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The pilot had been very patient but, after an hour of the plane waiting on the Tarmac at Heathrow, with my son Stephen refusing to get up off the floor, sit in his seat and buckle up, our bags were removed from the hold and he was carried off the flight, my husband Roy and I walking, hot-cheeked and humiliated, behind.
Our family holiday to Greece would not be going ahead, after all.
And no, Stephen was not an obstreperous toddler when this happened. He was 45 years old. This embarrassing scene happened two years ago and the episode is just one of the many challenges we have faced since Stephen, our second child, was born with Down's Syndrome.
So difficult has it been that I can honestly say I wish he hadn't been born.
I know this will shock many: this is my son, whom I've loved, nurtured and defended for nearly half a century, but if I could go back in time, I would abort him in an instant. I'm now 69 and Roy is 70, and we'll celebrate our golden wedding anniversary next month.
We were childhood sweethearts and married when I was just 19 and he was 20. I sailed through my first pregnancy with Andrew a year later, and both of us were really looking forward to a second baby to complete our family.
There were no antenatal scans or blood test to detect abnormalities in those days and although I had a sixth sense, call it mother's intuition, that there was something wrong with my baby, the doctors and midwives insisted I was being hysterical and refused to perform an amniocentesis (where cells are taken from the amniotic fluid and tested). A healthy 22-year-old, with a thriving baby, I was considered very low risk to have a Down's baby.
Stephen came into the world one Sunday in January 1967 at the Kent & Canterbury Hospital.
The following Wednesday, I looked at him in his cot: his small, almond-shaped eyes, broad, flat nose and the one crease on the palms of his hands.
'He's a mongol, isn't he?' I gasped to my mother. It sounds shocking now but that was how we used to describe people with Down's Syndrome in those days.
She told me she was sure he wasn't, and it seemed everyone else was blind to what I saw so clearly. None of the doctors and health visitors even mentioned it, so for seven months I blundered on, trying to convince myself that my baby was 'normal'.
However, when Stephen became ill that summer and I took him to hospital, I overheard a paediatrician refer to him as a 'mongol baby'. I had been right all along.
In that instant, my world came crashing down around me.
Questions I couldn't answer raced through my mind: Had I caused his disability? How terrible would his life be? What impact would it have on his brother Andrew, then only two? How on earth would Roy and I cope?
That was the day normal life ended for Roy, Andrew and me.
Perhaps you'd expect me to say that, over time, I grew to accept my son's disability. That now, looking back on that day 47 years later, none of us could imagine life without him, and that I'm grateful I was never given the option to abort.
However, you'd be wrong. Because, while I do love my son, and am fiercely protective of him, I know our lives would have been happier and far less complicated if he had never been born. I do wish I'd had an abortion. I wish it every day.
If he had not been born, I'd have probably gone on to have another baby, we would have had a normal family life and Andrew would have the comfort, rather than the responsibility, of a sibling, after we're gone.
Instead, Stephen - who struggles to speak and function in the modern world - has brought a great deal of stress and heartache into our lives.
That is why I want to speak in support of the 92 per cent of women who choose to abort their babies after discovering they have Down's Syndrome. Mothers like Suzanne Treussard who bravely told her story in the Daily Mail two weeks ago.
Suzanne, who was offered a termination at 15 weeks, braved a backlash of criticism and vitriol from some readers.
But I'd challenge any one of them to walk a mile in the shoes of mothers like me, saddled for life as I am, with a needy, difficult, exasperating child who will never grow up, before they judge us.
They should experience how it feels to parent a grown man, who is no more able to care for himself than a toddler - and at a time of life when your children should, all things being equal, be taking care of you.
They should know how it feels to live every single day under a crushing weight of guilt.
They should know how it feels to watch Stephen's constant suffering and witness the almost daily destruction wreaked on all our lives.
Roy, like a lot of men of his generation, is not terribly good at showing his emotions, and never says much about Stephen's condition.
He loves his son, but knows he cannot be 'fixed', so chooses not to waste time contemplating the 'what-ifs'. For my own part, however, I don't think I will ever come to terms with Stephen's disability.
In his early years, it caused me physical pain seeing friends' toddlers reaching milestones when my son was still so baby-like. Stephen didn't walk until he was five and couldn't speak - even now he has only a few words and communicates using Makaton, a form of sign language. This made working out his needs a constant struggle.
