Dear future mum

You’ve been given the news: Down syndrome.

The words are playing over and over again in your mind as you sit unable to speak. Grief hits, for the daughter you thought you were having.

You Google “Down syndrome’ in every imaginable permutation and you hate what you find. All these faces that look different. Different is not good.

What about marriage? University? Independence? Career? Unachievable. Impossible. All your dreams for your child, shattered.
You ask yourself – will she need continuous support? Will she have a low IQ? Will she even walk? Will she have a personality that is a personality beyond those two words – Down syndrome? You feel the future closing in on your baby, boxing her in, making her small. Everything inside you feels raw.

A few days pass, and you are surprised this morning to find yourself aching to look at your daughter, counting the minutes until she wakes up. You had never thought it would be possible to miss someone overnight! But you do. The words Down syndrome haven’t even flitted across your thoughts today. Instead, you find yourself wanting a) a coffee, and b) to know what she will achieve today.

Because she has achieved something new every day, she’s been alive, and it has felt miraculous, like you’ve been chosen above all others to witness this tiny miracle unfurling.

Your child is not who you thought she would be. She is who she is supposed to be. You realise – yes, you created her, but her life is her own. You feel so excited to see what she will do with it.

Yours,
Vicky

Company Director, mum to Sophia