In this article I will discuss what happens for a parent when their child is diagnosed with some form of disability.
Here I focussed on the emotion of grief as it can be so strong that parents may find themselves overwhelmed by the enormity of a situation.
Their hopes for their children can be shattered in an instant and they may feel like they are drowning in unchartered waters and totally out of their depth.
The reason why I can write about such matters is that having gone through the stage of having a diagnosis for my own child, I know some what how other parents who find themselves in similar situations must be feeling and experiencing.
Before a baby is born, it is always an anxious time.
You wonder will the delivery go okay and whether there will be complications and then after all this has passed you relax.
You relax until you start to notice something different or maybe someone else makes some observations.
Depending on the disability, this can take years before a diagnosis is formally made.
However once you suspect something, things are never the same again.
From that point onwards, you are always watching, waiting, wondering and then when it finally happens, you find it so hard to deal with it, accept it, and believe it.
Your world becomes a very different place and you worry about the world your precious child will live in.
These feelings are very normal and because each person has a uniquely different experience, we each process this information on a child's diagnosis differently and move through different emotional stages at our own pace and in our own time.
At this time of great suffering, it is not unusual to withdraw from others, be zapped of energy, sleep little and find it hard even to do the simplest of tasks.
You may also find you do things out of character that you normally would never do.
On top of this we may be aware that there are other family members we are neglecting but feel disempowered to do anything about it.
In helping parents cope, some turn towards alcohol, cigarettes, antidepressants or tranquilizers as a temporary coping strategy.
However, all these raw emotions will not stay raw forever and there will be a degree of healing over time.
Be kind to yourself, take some baby steps in your recovery and accept what help is given even temporarily by well-meaning friends, families and support groups and above all avoid making any important decisions until the pain has subsided.
Remember, you are never alone, even though you may feel like the loneliest person on the planet at this time.