This is the story of Harleigh Ann Catto and her ups of Down syndrome.  Her story starts with doom and gloom, as for the end of the story, it is still full of endless possibilities.  From the time Jason and I realized we were expecting a precious child we...

Brynley Farren Suzanne Woods aka “Queen B”, was born December 22 2016, a little over two months after her aunt/angel passed away. I had a normal pregnancy with no complications, but because of my age I was considered high risk. Her anatomy scan was fine, the...

It has been a full year! Ransom is an active 2.5 year old, always pushing boundaries and exploring new things. He’s a proud big brother to his sister, Darby. We’ve seen great progress in Ransom’s overall development. His therapy team has been enthusiastic about his...

Xander was born February 9th, 2013, 2 days after his estimated due date. He weighed 8 pounds 8 ounces. My pregnancy was picture perfect, as was the delivery. The only concern at the time was our strong family history of Long QT Syndrome (an electrical abnormality...

Luke was a surprise addition to our family, to say the least. I had made peace with the fact that my husband Ray and I would never have children after ten years of no pregnancies. Then we had our son Harker who is now 14. He was a healthy baby born right on his due...

Rick and Tara Whittaker found out they were expecting in July 2016. The newly married couple was excited about the new adventure and big sister Sarah couldn’t wait to meet the new addition. Flash forward to September 2016 when they received the news that their new...

Erica James is a 29 year old business owner, realtor, investor,  athlete, and fierce disability advocate from Greenville, SC! When Erica was 6 months old she was diagnosed with a rare cancer in her eyes called retinoblastoma. After undergoing numerous...

Landon Hall Tatum was born on January 31, 2018, in St. Petersburg, FL. He was born with two congenital defects that he was diagnosed with a few weeks after his initial anatomy scan. We learned first that Landon had a Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH) and then a...

Liam was born on January 27th, 2013, arriving 4 weeks early. Liam was born with hydrocephalus which means water on the brain. His specific diagnosis is L1CAM. It affects him physically and mentally. He underwent brain surgery and had a shunt placed at just 3 days...

Meet the Basile Family Our family is quite different than many others on the outside but, like many families, we were built from love! Shawn and I (Sarah) got married in 2005 and we both deeply felt that we didn’t want to just “go through the motions,” in this one...

Meet AnnaKate Weekes and her mom, Kelly Weekes AnnaKate is a joy to everyone she meets! She came into our lives through the blessing of adoption. At 3 months old she was diagnosed with Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome (RTS).   RTS is a rare genetic disorder that affects...

Meet the Cleveland Family and their son Jay.  When Jay was born, he was diagnosed with Pierre Robin Sequence (“PRS”).  PRS is a rare birth defect characterized by a recessed jaw, backward placement of the tongue and upper airway obstruction.  The...

My pregnancy with Jack was fairly uneventful, as was my short labor followed by a few minor complications with delivery. We were quite surprised when the doctor came in and asked us if we were familiar with Trisomy 21.  It only took a few days for testing to...

We are the Millers, a wide-open family of 10! We would have never guessed that we would have had this many loving children; however, just under a year ago, we brought home two of the sweetest additions to our family. Christian and I (Megan) were married almost 14...

Ryan’s life has been remarkable for several reasons and it started with his very first ultrasound that indicated that I was pregnant with THREE babies. Ryan is a triplet and for that reason, my pregnancy was monitored very closely by Maternal Fetal Medicine as a...

My daughter, Haley, was born on Father's Day, and after her birth I told my husband that I was good on Father's Day gifts for 10 years. Ha! Little did I know that Haley was going to be the most amazing gift to our family and the WORLD! All children are gifts from...

Meet the Rosenfeld Family and their daughter Charlotte. Ryan and I have three daughters;  Charlotte, 15, Reese, 12 and Holland, 7. Our oldest, Charlotte, was born in Tampa, Fl in August of 2006.  She has always been described as an outgoing, active, funny child and...

Hello! We’re the Phillips Family! I’m Erin, wife to my husband Ryan, and mom to our three daughters, Sullivan “Sully”, Finley, and Francis, plus our two golden retriever mixes. Our story began in 2009 when Ryan and I met at the Carolina Cup in college. Just nine...

Meet the Johnson family and their daughter Delaney I was thirty years old when I gave birth to Delaney. During my pregnancy, we had a positive result on the early blood test that could indicate Down syndrome. Because of this, I had to see a specialist every couple...

Crawford Lee was born February 14, 2012. It was a high-risk pregnancy but completely uneventful until the day he was delivered.  My blood pressure skyrocketed while at a check-up and the OB determined she needed to deliver him that same day. He was born two...

