Category: Down Syndrome

By Dave Andrusko Editor’s note. October’s is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. As our many faithful readers know, each year we post new and previously published stories about children with Down syndrome and their wonderful families. Amy Julia Becker is author of “A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny.” I …

By Dave Andrusko It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall at the offices of The Daily Mail newspaper in Great Britain. Why? To be able to figure out how, on the one hand, this newspaper can print highly sympathetic first-person narratives about why it was a good idea that a mother …

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser  Women who receive a diagnosis of Down syndrome rarely receive the news in a positive way. For Nicola Bailey, a nurse from Sheffield in the United Kingdom, it was no different. When her daughter with Down syndrome was born, she said doctors apologized and acted as if someone had died. Bailey gave …

A touching exchange between a mother and her daughter with Down syndrome was shared by disability advocate Maria Shriver, and has since racked up hundreds of thousands of views. The simple conversation is touching countless hearts, with its frank and honest discussion of fears before pregnancy, and the reality after. Read the whole story.

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser  A touching exchange between a mother and her daughter with Down syndrome was shared by disability advocate Maria Shriver, and has since racked up hundreds of thousands of views. The simple conversation is touching countless hearts, with its frank and honest discussion of fears before pregnancy, and the reality after. “What did …

By Sherri Pigue Zoey O’Hehir took the phone call from her OB/GYN while she was teaching her preschool class in Central West/Orana region in NSW, Australia.  It was an important call – one she’d been waiting on for three weeks.  Several weeks prior, a preliminary ultrasound screening and blood test indicated her preborn baby was at high risk for …

By Dave Andrusko Back in September we repost a story from a few years back that told the grim truth about the fate of babies with Down syndrome in Denmark. In 2019 there were virtually none—just 18! When I read “The last children of “Down Syndrome” by Sarah Zhang, which is a brilliantly written piece …

By Dave Andrusko When it comes to slippery slopes, few, if any, can match Iceland’s extermination of babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. Nowadays, there are virtually no children with Down syndrome to be seen anywhere. For the most part, outsiders were clueless until the 2017 story from CBS News about Iceland titled “What kind …

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser  The way parents receive a Down syndrome diagnosis will hopefully be changing after years of advocacy. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is updating their guidelines on how medical professionals deliver a diagnosis, something that could be potentially life-saving. The Down Syndrome Diagnosis Network (DSDN) originally launched on World Down Syndrome Day …

By Dave Andrusko Editor’s note. This first appeared in November 2020. I thought I would share it will you because the message is more relevant than ever. Back in September we repost a story that told the grim truth about the fate of babies with Down syndrome in Denmark. In 2019 there were virtually none—just …

Editor’s note. This story comes from the Jerome Lejeune Foundation.  As the mother of a child with Down syndrome, Gail Hamblin is determined to make sure her son, Calvin, and those like him are able to live their best lives. Raising Calvin, she realized that there was a critical gap in children’s literature on Down …

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser  A teacher in Auckland, New Zealand, was disciplined after leaving a message on a video posted online by the mother of a child with Down syndrome. The teacher said she would have “killed it,” referring to the child. The New Zealand Herald reported that the mother of a child with Down syndrome …