Recently in the area that I live, the disabled community have been getting a right bashing about parking. 

A local supermarket has supposedly put even more disabled bays in their car park and shock horror they have moved the mother and child bays further away from the store. 

Now as not only a mother, I am a mother to a fully able 1 year old and a totally dependant disabled 2 year old, whom has a blue badge for parking… People went into uproar-

“The disabled bays are always empty”

“They should have put in more mother and baby bays”

“Disabled aren’t royalty they can’t park where they want, so should we park in the disabled bays when there aren’t enough mum and baby bays…”

Let’s just clear a few things up. Having a child, a baby, is a privilege and to some degree is a choice, if you choose to have a child the world does not owe you any favours, those mum and baby spaces are put there, at the stores discretion. Being disabled, is NOT a choice. Can you even imagine how insulting, how shallow it is to see and hear people saying that we are not royalty, how dare we park where we want?! 

Royalty is a bit far, but Ava is royalty in my eyes!… But that aside, the law and the government allow disabled people to park l, (within reason and safety guidelines) where they NEEED to ensure they can have the access to the very little things that an able bodied person takes for granted and doesn’t even think twice about. 

As I have pointed out, I’ve gone out with just my son before and not been able to park in a mum and baby spot, and yes I huffed and puffed about having to squeeze this huge car seat out of a tiny gap and not ding any car doors. But guess what, no one was at risk, maybe minor dent or scratch, so what?

What about when I was jumping through hoops to get the blue badge Ava is entitled to I had to try and get her out of a small “normal” space. On a good day, she has 3 wires attached to her, on a bad day, 5. 3 out of those 5 are her lifelines. The very things that keep her alive and functioning, without them? Well life wouldn’t be sustained. 

If they are caught, or pulled out its a disaster, and an emergency. We’ve been through that once before and had to have an ambulance rush us all the way To London just so she wouldn’t bleed to death or contract an infection directly into her heart and body. 

So to the moaners (not everyone!) about the disabled community, and our supposed “privileges” to park where we want. We aren’t all handicapped in a way that you can see, we don’t all need a wheel chair, sometimes we need that space, we need to park on those double yellow lines, just so that we are safe. Just so that at the end of our outing we are heading home, and not headed for weeks in a hospital – we spend enough time there as it is.