Kick Off for Down Syndrome Awareness Month!!!

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month!!! Hazel is excited!!!

This will be an exciting month for us, not only in our home, but on the blog!!!

I will be featuring a series of posts to try and raise awareness for Down Syndrome. My goal is to inform as well as educate readers on living with DS. And, as always, to share the story of our sweet girl Hazel, in hopes that our readers will see that although raising her certainly has some challenges (surgeries mainly), Hazel experiences and reaches all the milestones that every other baby reaches. Please join us in the educating, raising awareness and spreading knowledge.

Share the links that you find interesting on your Facebook pages. Also, feel free to visit Chasing Hazel's Facebook page for regular updates. Please don't hesitate to contact me with stories or resources you would like me to include on the blog this month. We would love to hear from you....

I can only speak from my experience of having a child with Down Syndrome.

Just because Hazel has t21, it doesn't mean that she doesn't wake up during the night just looking for cuddles cause she's figured out that when she cries we come to tend.

It doesn't mean that she doesn't get really cranky when she is tired or hungry.

It doesn't mean that just as we are ready to take her visiting, she has a poop that I'm sure brakes records for just how far up her back it goes, ruining the perfectly adorable outfit that I had taken time to pick out, only to end up wearing the first sleeper on the clean clothes pile.

It doesn't mean that as we are trying to get her into the car seat she isn't throwing a fit so real and serious that I can't possibly get her to bend to sit in her car seat. She was serious, her voice was going to be heard.

She is a baby, just like other babies, and we are parents, just like other parents, trying to do what works to make sure we all stay sane. Some days it easy, other days you wonder how the universe saw it fit to deem you a suitable candidate to be responsible for a life other than your own.

I believe that in order to embrace difference and understand the world of special needs we need to listen, we need to educate, we need to understand and then finally to accept.

Watch this video, show it to your partner, your friends, show it to your kids. I am wiling to bet your kids know more about special needs than you think. Here is a perfect video for younger children.

Let Down Syndrome become a topic of conversation in your homes. Let it into your life, you never know when you will be called upon to act, to protect and to love. We certainly didn't...