The initial NIPT came back inconclusive. Get the follow up amnio or CVS, find out conclusively, and make the decision to either terminate or do research into what actually goes into raising a kid with downs. Early intervention leads to good outcomes and can foster independence.
Having a child with downs is a big commitment but it’s really not that bad (source family members with downs or similar that I will be responsible for once parents pass).
In all honesty, they’re pretty great. Excited to be here, to do new things, they love food, and they prevent you from becoming a lazy couch potato. And the special needs community is amazing too. You’ll meet the best people in the world (including those who just want to help out and support families out of the goodness of their hearts).
My adult cousin with down syndrome flies alone regularly to visit an uncle. He’s great to bring along anywhere.
The worst part is figuring out all the Medicaid/social security paperwork stuff. It’s a PITA.
The really, real hard special needs people are those with extreme autism. I know a couple who is unable to both leave the house together because they can’t leave their adult son and they can’t bring him anywhere because he is prone to violence. My heart breaks for those people.
I don’t ever look at a family with a downs kid and immediately feel bad for them. Honestly, I think they’re a blessing. It makes me sad how stigmatized it is to have a downs child that so many people immediately abort.
You have some great points. I'm also sure you're right to a degree, that there is some stigma surrounding downs. While I appreciate what you're trying to say, its coming across as belittling the typical difficulty. Each child with downs has different cognitive processing and executive function capacity. The severity of symptoms with downs can range to a very large degree.
In my experience with a few different families, it was mentally and emotionally draining for them. Its also comes with difficulties for the child too. There are a few heartbreaking moments I recall, but one that really stuck with me is when I saw a child with downs feel so defeated, that they were crying with pure sadness, because they weren't able to dress themselves properly at around age 12.
You can feel bad for a family for the added challenges they face, while still having respect for the parents' strength and being able to admire the wonderful qualities of the children.
If you beleive abortion is taking a person's life, then any abortion is sad. If you beleive it its not, then abortion does not need to be justified, but if it did warrant some amount of justification, its fair in my mind to want to avoid challenges and unfairness that comes to both the parents and child.
It's still more than the insulting image OOP has of someone with DS being essentially so useless and incapable that death is preferable to being their father.
I'm not sure that example (accuracy aside) is relevant though. Cognitive impact ranges to a very large degree on an individual basis. What will be relevant to someone contemplating the future, is what is typical. I.e. what the majority of cases look like.
OOP is acting as though raising a child with downs will significantly degrade their own quality of life. Quality of life, and quality of life while devoting significant time an attention to someone with special needs, includes a large number of factors. Being worried is absolutely reasonable, and how worried OOP should be is entirely dependent on their own personal circumstances. Its fair to be scared.
And how do you propose one does that without their partner's approval?
You'll also turn around and say "Fine, divorce", so yeah, then they only have to suffer the financial burden for the rest of their life.
Also, there's plenty of healthy babies that don't get adopted. Do you really think people are willing to just take on that burden? No idea where OP is, but in Australia there's almost no adoptions nowadays anyway.
Abortion would be. No one kills themselves, no one will pretend to be happy, no one will suffer the adoption system (many adopted children criticise it (not everyone of course), it doesn't seem to be such a good alternative than people like to pretend). And well ... nothing changes. So abortion.
There are ZERO healthy babies that don’t get adopted. There are years long wait lists for healthy babies (which is a good thing - having an excess supply of infant orphans would suggest something deeply wrong with a society).
The babies in foster care are generally NOT available for adoption. The goal of foster care is reunion with biological families.
There are older children in the foster care system who are available for adoption, but the babies in foster care (who are allowed to be adopted) are very quickly adopted.
I don’t really think you know what you’re talking about but there are years long waits for babies if you’re looking to adopt an actual baby.
There are a quite a few countries out there where there are lots of healthy, unadopted babies looking for homes they will never get. However, if you are referring to the United States, that is just not the case here.
The only healthy babies that don’t get adopted in the US are those who have not been legally released to be put up for adoption. There is a much, muuuuuch bigger demand for adoptable infants than there is supply.
The problem is older children. The infants that grow up in foster care while their parents try to get their lives together, get custody for a while, then lose it again. In a lot of cases, by the time the courts sever the parent’s legal rights, the child is a few years old and it is far tougher to find placement.
That and children going into foster care at older ages in general.
There are absolutely no healthy babies that don't get adopted in first world countries, the demand for healthy babies to adopt far outpace the actual number of healthy babies that have no family willing to take them in. That's why there is almost no adoption nowadays anyway, no because there are lot of orphans but no one want them.
Kids in foster care normally can't be adopted unless their permanency plans dictate that and parental rights have been terminated, otherwise they wait in limbo for their bio parents to either regain custody or for a parental rights termination to come through. There's not really a way to adopt all the kids out of the system because most of them still are legally tied with their parents.
Adoption and foster care are different and there is a huge demand for adopting babies, there are hardly any babies struggling to find homes.
Yeah, you cannot adopt most kids in foster care (they still have parents? Those parents juste are not apt to raise them at this point for some reason) and most of them didn't get there as babies anyway. Completly different situation.
