Grace

We decided to go on holiday to forget about getting pregnant. Then I discovered to my absolute delight that I was already pregnant!

Within hours of landing in Australia I began to bleed and thought that it was all over. However I was still pregnant.

Grace, our long awaited second child was born four years and one month after her sister Olivia.

After being taken down to the ward from the delivery suite our midwife came into our room to tell us that the general feeling amongst the staff was that our baby may have something wrong with it. The paediatrician flipped our baby over and began some investigations. It was the longest ten minutes of my life. On completion, he looked us straight in the eye and said,

“I have no doubt in my mind that she has Down syndrome. She will grow up and lead a normal life; she will go to a normal kindergarten, a normal primary school and a normal high school.”

And then he left the room.

At this time my extended family arrived, bringing Olivia to see her new sister.

How were we to greet Olivia now? What were we supposed to say? How was I supposed to explain everything to her? This was only supposed to happen to other people.

Olivia taught us about the power of the innocent. She greeted her new sister with open arms, cuddled our baby with immense pride and said “Our baby has an upside down face”.

We spent the next few days looking at our baby for signs of Down syndrome. Could it all be a mistake?

But confirmation came through that she had trisomy 21 and we also discovered that she would require open heart surgery. What else was going to happen?

Was she going to die?

I wanted to find out: How do children with a heart condition function? How close to normal can children with Down syndrome be?

Before her operation, Grace spent a lot of time in hospital. She was on oxygen constantly for the nine weeks prior to her open heart surgery. Because of this, Grace knows how to operate just about all of the equipment used by the doctors!

I’ve learnt that no two children are the same and each child with Down syndrome functions at a different level. No matter how much you read no one can tell you what your child will be like or the right and wrong way to do things for your particular child. I hold on to the fact that no-one is perfect and that I can only do the best I can for my child, no matter what.

Grace is a very much loved member of our family. She is and always will be treated as normally as possible.

Life with her has been full of happiness and joy. Grace is the precious baby that we wanted and is growing into a little girl with a personality to die for. Not a day goes by that we don’t feel proud of her.