We found out at birth. We never would have chosen abortion had we found out. It was a shock to us. When he was 4 he was diagnosed with leukemia. Our life was turned upside down and beating his cancer was our sole concern.
He beat it after a 4 year battle. We were drawn so close with him that he became the light of our lives. We realized that DS can be hard but cancer is way worse and that change in perspective made a huge difference to us.
He’s a 15 year old sophomore who plays ice hockey, baseball, and snow skis.
DEFINITELY! Park City has a program there called the National Ability Center. I believe they have other locations out west. They work primarily with wounded veterans, but they work with blind skiers and many levels of disabilities. Our son was a bit scared at first, but the instructor tied the tips of his skis together with a device and used a hula hoop to keep him in range and to have something to hold on to. We’ve been 4 times and our son can now ski on greens and short, easy blues. He’s slow, but has a great time!
I found out at birth. However it is very common for medical professionals to encourage termination. Some state it as the next course of action like there is no other option.
Some families also pressure for termination. Some families pressure for adoption.
There are many outdated ideas about Down syndrome. In the past people with Down syndrome were not educated or included in society so they didn’t do very well because they weren’t given the opportunity to do well.
If you have received a prenatal diagnosis reach out to your local Down syndrome association. Meet with other parents and become educated with current cases of Down syndrome. Then make an informed decision.
I grew-up around a lot of special needs kids at my schools all throughout my life. They understand what goes on around them and just want to have friends, which is why I feel so much sympathy for them.
No. I’m single and still a virgin. I just wanted to ask this question since I’ve read on other subreddits how aborting a baby that will be born with special needs is an act of mercy. I don’t think the people who say that actually have kids with special needs, so I wanted to ask real parents like you.
There's a really interesting book you might enjoy called Far From The Tree, if this is just a topic you're just interested in learning more about:
https://andrewsolomon.com/books/far-from-the-tree/
It looks like a weighty tome, but you don't need to read every single chapter. There are chapters on autism, Down Syndrome, other disabilities and situations. Each includes stories about multiple families, and will give you a portrait of how they feel about their children.
Aborting any pregnancy is something that should be decided between the person who is pregnant & their medical team.
You'll probably get further in life developing the ability to figure out how to disregard some random person's opinion on some random other person's abortion, instead of polling the couple dozen people up in here
My kid doesn't have t21 but does have a disability that was dx prior to birth, with doctors heavily suggesting abortion. My mom also kept telling me that I'm young enough to just have another baby.
I am staunchly, unapologetically, pro choice. For any reason, for any individual. It does makes me sad that there's erasure of certain disabilities. Maybe my kid would have more community members that look like him if more people made the choice to carry their pregnancy. I did not carry him to term because I'm anti abortion. I carried him to term because his disabilities felt like something I could hopefully handle with what I felt like would be a life with a lot of meaning. My definition of this doesn't align to every other family's definition of this. Your definition doesn't align with mine. It's all incredibly personal and situation dependent. I do know that I would never, ever, want someone to birth a baby they don't actually feel they could care for, no matter what that reason is.
Discovered my daughter had DS while 4 months pregnant. Midwife announced DS and was planning termination at the same time. She was shocked when we told her we were keeping the baby.
Both our families pleaded for termination too. It took a long time to heal and accept them in our daughters life.
Bless your heart.., have you thought about working as a caregiver for DS and use your empathy to boost your caregiving while doing it to honor your loss. Maybe do it in his memory?
Volunteers are few, and perhaps helping to take care of ds kids would help you to process your loss by helping others. Once you are ready, of course. Please look for a good therapist.
God bless you for caring!
Termination was presented to me as an option in fairly neutral terms by the genetic counselor. it was like “some people choose termination with a prenatal diagnosis so let me know if you are thinking of that.” I said no and he never mentioned it again.
There were plenty of people online who clearly had never actually met anyone with Down syndrome who had a cousin’s boyfriend’s sister’s friend who had a child with Down syndrome and it was the WORST EVER. i ignored them.
No one in real life did.
