Ups and Down's

It's the phonecall that will always stay with me. I often hear people remark that certain things will always stay or be with them, usually some 'life-defining' moment or another, and being the cynic that I generally am, I usually dismiss them privately as the product of the Dawson's Creek / Friends generation where every happening must be accorded a public degree of emotional outpouring and be shared with other folk desperate to define their feelings in a public forum. This has never sat well with me, primarily because I am the aforementioned cynic and, if truth be told, don't generally often ask for the sympathetic ear of friends and family, its not quite the 'stiff upper lip' syndrome of the archetypal Englishman, but you are in the right ball park as our American friends might happen to say. So here I am now, blogging, social-networking, publicly-sharing my private thoughts, the antithesis to my former cynicism you might say, but why? Well, its because of the phonecall. Ay, there's the rub. The phonecall is the rub. The phonecall that will always be me. The phonecall changed my life. [Dawson exits stage left].

The pre-cursor to the phonecall was November 2007 when we found out we were having a baby. We were thrilled by the news and this joy was offset by an overwhelming sense of terror that I was going to be a Dad and had not the first idea about what to do, what I was supposed to and when I was supposed to be doing it. Pregnancy is a funny old fish really, all of a sudden portions of time are no longer refered to in months and everything is now calculated by weeks. When you are not used to using weeks a measurement of time, as I am sure you are not because let's face it, the only other time that weeks are used to significantly measure time is the old six weeks school holidays which seemed far longer than the month and a half it in reality actually was, life takes on a certain distortion but in a tremendous capacity. To slowly see our baby growing and listening to the most perfect heartbeat I ever heard, is an astonishing feeling and allayed the terror somewhat replacing it with a nervous excitement and anticipation. The thought that anything could ever disrupt this picture was frankly never even considered.

Down's Syndrome is not something I knew an awful lot about, in all honesty I was quite happy with that situation. I am not afraid to admit that if something didn't affect me directly, I didn't generally go out of my way to research it. This may sound selfish and in some ways it is, but I think most of us would subscribe to the same if it came down to it, turn the other cheek as it were. To hear the Doctor say the words to me on the phone is not a situation I ever realised I didn't want to find out about. "The news isn't good, your baby has Down's Syndrome - I am sorry." And that's when my life changed. [Dawson looks pensively across the creek].

With twelve weeks (!) to go now, life is good, changed granted, but oh so good. It has been very interesting to reflect on the feedback we have received to the news, the clinical scientific viewpoint from the Medics, the shocked and almost desperate optimism of some and the overwhelming support of all. We have talked to a counsellor that allowed us to slay some of the demons that were plaguing us, it was comforting to know that the selfish thoughts we were experiencing were ok, it was almost as if we were being given permission to grieve the loss of the life we thought we were going to have and start to build for the life ahead of us. We are now members of Down Syndrome Ireland and a whole new world has opened up in front of us. A friend of mine put it best when he said its just about adjusting to a new paradigm which, apart from being remarkably articulate for him, really shows how little of a deal this really is. I am at peace with it now, there are still sad moments of course, the 'why me' and 'its not fair' and all that but there are far more 'up' moments now. Sitting in the newly decorated baby room really hammers home that the little one will be just like all other babies, will need to be changed (must fix the wobbly leg on the changing table while I think of it...), will need lots of colouful plastic things to stay amused and will need it's Mummy and Daddy to be on hand with a regular supply of food, pillows and cuddles. There is plenty more to come, but that's enough for now I think. Twelve weeks and counting....