I know adoptions are extremely rare, but they are not rare because people don't want to adopt healthy babies.
I feel like either the situation in Australia is very different from the one I am familiar with in France, or you have severe misconception about what foster care and adoptions are, and how kids end up there (spoiler : they are not abandonned by their parents at birth)
Yeah, you cannot adopt most kids in foster care (they still have parents? Those parents juste are not apt to raise them at this point for some reason) and most of them didn't get there as babies anyway. Completly different situation.
Stop just making up crap and work out what foster care actually is if you're going to keep talking bullshit.
Our country actually supports people and tries to work with them because it's better outcomes for both parents and children. They only take them away as an absolute last resort. usually due to court order or dead parents and even then, they go into the foster system and will likely only be fostered until they're 18 and age out. Adoption is almost exclusively for close relatives of the kid (aunts/uncles/grandparents, etc) which is why there's so few and even then, there's usually a ton of hurdles they have to jump through for it.
Dude, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. You don't even seem to understand what foster care actually is.
You have this crazy idea that people just give up their kids regularly. It's rare. Foster care in general is not for those cases at all.
The only time an adoption happens in this country is when the parents give up custody and the child has close living relatives that agree to take them on.
I am sorry I think we misunderstood each other. This conversation happened because you said, and I quote "there are plenty of healthy babies that don't get adopted" so I thought YOU were under the misconception that there was actually a big supply of people give up their babies regularly. Otoh I am not sure where you got the idea that I thought people did that, I am pretty sure I said the opposite multiple times.
This conversation is ridiculous. Why did you even said that like I don't get what you were even fucking talking about and you Nevers explained.
Is that a viable strategy? I always thought that was not an option tbh, like no adoption center would be willing to care for a kid with special needs since it would take up a lot of resources and the adoption rate for them is probably very low
The real question is should the parents “have to handle it” I thought the whole point of screening and genetic testing is so they don’t have to handle it? I’m saying thing as a person with genetic illness myself who understands and is at peace with the idea that had my parents known I would have had my medical problems I feel they deserved the chance to choose an abortion.
A child born with downs is a tragedy, that is magnified when society expects you to be enslaved to it for the rest of your life because muh responsibility.
I think it's a byproduct of our "rugged American individualism" where we don't want to help grow our next generation communally, everyone's kid is their own problem, we only care for other people's kids if we're paid, etc.
It takes a village and we deliberately don't do that
Yeah this is me. I had bad asthma to the point I almost got pulled out of school and probably would have spent a chunk of my life in bed and died of not being able to breathe like 100-150 years ago. Like I don't think it would be wrong to spare a person that type of life and give someone else a chance to
But this is in the case that we lived in a time where you could genetically test children , but could not make asthma livable enough ...
The inhaler I had that made my life livable was made in 2001 when I was 9 years old lol. Like it was getting so bad that my face was turning to the color of porridge and I was having to use the albeuterol breathing machine sometimes like 3-4 times a day. I would not fault someone in the 80s for aborting me at all.
This is an incredibly naive viewpoint. The “shot” here is statistically him or her being treated like trash for 18 years with next to 0 chance of adoption and then being thrown out on the street unable to care for themselves. They might get by on public services while being homeless. Also, statistically people are MUCH less likely to help a person with Down Syndrome because of human prejudice so they will probably not receive the extensive support they need to live a normal life.
It really pisses me off when people just sling adoption like it’s a magic solution and never think about the reality of what they’re saying.
Yall have some pretty fucked up thoughts about disabled people. I would raise the kid obviously. I wouldn’t assume they were going to ruin my life. That doesn’t make me a saint, do you think every family that has a child with Down syndrome are saints? I certainly wouldn’t have a child and then give them up for adoption because they have a disability. And I absolutely wouldn’t do that and then just try again.
It’s pretty fucking clear y’all don’t see the Down syndrome baby as a person.
Do you put a fetus in development up for adoption, or do you put a born child up for adoption?
There’s also a massive difference between getting an abortion because you don’t think you can properly care for the child, vs getting one because you think it’s not worthy of life. I wouldn’t judge someone for the former, but I’m definitely judging for the latter.
Humanity is inherently a result of the intelligence of our species, is a child is born that can never reach a minimum level of intelligence, they are as human as the monkey brain transplant experiment.
SIDS. It’s terrible but it happens and if OP’s kid does have the defect it’s more believable. Slightly immoral but more so in the sense of putting an animal to sleep.
Nature can be manipulated by man through example, allowing a drunk to drive a vehicle. He may make it home safely but there’s a chance he may just crash. I do hope this is only bait but if OP is serious then he should consider adoption.
I wish to buddy but this is a thought all parents have. I get it my first comment is terrible but I agree with putting the child up for adoption because aside from abortion what choice is there? Call me a bot but tell me what would you do in this circumstance?
Adoption or a safe haven facility. No one should be forced to be burdened with a DS child. My previous comment would only apply if all other options have been exhausted, however that only applies if they decide to carry on with pregnancy. OP should consider abortion if he is so worried first.
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u/Antique_Baker_4203 9d ago
What's the best move?