“Everybody’s got their problems;
-Sum 41
Everybody says the same things to you;
It’s just a matter how you solve them;
And knowing how to change the things you’ve been through.”
***
River
River was born at-term without a heartbeat for 13 minutes and diagnosed with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. She is recovering from her run-in with the american healthcare system quite well, often called a miracle baby by her healthcare providers. We wrote some poems during the first 3 days of our zombie cyborg’s life, when we didn’t know if lil Speed Racer would live or die or something worse, and we would love it if you would read them: https://sylveon.org/NICU
We wanted to have a homebirth in the bathtub but decided a hospital would be safer. We are pretty sure our child’s traumatic birth was a result of hospital negligence. In any event, the experience brought us closer together as a couple and we are excited to move forward with our beautiful baby.
We were, of course, hesitant to have any surgery done to our baby, but the gastronomy tube has been a blessing. We are working with several speech therapists to get her to eat, but if she has to wear her cyborg backpack to feed herself forever, we are okay with that, and continue to focus on cognitive & motor development as equal priorities.
We intend to homeschool, and will more than likely be following the contemporary “Unschooling” approach. Being a recreational rocket-ship race pilot & president of the USA is our suggestion to our daughter so that she will have the network and funding to do whatever she wants in life in her 40s and beyond so we hope she can count on your vote in the election of 2060.
Ajia
Ajia Leilani is a UX Researcher who writes the scripts and conducts the interviews that are used to determine how to write scripts and conduct interviews for improving government products and services. When time permits, Ajia makes electronic music, tattoos Dakotah, and giggles at River’s farts.
Dakotah
Dakotah Taylor is a political artist, stay at home parent, published poet at 13, single major in Philosophy including studying eastern religion abroad, and was the youngest ever elected-official in a town of ~30,000 at age 25. Dakotah has been professionally reading tarot cards for over a decade, has a passion for GIFs with a hard-G, and once tried to build a new Internet.