November Thankfulness Day 14- Evolution

Today I am thankful for evolution.

Merriam Webster defines evolution as a process of change in a direction; a process of change from a lower, simpler or worse to a higher, more complex or better state.

After a particularly rough night here that ended in my questioning my ability or want to parent any child, much less a child with Down syndrome, I decided I really needed to put my pity party on hold & re-examine my perception of my life. I have to put aside the "why me?", "Why him?", "Why us?", Why can't he just be normal?", "Why can't he just get it together? It's not rocket science." thoughts and move on.

Why does my son have Down syndrome? And really...... why does it have to be a syndrome? It sounds like an illness when in reality, it's not. It's not a disorder. Um..... it is a disorder of normal genetics, I guess. But.... it's not a disorganization of the genes. It's added genes.

What got me thinking about all of this was this new blood test that is being offered to parents that will tell them whether their baby has Down syndrome. Those parents with a positive diagnosis of it will have the ability to either continue with the pregnancy or terminate the pregnancy. Those parents getting the test also won't run the risk of miscarrying the pregnancy after a CVS or amnio regardless of what the answer would be.

But why do people terminate pregnancies if their children are diagnosed with Down syndrome? I can only tell you why I might have if Sean had been diagnosed earlier. I questioned my ability to raise a retarded (yes that was my perception of DS) child. I questioned my want to raise a child who had more potential to have major medical, as well as functional issues then a child with 46 chromosomes. I questioned how down syndrome would affect Meredith & her future. Would I have terminated my pregnancy with Sean if I had gotten the diagnosis earlier? Probably not.

I started to think about history to see whether it could shed some light on the psychology of making a group of people extinct. As I recall, there were quite a few folks that felt that certain sects of human beings were not fit to mingle with the rest of the population. I recall learning that those dictators felt certain individuals tainted the gene pool & should be extinguished. And I'm sure that if a test for Judaism had been developed, Hitler would've used it on ALL pregnant women he could find & administered it.

Are parents who terminate their pregnancies like Hitler? Of course not. They are making the best decision for their family, but you see the similarities. Terminating a pregnancy simply because a child has Down syndrome & you wish to eradicate Down syndrome, is similar to trying to eradicate a whole group of people who practice a certain religion or look a certain way, have a certain color skin, etc. It doesn't pass muster in any other instance except for things people have defined as disorders or syndromes.

Where am I going with this? When Meredith was an infant, I prayed, begged & anything else I could think of to slow time down so I could savior every moment of her evolution from baby to toddler to preschooler, etc. No one seemed to hear me. Meredith is still speeding through her development at light speed barely pausing to take a breath.

Then Sean came along. Guess what? He's slower to evolve. He allows me to savior every single moment of his development. He's not rushing through at light speed. He takes his time to get each step right. He makes sure that when he does do something, it's perfect.

What if what we know as Down syndrome is really evolution at work? What if what we know of as Down syndrome is the wave of the future? What if Sean and everyone like him is Homosapien v2.0?

Looking at it like that feels better than focusing on the "why can't he be normal?" He is normal. He's just taking his time & giving me what I asked for. I asked for evolution to step in and make him perfect. Do I think Meredith is perfect? I certainly do, but maybe mother nature feels that propelling humans forward at light speed means that a few important things get lost in translation. A few things that may very well be needed as the earth evolves & changes.

Quite possibly, in adding things like half of a 21st chromosome, humans are getting those much needed things to be able to survive long after Homosapien v1.0 is gone.

You may not agree with my views. That's ok, but I hope they give you food for thought.

Hopefully seeing that people with what is known as Down syndrome are way more complex & in a lot of ways better than you & me.

Darwin would be proud to study people like Sean to see how they fit into what's coming.