Hazel Loretta - A Birth Story

Finally...I am posting Hazel's birth story. I know I meant to get to some other posts for Down Syndrome Awareness Month, but I am also trying to be very conscious that I have another babe on the way that needs me to rest and relax so I am ready when she decides to join us out here. There's always National Down Syndrome Awareness Week in November. Hazel is only going to be an only child for another couple weeks, so I am trying to soak up every minute of her that I can in the coming days.

Long story short - this will be my last post for a while. Bitter sweet for us all (I hope). I miss the blog when I am away from it, but I will come back with lots of new material and some old, that I have prepared ahead. I am not going to completely unplug. I will, as always, be updating my IG feed (follow us at user name Chasing_Hazel) AND I will still be posting pics and small updates via our Chasing Hazel Facebook page (jump on over and give it a "like").

Hope you all enjoy this read. It's a long one so you may want to do it in parts. I put my heart on the line with this one.

Can't wait to share our new little girl with all of you...Thank you so much for your support, your love and your interest in our little family.

Leaving you all with much love in my heart.

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"Did you guys know?"

A very common question that we’ve been asked since the birth of our daughter, Hazel. Down Syndrome - really? Trisomy 21? How could that be?

Yes we did – Wait (pause for dramatic effect) Did we?

Well, that’s the simple answer. Right? It makes perfect sense.

However, the full story is not simple. It is painful, long and feels like the pieces took a very long time to fall into place. The happy ending has already been documented and continues to flourish but for a long time it seemed unlikely that the end was near and the last thing it seemed was happy.

I hope that after reading this story you are able to identify and relate to 2 people who overcame fears, learned how to truly accept what is, and who were completely vulnerable to what the universe had hidden up its sleeve. I also wish that through this story, you might gain empathy for others that have had to surrender themselves to a universal plan that was far beyond anything they could ever have imagined or controlled.

By living this story, I have realized that life has a way of providing the experiences that we NEED to make us more compassionate people. More importantly, it usually has little to do with our own perceptions and ideals about what will help us along. Indeed it is what will enlighten and empower us, we just have to accept it for what it is.

In the end, it all happens just as it is supposed to.

Happy reading!

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As I sat down and tried to write this some months ago, I found that it presented more challenges than I expected. It became painfully obvious that I was having a hard time separating my fertility story, from my pregnancy story, from Hazel’s birth story. I was not ready to revisit the fertility battle, nor was I ready to recollect and explain my pregnancy in detail. Advice was desperately needed. I was determined to get this birth story out there somehow. The advice I received to help me get this process started was, that all of those experiences do not necessarily have to go together and form one story. I could dissect each individual part and write what I felt I could handle and relive again. Turns out that I do revisit the pregnancy in some detail.

Mostly, this is a birth story.

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