To the Mom with a Prenatal Down Syndrome Diagnosis

It was a shock. Maybe you were just trying to be responsible, maybe you were older, or maybe, like me, you decided to do genetic testing just because you couldn’t wait another day to find out the sex of your baby. Whatever your reasoning, you never thought that the test would actually come back positive for Down syndrome. The day you got that phone call, your world crumbled. That baby that you were so excited about was not the baby that you were going to be having.

So you change course. You put on a brave face and go through the motions of pretending to be excited throughout the rest of your pregnancy, but the unknown before you steals your joy. The pink dresses, pink bows, pink everything you’ve dreamed about your entire life takes a back stage to the fear consuming you. Do you even decorate that nursery that you’ve been planning in your head for years? Do you buy baby supplies? Should you have a baby shower? The risk of miscarriage and stillbirth is high. Could you bear to walk into that nursery if the baby doesn’t make it?

All of a sudden you’ve turned into a high-risk pregnancy. You switch to an MFM and a hospital with a NICU just in case something goes wrong. And things do go wrong, over and over again. Doctors appointments become traumatic, anxiety-inducing events. What will they tell you about your baby this time? Increased monitoring becomes the norm, and the baby will arrive early. They don’t like to leave babies with Down syndrome in the womb too long.

None of this includes the mental drain that you have about what’s ahead. What does a life with a child who has Down syndrome look like? How will her diagnosis affect her siblings? Will she live with us forever? Will people make fun of her? Will she look like us? Will she have meaningful relationships?

So you take it day by day. This is the only way to make it through. Check yourself: Are you alive? Is the baby alive? That means you’re okay today. Don’t think about tomorrow. Today you have both survived.

Soon the baby will arrive. Soon this nightmare pregnancy will be over, and you will be sad that this miraculous time of building a baby in your body was consumed by fear and worry. Soon you will see that she is much more like a typical baby than not. Soon you will realize that she is perfect and that everything you went through was absolutely worth it. Soon you will truly understand what it means to be a member of the Lucky Few.

Hang in there, mama. Things are so much better on the other side!

Love,

Brooke

**Photo Credit: https://www.laurenmaherphotography.com/