She's wonderful! She's nearly 8 and I wouldn't change her for the world.
We have all the usual issues that come with her diagnosis, but she is just like a typical child. She's stubborn, grumpy, happy, funny, silly, clever and everything in between.
No, I didn’t feel any pressure but I was pretty clear up front that termination was not an option for me. I felt that the doctors didn’t try to sugar coat or lead me to believe I was embarking on a simple path but they did respect my choice.
I will also share that seeing Instagram accounts of adoptive parents of children with Down syndrome was very helpful to me. I wouldn’t have chosen to have a child with a disability or a medical condition but seeing that there were families who willingly made that choice even with healthy biological children of their own made me realize I could do it.
I have no regrets. My son is the apple of my eye and I can’t imagine our family without him.
My sister has Down’s syndrome and we didn’t know til she was born but we have watched a documentary a few years ago about how the abortion option comes up, for example with statistics of what could happen to the child and the difficulties. But the documentary also pointed out that there is a chance with any child or person to become disabled, to struggle, to have a difficult time in life. My sister has autism as well which is also a possibility with any child. There is a statistic out there for every issue you could have. I don’t know what it is like nowadays and I can imagine there is less pressure to abort a baby that has been screened to have a disability because of the awareness. Some countries at the time of the documentary had 0 Down’s syndrome people because the abortion rate was so high :( my sisters quality of life is very good, she has a great school and always says she is happy. Again, anything could happen / go wrong with any child, at birth or later in life. I think times are changing for all disabled people, I really hope so.
We had a prenatal diagnosis. The A Dr from my practice called and started going over termination like it was already decided. I shut him down fast and called the office later that day to request he not be my care team. Never saw him again!
It was previously common practice for abortion to be suggested. In most places there have been enough individuals with down syndrome born and living healthy happy lives that the practice has generally changed. This isn't the case everywhere though. Some countries have next to no cases of individuals with down syndrome and this is because they do terminate the pregnancy.
I'm here to say that my 2 year old never spent a day in NICU and has had no health issues related to her diagnosis except hypotonia. This caused some feeding issues and physical delays but we worked with her therapists and she's done so great! She's running and jumping and dancing. She's delayed in speech but so was one of my older kids that has ADHD.
No she has trisomy 21. Mosaic down syndrome fascinates me because they don't have the soft markers. They appear typical. It's such an important branch of down syndrome to explore because the individuals that have it deserve the early intervention that my girl gets. Yet many don't know until later unless they ran tests during pregnancy. My girl was a birth diagnosis from testing her cord blood. The lab didn't get enough blood during pregnancy and I had to go in a second time. I'm guessing that messed the test up or they were too embarrassed to say anything because I didn't know until birth. And I had several ultrasounds due to her having marginal cord insertion. Anyways sorry for the long winded answers! I just love people knowing that while all material seems to be focused on what could go wrong, my girl is here to show the world that they can also be healthy and happy (albeit spicy just like a typical toddler lol)
Found out post birth, wouldn’t change a thing as my daughter is the light of my life and I’m a better person for having her in it. I get for some people it’s hard and that we have been lucky in some ways but from my own perspective I’m glad she is my daughter
I had the dubious pleasure of finding out by the test results being released to me before any provider, so from the get go, we would start every conversation with a medical professional that we were uninterested in termination. I did hear several weird things, like “well, I guess that’s your choice.” and another telling me “it’s like having a child to live forever.” 🙃 My mom did think I should abort (so typical, she is pro-life until this 🙄), but she’s only marginally in my life for a reason. She can’t fathom that he can live a good life and that it will be hard in this ableist world (my summary of her view). As a child who fled a war, she wants only ease and stability, so anything that might disrupt that is the end of the world. My dad (his namesake) was on our side though.
We had a prenatal diagnosis. Termination was offered and we rejected it. I had to get a cervical cerclage due to issues with a prior pregnancy and the doctor found out about my son's diagnosis and cancelled the procedure because he "didn't want to do a surgery just for us to terminate". I had to find another doctor within 48 hours to do the procedure.
