Raising Owen
Suzanne Lezotte
Aristata Press (2023)
ISBN: 979-8987852422
Reviewed by Dawn Colclasure for Reader Views (06/2024)
Suzanne Lezotte is about to have her first child with her husband, Erik, so she ensures she does everything right to deliver a healthy baby. She is shocked to discover after his birth that he has Down syndrome. “Raising Owen: An Extra-ordinary Memoir on Motherhood” by Suzanne Lezotte is her journey from heartbroken parent to warrior mom as she raises a child with Down syndrome from infancy to adulthood. This amazing book is one mother’s story of coming to terms with having a child with a disability and how she learns to be just the kind of mom her child needs to navigate his way through a world that has so much trouble accommodating and accepting children with Downs (as it is commonly referred to).
I found it interesting that as a coping mechanism, she would tell complete strangers about her son’s diagnosis while he was still a baby. Predictably, it exposes her to hurtful comments, one in particular driving her to tears. I understood that this was her way of trying to get it into her system that her child has Down syndrome and to gauge public reaction, but she is not yet ready for this type of thing. It causes her some tearful moments, but it also ends up being a learning experience for her.
One thing about first-time parents is that they think they are in control of everything related to their pregnancy and childbirth. The author, as with most mothers, liked to have control over everything, especially her pregnancies. But what she’s struggling to realize during Owen’s infancy is that having a child with Down syndrome is not something you have any control over during conception. It happens without human participation. However, her grip on having control makes it hard for her to be okay with her son’s diagnosis.
Acceptance was about letting go, and to do that, I would have to relinquish control, which I wasn’t yet ready to do. (Page 67)
Having a second child taught her that when it came to pregnancy, childbirth, and even parenthood, a lot of things are out of our control.
I love how Owen’s father is so accepting of him from the beginning. He sees the baby as “perfect” even though his wife does not. When they go to therapy sometime after Owen is born, he tells the therapist,
I don’t think my son is a failure. I disagree with how she thinks about him; I think he’s perfect. Look, we got pregnant, and out of the millions of sperm that could have been any child, he won the race. He made it and won the prize of life, and he was born. That’s pretty incredible to me. (page 78-9)
It’s definitely an eye-opener for her, as she writes about her reaction to this:
I looked at him, stunned. I had never seen it that way. Despite what I perceived as Owen’s brokenness, he was the winner. He beat out any other child who could have been typical, and he survived. Erik’s way of thinking was so resolute, so sure. He never wavered when it came to Owen. He believed from the moment Owen was born that he was perfect. (pg 79)
I was touched by the scene where Owen, who was under 2, signed “I love you” to his mother one night. I thought this was remarkable that he knew some ASL signs at such a young age. And on that note, while I understood her mother-in-law’s constant milestone comparisons were bugging her, I wondered why nobody took pride in the fact that Owen knew over 30 signs in ASL before he was two. I thought that was pretty darn remarkable!
I absolutely LOVED the part of the book where the author went from feeling isolated and left out to connect with other moms who had children with Down syndrome. There were no groups for her to join so she created one, and she shares about how this helped her (and them) a lot.
Having that kind of support system in place and exposing herself to other parents with kids who have Down syndrome helped her to see just how “normal” and wonderful life can be for parents with kids who have Down syndrome. All the things she read about Down syndrome – how these kids would have lower cognitive skills, the susceptibility of acquiring leukemia, and facial differences from typical kids – filled her with dread and made her see Down syndrome as BAD. But it made her realize that there are also good sides to life with Down syndrome as well. As she writes:
I thought Down syndrome was something to be feared rather than accepted. (page 83)
The problem with the ableist society that we live in is that so-called “experts” and people in general believe that ALL disabilities are meant to be feared or seen as “bad.” Plus, there is the fact that, statistically, fetuses with a Down syndrome diagnosis following an amniocentesis have a higher rate of termination.
I loved reading all about how she constantly went up against the school district for her son to receive a better education, as well as being included among his regular peers instead of segregated to another room or area just because he had a disability. She really advocated for her son while everybody was expecting less from him simply because he had Down syndrome. I also loved how she changed the narrative about his diagnosis, going from sad to 100% accepting of it and not saying it like it was the most awful thing in the world.
She succeeds in having full inclusion for her child with Down syndrome in the public school system and I was cheering the whole time I read about how Owen excelled from one grade to the next. It was just so awesome to read all about how Owen seemed to keep winning at life – and that was all made possible thanks to his mom advocating for him every time anyone in the educational system tried to hold him back. She knows her son better than school officials and she realizes that Owen is just like the other kids in his school.
He won the race to be born. I won the fight to have him included. (Page 161)
She also won for being an amazing parent to a kid with Down syndrome.
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