“When I first looked at her, I knew something was different. I asked my husband, ‘What did you think when you went to see her?’ He replied, ‘She’s just so perfect and beautiful.’ I couldn’t shake what was in the back of my mind.”
‘It’s a bambino!’ I was like, ‘what??’ All I saw was all the HAIR she had! Then 5 seconds later, she was whisked way to the NICU.’
‘His teacher suddenly jumped on the desk. He started walking across each one, to make sure every single eye was on him.’
“I’ll never forget when he had them throw their history books on the ground and tell them how they got it all wrong that day, and made choices that would come back to haunt them.”
‘Mom, that boy said Judah looked weird.’ I knew. I saw. I could feel the little boy boring holes into my 4-year-old, who has Down syndrome.’
“I watched him turn away and mention my son to his dad. That’s the first mistake we both made. We both chose to turn away.”
‘Mom! You are white and I am brown, and that means Martin made it so you could adopt me!’ He grabbed his little brother’s hand. ‘Look! Martin’s dream came true.’
“He was 4 the first time kids told him he couldn’t play with them on the playground because he was black. I wasn’t prepared for any of it.”
‘He was blue, and his skin was covered with deep purple spots. He wasn’t crying. The whole room was especially quiet.’
“They had no clue what was going on with his skin. They thought maybe I had passed on an infection. Our nurse crouched down next to me. ‘This is going to get better. We will get through this.'”
‘The growth is very large. There’s a chance the baby may not survive.’ Right then, reality hit me. All the fear and nerves I carried through my pregnancy hit me all at once.’
“It was this second I knew, I knew something was different. Something had changed and our baby girl may not be as perfect as was earlier suggested.”
‘This is dwarfism and I’m 99% certain the result will be fatal.’ There it was. A bomb. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t talk, I didn’t understand at all. She was perfect.’
“As she rambled, completely ignorant of the fact I was in my own puddle of tears, she wrung her hands. It was horrible. At that point, my mother stepped in. She and my husband scooped me out of the chair and we left, never to return.”
‘Her skin hardened within seconds. After hardening, it began to split. Behind the curtain, I sensed their frantic panic. My husband’s silence scared me. He kept saying, ‘It’s bad.’
“He told me, ‘Jennie, I looked in her eyes, and she has the most beautiful soul.’ Broken is the only way to describe the feeling as they placed her in my arms. They had never seen anything like this. She was fine; everything was perfect, and then it wasn’t — just like that.”
‘When he was born I heard, ‘Oh my God. He has RED HAIR!’ I paused. ‘No, just wash him a few times.’ The nurse washed him 3 times. ‘No mama, you’ve got a little ginger.’
“Trust me, I was shocked too. I can’t count how many times I had to explain he wasn’t adopted, wasn’t my stepson, and wasn’t albino. That I was his mom – not the aunt, Godmother, or the nanny.”
‘Dear white moms, what I need you to know…’
“You are my friends. You are my sisters. We are the same in more ways than we are different, but there are a few things I need you to know.”
