”When Joshua was born, there was no cry. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and the doctor had to pry it off piece by piece. The second I saw him, I knew. At that moment, everything changed.”
‘I’m 25 years old and this is my first baby. The doctor showed us the ultrasound, and I could barely look. I couldn’t even look at my husband. I felt paralyzed.’
‘This was an 18-month-old Caucasian little girl. ‘Do you want to move forward?’ I looked at him as he read it. The biggest smile came over his face as he wrote, ‘YES!’
“I told him this wasn’t a typical ‘let’s do it’ situation. They had just received information about the bio mom of the little girl, and she was pregnant. My jaw dropped. We had never considered two kids, let alone a newborn. I can’t say I was fully on board. The next month – I was pregnant.”
‘Stephanie, our daughter is defective.’ Her father left us after learning of her diagnosis. I wondered how the rest of the world would accept her, after her own flesh and blood CHOSE not to.’
“He reminisced about how he and his friends in school used to make fun of people with Down syndrome and scream across the playground calling them the ‘R’ word. He continued to state, ‘People will look at Hannah and feel sorry for us, and then they will blame this on me.’”
‘I looked at my daughter standing beside me. You could see the fear in her eyes. No one was talking. I finally yelled out ‘HELLO!’
“I kept thinking, ‘I just have to make it to the hospital, I just need to make it to the hospital.’ Her coloring was terrible. I entered the door carrying my limp daughter.”
‘They plopped her on my tummy, facing her daddy. I cried the happiest tears. But, my husband looked at me with the most concerned look on his face. He knew.’
“It’s 2 o’clock in the morning, my water breaks on the toilet. No contractions, no leaking. I assumed it was urine, so I went back to bed. I called the nurse line when I woke up. ‘It’s most likely just urine from the baby shifting on your bladder.’ But for the first time ever? On my due date?”
‘Mom, that boy said Judah looked weird.’ I knew. I saw. I could feel the little boy boring holes into my 4-year-old, who has Down syndrome.’
“I watched him turn away and mention my son to his dad. That’s the first mistake we both made. We both chose to turn away.”
‘Babe, while you were gone, they found some things wrong with the baby.’ I had no idea how I was going to tell him. He missed it all. He had no clue.’
“Brian watched from a phone screen 3,000 miles away as our darling daughter Adaline drew her first breath. Quietly she came, and our lives were never the same.”
‘He said, ‘How old are you?’ I remember thinking that was such a strange question to ask. ‘I am 26,’ I told him. ‘Oh, you’re pretty young,’ he replied. ‘This could mean nothing.’
“I could see worry in my husband’s eyes. I could hear nurses say she was ‘really floppy, and was not moving her arms and legs.’ The nurse practitioner finally asked if she could speak candidly to us. ‘What is my family going to say? Will people accept her?’”
‘Six little words made my whole world fall apart. ‘Your baby may not make it’ – I jumped off the exam table and threw up in the trash can.’
“I was 22, pregnant with my first baby boy. I should’ve been ecstatic, preparing to welcome my sweet boy. Instead I was attending appointment after appointment to find answers as to what was wrong with him.”
‘The doctor knelt beside my bed with our baby. ‘There are things I want to point out to you.’ Those words hit me hard. ‘No she’s perfect. That’s not possible – she was already tested for that.’
“This was not how it was supposed to be. I was grieving the perfect baby I had in my head for 10 months. I felt pity for not only myself, but her. I wanted to know ‘why us?’”
