"They took me in see him and I looked at this guy and I said, he's beautiful -- he's perfect and I'm absolutely keeping him."
Soon Forrest walked into his wife's hospital room with Leo in his arms.
Her reaction was unlike one he ever expected.
"I got the ultimatum right then," he said. "She told me if I kept him then we would get a divorce."
Forrest, who's from Auckland, New Zealand, said he was completely unaware of the hospital practices in Armenia when it came to children.
"What happens when a baby like this is born here, they will tell you that you don’t have to keep them," he said. "My wife had already decided, so all of this was done behind my back."
Despite his wife's warnings, Forrest said he never had a doubt in his mind that he would hold onto his son.
One week after his birth, Leo's mom filed for divorce.
"It's not what I want," Forrest said. "I didn’t even have a chance to speak with her in privately about it."
Forrest, who works as a freelance business contractor, has plans for he and Leo to move to his native country of New Zealand where he said they'll receive support from loved ones.
In the meantime, he's enlisted for some help on his GoFundMe page titled "Bring Leo Home."
"This really came out of the blue for me," he said. "I don’t have a lot, I have very little in fact. The goal is to raise enough for a year so I can get a part-time job so Leo doesn't have to be in daycare and I can help care for him. He's lost a lot in two weeks. It'd be different if he had his mommy."
Forrest has recently been working with disability awareness groups to share his story in the hopes that parents will become better educated on children with special needs.
"After what I've been through with Leo, I'm not going to sit back and watch babies be sent to orphanages," he said. "As a child with Down syndrome, that becomes somewhat of a label. If we can get around this label, we’ll see that they’re normal. They’re a little different from us, but they’re still normal.
"They all have niches and I want to work hard to find out where Leo's special. This little guy is great."
God Bless Samuel and Leo. I’m almost afraid to ask — what the heck do they propose to do with such babies — with Leo if his Dad hadn’t kept him? The baby has been born live — by anyone’s measure it’s a human being. What would they have done?!?!?
Good Guy. I hope he and his son get the help they needs to move back to the father’s home.
God bless this man! When my wife was pregnant 25 years ago, we had tests done and the doctor told us that the baby showed indications of Downs and suggested an abortion. We said NO WAY! A few months later our daughter was born, perfectly normal.
Good for him. Every human life is precious.