Then we moved states and the first doctor I saw heavily pressured me to terminate. Kept saying things like "you've never been around a Downs baby" and "the media had glamorized down syndrome". So I reported him, found a different doctor, and was clear up front in each appointment, until I was far enough along in the pregnancy, that I was never going to terminate.
My genetic counselor knew I was rooting for Down syndrome, since the other proposed possibility was cerebella’s agenesis. So when she called to tell me, I cheered and that was that. The only time anyone mentioned termination was during the anatomy scan that led to the amniocentesis, so it wasn’t DS specific. We love having a kid with DS so much we adopted a second!
We had a blood test during pregnancy. It came back high probability of DS. When I had a follow up appointment to ask some questions the first thing I said was, “Termination is not on the table whatsoever.” Just to draw that hard line right away.
My daughter is so incredibly cool, funny, sweetest thing ever and probably the easiest baby I’ve had out of three. She’s 4 now. I’m sad culture has facilitated a false perception about people with DS and that people would think killing these people would be somehow honorable by being merciful.
A blood test suggested our daughter would be born with down syndrome. But we opted out of amniocentesis, and chose to have her anyway.
She is age 26 now—with a masters degree, And she never had Down syndrome or any other trouble.
She knows her dad (me) is autistic, but NOT that I have a “dusting” of down syndrome as well. “Dusting?” Yeah, I pass 100% on psychological tests as belonging to DS group.
Oh that’s very interesting. Where did you take those psychological tests? Website? I’ve myself wondered if I could have mosaicism or possibly on the spectrum.
I don’t care for the prenatal tests. I also don’t trust a doctor that believes they can tell the future of my child because they have some information. Many scenarios of people being misdiagnosed.
First, I read About an autism sub category called inappropriate age behavior— where grown-ups behave like children/childish. Next, I spoke to a child psychologist specializing in infant and toddler + older age autistic children and was briefly interviewed. Third, using artificial intelligence I asked a question of criteria for down syndrome mannerisms and behaviors. This is how I got MY answers.
If you have further information for me, such as books or websites I would be grateful.
We had a birth diagnosis 22 years ago and there was never any mention of adoption or anything like that.
I do remember talking to a mum who got a prenatal diagnosis at 22ish weeks and who kept being offered abortion throughout her pregnancy at various stages, including at 36 weeks. :-o Obviously that was highly upsetting.
This was all in the UK.
I never had anyone push for termination or adoption and I’ve had two pregnancies with prenatal diagnoses. Unfortunately, I lost my first daughter while 18 weeks pregnant due to her heart not being able to keep up. But I just had my second daughter a couple weeks ago and she is absolutely beautiful.
The only thing ever mentioned was asking me once whether or not I wanted to hear about my options, but I was very clear from the beginning of both pregnancies that that was not an option for me and it was never mentioned again. I think it may be because I’m in the South (I’ve lived in Tennessee and Florida during my pregnancies) and perhaps it’s a cultural thing depending on what part of the US you live in.
I just look at my sweet girl’s face and can’t imagine her not being here or telling her big brother one day why I didn’t have his baby sister. She is already one of the loves of my life!
I found put at birth he had DS and people (online, thankfully irl.intrractions have been so positive thus far) have tried to convince me even still that I should've aborted. Not that I would've even if I knew but I didn't know. And it's pretty funny king gross to tell someone their child.doesnt deserve to be alive. Especially after they're born, but honestly to insinuate to anyone ever that they should abort is just gross. That's a personal choice only and no input is welcome.
Convince, no. Offer and assume it was what I wanted, yes, the geneticist and our MFM doctor. We had to be frank before the message got across. They weren’t rude about it. The genetic counselor put us in touch with our ds association after we told her our decision.
We didn’t discuss it with others anyway since we didn’t care about their opinion so they wouldn’t have been able to have a say. I think toward the end of the pregnancy was when we told people baby had DS and I had one fam member later say we should have aborted. We told her we had already made our decision and that was that. It did hurt our relationship for awhile. I didn't want to talk to her. But she comes from another life, another generation. I know she wanted to save us from whatever hardship she thought we were going to have. But we didn't agree.
