Making New Friends

To celebrate Piper's 7 month birthday, we went to the Trisomy 21 new parent reception at CHOP. After being stuck in some unwanted traffic due to an accident and the Penn Races, we made it to the reception a little late.
It was really nice for us to meet some new families with children who have Down Syndrome. After listening to a few speakers we were able to introduce ourselves and share our stories. We met families who knew their child would have down syndrome during their pregnancy to parents who were surprised the day they were born. We met families where their child with DS was their second or third or even fifth child. We also met families where they were the only one. We met a family who had a set of twins with DS and a family who had twins where one had DS and the other didn't. We also met a family who had two 5 years apart who both had DS.
I guess my point is that there were all types of families and what I really took from this was that no matter what makes up your family, as long as you have a support system and love you can conquer anything life throws at you. Also that when ever you are feeling low all you have to do is look at the smiling face of your child and all those worries melt away. It was great to hear other peoples thoughts and feelings and know that there were other people feeling the same way.
At the end there was an informal time to chat with other parents, Sara took that time to see how many babies she could hold. Here is a picture of our new friend Sara "holding" Piper.