Yes, people like me can have babies
It has been seven years since Karen Hodge first became a mother, but she still gets nosy questions from strangers. ?People will approach me and my kids on the street and ask if they are my children and if I had them naturally,? says Hodge. ?In my better moments, I?ll usually try to see it as a teaching opportunity and respond with humour.?
The Port Moody, B.C., mom of seven-year-old Colin and four-year-old Laura has a spinal cord injury and has used a wheelchair since she was 15 years old. By now she is used to acknowledging as politely as possible that yes, these are her biological children, and yes, she had two vaginal births.
Hodge reminds herself that some people just don?t realize it?s possible for women with spinal cord injuries (and other physical disabilities) to get pregnant and give birth. Back in 2007, when she and her husband first started talking about having kids, even she wasn?t sure if it was possible. At a time when women without physical disabilities can take for granted that answers to even the most obscure question about their bodies during pregnancy and birth are only a Google search away, for women with physical disabilities, it can be difficult to find reliable, evidence-based information specific enough to their case to be useful.
Lesley Tarasoff is a Toronto-based researcher whose doctoral thesis focuses on the pregnancy and birth experiences of women in Ontario with physical disabilities. She thinks one of the underlying issues that makes it hard f...
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