Day 6 - How we found out

Since this is Ds awareness month, and the month of Jack's birthday, I thought it would be a good time to re-hash some of my favorite posts about finding out that Jack would have Ds and his birth story and stuff like that. The is the first I'll do. I thought about just linking it but decided to copy/paste it. Pics next time!

Sunday, March 16, 2008

I wanted to start this blog to write how we felt and what happened when we found our baby would have Down Syndrome. That seems like an overwhelming job now. Maybe I'll just do it in bits.

Installment #1 - How we found out

At about 12 weeks pregnant (right after we found out we were pregnant), I decided to do that nuchal fold test, where they measure the back of the baby's neck (via ultrasound). There's some magic number that is a marker for ds. With every pregnancy, I took pretty much all the tests because I like to be prepared. This sounded like an easy one, so I took it. They couldn't get our little one to be in the exact right position, so it didn't work. That was on a Fri. We tried again on Mon., still with no results. I don't really remember what made me decide to have the amnio; I just remember having the appointment and my friend Sherry telling me she would come with me because she didn't want me to go alone. This was really a big deal 'cause she lived a couple of hours away. We found out Jack was a boy while getting prepped, and the actual amnio really wasn't bad. That was on a Wed. On Fri., while I was home, my ob called. "I really hate to tell you this, but your test shows Down Syndrome." I know he said more stuff but I sure don't know what it was. I called my husband at work and told him to come home. He did, and we cried together. We had plans that week-end but cancelled everything. We didn't tell anyone for almost 2 months. I just needed that time to be okay. It was really hard. People kept calling to ask if we heard anything yet and I lied. I said "no news must be good news, ha ha" knowing the whole time I would have to tell them at some point. It's an emotional thing. I honestly wasn't worried that anyone would be mean or anything, I just needed to get to the point where I was emotionally okay telling people because I knew I would be the one reassuring others. I thought no way can I start talking to people about this if I'm breaking down every time. Even my closest friends and our parents. For some reason, I needed to be strong. My dr. was great. He said, at the first visit after we found out, that we wouldn't dwell on the ds unless I had questions or concerns. He wanted me to feel like this was a regular, fun, miraculous pregnancy, just like it was. We finally told our other kids. They decided at once no one would ever make fun of their baby brother and were protective right away. They made me cry in a good way. We then told my parents; I kind of chickened out and told them when I was literally on my way out the door to go 3 hrs. home from a visit with them. After a quick hug, I ran away quick so they could be upset and cry. Then I wrote a big long e-mail to all the friends and family I had an e-mail address for and even asked them to forward it to others. The response was really positive. Sounds anti-climactic, but that was it. I have one friend that I'm really close to and everyone was saying to her "wow, you sure kept that quiet" and she has to say "yeah, cause she didn't tell me" which I feel a little bad about but I just couldn't yet. The rest of the pregnancy was okay; I had gestational diabetes (special diet, blood checks, and even shots in my tummy!) and lots of ultrasounds and non-stress tests and an echocardiogram for Jack and everything came back great. Everyone acted very excited to see our new guy. We had the BEST baby shower. (That'll be another story!)

Day 5

First off - Happy Birthday Lori! I won't mention how long we've been celebrating b-days together - but man it's been a long time! Here we are when we were so cute - college sorority dance. Hope you had a super day!

Now onto the Ds awareness portion of our post -
I wanted to post some interesting little fact about Down syndrome. But I'm too lazy at his very moment to look something up. So the only thing that comes to mind is the way I spelled it - Down syndrome with a capital D and a small s. In the US, that is the preferred spelling. I believe in other countries it could be spelled with a capital S too, but we don't want to give our syndromes more credit than they deserve here, so small s it is. And there we have it. Maybe during the rst of the week I'll "borrow" a post from someone else, or actually look up a fact, or just send you to someone else's interesting blog!

Day 4

Someone posted on fb that their child ate a crayon. My first thought was "hey - my kid ate a crayon, and I need a blog post!". So even though I did post this pic before, you get to see it again because it cracks me up and, after all, this is my blog!

Day 3

At some point, I will do a post that lists 21 things about Jack. Why 21? Anyone that reads this blog I'm sure, already knows, but just in case it's because Down syndrome is also known as Trisomy 21. Most people have 2 copies of each of their 23chromasomes, and Jack has 3 copies of the 21st.

Until that big post - here's a little fact. I tell Jack every day, "I love your face", and usually it comes out when he's just done something that he thinks is clever and he gets this very delighted grin. It just makes me happy! It's hard to capture on film, but I'll see if I have a pic of that expression to share later!

Day 2

My older son plays footbal for his high school team. This is his senior year, so his last year. His dad and I, and Jack and M & Ty, have gone to pretty much every game. Last year he played down on the JV squad so we even doubled up on games. The point is, Jack has a fan club or a following so to speak, at the games. There are other parents who sit in the stands with us that say hi to him every week. Some of them don't even know our names and we don't know theirs but they know Jack. How cool is that?! It makes me wonder if maybe he's been an ambassador for Ds at the games. Maybe he's given a positive image of Ds to people who may not know anyone else with Ds. He gives high-fives and knuckle bumps; he smiles and laughs and cheers; he waves and says "Hi" and "Bye - see ya" when people walk by. Everyone has responded to him so positively. I'll miss it next year. Or maybe we'll still go, at least to home games. Jack will be 4 on his next birthday - he's gone to games since before he was one. Everyone has watched him grow into a little boy, and hopefully thinks of cuteness from now on when they think of Ds!

Day 1!

I thought I would start out Ds Awareness month with a pic of my cuties!  Capn Jack is sportin’ his very cool “Don’t Dis My Ability” shirt with I also thought was appropriate!  And Dashlyn, well, hopefully I’ll have new pics to post of her soon, after we get to travel.  Although I love pink, it will be so amazing to see her in a shirt other than that one :).   

31 for 21!

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Guess what tomorrow is?!

The first day of October! So we all know what that means - Down syndrome Awareness Month! So, once again I'm going to attempt to blog once each day in honor of this month. Hopefully, I will make it.

Enjoy all the other blogs!