Family Stories

Mark’s Story

Mark’s Story Mark’s story begins when his father and I decided to try to have children. This would have been approximately 1977-1978. I was 28 and my husband was 25. I got pregnant in March of 1978. That baby would have been due around Christmas of that year. I suffered a miscarriage. There were 2 […]

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Mitchell Emil McCollum

Mitchell Emil was conceived in love and grew surrounded in that love. We learned early in the pregnancy that he had T-18, and his time would most likely be limited. As his parents, we supported him completely throughout his natural life span, enjoying every moment of the pregnancy with Mitchell. Our sweet little guy would

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Sawyer Jude Hanson

The term ‘struggle’ is defined in Webster’s dictionary as ‘to make strenuous or violent efforts in the face of difficulties or opposition’. I struggled with female reproductive issues since my first menstrual cycle began at the age of 15. I went to specialists to see why my periods were non-existent, special diets and birth control

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Elijah Spencer

Elijah was diagnosed with full Trisomy 18 and Klienfelters after our 20-week ultrasound showed many markers for a chromosome disorder.  After continuing our pregnancy care at a maternal fetal specialist our only goal was to have the chance to meet our little boy. Because I also had polyhydramnios we expected to go into labor at

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Joelle Hope

We were blessed to find out in December 2016 that my wife was pregnant with our first child. Being older, we couldn’t believe the wonderful news that we were going to bring our first child into this world. As with all pregnancies we were both excited and nervous at the same time. All the what

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Our Hanna Angel

We found out at 32 weeks pregnant that’s something was wrong, possible Down syndrome I was told. But two weeks later we learned our daughter’s fate. Our unborn daughter had Trisomy 18 and would probably die very young. Doctors told me to abort, but I couldn’t. I knew I had to push through, meet our

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Darian Sadie Randall

Joyful Beginnings? Our Trisomy 18 journey of our beautiful daughter Darian Sadie Randall began, unknowingly to us November 9, 2008, with our positive pregnancy test. We were ecstatic to learn of this new sibling for brothers, 4-year-old Kieran and 2-year-old Joah. We were sent for an early ultrasound at 8 weeks to verify dates, something

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Baby Grace

My boyfriend and I were very happy to have a newborn baby in our lives. I have always wanted to be a mother. At the age of 31, I found out I was pregnant. To make things more exciting, my baby’s due date was one week after my birthday. The stress of a new baby

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Jonesy Luke Gray

We found out we were expecting our second child just a few days before our daughter’s third birthday. We were so excited to finally be expecting again! We decided it was time to sell our house and start building our dream house for our growing family. Our home sold quickly and we had some gracious

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