My Name is Janell, and my 2 year old daughter, Jayme has MDS. We have a 10 yr old daughter and we thought for many years that she would be an only child. When we decided that we would like to have another child, we tried for about 6 months to get pregnant again. Days before my husband was set to deploy to Iraq, we found out that we were going to have another baby!!!! The only bad thing was that Jason would miss the birth.

Emily was born September 16, 2003. We were ecstatic. We had the perfect pair (we also have a son who is 3 years older than Emily). Shortly after she was born, I began to have weird dreams. In these dreams a doctor is telling me my beautiful baby girl has Down Syndrome. I pushed these dreams out of my mind after talking to a friend of mine who works with kids with DS.

My daughter, Ariel, was born 4 weeks early on January 30, 1994. Shortly after her birth her pediatrician felt that she was a little floppy and decided to run some tests. He didn't really feel that she had Down Syndrome but just wanted to make sure that there weren't any problems.

Hello, I am a mother of two very beautiful daughters: one is six, and the other is 15 mos. old. My youngest was diagnosed with MDS shortly after she was born. There was so much going on at the time that I really didn't have time to digest all that the Genetic Counselor was telling me, because Brooke, my daughter was born with heart disorders, and was scheduled for surgery as soon as she was big enough to undergo it.

My name is Maryann Grillo and my daughter Christine has MDS. Our story began 18 weeks into my pregnancy with Christine. The doctor called and in a very somber voice told me that my AFP blood test was low and that I needed an ultrasound and to see a genetic counselor immediately. I had to ask what a low AFP meant, and she told me it could be down syndrome or some other chromosomal abnormality.