Palins' child diagnosed with Down syndrome

Anchorage Daily News ^ | Last Modified: April 22nd, 2008 12:05 PM | By LISA DEMER

[Perdogg]

ov. Sarah Palin was back at work Monday in Anchorage, holding a meeting on the proposed natural gas pipeline three days after giving birth to her fifth child.

She and her husband, Todd, showed their new baby, Trig Paxson Van Palin, to a few reporters and photographers and answered questions about his condition and the sooner-than-expected delivery.

[Perdogg]

EARLY ARRIVAL

Palin was in Texas last week for an energy conference of the National Governors Association when she experienced signs of early labor. She wasn't due for another month.

Early Thursday -- she thinks it was around 4 a.m. Texas time -- she consulted with her doctor, family physician Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, who is based in the Valley and has delivered lots of babies, including Piper, Palin's 7-year-old.

Palin said she felt fine but had leaked amniotic fluid and also felt some contractions that seemed different from the false labor she had been having for months.

"I said I am going to stay for the day. I have a speech I was determined to give," Palin said. She gave the luncheon keynote address for the energy conference.

Palin kept in close contact with Baldwin-Johnson. The contractions slowed to one or two an hour, "which is not active labor," the doctor said.

"Things were already settling down when she talked to me," Baldwin-Johnson said. Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said.

"I don't think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back," Baldwin-Johnson said.

So the Palins flew on Alaska Airlines from Dallas to Anchorage, stopping in Seattle and checking with the doctor along the way.

"I am not a glutton for pain and punishment. I would have never wanted to travel had I been fully engaged in labor," Palin said. After four kids, the governor said, she knew what labor felt like, and she wasn't in labor.

[SE Mom]

~snip~ Because of prenatal testing, most families now know beforehand, said Judy Waldron, president of the Alaska chapter of the National Down Syndrome Congress, a support and education group that delivered a parent packet to the Palins in the hospital.

[scooby321]

I will do anything for her to be elected. Mc Cain I would have voted for but thats all. I was in Florida in 2000 and helped chase Jesse Jackson out of Palm Beach. I am 10 times madder now.

[digger48]

The latest poop fron the Kos kids is that the latest child was not birthed by Sarah, but was her daughters child.

[Perdogg]

that’s why I posted this.

[synchron]

“The risk of Down syndrome increases with the mother’s age. For mothers under 30, it happens in fewer than one in 1,000 births. For mothers Palin’s age, it’s one in 35, according to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.”
There are the odds.

[TommyJoe]

Another birth certificate thing again?

[Saundra Duffy]

In their eyes, she said, “he’s absolutely perfect.”

I love this woman!!!!!!!!! She doesn’t just talk the talk but she walks the walk. This is absolutely precious.

[mabelkitty]

May I ask why we are engaging in tin-foil crap from the Kos Kooks?

[brytlea]

That’s so stupid, where do they come up with this stuff?
susie

[psjones]

Just give her time, she won’t be saying his perfect when that extremely stubborn streak people with Down Syndrome tend to have starts manifesting itself, lol.
I’m the mother of a 14 year old with DS, when he doesn’t want to move, there’s nothing I can do about it except coax him and coax him, sometimes I have success, and sometimes I just have to give up. Drives me up the wall.
I wish her and the family all the best. The little one seems to be surrounded by siblings who love him very much.

[xp38]

Oh they think it up using their so called brains. The location of which will be left unsaid.

[waxer1]

My cousin Suzette is about 35 years old. We just love her so much, we always say she is our precious jewel.

That being said, I know exactly what you mean LOL. She is so headstrong. My poor Aunt (smile).

[vrwc54]

She did everything correctly, but it won’t help with the left. They have their ridiculous story and they’ll stick with it.

[vaudine]

Siblings love and care is very important. I have a friend who had a DS baby first; then a normal boy and girl. The DS child was included in every way in the family and was loved by his brother and sister, who were not ashamed of him. He lived to be 24, and was sorely missed when he died--he had several physical disabilities from a prolonged and difficult delivery.

Another friend of my youth had a brother with DS, and because of the parents reaction, it split the parents and the mother gave all her time and attention to the DS child, was irrational about him and overly protective. My friend resented and was ashamed of her brother because of the mother's attitude.

Love and acceptance make all the difference.

vaudine

[sourcery]

Obama wants to raise taxes and kill babies.

Palin wants to raise babies and kill taxes.

[Menehune56]

That says it all!

[LottieDah]

“The latest poop fron the Kos kids is that the latest child was not birthed by Sarah, but was her daughters child.”

And even if that cannard were true would the Kos kids have preferred that the child be aborted and tossed into a dumpster? What dispicable creatures those Kos kids are!

[pinkpanther111]

In their eyes, she said, “he’s absolutely perfect.”

She's right he is!

[HighlyOpinionated]

I have a Down cousin. She was given the vitamin/supplement formula that is supposed to help a Down child not develop the striking "look" of Down Syndrome. She is a teenager now, very polite, quiet, prefers French to English (they live in France, have been since she was a toddler), but does display the Down "facial features." She is not a problem but then her hormones are decidedly different from a boy's. And she is a "love" with everyone. There is so much kind love in her look and her touch that the family knows why she was placed in our family. No matter how crazy the world gets, no matter how tired one is, all it takes is her holding your hand for all the cares of the world to disappear. She brings the joy of knowing that "everything will turn out alright" no matter what the crisis, just by her being.

Now, I know not ALL Down children are like this. But I know that my "little" cousin has a definite purpose in life and no family member would ever think she should not have been born.

ALSO, my cousin was a FIRST child (of 2) to a mother who was in her mid-thirties and father in late thirties.

I read in a Medical journal ages ago when I was involved in Social Work and Casework, that the reason it appears that more Down babies are born to older women is because fewer babies are born to older women. If the same number of babies were born to 40 year olds as were born to 20 year olds, the statistics for Down Syndrome would be nearly the same. This makes sense.

Because women are waiting to have babies later in life, scaring them with the "older" statistics is unjust. Down babies "happen" just like red-headed babies and birth-marked babies and any other genetically decided trait that is embedded in a zygote by male and female gametes. There is no reason to try to "blame" anyone for a Down baby as there is no reason to blame someone for a red-headed baby in a family that has never had a red-head or a baby born with huge 'birthmarks' on his body. My grandmother was the only blue-eyed baby in a family with brown-eyed parents and 12 other brown-eyed children and my idiot greatgrandfather (God love him) did not think she was his. Whose could she have been, my greatgrandmother was practically a baby-factory for him?

What Trig Palin does to Democrats is cause them great emotional distress because his Mama did not destroy him. And by doing so, she gained the love and prayers of millions of people whose lives have been touched by Down Syndrome. Sarah Palin is a standard bearer for the unborn.