He shrugs. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe they just need to weigh her or something or give her a special checkup because she was so early.” He smiles down at me in reassurance. “She’s beautiful, Abby, so beautiful.”
I want so desperately to be appeased, but I’m not. Something feels wrong, but I have no idea what it is. “But there’s a scale right there.” I point to the side of the room. “They didn’t dothat with the other kids, did they? Take them out like that, so quickly?”
“Abby…” Josh’s voice is gentle. “I really don’t think there’s any need to worry. She lookedfine. Healthy. A little small, maybe, I’m guessing five pounds? But she took a breath, she cried, she was a good color, all that stuff.”
I shake my head. “It just seems weird.”
“I really don’t think it’s weird,” Josh tells me firmly before he adds, “But if you want, I’ll go out and ask, okay? See what’s going on. Do you want me to do that?”
I nod jerkily. I don’t know why I feel so afraid; maybe it’s just because I can be such a panicker. “Yes, if you don’t mind.”
He nods. “I’ll call William, too. Everything happened so fast, I haven’t given the kids any updates.”
With one last reassuring smile, Josh slips out of the room.
Alone, I take a deep breath and try to calm myself. My heart is beating wildly, and it’s not from the exertion of labor.You’re overreacting, I tell myself sternly.That’s all this is, your classic overreaction.
Minutes tick by, too many minutes. I want my daughter back. I want to look at her, gaze into her face, and memorize her features. I want to feel the tiny yet pleasingly solid weight of her in my arms. I want to hear her snuffles and sighs. And shouldn’t I be feeding her? Nursing skin-to-skin is supposed to be so important in those first few moments of life.
Where is everyone?
Finally, Josh comes back into the room. From the look on his face, I know instantly that something is wrong. Deeply wrong, just as I feared. His expression is grave, his face pale, his eyes dark and wide.
“Josh…” My voice wobbles. “What is it?”
“Abby…” He comes to sit next to me, holding my hand.
My mouth is dry, and my heart feels as if it is beating out of my chest.
“They think… they think the baby might have Down Syndrome.”
Chapter twenty-one
It’s the day after our daughter’s birth, and I’m existing in a weird limbo of sorrow and hope, grief and joy. I feel like we’ve stumbled into someone else’s life, a dream that we could still wake up from, and at the same time, it’s hard to remember when weweren’tliving this way. When we still believed our daughter was perfectly healthy.
When Josh told me, I simply stared at him. “What…no…”
He nodded somberly. “There were some clear markers. Obviously, they need to do some tests to confirm, but she had an extra fold on her eyelid, her features are a little flat, her limbs floppy…”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I cried.
Josh hung his head. “I’m sorry, I’m just… I’m just trying to approach this as… as reasonably as I can.” He rubbed a shaky hand over his face as I shook my head.
Nothing about this felt reasonable.Down Syndrome. Did I know anyone with children with Down Syndrome? Only vaguely. I knew the generalities, the stereotypes—happy, affectionate personalities, short stature, heart defects. That about summedup my entire knowledge, and I didn’t even know if it was accurate. It felt like so little, like no person or condition should be condensed into a couple of pithy sentences, defined by the health of their heart or their height or what their eyes looked like.
And floppy limbs?Allbabies were floppy. Flat features? Wasn’t that a matter ofopinion?
“Can you bring her back in?” I whispered.
He nodded, tears starting in his eyes. “Yes, of course.”
He went to get the nurse, and she brought her a few minutes later. I held out my arms, and she smiled at me as she placed my daughter in them.
I looked down into my baby’s face, studying her perfect features—the rosebud mouth, the button nose, those deep blue eyes. I saw the extra fold, and I saw how her nose looked a little flattened. When I unwrapped her swaddled blanket, I saw how her limbs became loosely splayed.
I swallowed hard. They might need to do tests, but the evidence was right in front of me, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Anything but complete joy and thankfulness felt so wrong right now. I did not want to grieve any part of my daughter’s birth, my daughter’sperson.
Yet I was fighting back tears just as Josh was, and they weren’t happy ones. How much did this change things? What did this mean for our daughter, for our other children, for our lives? Would there be endless medical appointments? Would our daughter be able to live independently one day? Would people accept and love her? WouldI?
