{"id":172,"date":"2009-11-04T14:42:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T14:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2009\/11\/the-diagnosis-of-down-syndrome.html"},"modified":"2009-11-04T14:42:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-04T14:42:00","slug":"the-diagnosis-of-down-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/11\/the-diagnosis-of-down-syndrome.html","title":{"rendered":"The Diagnosis of Down Syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ellen Hsu has written a narrative of learning that her son, Elijah, had Down syndrome. It is available here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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My comment (also posted on the other blog):<\/div>\n
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<\/p>\n

I also have a child with Down syndrome, a daughter, age 3 1\/2. And we too were shocked to discover, upon birth, that she had an extra chromosome. She was born around Christmas time, and one of the refrains that ran through my head was from “O Little Town of Bethlehem:” “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” Initially, there was only fear. But eventually, we learned to have great hopes for her. And we found that it was in Jesus that we were able to find a space to hope in spite of the fears.<\/p>\n

Penny, like Elijah, is learning to read. She is also learning that she has a past. She asks me to tell her stories about herself. She is particularly fascinated by her birth story and medical history. I tell it like this: “When you were born, the doctors were worried. They thought you were sick because you have Down syndrome. But they checked your heart, and it had some little holes, so they fixed them. And pretty soon we all realized we didn’t need to be worried anymore.”<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ellen Hsu has written a narrative of learning that her son, Elijah, had Down syndrome. It is available here. My comment (also posted on the other blog): I also have a child with Down syndrome, a daughter, age 3 1\/2. And we too were shocked to discover, upon birth, that she had an extra chromosome.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-down-syndrome"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Diagnosis of Down Syndrome - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/11\/the-diagnosis-of-down-syndrome.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Diagnosis of Down Syndrome - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ellen Hsu has written a narrative of learning that her son, Elijah, had Down syndrome. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}