Fighting for Taylor: A Mother and Child's Journey of Inclusion

by Kimberly Moore

Overview

"We must recognize that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity. That the happiness of one person or nation is the happiness of humanity."

Fighting for Taylor presents the autobiographical story of a single mother struggling against the odds to support her child through social, economic, and educational challenges.

The whispering among the nurses in the operating room when her son, Taylor is born signals to Kimberly that something about her baby is cause for concern, Her life quickly shifts to a world in which she must continuously fight to provide the best possible life for her child. Who was born with Down syndrome and later diagnosed with Autism. To make matters more difficult, her relationship with her husband is rapidly deteriorating, as his drinking and domestic violence escalated-factors that lead to the end of their marriage.

As the years pass, she gathers her strength from her beautiful little boy. As she traverses the various social, economic and beautiful obstacles, she presents many thought-provoking ideas to help other parents find the emotional, financial and spiritual support their children need. What she discovers is a system designed to work against the best interest of children with special needs in today's schools. She fights for inclusion of all children in the educational system, regardless of their abilities or inabilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475957747
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/21/2012
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

Read an Excerpt

Fighting for Taylor

A Mother and Child's Journey of Inclusion

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By Kimberly Moore

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Kimberly Moore
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-5772-3

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Chapter One

Adversity

As I lay on the bleach-faded sheets of my hospital bed, a nurse helped to put a surgical cap over my head, gently tucking my long blonde hair under the elastic band. She spoke with calm and ease, assuring me everything was going to be okay. Step by step, she began explaining the events that were about to follow. My baby was in trouble and they needed to perform an emergency c-section. He wasn't getting enough oxygen and his heart rate was dropping drastically.

The memories of the night before kept coming back to me. I could feel him kicking within and then nothing for several seconds. Then a kick, then nothing. My husband and I were having what I was hoping would be, a nice quiet dinner in anticipation of our son. As my husband poured glass after glass of wine before dinner, I asked him to hold back in case I went into labor and he needed to drive me to the hospital. The day before, my doctor had tried to induce labor, given that the baby was overdue. As the evening wore on, I had a mother's instinct that Taylor was ready.

Our feelings of anxiety and anticipation were adding to the tension and unease between us. I kept re-living the events of the past eleven months and in spite of them I was still trying to build my imaginary white picket fence and find normalcy in our relationship. My strength and courage would bring me through everything, I thought; it was my duty as a wife, after all, and the duty of a mother-to-be. It was my job, my calling to fix everything that was wrong with our relatively new marriage, but another part of me also knew that pride simply wouldn't let me show the outside world our dysfunction. I knew I had made a mistake in marrying him.

After nine months, I desperately wanted a calm and inviting home, and I wanted everyone to feel the excitement. Before I knew it though, my request had escalated into yet another argument. I was afraid of a child being born into this environment. Regardless of what I did or what I said, I lived in the shadow of his next confrontation.

Now, at the final hour, I had completely run out of energy and the last thing I wanted to do was argue with someone. I just wanted my imaginary Town and Country magazine home to be, somehow, magically real—a life mirroring all of my years of self-education, hard work, my capacity to love and care for people and an insatiable desire to live life to the fullest with my dreamed soul mate.

But he was not my soul mate. He seemed to curb his insecurities with a wine bottle and guitar. His drinking was life itself. The closeness of the wine country was a constant temptation as well as his justification for another wine tasting. He felt it was a part of his cultivation of new business alliances and clients in real estate as well as the link between him and his friends. A few bottles always sat in the corner of the kitchen loosely corked, just waiting for their devilish unveiling night after night. With each pour, his hidden anger would surface.

The night before our son was to be born was no different. As he drank and ignored my request for moderation I felt the need for a hot bath and the warmth and comfort of my fluffy down pillows and down comforter. I could hear the guitar stemming away at his finger tips as I slipped into an exhausted sleep. I tried to move back to my Zen mode of thought and not let the dysfunction outweigh my excitement for my child.

