This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from gingicat . It also fills the "fear" square in my 6-4-18 Dark Fantasy card for the Winteriron Bingo Adventure fest. "Scarier Than Marriage" Becoming parent is scarier than marriage -- you don't know who you're letting into your life for the next 18 years, and there is no divorce if it doesn't work out. Some people go into it with lofty aspirations of pink-and-blue nurseries only to find out that parenting isn't all puppies and kittens. It involves falling in love, but like romance, sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be. Some people go into it with a sense of adventure, looking forward to whatever the relationship brings. So it's really more like an arranged marriage, where both people have similar life goals that they can approach together, but it takes a lot of work. When the child arrives with a disability, all plans and expectations are upended -- but not necessarily ended . The success of the family lies in the parents' ability to face what seems impossible, to turn the feeling of "This is NOT what I signed up for!" into the realization that having a baby means signing up for whatever you get.