Hi again, friends.  I'm still here.  I know, it's been a while since I've

posted anything.   Everything's fine and Erik's fine.  I've just been 

wondering what to include on this blog that I haven't already written.

I've kind of run out of "Erik stories" ... for now.   

Then today I saw this article so beautifully expressed by Amy Julia 

Becker, mom of a 5 yr-old daughter w/ Ds.  I love her description 

of recounting the stories of her children's birth, and deciding to tell

Penny more about the day she came into her life.    

She is 'right on' in her view of the cultural attitudes associated with families

like hers. She asks the hard questions:  Is a life with Down syndrome a life

worth living?  Is the burden such a life places on a family and society

too great?

Honest and inspiring, so I share it with you.

October 3, 2011, 1:10 PM

Has Down Syndrome Hurt Us?

By LISA BELKIN

Of the growing genre of eloquent parents describing what it takes to raise a child with a disability, Amy Julia Becker is one of the best. She has writtenoften for Motherlode, about how Down Syndrome means life for Penny is different, and exactly the same.

She recently published a memoir of her family’s tale, called “A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny.” To commemorate the moment I asked her to write here for me one last time, about the question every parent asks in one form or an other at the start of the journey.

HAS DOWN SYNDROME HURT US?
By Amy Julia Becker

When a car trip gets too long, when they are stalling before bedtime, on a rainy day, my kids ask me to tell them the story “’bout when I was born.” They can recount many of the details: that William’s head was very big (they giggle every time I explain that the obstetrician had to vacuum him out) and that we had to wait and wait and wait for Marilee and that for all three of them I got medicine to make me feel better when we went to the hospital. They know that their dad and I spent three hours getting Penny’s nursery ready before I called the doctor. But for a while, when I told Penny’s story, I left out one crucial detail. I didn’t tell her what happened two hours after she was born, when a nurse called my husband out of the room and he returned with wet eyes and a sentence I couldn’t comprehend: “They think Penny has Down syndrome.”

Earlier this year Penny and I were alone as I retold the story again, and I decided it was time to let her know that the day of her birth hadn’t been all rejoicing and ecstasy. I got to the end of the familiar narrative and I added, “After you were born, I was scared, because the doctors told us you had Down syndrome.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Why you were scared, Mom?”

“I was scared because I thought Down syndrome would hurt you,” I said. I paused, knowing I had only told part of the truth. “And because I thought it would hurt me.”

“Oh.” Penny blinked her eyes the way she does when she’s thinking hard about something.

My thoughts moved back to the wave of fear and sadness and anger that had engulfed me in the hospital, the darkness that lifted only when Penny was in my arms, when I stopped worrying about the years ahead and instead gazed at her pudgy round cheeks and waited for her deep blue eyes to flicker open and believed for just a moment that everything would be O.K.

And, five years later, everything is O.K. My fears about Penny’s condition were largely unfounded. She hasn’t suffered major health complications and it has not been difficult to love her. I can even say that I’m grateful to have a child with Down syndrome because through her I have learned to value more of my fellow human beings than I might have if I had given birth only to “typical” children.

But I haven’t told Penny that the general cultural perception of Down syndrome continues to hurt us all. The hurt comes in two forms. One, the well-meaning but simplistic pronouncement that people with Down syndrome are “sweet and loving angels.” This attitude dehumanizes individuals with Down syndrome by assuming they can’t and don’t experience the full range of human emotions and needs. A similar hurt comes in the statement I heard all too often when Penny was first born, “God only gives very special parents such special children.” Down syndrome became a litmus test for my parenting skills, but I was well aware that I didn’t know anything more or have any greater capacity to love my child than the woman who gave birth in the room next to mine.

The other way that cultural attitudes toward Down syndrome hurt us is through the assumption that individuals with Down syndrome and their families would be better off not living at all. At this moment, most women who give birth to a child with Down syndrome do not know about their child’s extra chromosome until he or she is born. Only 2 percent of all women seek a definitive diagnosis of Down syndrome or other chromosomal abnormalities through amniocentesis or chorionic villa sampling during pregnancy. But of the women who receive that definitive diagnosis, the vast majority (90 percent) choose to terminate their pregnancies.

Recent advances in prenatal testing include a non-invasive blood test for all pregnant women with 98 percent accuracy in diagnosing Down syndrome in the ninth week of pregnancy. It’s not the test that bothers me, nor the desire to prepare well for the birth of babies. What bothers me, and what hurts our family, is the perception, often reinforced by doctors, that a life with Down syndrome is not a life worth living, or that the burden such a child places upon a family and society is simply too great.

Penny starts kindergarten this fall. She will be learning to read and play and paint and use the computer and express her feelings alongside her typically developing peers. She will help me out around the house by “folding” laundry, by setting the table, by making her little sister giggle as I prepare a meal. She’ll frustrate me when she refuses to go to the potty by herself or when she yells at William or when she whines about not getting her way. We’ll snuggle on the couch and she’ll sound out words on flashcards, with a flush of excitement rising to her cheeks when she figures one out and says, “I can do this, Mom!”

In that moment a few months back, when I finally added Down syndrome to Penny’s birth story, I took her chin in my hand so I could look into her eyes, now a sparkling green with a dark blue outline. I said, “But Down syndrome didn’t hurt you. And it didn’t hurt us. So we didn’t need to be scared anymore.”

“So then you were happy?”

I reached out my arms and gave her a big hug. “I couldn’t be more happy that you are my daughter.”