Just as so many nights before, he continued to drink as I slept. In his usual pattern he would wake me from a dead sleep "to ask me a question" in his aggravated and oddly aggressive voice. As the words bounced off the bedroom walls, I winced at the thought of yet another night of no sleep and the possibility of more physical and mental harm. Rather than battle, I picked up a pillow, headed to the linen closet for a warm blanket and regressed back downstairs to sleep on the sofa. It was just easier to ignore him and find a safe hole to crawl in.

After hours of lying on the sofa trying to get comfortable, I hoped this was the night I would meet my child. Over the past nine months, the anticipation was all I could hold on to. It became easier and easier to block out anything negative around me to prepare for his birth. This was my dream and I couldn't wait to see his tiny little face.

Around 11 PM some slight cramping in my belly began. And then throughout the night, more intense cramping followed by the baby's slight movements. By around 5 AM, I knew something just wasn't right. My baby and I had a language of unspoken words. Within an hour and a half, I would be laying on a surgical bed worrying about his survival.

I called my mother around 5:15 AM in Southern California to ask her advice and describe what I was feeling. "Mom, something isn't right. I keep feeling hard cramps like a menstrual cycle and then there is just silence and nothing at all."

"Kimberly, you need to call the doctor and get his advice. I can be on the next plane to meet you at the hospital." I called the doctor immediately, and after discussing everything I had been feeling, he insisted I go to the emergency room as soon as possible.

I knocked on the master bedroom door with enough grace to not wake him with a jolt. I didn't need more problems, just a ride to the hospital. After I explained what was happening, he opened the door. The entire room smelled of stale wine. He dressed and sauntered downstairs to make coffee. I knew better than to push him too much, especially after his actions the night before. So, with a gentle persuasion I said, "I really think I should leave for the hospital now. The baby just doesn't feel right". He pulled the to-go cup from the cabinet, loaded it up with hot coffee, and we left. As we reached the garage, I noticed the almost flat tire on my VW wagon still hadn't been repaired after weeks of asking him to fix it. So, as I sat in the car in labor with a possibly distressed unborn child, we stopped at the local gas station along the way to fill it. I just wanted to scream, "Wake up! You are 48 years old! You need to care for your wife and soon-to-be newborn son!"

After we arrived, the room began to flood with a flurry of hurried doctors and nurses, though it seemed as if everyone were in a regular routine; this was just another part of their daily schedule. But to me, this was completely unchartered territory. My mind began racing and I was desperately trying not to panic. An I.V. stuck painfully out of my left hand, and all I wanted to do was rip it out. The doctor had been in such a hurry to get me into the operating room, he had jabbed it in himself not waiting for the nurse to find my vein. I was so afraid I would feel the same excruciating pain of the initial jab, I didn't say anything. I just wanted a baby. A healthy, happy, beautiful little boy. I could never have imagined in my wildest nightmares any of this would happen as I lay on the hospital bed waiting for reason.

For what seemed like an eternity, I laid in silence watching the nurses getting the room and me ready. The smell of the sterilizing alcohol was making me nauseous. It was so clean, so cold. The bright fluorescent lights hung over my head with a large circular magnifying lamp. It slowly began to dawn on me. My baby was in trouble and this was an emergency c-section. I was in an operating room. The nurse calmly explained that I needed an epidural and it would be injected into my spine. It was very, very important that I listen very carefully and do exactly as they instructed. I remember hearing stories about this: What would happen to my baby if I moved at all? Would he feel this large needle as well? The nurse gently explained I needed to very carefully sit up with my legs over the edge of the bed so they could administer the shot. It was so freezing cold and the stiff white sheet and thin woven cotton blanket wasn't enough. And this I.V. in my hand. It was really bothering me now. I became fixated on the simplest things. The shot—focus. I need to focus on the shot.

