Life with Down syndrome

Opinion Piece; By Jeremy P. Meyer
The Denver Post

The memory from eight years ago is almost as vivid as if it had occurred only seconds ago.

My wife was in the recovery room at Penrose Community Hospital in Colorado Springs, having delivered our first child, a daughter who came early and under emergency conditions.

Behind drawn curtains in the crowded recovery room, we watched a video I had just shot of our baby in the neonatal intensive care unit when the doctor who performed the delivery nervously approached.

Standing just outside the curtain, the doctor changed our lives.

"We believe your baby has Down syndrome," she said.

"I'm so sorry."

The perfect baby we were expecting now was gone. We didn't know much about Down syndrome but soon realized the world was looking at us and our baby differently.

Instead of congratulations, we were told, "I'm so sorry." In place of flowers and balloons, the hospital sent a chaplain. We were given outdated material about the genetic condition and didn't know what to expect next.

Still don't.

Eight years later, Abigail Anna Meyer is a beautiful and lively second-grader who is popular, funny and fully included in her classroom. She is sometimes confounding, sometimes difficult, but show me an 8-year-old who is not. She is not the same as her peers or her younger sisters. She has medical issues, and learns and speaks differently. But she is just as her name means in Hebrew: her father's joy.

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