On CNN.com, an article that first appeared in Parenting Magazine back in November gets a second look.

Contributing editor Margaret Renkl profiles Lisa and Mike Spellman of Nashville, whose 19-month-old son Anthony was diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth. Renkl paints a portrait of two loving parents who have come a long way from their initial disappointment over their little boy’s diagnosis to celebrating and cherishing him for himself.

Revised prenatal testing guidelines apparently provided the news hook that brought the piece back.

Older mothers are more likely to have a baby with Down syndrome, but 80 percent are born to women under age 35, because more in this age group have kids and, until this year, they weren’t routinely tested in the first trimester. But now two noninvasive blood tests combined with a new ultrasound can identify Down with 87 percent accuracy at 11 weeks’ gestation, without risk of miscarriage. Currently (and controversially), an estimated 90 percent of Down pregnancies are terminated, but this new test may raise that percentage.

Not that it would have changed anything for Lisa.

“Whatever those tests might have revealed, it wouldn’t have changed our minds about the pregnancy,” she says.

The Spellmans had no special risk factors for Down syndrome.

The story offers helpful tips for parents, and says siblings of children with Down syndrome “learn kindness, empathy and respect for diversity in greater measure than other kids.”

When the story first appeared last fall, it carried a subhead that read: “A generation ago, he’d probably be growing up in an institution — but today his world is open.” No sign of it this time around, and the link to the earlier story no longer works. Wonder if someone complained?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Down syndrome, News_2_Use, abortion, families, parents, personal stories, prenatal diagnosis, siblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post