We lost our child to trisomy 18. The last paragraph of this article is complete bunk. The *vast* majority of babies don’t even survive the pregnancy, and the tiny fraction that do are highly unlikely to survive even a year past the birth. I would challenge the author to cite any case where someone survived to adulthood. Trisomy 18 is diagnosed in the womb through the identification of substantial physical abnormalities, including a severely enlarged heart.
We lost our son at 4 months gestation when his heart stopped. They gave my wife an abortifacient a few days later to make it easier to remove the corpse, and she ended up actually delivering in the ER before they could perform the evacuation. Because he was delivered intact, the hospital was very interested in examining his body. We declined to allow them to perform any physical dissection, as we wanted to give him a proper burial, but did permit them to do any non-intrusive tests. They actually drove one of those truck mounted scan machines up from Boston, and a whole troop of medical students came up to see our son.
I’m sorry
My condolences to you on the loss of your son. I’m sure that was an extremely difficult experience.
My son and DIL also lost their son at 9 weeks, to the very same trisomy.
One of the things I love about FR is that we all come from different walks of life, and we use that knowledge to help each other, sometimes through education, and sometimes by compassion and supporting each other.
Thank you for sharing your story.
So deeply sorry, Little Pig.
There’s a channel on youtube called Special Books by Special Kids where a former special ed teacher goes out and interviews people with different conditions, as well as their families. I find it to be pretty educational as well as eye-opening.
Here’s a link to an episode about Trisomy 18 that may or may not be of interest to any of the posters here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW7OhP6kfNI
I am so very very sorry for your loss
I am sorry for your loss.
I’m so sorry that your beloved son is not able to be with you now. Your situation is different from Ms. Lopes in that she aborted a live baby. Doctors have told other mothers with similar a diagnosis that their babies wouldn’t make it beyond certain ages only to be proven wrong.
I think the qualifier in the article was “Most babies...who are born alive will live for at least a year”. There are some adult survivors, the oldest one in the U.S. being 40. Her mother was told she would not live past 4 months. The oldest U.S. male survivor almost made it to 23. According to the following article, many that survive birth make it past 8 years of age. Of course, that’s not speaking to the development and medical problems trisomy causes.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/trisomy-18-kids-bella-santorum-rick-santorums-daughter/story?id=16090571 (Article title - Trisomy 18 and 13: More Children Like Bella Santorum Survive)
The heartache of the families cannot be imagined by those of us who haven’t been affected personally. It’s disgusting that the Democrats gleefully turn a family into a photo-/fundraising-op and will then drop Ms. Lopes like a hot potato once the donations decrease.