His incontinence meant that washing his clothes and bedding became my full-time job.
Our family holiday to Greece would not be going ahead, after all.
And no, Stephen was not an obstreperous toddler when this happened. He was 45 years old. This embarrassing scene happened two years ago and the episode is just one of the many challenges we have faced since Stephen, our second child, was born with Down's Syndrome.
So difficult has it been that I can honestly say I wish he hadn't been born.
I know this will shock many: this is my son, whom I've loved, nurtured and defended for nearly half a century, but if I could go back in time, I would abort him in an instant. I'm now 69 and Roy is 70, and we'll celebrate our golden wedding anniversary next month.
We were childhood sweethearts and married when I was just 19 and he was 20. I sailed through my first pregnancy with Andrew a year later, and both of us were really looking forward to a second baby to complete our family.
There were no antenatal scans or blood test to detect abnormalities in those days and although I had a sixth sense, call it mother's intuition, that there was something wrong with my baby, the doctors and midwives insisted I was being hysterical and refused to perform an amniocentesis (where cells are taken from the amniotic fluid and tested). A healthy 22-year-old, with a thriving baby, I was considered very low risk to have a Down's baby.
Stephen came into the world one Sunday in January 1967 at the Kent & Canterbury Hospital.
The following Wednesday, I looked at him in his cot: his small, almond-shaped eyes, broad, flat nose and the one crease on the palms of his hands.
'He's a mongol, isn't he?' I gasped to my mother. It sounds shocking now but that was how we used to describe people with Down's Syndrome in those days.
She told me she was sure he wasn't, and it seemed everyone else was blind to what I saw so clearly. None of the doctors and health visitors even mentioned it, so for seven months I blundered on, trying to convince myself that my baby was 'normal'.
However, when Stephen became ill that summer and I took him to hospital, I overheard a paediatrician refer to him as a 'mongol baby'. I had been right all along.
In that instant, my world came crashing down around me.
Questions I couldn't answer raced through my mind: Had I caused his disability? How terrible would his life be? What impact would it have on his brother Andrew, then only two? How on earth would Roy and I cope?
That was the day normal life ended for Roy, Andrew and me.
Perhaps you'd expect me to say that, over time, I grew to accept my son's disability. That now, looking back on that day 47 years later, none of us could imagine life without him, and that I'm grateful I was never given the option to abort.
However, you'd be wrong. Because, while I do love my son, and am fiercely protective of him, I know our lives would have been happier and far less complicated if he had never been born. I do wish I'd had an abortion. I wish it every day.
If he had not been born, I'd have probably gone on to have another baby, we would have had a normal family life and Andrew would have the comfort, rather than the responsibility, of a sibling, after we're gone.
Instead, Stephen - who struggles to speak and function in the modern world - has brought a great deal of stress and heartache into our lives.
That is why I want to speak in support of the 92 per cent of women who choose to abort their babies after discovering they have Down's Syndrome. Mothers like Suzanne Treussard who bravely told her story in the Daily Mail two weeks ago.
Suzanne, who was offered a termination at 15 weeks, braved a backlash of criticism and vitriol from some readers.
But I'd challenge any one of them to walk a mile in the shoes of mothers like me, saddled for life as I am, with a needy, difficult, exasperating child who will never grow up, before they judge us.
They should experience how it feels to parent a grown man, who is no more able to care for himself than a toddler - and at a time of life when your children should, all things being equal, be taking care of you.
They should know how it feels to live every single day under a crushing weight of guilt.
They should know how it feels to watch Stephen's constant suffering and witness the almost daily destruction wreaked on all our lives.
Roy, like a lot of men of his generation, is not terribly good at showing his emotions, and never says much about Stephen's condition.
He loves his son, but knows he cannot be 'fixed', so chooses not to waste time contemplating the 'what-ifs'. For my own part, however, I don't think I will ever come to terms with Stephen's disability.
In his early years, it caused me physical pain seeing friends' toddlers reaching milestones when my son was still so baby-like. Stephen didn't walk until he was five and couldn't speak - even now he has only a few words and communicates using Makaton, a form of sign language. This made working out his needs a constant struggle.
His incontinence meant that washing his clothes and bedding became my full-time job.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...ead-judge.html
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