Taylor Dunnavant of Saint Clair, Missouri was pretty surprised when she found out that she was pregnant again. But she had no idea just how surprised she would be when her baby was born.
In fact, her entire pregnancy was filled with surprises.
“I expected it to be the same as my first pregnancy. I would crave some weird food, eat a bunch of it, gain 20 pounds, and have a beautiful baby at 40 weeks! I did start out craving food, but I couldn’t eat it!” she explained in a piece for Love What Matters.
“I couldn’t eat anything. I never gained any weight. I actually lost it. This was shocking for me, because I always thought when pregnant, you must gain weight. The doctors assured me it was completely fine and that the baby was still growing normally.”
She was surprised yet again when she found out she was having another baby girl, since she was convinced it would be a boy.
Another surprise came when her water broke two weeks before she was due. She wasn’t surprised when the nurse told her that her baby had hair. But she was shocked when she found out the color of the baby’s hair.
“The time finally came, and after one final push, my doctor lifted her up for her daddy and I to see her for the first time. Noralynn Kay was finally here! When he set her down, all I could do was yell, ‘Oh!’ Our baby had hair alright, a head full of hair — white as snow,” she explained.
Panic started to set in as Taylor wondered what caused her baby to have such light colored hair.
The hospital told her to see a genetic specialist. Then came all the questions she had to field from strangers. Was she an albino? What does that mean? Would have have any problems? Her 5-year-old Brooklynn decided that her new sister was a snow fairy and related to Elsa from “Frozen.”
“Everywhere we went, people would want to see our baby, because who doesn’t love babies? And then the questions would come. They would ask Chris and me if she was albino. People would point, and stare,” she explained. “And we even had people yell across the grocery store to ‘look at the little albino.’ Of course, this upset us. We expected that type of behavior out of children but never from full grown adults.”
Eventually, they learned that their daughter did have albinism.
But the worry melted away when they learned more about it. It was likely that her hair would remain white and that her eyes would stay silver with glares of red. She might need glasse, have trouble hearing, and would have to be slathered in sunscreen. All these things seemed totally manageable to Taylor.
“Now, we just have to deal with the public. How do you protect your children from the world being so cruel? How do we as parents make sure that our children do not grow up disliking themselves or things about themselves because they are different? At first, it was extremely difficult to deal with all of the attention we were receiving,”she said.
“We cannot go anywhere without people stopping and asking something in reference to her hair. Or asking to see the color of her eyes, or just asking straight out if she is albino. Now I just politely respond with, ‘She has albinism.’ Most people are just genuinely curious. That’s why I feel it is so important that we shine a light on the subject.”
Having Nora has taught Taylor to accept that everyone is different in their own way and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!
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