My mind raced back to my Lamaze class. The living room. Remember the living room. If anything should ever go wrong, something unexpected during my delivery, the Lamaze instructor said to picture yourself in your place of calm in your mind. Pretend you are in your living room in complete calm. So, I moved my mind and complete focus into my living room. The entire operating room seemed to calm down. It was quieter and for a few brief seconds I found pockets of silence and a renewed hope that all would be fine. The lights were still obnoxiously bright, and people were still hurried, and it was still freezing cold, but then I remembered my baby. I was moving into the zone deep in my mind, just as I had found the same zone I was trained to focus with while racing the high banks of Daytona Motor Speedway. My mind flashed back remembering the rush of adrenaline pumping through my veins as I approached each concrete barrier at 180 miles per hour. Packs of almost thirty other motorcycle racers battling for placement ahead of one another at almost 200 miles per hour on the straights of the track. If I made one false move, I would crash into a concrete wall or worse. I remembered approaching certain turns at Daytona's track where I found myself not breathing, with the G-force in the high outer banks of the track so strong I felt my eyes would explode from the pressure. Yet, as I approached the stands of thousands watching the race, I was able to re-focus and the only thing I would hear was my breath against my helmet's visor and the calm of the zone within my mind. The feeling was euphoric in its simplicity and unlike anything I had ever felt or experienced before as time seemed to stop, and I found an inner peace and calm of the present moment. After so many years of racing and training, I was conditioned to not only lead, but also to focus in life and death situations. Just as had I reached the zone in my mind of calm to process the intensity of the sport, I knew once again, I could certainly reach the same zone of calm, peace and awareness to bring this child into the world safely. My baby needed me to focus and breathe without panic, now more than ever.

Breathe. If I stayed calm, and everyone else in the room focused just the same, my baby would feel the same warmth and welcome into the world. I quickly moved the focus to calming him down. My mind tried to reach his. Baby, I'm here, and everything is going to be fine. You are fine angel, just stay with me and I promise everything is going to be okay; we are all here for you, and we will help you. I kept looking for someone to be there for me but there wasn't. Just a room full of strangers and a man that was supposed to be my husband, yet I never felt further from a person in my life. He was a complete stranger that seemed to be observing rather than participating. There was no hand holding; he had turned into a cold shadow, a grimace on his face. It was over between him and me. His malicious and perverse intentions to control and dominate me for the past eleven months became apparent and I saw him for the first time as he was, rather than who I envisioned him to be. He stood in the hospital room for some fake social grace, to report back to his clients, friends and ex-girlfriend, but by no means was he a part of my child's birth as a father. A future dead beat dad that would never be a decent, loving, nurturing mentor for my son. With the birth of a child, it all came to a screeching halt.

The nurse at my side slowly lifted me and helped to swing my legs to the left over the edge of the bed. My gown was coming undone in the back and the I.V. still jabbed into me. Calm. Go back to calm. "There will be a small prick of a needle just slightly to the left of your spine, just north of your left butt cheek," the nurse explained "and this will numb the area for the epidural." A few minutes later, with her reassuring arm around my shoulders, she asked me not to move as they were going to administer the large needle. Back to the peace and calm of my imaginary living room. Baby—don't worry—I'm here. All I could think of was my baby being okay as a small team slowly laid me back down on the table. The doctor seemed agitated. It was going too slowly for the baby—he needed to begin the c-section. A large blue cloth was flagged over my waist and I could no longer feel my legs. There were suddenly so many people in the room all below the blue cloth, and perhaps the nurse noticed and felt my growing anticipation as she began to stroke my forehead just as my grandmother had done when I was a little girl. This was now the new focus, and it was comforting to know even if she was a stranger, she was at least there for me. It was incredibly calming and felt so good in the chaos of the room, and a relief to know someone seemed to care about me, my baby and our personal well being.

I had never been an overly religious person, however, for the first time in my life, I truly felt the presence of God by my side and He seemed to blanket my child and I with an unexplained sheltering feeling of love, support and safety.

