In The Beginning

I was eighteen going on nineteen when I found out I was pregnant. No matter how young or how old, every child is a blessing from God. Anyways, six to seven months into the pregnancy my doctor did some routine blood work, which came back with a .0000001% chance of my son having down syndrome. When I went into labor the nurses did some test to make sure the baby was healthy and ready to greet the world; come to find out while I was 39 weeks pregnant when I was going into labor Jay stopped growing at 35 weeks. After 25 hours of a semi-complicated birth, my beautiful baby boy was born February 5, 2013 at 5lb 12oz. During my stay at the hospital, Jay dropped 6oz and we all became a bit concerned but thank God he ended up being perfectly fine to go home. I had a doctor's appointment three days later and come to find out Jay's blood work came back positive for T21. At that point I kind of expected it because when he was born he had features of down syndrome and I had already mentally prepared myself since the moment they suspected him to have some type of disability. Still,  when you actually hear the news you just feel so many different types of emotions and don't really know what to expect from that moment on. I pondered so many questions and had that "well what now" moment. When I told my family I didn't really want to tell everyone because I didn't want pity from them or have them feel like they have to walk on egg shells because of this. I contacted the regional center right after and was given a therapist for Jay (which she is amazing by the way), to make sure he was hitting milestones, to see if Jay was going to need other types of therapist (physical therapist, speech therapist, etc.), and to inform me more about what T21 is. Since then, I've been doing my own little research about T21, I've been talking to other families with down syndrome children, and I'm happy to say his progress (which I will talk about in other blog posts) has been just wonderful. I am one proud mama of one sweet little soul and I am blessed to say that I finally know what love really is with him!

"DOWN SYNDROME IS A CONDITION YOUR BABY HAS, IT IS NOT WHO YOUR BABY IS" -CTW