S U R P R I S I N G L Y      S P E C I A L

Life is just full of surprises, isn’t it? That has certainly been the case for our family!

Already, our parenting journey has thrown us some major curves: challenges we never saw coming, and blessings we could never have hoped for.

Our first baby, Calvin, was diagnosed with 22q deletion syndrome when he was three months old. It came as a huge surprise given that his father and I have the usual 46 chromosomes, just as you’d expect them, and we were young and had no family history of genetic disorders.

When Calvin was six months old, I got pregnant again – surprise!! And we had no reason to worry that our second son, Henry, would share his brother’s syndrome or have any other syndrome for that matter.

So the most unexpected news of all, which came when Henry was two months old, was that Henry actually has a completely different, unrelated, rare chromosome disorder called Dup15q.

Parenting two young kids with special needs is one wild ride, and we are holding on to the things we love and learning as we go along!

I write this blog because it feels like much needed therapy for me, and because I want to share our family’s story. I always enjoy reading stories from families like ours because it reminds me that we’re not alone, and it often shines a light on the unexpectedly lovely things that come along with life’s big surprises. I hope that our story can do that for other parents like us who are just trying to figure things out as they go along under surprisingly special circumstances.

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Or, contact Diana by email at surprisinglyspecialblog@gmail.com.