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Multiple Sclerosis (MS): Did This Affect Your Decision To Have A Child?

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Kelly explains if her MS affected her decision to have a child.

Kelly:
I never envisioned myself being a mother. Most little girls grow up and they think, oh when I am married and I have kids.

I never had those thoughts and then my siblings were all getting married and having kids around me and I thought, I’ll be the cool aunt, because I could do that.

But after we got married I thought, wow, we should have a kid, because that’s what we should do. That’s what you do when you get married.

So being diagnosed with MS actually made me think I better have a child now, as opposed to waiting, because I don’t know if I will be walking in 20 years.

I want to make sure that I am able to be mobile, be walking, be doing whatever I can to whatever extent I can.

So we knew that the research had told us that there was no genetic connection between MS. So I thought, well, let’s do this now. So that’s how we went about deciding to have a daughter.

So that daughter is 13-years-old now and really an amazing child. And we have always included her in knowing about the disease process.

We never withheld anything from her. I never was afraid to do my injections in front of her. She was really a participant.

She would know that mom’s taking her medicine and will need to go to bed earlier than I will, maybe on certain days and we just thought that was the best way to really include her into this.

I didn’t want her to ever wonder why I walked a certain way or for her friends to speculate why Phoebe’s mom is ambling like a kooky person.

So we really just included her in it and she is the most compassionate empathetic 13-year-old, I mean considering the age and many times compassion and empathy are not the prevalent characteristics of a 13-year-old.

I really feel like our daughter is pretty exceptional on both of those fronts.

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