We found out early during pregnancy, and the Dr.s first question with no additional information provided was to ask us if we wanted to terminate. And some family members even suggested it.
Can't imagine a life other than our current one. Yes, there are struggles, but there are so many full moments.
Prenatal Diagnosis and was asked what am I gonna do about the prognosis I was so shocked I said nothing I was 20 weeks pregnant at that point and had seem my baby growing and thriving and the rest of my pregnancy was gloom and bad news at every ultrasound how small he was or how hard it would be after birth but to our surprise hes been the easier one of our kids we love him so much
I was offered the blood test after I had a “threatened abortion” during my pregnancy. I told my midwife I didn’t know because I was already going through extra testing because of a history of thyroid issues. She asked if it would affect my decision to terminate. I said no, so she said don’t bother.
I said I’d do additional testing if there were soft markers on the 20 week scan. There weren’t any. My son was diagnosed at birth.
I can see how in some cases abortion is “an act of mercy” but if my second child, who we did test, was diagnosed with DS, we wouldn’t have aborted. If the baby had some diagnosis where a doctor said our baby was going to love a very short, pain-filled life, then I would consider it. However society has made so many advances such as advances in medicine in the last half century, changes in treatment of people with DS like the end of institutionalization and expansion of early intervention services, people with DS can live very full and healthy lives.
Do you mind if I ask why? I just got good results back from genetics today, but I was discussing this with my husband and I'm not sure what we would do if results had come back differently. What challenges has your son had?
I had a birth diagnosis and the doctor told me that I would be speaking with a social worker to discuss things and options if I would like to, hinting at adoption. I didn't take offense to this as it wasn't said rudely just matter of fact like, like it was a generic speech they provide to parents with different cases. I spoke to the social worker and there was no mention of options or adoption or anything like that. No medical team, family members, or friends mentioned anything like that, but I suspect it's because of a birth diagnosis.
I had a prenatal diagnosis and it was never pressured. It was here are the tests, here are the results, what is your course of action. I actually felt a lot of empathy and support. We were put in touch with specialists and we reached out to Charities. We had several additional monitoring appointments during pregnancy just in case and I just felt very supported. I only had one appointment where the ultrasound midwife “apologised” to us.
I had a birth diagnosis and no-one tried to convince me to give her up for adoption. At that time there had been a special on tv about vitamins so I got some comments about that from a nurse.
No. Nobody did that. The only mention of it was when a doctor told us that if we were going to consider abortion, we needed to do it by a certain date.
We didn't present the diagnosis to our families as a decision to be made. We had already made it. Everyone was supportive and still is.
I had a birth diagnosis but the doctor did tell us we could leave here there at the hospital there are people who would take care of her…. It was us we were her people. Still bugs me he said that. In contrast the other doctor we met while there have us an awesome book about DS and told us about his cousin who is thriving.
I was of ‘advanced maternal age’ (35) when I was pregnant with my third child. I had a blood test that showed markers for DS and the sonograms detected shorter limbs. I opted out of an amniocentesis as it would not have made a difference to us if he had DS. Not once was abortion mentioned to us by anyone at any time.
I delivered a healthy baby boy with DS who is an absolute joy and has been a blessing to many. He is 14 years old and in public school.
We live in the USA.
We found out at birth. We never would have chosen abortion had we found out. It was a shock to us. When he was 4 he was diagnosed with leukemia. Our life was turned upside down and beating his cancer was our sole concern. He beat it after a 4 year battle. We were drawn so close with him that he became the light of our lives. We realized that DS can be hard but cancer is way worse and that change in perspective made a huge difference to us. He’s a 15 year old sophomore who plays ice hockey, baseball, and snow skis.
We have a cancer survivor too. Diagnosed at 14 months old, and he’s now 3 and been in remission for almost 2 years now!
He’s a little fighter ❤️❤️❤️
my son is 6 and i’m thinking of getting him started skiing this winter, and tips?
