“Congratulations, it’s a girl!” was the phrase she heard on August 27, 2011 when her pregnancy ended at 39 weeks.
Sofia’s birth brought a strange silence in the delivery room, her crying was not, as they say, ‘conventional”, rather it was a late warning that something was not right.
That night, she was not informed of her condition.
The next day, the doctor and her husband (my brother) told her there was a ‘good chance’ that she had been born with Down Syndrome.
The following days were difficult and in tears and complaints they received the final results: Sofia had been officially diagnosed.
She tried at first to give thanks because her daughter was special and as everyone told her “God only gives special children to those who are special”, but she really never understood this, for her (as moms know), all her children are special!
After several weeks, she decided to understand and deal with what was happening. As with any other situations that she had dealt with in her life, she sought information.
She made a list of things that they needed to evaluate to make sure Sofia was physically well: heart, hearing, eyes, thyroid, hips, neck, spine and more.
She went to every specialist available, explaining and repeating her condition, it was all a form of therapy.
This year, celebrating her beautiful Sofia’s first year, she tells herself “Congratulations, it’s a girl!” And congratulations to our family, as we have been one of the few awarded ‘the secret of life’.
With Sofia, we’ve understood the marvel of the human spirit, how amazing it is to breath, to see, to hear, to speak, how important it is to creep, crawl, walk, and, above all, how amazing we are as we learn and develop.
We learned that we are not born with a silver spoon in our mouth but that with happiness in our hearts, it beats.
We’ve learned that we don’t need to seek anything outside of what we already have, we are born breathing, seeing, hearing and even those who cannot have some of these capabilities can develop others that are equally or more important.
Thank you, God! It’s a girl that will play, learn, develop and above all, a girl loved by her family who understands her needs and strengths, who sees in her the desire to learn and will never put limits on what, like any other human, she can achieve.
This first year of Sofia’s life has been the most valuable thing we have had as a family. A year especially revealing, a year to understand how ‘special’ we are, a hopeful one.
Vanessa Coppes empowers women, moms especially to live fabulously, everyday.
