[blparent] Why Blindness shouldn't work against us

[Sheila Leigland]

Bridget I toatally agree with you on this one. I had hoped in the last twenty years things had progressed but I'm not sure they have. When we had our son we were considered high risk parents based on nothing but blindness. My brothers and sisters came from the same background as I did and had for the most part the same experience with kids but the exception was the blindness of my husband and I. A county health nurse came out for several months to check in on how we and our baby were doing. Most of the time the baby was asleep so nothing much happened. It also happened that the nurse was the sister in law of a person that I went to college with and we didn't know that the nurse already knew about us or at hleast me. That actually worked to my advantage. We had questions from people before my baby was even born. I had to take strong stands even then to let people know that my blindness and the raising of our child was our responsibility and not theirs. If we didn't we would have had way to much interference. My pediatrician told us not to let the cometee raise him.

Sheila Leiglan	d