Start from the beginning…

My precious 2nd son, Jackson Dean Marquette was born 9 years ago. I must say that I was madly in love with him the instant he was put into my arms. They told us within 20 min. of his birth that they were 95% sure that he had Down syndrome. It was such a shock. He looked so healthy and beautiful! How could this be? Of course my husband, myself and our family spent the next 2 days hoping that we were in the 5% bracket!! It was not to be so. His tests came back that he indeed, did have Trisomy 21. It was at that time that we started our journey of enlightenment.

In one overused cliche’, I will say, “He is the light of our lives!” It is true that as they grow, and get their own personalities, you do not think so much about the diagnosis of DS. Each accomplishment is so wonderful, and we celebrate them! I feel as though I have been waiting all my life for our little Jackson. (I just did not know it at the time Not to say that I do not mourn for the child that I thought he was going to be, it is a normal reaction! But it does happen to me much less frequently now, than it did when he was first born.

I am very proud of my precious boy. He lights up a room with his infectious smile and even in the grocery store he draws people to him. He loves playing outside with our neighbor kids, and he and his older brother Will love to wrestle any chance they get.

Regarding services: We started the paperwork when Jackson was about 2 months old, and had his therapies in place by 4 months of age. I felt better once Jackson’s therapists started coming to the house and working with him. I have good, competent, compassionate people to share Jackson with! They celebrate his accomplishments almost as much as I do.

I want to emphasize that children with Down syndrome are more “like” their own families than they are “different”. ( In looks and in personality) We feel very blessed to have our son Jackson in our lives.

A great list to get on, is the Einstein list. They talk a lot about vitamins and other homopathic ideas. The Web site: http://www.einstein-syndrome.com Take a good look around in this website. There is so much information here. You need to bookmark it and come back when you have lots of time to check it out.

I also would like to mention that we told our older son Will pretty quickly that Jackson had DS. Even though Will was only 2, we wanted him to hear the words, and know what it was. We did not want him to think it was something sad, or bad. I am glad that we did it that way. He has grown up thinking that every family should have a child with DS! (As a lot of the friends we hang out with do There are some pretty good books out there for this. “We’ll Paint the Octopus Red” Written by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen and although I don’t care for the title, Maria Shriver’s book, “What’s Wrong with Timmy?”

http://users.psln.com/sharing/Marquette/MarquetteFamily.html

PS:
I will tell you that when Jackson was born, at Chandler Regional Hospital, it was quite a surprise that he had DS. Although I was an “older mom”, I was 38, I did not want the prenatal testing. He was my flesh and blood, no matter what. I had no desire to do an amino, I did not want to take the risk.
When my OB told me, it was about 20 minutes after he was born. They had not even “finished” with me yet. They told my husband first. That is a No No! We should have been told together, LATER. They did not do a great job, it was like…. “I have some bad news….” Ok, so it was a shock, but in no way is sweet, wonderful Jackson “bad news”. His birth should have been celebrated. Then, later as reality set in, a nurse came to me and asked me if I wanted “Social Services” to come in. Now, I had no idea what she was talking about. Did she mean CPS? Were they going to talk to me about giving up the baby? I was very irritated about this. We decided to let her come in. She was just the Social Worker for the hospital. The nurse should have told me this plain and simple. The Social Worker was trying to be nice and cheerful, but she went on and on about how she had helped another family with a newborn with DS, who did NOT want to keep the baby, and how she helped them find an adoptive family. I was unnerved by this, and insulted. This is my story and I am sticking to it.

Tags: Down syndrome