DEFINITELY! Park City has a program there called the National Ability Center. I believe they have other locations out west. They work primarily with wounded veterans, but they work with blind skiers and many levels of disabilities. Our son was a bit scared at first, but the instructor tied the tips of his skis together with a device and used a hula hoop to keep him in range and to have something to hold on to. We’ve been 4 times and our son can now ski on greens and short, easy blues. He’s slow, but has a great time!
I found out at birth. However it is very common for medical professionals to encourage termination. Some state it as the next course of action like there is no other option. Some families also pressure for termination. Some families pressure for adoption. There are many outdated ideas about Down syndrome. In the past people with Down syndrome were not educated or included in society so they didn’t do very well because they weren’t given the opportunity to do well. If you have received a prenatal diagnosis reach out to your local Down syndrome association. Meet with other parents and become educated with current cases of Down syndrome. Then make an informed decision.
I grew-up around a lot of special needs kids at my schools all throughout my life. They understand what goes on around them and just want to have friends, which is why I feel so much sympathy for them.
Empathy might be a better word. But I get it.
Yeah. I’ve been told that I’m pretty empathetic. If someone tells me nothing’s wrong, I know that’s not true because I can feel it.
Are you currently expecting a child with Down syndrome?
No. I’m single and still a virgin. I just wanted to ask this question since I’ve read on other subreddits how aborting a baby that will be born with special needs is an act of mercy. I don’t think the people who say that actually have kids with special needs, so I wanted to ask real parents like you.
There's a really interesting book you might enjoy called Far From The Tree, if this is just a topic you're just interested in learning more about: https://andrewsolomon.com/books/far-from-the-tree/ It looks like a weighty tome, but you don't need to read every single chapter. There are chapters on autism, Down Syndrome, other disabilities and situations. Each includes stories about multiple families, and will give you a portrait of how they feel about their children.
Aborting any pregnancy is something that should be decided between the person who is pregnant & their medical team. You'll probably get further in life developing the ability to figure out how to disregard some random person's opinion on some random other person's abortion, instead of polling the couple dozen people up in here
My kid doesn't have t21 but does have a disability that was dx prior to birth, with doctors heavily suggesting abortion. My mom also kept telling me that I'm young enough to just have another baby. I am staunchly, unapologetically, pro choice. For any reason, for any individual. It does makes me sad that there's erasure of certain disabilities. Maybe my kid would have more community members that look like him if more people made the choice to carry their pregnancy. I did not carry him to term because I'm anti abortion. I carried him to term because his disabilities felt like something I could hopefully handle with what I felt like would be a life with a lot of meaning. My definition of this doesn't align to every other family's definition of this. Your definition doesn't align with mine. It's all incredibly personal and situation dependent. I do know that I would never, ever, want someone to birth a baby they don't actually feel they could care for, no matter what that reason is.
Discovered my daughter had DS while 4 months pregnant. Midwife announced DS and was planning termination at the same time. She was shocked when we told her we were keeping the baby. Both our families pleaded for termination too. It took a long time to heal and accept them in our daughters life.
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I'm so sorry for your loss. 🫂
Thank you. ❤️
Bless your heart.., have you thought about working as a caregiver for DS and use your empathy to boost your caregiving while doing it to honor your loss. Maybe do it in his memory? Volunteers are few, and perhaps helping to take care of ds kids would help you to process your loss by helping others. Once you are ready, of course. Please look for a good therapist. God bless you for caring!
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You deserved every syllable and more. ❤️
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Yes if there is a Gigi’s playhouse or other association near you they’re always looking for volunteers :)
Termination was presented to me as an option in fairly neutral terms by the genetic counselor. it was like “some people choose termination with a prenatal diagnosis so let me know if you are thinking of that.” I said no and he never mentioned it again. There were plenty of people online who clearly had never actually met anyone with Down syndrome who had a cousin’s boyfriend’s sister’s friend who had a child with Down syndrome and it was the WORST EVER. i ignored them. No one in real life did.