Meet the Pretulak Family.  My husband Jared and I feel beyond blessed to have two kind, loving, hard working, and athletic children. Our first child, Hane, was born in December 2008. We noticed early on that Hane was very articulate. He could express complex...

Meet the Wright family and their daughter Calleigh.  In June 2014 we were planning a return Disney trip and first day of school outfit, until one day our four year old, Calleigh, started vomiting and couldn’t stop. We were admitted for dehydration and over...

Friday Family Feature  Meet the Andrews Family and their son Matt.  My son Matt is 3.5 years old. He has blue eyes and the very best smile! He follows his dad around everywhere and LOVES his little sister Ruthie. He enjoys being outside and going on...

Friday Family Feature  Meet the McGrath Family and their son Banks.  We found out in January of 2019 that we were pregnant with a little boy right before Eliza turned one in February. We were thrilled to have one of each and complete our family of four....

Meet the Hibbs Family Disability is something my husband and I were familiar with before we started our own family. My husband’s youngest brother, Nathan, has Down Syndrome.  Nathan is the reason I decided to become an Occupational Therapist.  At the...

On October 28, 2006, our family was made complete with the addition of our daughter, Mary.  A true third child, Mary was by far the easiest baby of all three children.  We dragged her from soccer, to dance class, to kindergarten performances.  She...

Friday Family Feautre Introducing Chase Sampson, 10 years old and thriving. Chase was always a very smart little boy. Always ahead of peers in speech. He can talk to any adult in the room and his teachers always told us that he is a “friend to all”. Chase is very...

Edith Lawrence Terrell was born November 20, 2018.  Pregnancy, delivery and infancy was all wonderful and normal but at 4 and a half months everything changed, and our lives were turned upside down within a week.  Monday morning, April 8, 2019,...

Hi, my name is Louden and I was born with cerebral palsy. Having CP over the course of my life has made some things difficult but has never stopped me from living my life and creating who I want to be. My CP has caused me to use a lot of energy completing physical...

When we decided to start a family, it never occurred to us that we would face any life altering challenges for any of our children. To be honest we were living in the present and not worried about the "tomorrow." Our daughter Claire came into this world so loved....

I had a very normal pregnancy and with it being our first child, we were so excited to become parents and start a new chapter of our life. On a Monday morning I went into work and noticed that I could not get my swelling to go down in my ankles. I reached out to...

Our daughter, Halle, was born in February 2010. She surprised us by coming five weeks early. She was small and had to stay in the hospital for extra time due to her low weight and low temperatures, but we took her home eight days later and launched into the perfect...

Addison ‘Addi’ Walter is a beam of light to anyone she meets. Addi is full of energy from sun up until her head hits the pillow at night, defying the odds of her diagnosis every single day. In January of 2012, I was writing our first story about Addi. This story,...

Smith was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes (“T1D”) at 2.5 years old. T1D is an autoimmune disease in which a person’s pancreas stops producing insulin – a hormone essential to turning food into energy. Without insulin, a person with T1D will become ketotic and...

Flashback to 2004 and I was introduced to a rare metabolic disorder, Erythropoietic Protoporphyria (EPP) characterized by an enzyme deficiency in the blood. College kids and newly dating, David told me that he had a rare sun condition that was best described as an...

Logan was born in August 2014, at just 24 weeks gestation, weighing 1 pound 5 ounces at birth. He was an identical twin, and unfortunately, during pregnancy, mom developed a condition called Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. When this occurs with twins, one twin...

April 13, 2021 my phone rang and it was THE call- we had been matched to a birth mom in Arkansas who was 25 weeks pregnant with a baby girl with Down syndrome.  We had been working with the National Down Syndrome Adoption Network for about 6 months. We quickly...

Our Jack was born 10 days early in November 2015.  He came into the world pretty quickly for a first-born child.  Nevertheless, he was healthy as far as we could tell.  On the first full day in the hospital, his hearing screen was...

Grant Hollis, V (G5 as he is lovingly called) was born June 23, 2018 at 26 weeks. Before birth, his pregnancy had been typical but my body was just ready to go in to labor too early! He was 2lb 1 oz and did well for the first 2 weeks of life. That’s when that NICU...

Saturday April 13th, 2018 was a normal day.  Levi was 18 months old at the time.  We played outside as a family and I remember it was the first time Levi tried to play hopscotch on our driveway.  That morning my husband, Pride, and I thought he looked a little bit...

Katherine Jane Schomisch (“Katie”) was born September 9, 2017. After experiencing some global developmental delays, our answer was found with an exome sequencing of Katie's genes. Katie is the 220th person world-wide to be diagnosed with Schaaf-Yang Syndrome (SYS)....

