jeremiahsmommy1029-blog

[jeremiahsmommy1029-blog]

Day 1

"October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, a chance to spread awareness. During the month of October, we celebrate people with Down syndrome and make people aware of our abilities and accomplishments. It's not about celebrating disabilities, it's about celebrating abilities." I will be sharing a fact about Down syndrome everyday of October for awareness. And please be free to share to help spread the awareness! October 1st "One in every 691 babies in the U.S. is born with Down syndrome, making it the most common chromosomal condition. There are more than 400,000 people living with Down syndrome in the U.S. In 1983, the average life expectancy of a person with Down syndrome was a mere 25-years-old. Today, it's 60." Down syndrome is not a mistake. There is no way that there would be so many people in the world with Down syndrome if they did not belong here. 💙💛

[jeremiahsmommy1029-blog]

Hello. My name is Brianna. I am 19 years old. And this is my pregnancy story. When I found out I was pregnant I was 18 years old and had been with my boyfriend for about 4 years. We were excited! And terrified. This had just meant that we would have to work hard to make things possible for us. So we scheduled for our first ultrasound. The day of the appointment we were ready to see our little blob growing inside of me. When we got there we were scared to walk into the room and for them to say that I wasn't really pregnant. As soon as his turned the machine on and lubed me up, there it was. This little blob. The little baby we were looking forward too seeing. The tech didn't really say anything, so it made us kind of think to ourselves, but what did we know? This was my first pregnancy. After he was done, he told us that the doctor would come in and talk to us shortly. We felt that something was wrong. But again, what did we know? The doctor came in and took a look for himself. After he was finished, he turned the machine off and wiped off my stomach. He told us that the back of the babies neck seemed a little larger than normal. So what did this mean? He told us that it was probably nothing because we are so young and nothing runs in our family. He needed us to schedule another appointment, just in case, at the hospital to do further testing. At the hospital they took a look at our little blob and measured the neck, head, length of the body and everything else. When they finished they told us that the doctor would come in and talk to us about what they see. When he came in, he was holding this box of tissues. For what? He told us that the back of its neck was measuring about twice the size that it should be, and that this meant that their was something wrong. We were told that if our baby was a girl than she only had about 15% chance of survival. My heart broke. Ahh the box of tissues. As I wiped my many, many tears he continued. He talked about all the different types of genetic and non genetic disabilities going into very little detail of each one. He said we wont know until further into the pregnancy which one it has. So we scheduled another appointment further down the road. Days/weeks went by, and finally the day came. We were going to figure out if the baby was a boy or a girl (I wanted a girl, my boyfriend wanted a boy). During the ultrasound my boyfriend looked at me with this big smile on his face thinking he saw a little something. Sure enough he did. It was a little boy. We went into another room after all the measuring and talked again. Because it wasn't a girl, his chances went up to about 40%. I felt a little better, but only 40%.. My heart still ached. More weeks went by. Than it was time to test to see what our little baby boy had. We went in, they drew blood and we waited for the call. The day I got the call they said they didn't want to discuss the topic over the phone, so we went in. They told us that the blood work came back positive for down syndrome. That meant that his chances went up to 75%. My heart jumped out of my chest of excitement. Yes, we had just found out that our baby was diagnosed with DS, but 75 freaking percent that we were going to have our little baby. Many people would be torn that their baby had a diagnoses, but we were just happy that we were going to have this baby. Jeremiah. Our little baby had a name. He was going to come him with us when he was born and he was going to live his life with us. After many, many, MANY ultra sounds and tests, I was 36 weeks pregnant, and on May 21st, early labor was in full effect. May 23rd, 2016 at 1:35am our baby boy, Jeremiah was born.