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[Guest guest]

Hi,

We´re a couple from Mexico City with identical twin girls of 5, both with Down's Syndrome. My wife's name is , my girl's names are Natalia and a; my name is José .

Besides some difficulties at the beginning, Clau had a very smooth pregnancy, all the way to week 36 when she gave birth. Our doctor had scheduled the birth for week 38, but Natalia decided otherwise and sent us to the hospital at 2 am where she just popped out after a few minutes. a was a bit stuck, so after trying to naturally extract her, the doctors had to operate. So we had it all in one day: natural birth, a c-section, umbilical cord problems and forceps.

Even though we had screenings and a more than usual amount of sonograms, we didn't find out about the DS until they were born. A few minutes after we were out of the operating room our pediatrician asked me to go into a meeting room with the gynecologists and another doctor. They said that both girls presented cyanosis -blue lips, eyelids and fingertips due to lack of oxygen, they explained-, which indicated heart problems. That, plus a number a physical traits, also made them think they had DS. Even though they were quite sure, they wanted some tests to confirm. About an hour later, we had another meeting, this time with a geneticist, who gave me a full explanation of the chromosomal aspects of DS (as if it was important to me at that time).

The hard part was telling Clau, or I thought, because from the very beginning she has been very strong about this. We of course had no idea what it meant to raise a kid with DS, not to mention two. In my head, at least, there were all these stereotyped images that weren't all that encouraging. Once that was over, everything just started to fall in place. DS didn't worry us as much as the health problems and, by the time the test results came in confirming DS, we were a big happy family. There is no way I can express the ever increasing joy that these two have brought into our lives very day.

They had one of their heart problems (PDA) corrected through heart surgery when they were 7 months old and, after 4 years of monitoring their other heart problem (ventricular septal defect), cardiologists agree that it has corrected on its own. Today they are extremely healthy, they go to a regular school and have an active social life. They take their therapies, swimming and dancing lessons, and make friends everywhere. They like parties, jumping in their trampoline, going to the movies, eating out and they love the beach.

Clau is pregnant again, four months, and we are all in all very happy with our girls.

This is the first time we participate in a group, so we are not fully familiar with how it works. We'll try to post some recent pictures soon, but in the meantime I'm attaching one from a year ago that I have in this computer.