratulations! If the hospital where you will deliver offers
> childbirth / baby care classes, I would suggest taking advantage of
> them, if for no other reason than it will give the med team an
> opportunity to realize that they don't have anything to worry about
> when a blind couple is involved. I agree that we shouldn't have to
> jump through additional hoops just because we are blind, but I'm glad
> I took these classes at my hospital. I wanted to minimize the "OMG
> blind people!" factor, and it worked really well for us. Congrats
> again!
>
> Angie
>
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