Ubuntu - the Importance of Empathy: A Father’s Perspective by Ali Allawala (guest writer)
My daughter Alaiyah was born in Karachi and she was born with Down syndrome. We had received a post-natal diagnosis, although there had been some suspicions before her birth. She had a cardiac arrest a few hours after she was born, had to be resuscitated and was put on a ventilator. Countless complications and blood transfusions later, she finally managed to pull through. We held her for the first time exactly twenty days after she was born. We brought her home after she spent a month in the NICU. She's had several surgeries - some major, some minor, and quite a few hospital admissions in the past 6 years but for the most part, is doing very well. If you ask any parent of a child with special needs, they will tell you that having such a child changes you in ways you could never have imagined. You start looking at the world from a different lens. There are many joys and many rewards. But there are so many more challenges too. There are reminders in every day of what could h...