Parents with a disabled child, do you ever regret having children, why or why not?

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5. I'm the older sibling to a heavily disabled child. He's had severe cerebral palsy all of his life, along with significant mental development delays. It's a general consensus that we love him to bits, but that if given the choice, we would have had him aborted immediately. I think people see the happy and fun side of people with disabilities far more often than the negatives. Can you understand how it feels to watch your ageing parents have to break their backs and knees to carry your disabled brother to and from his wheelchair several times a day? Or how it feels to watch your mother cry because she's thinking about the day when he'll grow too big for us to properly care for him, which is when he'll be given over to the government to live a restricted life in a hospital for the rest of his days? (Because no, my parents refuse to put the struggle onto their other children. Because they care for them, too.) My parents have gone far and beyond to show my brother the world. Constant physical therapy so he stays as fit as a regular person that can walk, constant talking so he can communicate "normally" and learn social cues, spending all of our money just so that he can visit different places, get different treatments, and live life away from a hospital. And yet, and yet, all of that hard work will come to absolutely nothing in a couple of years because he's growing so big and my parents are growing so old that soon, we won't be able to take care of him. Soon, he won't be able to ride the bus or go out for a walk like he used to, because he'll be in a hospital where nurses just don't have the time to do that several times a day. How cruel is that? Then let's add that to the fact that he's had to grow up his whole life being "different". He cried when he couldn't follow his older siblings to school. He has separation anxiety because he physically can't follow us when he wants to. All of his needs need to be taken care of by someone else. He's had multiple surgeries that have left him in ridiculous pain, all just for survival... and this is before he turned 10 years old. On our side, we have financial issues. My parents have physical pains from all the heavy lifting. A whole bunch of stress, enough to break down several marriages. Heck, I made a decision to learn another language just so that I could handle financial matters and paperwork in case one of my parents dies. There's been sacrifices all around. We love him, but let's get real. There are many, many regrets. But there's also nothing you can do about it, so you just take it day by day.
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