Coping with a child's chronic illness

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It’s human nature to believe that chronic illness or mental or physical handicap is something that only afflicts other people’s children. That is, until it happens to your own child. Many pregnant women worry about whether their unborn baby will be born normal and healthy; some even dream about giving birth to a handicapped or deformed child. This fear is almost universal, though it’s understandably worse for mothers who have had problems in a previous pregnancy or pregnancies, or who have a chronically sick or handicapped child already.

If a newborn baby is obviously handicapped or becomes ill very early in life, parents may react with shock, followed by numbness and denial, sadness and depression later, there’s a period of re-awakening of their energy, which is often combined with much anger. These stages are well recognised parts of the normal process of grieving. They are mourning for the normal, healthy baby that might have been.