I’d choose her in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality I would find her and choose her.
Our sweet girl was born on Monday, Nov 21st, 2016. After Kinley was born and they handed her to me to do skin to skin I just stared at her in amazement and thinking to myself ‘there’s something different about her’. I told myself over and over again in my head that she was fine, she was normal, you’ve never had a child before Jenesa and you had a C-section, this is what C-section babies look like.
The delivering pediatrician had suspicions that she had Down syndrome based on some of her physical characteristics. The hospital pediatrician came in to look over her and he starts quizzing me about my pregnancy. I was so out of it from the medications, hormones, and emotions rushing over me that I didn’t think anything about it. As he’s examining her he says to us “Judging by her physical characteristics I think your daughter had Down syndrome”.
Instantly I felt more than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I felt every bad emotion you could possibly imagine. We were panicked and scared, sad and frustrated. When I found out we were having a girl I pictured her doing dance and gymnastics, growing up with best girlfriends, joining the same sorority as me, getting married, having kids. All of this was erased from my mind as soon as that statement came out of the pediatrician’s mouth.
She was instantly taken from me and put in the level 2 nursery to be monitored. The doctors suspected something was wrong with her heart. The hospital I had her in did not have the equipment needed to run the tests. Two days after she was born she was transferred to the children’s hospital and I was left there in my hospital bed healing from an unexpected C-section and the shocking possible diagnosis of a condition I knew nothing about. Not everyone will tell you this part of their story but I think it is the most important.