My Head Is SPINNING!

Spinning, I tell ya! Of all the What did you just say? moments this past week has had, tonight's offering was by far, certainly the whopper. And it came from the mouth of My Beloved. Yup. The Dear Daddy himself, thank you.

Let me explain. We went out to get our tree tonight. It's up and waiting to "settle" it's branches a bit before the kids tear into it first thing tomorrow morning. After some grub and the usual sleepy time ritual, along with night time meds, The Olders were fast asleep. Jack, as is par for Jack in the later hours of the day, was in full swing with his bad self, rolling, rocking, jabbering, playing and having a grand old time on the floor with his toys. The Beloved asks, "Are you disappointed he wasn't a girl?" So I say that I'd initially really wanted a girl, but we got a boy and now that he's here, he's good. He's really, really good! I love my boy! I sit down on the floor next to him to play. And I said something about how girls with Ds are much more fertile than boys with Ds, so all in all, I'm glad that he's a boy. And that's when it happened. The Beloved asked, "Why? Do you think it would be bad if he had a baby? What are the chances that he'd get a baby just like him?" In my ignorance I said that with his kind of Ds it was almost certain that any baby he had would also have Ds. I have since researched more carefully, since I can't sleep yet even hours after that bombshell, and I stand corrected. The search results have not lent me any comfort.

I was flummoxed by the here-to-fore Voice of Reason having so very recently taken leave of his senses that I really didn't know what to say. Do you think it would be a good thing? To which he said, "Think about it. We've had so much fun with him, maybe he could have a little baby like him some day to love that would make him really happy!" Really? I ask. So if Jack has a baby when we're 75, that means we get to die when? When we're 135? Because if Jack has a baby, we're going to be starting all over again with a newborn at an even riper old age! To which The Newly Insane responded, "Look at him. He's got it going on. He's smart. He's better off already than some babies we've met. You don't think he'd know how to love a baby and take care of it?" He further went on to say that Jack would be capable of caring for himself and a wife one day, why not a little baby too. "And we can play with it and have fun with it and love it and spoil it rotten and send it home!"

S-P-I-N-N-N-N-N-N-I-N-G Who is this man? We had this discussion. In the middle days of my pregnancy with Jack I'd read a statistic the 70% of girls with Ds were fertile but that only 12% of males with Ds were capable of reproducing. My numbers may have been off, because it was all about the numbers before we had Jack in our arms, but we had both agreed that this baby having babies was not a good thing.

Okay, so now that I've snuck out of bed at 2:12 in the morning to research, the stress/relief ratio is about 50/50. According to most sites, males with Down syndrome can and do have babies with the typical 46 chromosomes, as do women with Down syndrome. What is uncertain, in the specific case of a man with typical generic plain old trisomy 21 who fathered a typically chromosomed baby, is if the Mother of this baby also had Down syndrome or not. The study didn't say. Neither did I find that of the women with Down syndrome who gave birth to babies with 46 chromosomes, were they fathered by men with Ds. Again, no information.

And there's the rub. What if Jack wants to marry and have babies? What if Jack does marry and have babies? What if Jack wants to have babies, but either he or his wife are unable? And if they are able, and do, are her parents going to come after us in the middle of the night with butcher's knives for encouraging our developmentally challenged children to reproduce? And what of the baby, or babies? Should we hope and pray for a typically chromosomed baby or one like Jack and his wife? Would a baby with Down syndrome be easier to care for than a typical baby? Would Jack and his wife be capable of caring for a typical baby? I don't know the answers to these questions. I shouldn't need to know the answers to these questions!

In November I'd planned on writing a sappy post called Gratitude about how The Beloved shines with Jack. It never happened, and I know I've been slim on pictures. But dang it, if life could just throw a few curve balls (Or basketballs!) somewhere else for a few minutes, I could get back to posting pictures! So the post about Gratitude isn't going to happen. I've said it all here. The Beloved fully believes in Jack, and as far as his Daddy is concerned, the sky is the limit for Jack. That's all I've got to say about it. Which is not to be construed as me being on board with Jack having babies. The jury will be out for a long time on that one.