Bethany Van Delft had a perfect pregnancy: every week the doctors and nurses would gather around her and say what a perfect baby she had.
The mum saw a specialist every week because of her age, but nothing unusual was ever spotted, and she spent nine months eagerly anticipating what motherhood would be like.
Lucia Esperanza was born on 11/10/2011.
“I saw her little chin and her heart-shaped mouth and her button nose and her folded ears and I saw her almond eyes and my heart stopped, and I asked Jayme, does she look like she has Down syndrome?”
Bethany teamed up with The Moth, a non-profit organisation, to share her story to a captivated audience; the video was picked up by The Scene and posted to their Facebook page.
“My worry turned to fear and my fear turned to panic and I finally rang for the nurse, hysterical," the mum of one said soon after her baby was born.
“Why is it taking so long? Is there something wrong?
“What is wrong with my baby? Can I have her back?"
Talking about the moment a paediatrician came into the room, she explained:
“He said her Apgar score was great and her hearing was fine and she had ten fingers and ten toes and he suspected that she had Down syndrome.
“And he gave us a packet with a number on a Post-It note on top for us to call and as he was leaving he said: ‘You know now is a good time to have these babies.’
“What with all of the research some of them even read now.”
Continuing, Bethany said:
“That first few weeks is just a blur of tears and forms and doctors’ appointments and lists I made of all the things that were never going to happen now and all the things that she would never do.
“I slept on the couch with her for months with her skin on my skin so she could feel loved, but every time I looked at her all I thought was, ‘Where is my baby? Whose baby is this? When do I get to see my baby?’”
Bethany’s video is real, raw and incredibly eye-opening, and deserves to be shared.
Watch the video in full below:
