T21 Tuesday!

I created this blog for DS awarness so I thought it would be fun to share other peoples stroies on here too.... So Tuesdays stories will be from YOU... anything you want to share, but it has to do with Down syndrome :)
If you have a story, please email me at cute-volcom@hotmail.com
Thank you, Ashley, for our first ever T21 Tueday post! I love you...


I never thought much about having a family member with special needs. I never had a reason to think about it. Not until May of 2009 that is...
My name is Ashley and I am almost 19 years old. In March of 2009, when I was almost 17 years old, My mom found out that she would be expecting my 4th sibling. I already had 3 brothers so I was excited, hoping that this time I would get a little sister. I had wanted a little sister for as long as I could remember. When my mom was 3 months along, she went to see the OB specialistbecause she was over the age of 35. Just me and my mom went and we were so excited to find out if there would be a boy or girl added to our bunch. They fially took us back to the ultrasound room.
The nurse performed the ultrasound, smiling and talking to us all about how the baby was sucking his/her thumb and "waving" at us. I noticed that she was stopping longer at some areas on the baby's body, measuring things for longer than normal. Then, she started telling us all of these things that were wrong with my new baby sibling. Fluid in the lungs, thick nucal fold, Calcification in the bowels, possibly no nasal bone, and on and on she went. Then she said......it's a girl. At that point,
I was so worried about my unborn baby sister that the fact that she was a girl wasn't the most important thing on my mind; even though having a baby sister was so important to me moments before. The nurse went on to say something about the baby possibly having a chromosomal abnormality. She mentioned Down syndrome. I had no idea what this meant for my unborn sibling.
Would she be ok? Would she live? I had so many things running through my mind; I looked over and my mom had tears in her eyes. We were so worried. We had never really known anyone with Down syndrome so we were so unsure as to what to expect. The only person I ever knew with Down syndrome was back when I was in the 3rd grade. I barely remembered anything about her so that didn't really give me much to go off of. The one thing I did remember though? She was one of the sweetest girls I had ever met. My mom and dad decided that they did not want to have an amnio done because they didn't want to put the baby in unnnecessary danger. No matter what,
abortion wasn't an option so an amnio was pretty much pointless to us. When my mom was about 4 months along, we found out that Laura, who was named after our grandma, would be born with a Complete Atrioventricular Canal Defect. In simpler terms, it meant that she would be born with a large hole in the middle of her heart. That scared me to death because I knew that she would have to have open heart surgery shortly after she was born; But, I knew at the same time that God was aking care of her. A week or so after we found out about Laura's heart defect, we got a call from
my mom's OB/GYN. She said that there was a possiblity that Laura could have Trisomy 13 or 18 because all of the soft markers on her ultrasound were markers for not only Down syndrome, but also for T13 and T18. This scared us because, most of the time, babies with T13 and T18 are either
stillborn or don't live long past birth. We had this peace inside though......we had peace in knowing that God knew what was going on with Laura even if we didn't. We had faith that she would live and that she would be ok. We continued through the last months of my mom's pregnancy praying for Laura.
Our dirty knees got dirtier as Laura's due date got closer. On October 25th, 2009, my mom went into labor. Laura wasn't due for 3 more weeks. We were told that there was a possibility that Laura would be born blue and that she most likely wouldn't be crying because of her heart defect. At 1:30 pm, she came into this world: pink and crying. It was so beautiful, and I cried. As soon as they lifted her up, I knew that she had Down syndrome. But she was so gorgeous. The most beautiful baby that I had
ever seen. Her almond eyes. Her creased palms. Her spaced toes. Her squishy little nose. All of it.
From the start, I did not see her as different. I have always seen her as my beautiful, precious, sweet baby sister. The little sister that I had always longed for. The baby sister that God had blessed me with. When Laura was a little less than 3 months old, she underwent open heart surgery. Like everything else, she came through like a champ. Surgery on Friday, home by Monday.
She is such a little fighter. She is 15 months old now, and I am more in love with her than ever before. She is beautiful, sweet, funny, strong-willed, sassy, and she has a personality that you just can't help but love. She has so many facial expressions that never fail to make me laugh. Whenever I have a badday, she is the one to put a smile on my face. When I look at her, I don't see a disability; I see ability. I don't see her Down syndrome. I just see beauty. Down syndrome is beautiful. So if someone were to ask me now what I thought about having a family member with special needs? I would smile and say, "It is the best thing that has ever happened to me."