The nurse moved to the doctor's side to help with the delivery, leaving me without a companion. Why is this happening? What is wrong with my child? I wished someone could just tell me step by step what they were doing down there, but then at the same time, perhaps I didn't want to know. I didn't want too many details—just a baby boy healthy and safe. I had a numb feeling as the doctor manipulated my belly and its organs. No one ever explained the process of a c-section to me, and I never inquired because I never in a million years imagined I would be in this room freezing cold ... and seemingly alone. My mother had been called and she was on the next flight up from Southern California. But where was she?

For nine months of anticipation and planning, I remained ecstatic to meet this little boy. It all seemed so incredibly surreal. And then, just as my doctor finished telling the details of what he was doing for the upcoming weekend, they announced my son was out. A gentle baby's cry. Just beyond the top of the blue sheet, I could barely see a tiny red baby. They asked my husband if he wanted to cut the cord. With a nod yes, he was handed the scissors. Within a minute or so, there were slight hushed tones. The entire atmosphere of the room died down, to a quiet lull from the excitement that had filled it for what seemed like hours. I was waiting for the congratulations and cheers, but the room instead became quiet. I forgot the I.V., the stiff sheets and the room's coldness. The lights seemed to dim again. The nurses gently cleaned, weighed him, and then swaddled my new little bundle of joy tightly in a blue blanket with a powder blue print on it. As they lay him on my chest, his tongue was slightly out between his tiny little lips. His eyes were closed, but I noticed they were slanted.

Why do you have these tiny little features? He was different from any baby I had ever seen before. In a wave of emotions, I said gently enough for only him to hear, "It doesn't matter handsome, we are in this together and whatever it is we will figure it out together." Welcome, Taylor! You are so beautiful!

The hushed tones were now gone in the sterile white room of half masked nurses and doctors. I had heard them, and their label for my son. And yet I didn't care. He was my beautiful little boy. Whatever it is baby, we'll figure it out. A male nurse had said Down syndrome. No, no, the others hushed. It felt like a tornado was slowly churning in my room. The words were swirling, the hushes were gathering, and still I was waiting for an I love you ... a kiss ... I knew from that moment on I was alone and yet, I wasn't. A part of me was finally complete because I was now a mother. Yet the overwhelming feeling of loneliness kept engulfing me. I felt one with my child. It was the crowd of people around me who made me feel lonely. Who cares if there is something different about him? He is a beautiful and amazing gift. The nurse reached for him to make sure everything was okay and check all of his vitals, and with a swift motion he was gone from my arms, and all I could think of was having him back.

I awoke to complete silence. I was completely alone in a freezing cold stark white room with the smell of oxidized hospital sheets. Where was everyone and where was my son? My husband had been there, even if in the far distance, but now I was on a gurney behind a drawn hospital drape. As I gathered my thoughts, I tried to pull my legs over the edge of the gurney. It was impossible. I was paralyzed. Just as a wave of panic began, a nurse appeared at my side. She said my son was fine, and he was just down the hall with my mother and husband. I was in the recovery room, and I would be taken to my room as soon as the anesthesia wore off. It all came back to me. My son, Taylor.

I had a new friend. A new beautiful son. I couldn't wait to see him again; I just needed to get out of this bed. I couldn't wait to see that precious little face again.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Fighting for Taylor by Kimberly Moore Copyright © 2012 by Kimberly Moore. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction 2012....................vii
Chapter 1 Adversity....................1
Chapter 2 Freedom....................17
Chapter 3 Survival....................25
Chapter 4 Hope....................42
Chapter 5 Tenacious....................50
Chapter 6 Acceptance....................62
Chapter 7 Balance....................69
Chapter 8 Patience....................81
Chapter 9 Independence....................93
Chapter 10 Life Beyond the Label....................102
Chapter 11 Together....................115
Chapter 12 Vermont....................121
Chapter 13 Closure....................132
References....................147