Welcome to Holland

On reading about parents with special care children One father described it in the following way. I just wanted to share what many of us are feeling. very good way to describe it.:

Welcome To Holland
By Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a
disability-to try to help people who have not shared that unique
experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel.

It's like this...
When You're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous
vacation trip- to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make wonderful
plans. The coliseum, Michelangelo�s David. The gondolas of Venice. You may
learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After a few months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.
You pack your bags and off you go.
Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says

"Welcome to Holland."
"HOLLAND?!?" You say. " What do you mean, Holland ? I signed up for Italy!
I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
"But there's been a change of plans," says the stewardess.
"They've landed in Holland and there you must stay."
The important thing is you haven't landed in a horrible, disgusting,
filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a
different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole
new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would
have never met.
It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy
than Italy. But after you've been there a while and you catch your breath,
you look around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills,
Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and
they're all bragging about the wonderful time they had there.
And for the rest of your life you will say,
"Yes, that's where I was supposed to go.
That's what I had planned."

And that pain will never, ever go away because the loss of that
dream was a very significant loss.
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to
Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special and lovely
things about Holland.