I left school yesterday morning with a knot in my stomach, for the dumbest of reasons.

There were plenty of good reasons, trust me.

It wasn’t because I’d had to practically peel Sophie off my leg and push her up the stairs to get her to go to class — for no particular reason.

It wasn’t because the previous day, I’d had Sophie’s parent/teacher conference. Even though the 20-minute conference ran almost an hour and the teacher and special ed teacher assured me Sophie is just fine (reading at grade level, progressing at math, behaving better overall) and I left loving these women more than ever, I still can’t get my arms around second grade. And I’m quite sure Sophie can’t, either.

It wasn’t because we’re now officially Waiting for Blood Test Results. Sophie’s been on thyroid medication for three weeks, and given some stomach issues that are way TMI even for GIAPH, we decided to test her blood now. Given that we are currently seeing a doctor who can’t spell diarrhea (dairrhea — and I don’t care if that was a typo, I don’t think it was, as this woman of indeterminate national origin has no command of the English language — which, seriously, doesn’t bother me one bit as long as you are not my daughter’s doctor and how did I end up with this doctor when I made an appointment with the guy who runs the freaking practice at the local childrens hospital?! Anyhow, we’re switching – the final straw was when the guy taking Sophie’s blood announced they couldn’t find this doctor anywhere in their system and YES I will be writing a letter, at least one) I’m not at all confident in any of this.

It wasn’t because I’d finally, after months of begging the eye doctor’s office, gotten ahold of Sophie’s eye exam records and dropped them off for the school nurse, only reminding myself that Sophie’s vision therapy exercises don’t seem to be doing much and we’ve been without a home occupational therapist for six months and are about to lose Sophie’s biweekly physical therapist sessions even though I begged the caseworker to just cut out music therapy and even speech, so Sophie can get the help she really needs instead. No  horse trading, the caseworker told me. And then there’s the cardiologist appointment coming up and the orthopedist appointment I never did make, or did I? 

It wasn’t because at Annabelle’s parent/teacher conference earlier in the week, her teacher had shown me straight As and Os (O for Outstanding Effort), then leaned in and very kindly told me she does worry about making sure Annabelle has her own space away from Sophie, who’s a frequent (uninvited) visitor to the classroom. I thanked the teacher profusely and agreed with her (and I do sincerely agree) but still, I’m left hating having yet another fear validated. And just how am I going to give Annabelle her space, anyway?

Oh no, it wasn’t because any of that. It was because of a birthday party.

I am almost 44 years old. You’d think I’d be over the birthday party thing by now. But oh no, yesterday morning before school I got just the quickest glimpse of three of Sophie’s classmates — standing together in line waiting for the teacher to lead them upstairs, all reading beautiful, hand drawn thank you cards from the birthday girl, the bright crayon colors glinting in the sunshine — and that was enough to knot my stomach, ruin my day. 

Sophie didn’t notice, she was too busy sucking her thumb and putting the death grip on my leg, and if she had noticed, she probably wouldn’t have cared because yep, my 7 year old with Down syndrome is more mature than I am.

The truth is that if Sophie had been invited to that birthday party I would have bitched and moaned and stressed out about it, then watched miserably as she failed to fully interact with her (not really) peers. And I would never, ever want someone to invite Sophie to a birthday party merely because they felt sorry for her (or because they read this blog post, ok?!).

Ugh. There’s no winning, not for me. And I might not be mature, but I’m not dumb. I know what this is about. I’ve noted it before and it’s true: It’s a lot easier to worry about a birthday party your kid wasn’t invited to than the other concerns on the list.

Really, though, I just need to grow up.