Charlsie Jane was born May 10, 2018 over 3 months early at just 1lb 11oz. I had been admitted to the hospital for 3 weeks due to Preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. We knew she was going to come early and have a lengthy stay in the NICU. Most preemies typically go...

On November 29, 2017, Ella was born, and the next day we learned she had a heart murmur.  We were told that her heart would most likely repair itself and we should not have any concerns as long as things continued on the same path.  We were relieved...

When Quinn was born, we nicknamed him "Mighty Quinn" because he fought for his life every day in the NICU. After we were able to take him home and get to know him better; however, we started calling him our "Sweet Quinn" because he is genuinely the most gentle and...

One of our greatest gifts, Lindsay “Neill” Bickerstaff IV (due on Christmas Day), was born on December 26, 2000. I was admitted on Christmas Day for what we expected to be a routine induction, looking forward to meeting our sweet, baby boy. Well, things did not go...

Henry was born on January 13, 2019, at a hospital in metro Atlanta, where we lived at the time. Our little guy was five weeks early, so when labor began, we weren’t 100% certain that’s what was happening. He was our first child, and my wife is pretty tough, so I...

Lauren is the youngest of four children, so by the time we had her, we kind of thought we knew what we were doing. We did not, and she rocked our world for the better. She was a very pleasant baby, and we didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary except for some...

Our sweet little Caroline was born early at 34 weeks and was admitted to the NICU immediately after delivery. Like most NICU stays, we had good days and bad days. We were told that our little girl was a typical preemie and would just need time to get the hang of...

My daughter Snow was born Dec. 1, 2009, one minute before her twin brother.  The delivery was a welcome conclusion to a difficult pregnancy complicated by fourteen weeks of bedrest.  Things went smoothly with the delivery, and I held both...

It was the week of Thanksgiving 2019, and we went in for our 20 week ultrasound excited to see our baby. During the scan the tech noticed a hole in the heart, so they sent us to MFM the following day for a more in-depth scan. After the scan, they took us to a...

In Duncan’s five years of life, we have seen time and again that our God is a God of miracles. When Duncan was diagnosed with polymicrogyria (literally the lumps in his brain are too small, aka micro), the physicians couldn’t tell us if he would ever walk or talk...

Hi, my name is Whit Brand and I love Cookie Monster, buses, and music, as long as I get to control the playlist. Whit is extra special, not just because he has an extra chromosome, but because of the impact he has on others. We found out that Whit was likely to...

Our second son, Jasper Douglas “JD”, was born August 18, 2020. Named after both of his grandfathers, we wanted JD to have a strong family name. At the age of 1, JD is already living up to his strong name. He is the happiest, most determined little guy. We thank God...

My husband and I always knew that adoption would be a part of our story. We both had a heart for it and were excited to grow our family in this way! Our adoption story was nothing short of a wild ride! We waited two years for our son and had multiple failed...

5 years and 6 months ago, our twins were born. For the previous 3 years, Hudson and I had loved raising our son, Wilson, who was very full of life and the easiest toddler there ever was. We were so very excited to add siblings to the mix. We knew Wilson would be a...

Anophthalmia. I can still hear the words "Your baby doesn't have eyes." clear as day. Like what did you mean she doesn't have eyes?! I mean,  I know people are born blind,  but to not have an actual eye seemed impossible to wrap my brain around. I reacted...

Callahan's story is nothing short of a miracle and proof that God is all ways in control. My pregnancy was pretty normal, but I had some minor issues that our OB was not too concerned with until I went in for an ultrasound at 24 weeks (at our 20week anatomy scan...

On April 26, 2020, Avery was born, and 12 hours later, we learned that she was born with Down syndrome. I had a healthy pregnancy. We did the standard genetic blood test early in the pregnancy to screen for Down syndrome along with a few other things, and...

I am so honored to share our precious son Mac’s story and support the important organization KIND. Mac is a very typical superhero loving, basketball playing 6 year old. He loves playing with his friends, cousins, and siblings. He has a special way with words and a...

Being a parent through adoption is both the greatest blessing and the most terrifying experience. It feels like yesterday when we finally got the text at 3am that our son was being born. Joe and I jumped on the first flight out of Greenville that morning and...

Sadie’s journey began on June 2nd, 2009 when Bill and I went, to what we believed would be, a normal 30-week check-up. Due to health complications in my first pregnancy, I was seen regularly by the Maternal Fetal Medicine group to watch for any reoccurring issues....

Hart just turned five this summer, and we celebrated by having his first “big boy” birthday party.  We are thrilled to hear him talking more each day and trying new things like joining a t-ball team at the YMCA.  He has a great sense of humor...