Things we hate to think about.

Taylor, my beautiful daughter with DS, is almost thirteen. Without being TMI, she reached menses a year ago. She is most definitely a boy-crazy pre-teen, who comes home telling me about her new "boyfriend" in class each day it seems.

We have a hard enough time with sexuality in this country, particularly for women, without bringing in the issues of mental disability. How much do you attempt to explain, and how? Taylor will stick out her belly and say she is having a baby. The last thing I am inclined to do is give her information on how that really works at this point! I know I will need to, but the hows are still beyond me.

So now, here I am with a twelve year old who is just started taking BCP. It serves two purposes, to regulate cycles and make flow lighter, and, well... let's face it, there are assholes in the world who will take advantage of the loving and giving nature of women with DS and similar developmental disabilities. Nature has played a lovely trick on us, making women with trisomy 21 fertile while men are not. She is supervised, and I hope to Gould that she never is taken advantage of, but the very idea that I have to prepare for something like that happening is horrifying.

Do the people who make out having special needs kids as being a "blessing from god" or whatever bullshit ever think about these kinds of conditions? Do the anti-choicers who want to force women to continue pregancies when a disability like this is known want to try to work this one out? Do they want to face the potential of a woman who will grow up to want intimacy with a special partner someday, yet cannot raise a child, especially one with a 50% chance of having the same disability?

I love my daughter. In every way a mother can. Most people just frankly don't sign on for these kinds of thoughts, and for those who can with a smile and a sense of doing the right thing I commend you. I'll be over here in the nervous breakdown corner, nursing that bit of resentment that will never quite go away.