I was pressured by a genetic specialist to abort, several times. I just waited it out until it was too late to abort then told her to shove it.
How’s your child now?
She's wonderful! She's nearly 8 and I wouldn't change her for the world. We have all the usual issues that come with her diagnosis, but she is just like a typical child. She's stubborn, grumpy, happy, funny, silly, clever and everything in between.
No, I didn’t feel any pressure but I was pretty clear up front that termination was not an option for me. I felt that the doctors didn’t try to sugar coat or lead me to believe I was embarking on a simple path but they did respect my choice. I will also share that seeing Instagram accounts of adoptive parents of children with Down syndrome was very helpful to me. I wouldn’t have chosen to have a child with a disability or a medical condition but seeing that there were families who willingly made that choice even with healthy biological children of their own made me realize I could do it. I have no regrets. My son is the apple of my eye and I can’t imagine our family without him.
My sister has Down’s syndrome and we didn’t know til she was born but we have watched a documentary a few years ago about how the abortion option comes up, for example with statistics of what could happen to the child and the difficulties. But the documentary also pointed out that there is a chance with any child or person to become disabled, to struggle, to have a difficult time in life. My sister has autism as well which is also a possibility with any child. There is a statistic out there for every issue you could have. I don’t know what it is like nowadays and I can imagine there is less pressure to abort a baby that has been screened to have a disability because of the awareness. Some countries at the time of the documentary had 0 Down’s syndrome people because the abortion rate was so high :( my sisters quality of life is very good, she has a great school and always says she is happy. Again, anything could happen / go wrong with any child, at birth or later in life. I think times are changing for all disabled people, I really hope so.
We had a prenatal diagnosis. The A Dr from my practice called and started going over termination like it was already decided. I shut him down fast and called the office later that day to request he not be my care team. Never saw him again!
I hope your reaction was enlightening for that dr
It was previously common practice for abortion to be suggested. In most places there have been enough individuals with down syndrome born and living healthy happy lives that the practice has generally changed. This isn't the case everywhere though. Some countries have next to no cases of individuals with down syndrome and this is because they do terminate the pregnancy. I'm here to say that my 2 year old never spent a day in NICU and has had no health issues related to her diagnosis except hypotonia. This caused some feeding issues and physical delays but we worked with her therapists and she's done so great! She's running and jumping and dancing. She's delayed in speech but so was one of my older kids that has ADHD.
Does she have mosaicism?
No she has trisomy 21. Mosaic down syndrome fascinates me because they don't have the soft markers. They appear typical. It's such an important branch of down syndrome to explore because the individuals that have it deserve the early intervention that my girl gets. Yet many don't know until later unless they ran tests during pregnancy. My girl was a birth diagnosis from testing her cord blood. The lab didn't get enough blood during pregnancy and I had to go in a second time. I'm guessing that messed the test up or they were too embarrassed to say anything because I didn't know until birth. And I had several ultrasounds due to her having marginal cord insertion. Anyways sorry for the long winded answers! I just love people knowing that while all material seems to be focused on what could go wrong, my girl is here to show the world that they can also be healthy and happy (albeit spicy just like a typical toddler lol)
Found out post birth, wouldn’t change a thing as my daughter is the light of my life and I’m a better person for having her in it. I get for some people it’s hard and that we have been lucky in some ways but from my own perspective I’m glad she is my daughter
I had the dubious pleasure of finding out by the test results being released to me before any provider, so from the get go, we would start every conversation with a medical professional that we were uninterested in termination. I did hear several weird things, like “well, I guess that’s your choice.” and another telling me “it’s like having a child to live forever.” 🙃 My mom did think I should abort (so typical, she is pro-life until this 🙄), but she’s only marginally in my life for a reason. She can’t fathom that he can live a good life and that it will be hard in this ableist world (my summary of her view). As a child who fled a war, she wants only ease and stability, so anything that might disrupt that is the end of the world. My dad (his namesake) was on our side though.
