Category: Down Syndrome

By Sarah Terzo From the mother of a child with Down syndrome: “I hate the thought that there will be fewer people with Down syndrome in the world as a result of advances in prenatal testing. As I’ve written before, it impoverishes us all when we selectively abort babies based upon particular characteristics (gender, for …

By Dave Andrusko Editor’s note. We are continuing to post new and old stories celebrating families with children with Down syndrome as a part of October’s Down Syndrome Awareness Month.  When Courtney Baker posted a letter to her former doctor on the Parker Myles Facebook page, I don’t suspect she anticipated thousands and thousands and thousands of …

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser  Editor’s note.  October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. We’ve been publishing new and reposting old stories. 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 …

By Eileen Haupt Editor’s note. October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, a time, according to The Jerome Lejeune Foundation, when “we applaud caregivers, families, and medical professionals — but most of all, we applaud all the wonderful people with Down syndrome.” All this month we’ve been running new and previously posted stories. Earlier this month, …

By Dave Andrusko Editor’s note. October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, a time, according to The Jerome Lejeune Foundation, when “we applaud caregivers, families, and medical professionals — but most of all, we applaud all the wonderful people with Down syndrome.” We will be running new and reposted old stories all this month. Here is …

The lives of children with Down syndrome oughtn’t to be discarded because the world remains imperfect By Dave Andrusko Editor’s note. October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. We will be posting stories, new and old, all month. In a post that appeared at The Atlantic, “A Generational Shift in Understanding Life With Down Syndrome,” Educator Theo …

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 …