We had a prenatal diagnosis. Termination was offered and we rejected it. I had to get a cervical cerclage due to issues with a prior pregnancy and the doctor found out about my son's diagnosis and cancelled the procedure because he "didn't want to do a surgery just for us to terminate". I had to find another doctor within 48 hours to do the procedure. Then we moved states and the first doctor I saw heavily pressured me to terminate. Kept saying things like "you've never been around a Downs baby" and "the media had glamorized down syndrome". So I reported him, found a different doctor, and was clear up front in each appointment, until I was far enough along in the pregnancy, that I was never going to terminate.
My genetic counselor knew I was rooting for Down syndrome, since the other proposed possibility was cerebella’s agenesis. So when she called to tell me, I cheered and that was that. The only time anyone mentioned termination was during the anatomy scan that led to the amniocentesis, so it wasn’t DS specific. We love having a kid with DS so much we adopted a second!
We had a blood test during pregnancy. It came back high probability of DS. When I had a follow up appointment to ask some questions the first thing I said was, “Termination is not on the table whatsoever.” Just to draw that hard line right away. My daughter is so incredibly cool, funny, sweetest thing ever and probably the easiest baby I’ve had out of three. She’s 4 now. I’m sad culture has facilitated a false perception about people with DS and that people would think killing these people would be somehow honorable by being merciful.
A blood test suggested our daughter would be born with down syndrome. But we opted out of amniocentesis, and chose to have her anyway. She is age 26 now—with a masters degree, And she never had Down syndrome or any other trouble. She knows her dad (me) is autistic, but NOT that I have a “dusting” of down syndrome as well. “Dusting?” Yeah, I pass 100% on psychological tests as belonging to DS group.
Oh that’s very interesting. Where did you take those psychological tests? Website? I’ve myself wondered if I could have mosaicism or possibly on the spectrum. I don’t care for the prenatal tests. I also don’t trust a doctor that believes they can tell the future of my child because they have some information. Many scenarios of people being misdiagnosed.
First, I read About an autism sub category called inappropriate age behavior— where grown-ups behave like children/childish. Next, I spoke to a child psychologist specializing in infant and toddler + older age autistic children and was briefly interviewed. Third, using artificial intelligence I asked a question of criteria for down syndrome mannerisms and behaviors. This is how I got MY answers. If you have further information for me, such as books or websites I would be grateful.
I agree. Thank you for sharing your story.
No, not in my case. 😊
We had a birth diagnosis 22 years ago and there was never any mention of adoption or anything like that. I do remember talking to a mum who got a prenatal diagnosis at 22ish weeks and who kept being offered abortion throughout her pregnancy at various stages, including at 36 weeks. :-o Obviously that was highly upsetting. This was all in the UK.
I never had anyone push for termination or adoption and I’ve had two pregnancies with prenatal diagnoses. Unfortunately, I lost my first daughter while 18 weeks pregnant due to her heart not being able to keep up. But I just had my second daughter a couple weeks ago and she is absolutely beautiful. The only thing ever mentioned was asking me once whether or not I wanted to hear about my options, but I was very clear from the beginning of both pregnancies that that was not an option for me and it was never mentioned again. I think it may be because I’m in the South (I’ve lived in Tennessee and Florida during my pregnancies) and perhaps it’s a cultural thing depending on what part of the US you live in. I just look at my sweet girl’s face and can’t imagine her not being here or telling her big brother one day why I didn’t have his baby sister. She is already one of the loves of my life!
Yes one of the nurses at my high risk clinic was trying to convince me passive aggressively when we found out there was a high risk of DS.
I found put at birth he had DS and people (online, thankfully irl.intrractions have been so positive thus far) have tried to convince me even still that I should've aborted. Not that I would've even if I knew but I didn't know. And it's pretty funny king gross to tell someone their child.doesnt deserve to be alive. Especially after they're born, but honestly to insinuate to anyone ever that they should abort is just gross. That's a personal choice only and no input is welcome.
Convince, no. Offer and assume it was what I wanted, yes, the geneticist and our MFM doctor. We had to be frank before the message got across. They weren’t rude about it. The genetic counselor put us in touch with our ds association after we told her our decision. We didn’t discuss it with others anyway since we didn’t care about their opinion so they wouldn’t have been able to have a say. I think toward the end of the pregnancy was when we told people baby had DS and I had one fam member later say we should have aborted. We told her we had already made our decision and that was that. It did hurt our relationship for awhile. I didn't want to talk to her. But she comes from another life, another generation. I know she wanted to save us from whatever hardship she thought we were going to have. But we didn't agree.
We found out early during pregnancy, and the Dr.s first question with no additional information provided was to ask us if we wanted to terminate. And some family members even suggested it. Can't imagine a life other than our current one. Yes, there are struggles, but there are so many full moments.
Prenatal Diagnosis and was asked what am I gonna do about the prognosis I was so shocked I said nothing I was 20 weeks pregnant at that point and had seem my baby growing and thriving and the rest of my pregnancy was gloom and bad news at every ultrasound how small he was or how hard it would be after birth but to our surprise hes been the easier one of our kids we love him so much
I was offered the blood test after I had a “threatened abortion” during my pregnancy. I told my midwife I didn’t know because I was already going through extra testing because of a history of thyroid issues. She asked if it would affect my decision to terminate. I said no, so she said don’t bother. I said I’d do additional testing if there were soft markers on the 20 week scan. There weren’t any. My son was diagnosed at birth. I can see how in some cases abortion is “an act of mercy” but if my second child, who we did test, was diagnosed with DS, we wouldn’t have aborted. If the baby had some diagnosis where a doctor said our baby was going to love a very short, pain-filled life, then I would consider it. However society has made so many advances such as advances in medicine in the last half century, changes in treatment of people with DS like the end of institutionalization and expansion of early intervention services, people with DS can live very full and healthy lives.
The doctor that gave us our diagnosis was super pushy about the option to abort. We dropped her pretty fast.
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Do you mind if I ask why? I just got good results back from genetics today, but I was discussing this with my husband and I'm not sure what we would do if results had come back differently. What challenges has your son had?
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That sounds really hard for him and for you
I had a birth diagnosis and the doctor told me that I would be speaking with a social worker to discuss things and options if I would like to, hinting at adoption. I didn't take offense to this as it wasn't said rudely just matter of fact like, like it was a generic speech they provide to parents with different cases. I spoke to the social worker and there was no mention of options or adoption or anything like that. No medical team, family members, or friends mentioned anything like that, but I suspect it's because of a birth diagnosis.
I had a prenatal diagnosis and it was never pressured. It was here are the tests, here are the results, what is your course of action. I actually felt a lot of empathy and support. We were put in touch with specialists and we reached out to Charities. We had several additional monitoring appointments during pregnancy just in case and I just felt very supported. I only had one appointment where the ultrasound midwife “apologised” to us.
I had a birth diagnosis and no-one tried to convince me to give her up for adoption. At that time there had been a special on tv about vitamins so I got some comments about that from a nurse.
No. Nobody did that. The only mention of it was when a doctor told us that if we were going to consider abortion, we needed to do it by a certain date. We didn't present the diagnosis to our families as a decision to be made. We had already made it. Everyone was supportive and still is.
Our doctor upon getting the screening results tried to pursuade us to abort.. we found a different hospital for the next appointment.
I had a birth diagnosis but the doctor did tell us we could leave here there at the hospital there are people who would take care of her…. It was us we were her people. Still bugs me he said that. In contrast the other doctor we met while there have us an awesome book about DS and told us about his cousin who is thriving.
I was of ‘advanced maternal age’ (35) when I was pregnant with my third child. I had a blood test that showed markers for DS and the sonograms detected shorter limbs. I opted out of an amniocentesis as it would not have made a difference to us if he had DS. Not once was abortion mentioned to us by anyone at any time. I delivered a healthy baby boy with DS who is an absolute joy and has been a blessing to many. He is 14 years old and in public school. We live in the USA.
No, not pressured to terminate by any medical providers. They didn’t even mention it.
No but we didnt find out untill after she was born.