In the Links section there are links to 2 short Down Syndrome video clips that we saw this Saturday at a Down Syndrome Speech and Communication Symposium that Chad and I went to in Denver. I thought I would share the links if anyone is interested. We had a good time at the day-long conference. We learned about speech and communication difficulties associated with DS, and I have a few ideas I will try to implement. But the biggest blessing was meeting other parents. There were close to 200 parents there. Since we took Jesse with us for the day, quite a few people came up to us and said "I remember those days of having oxygen." So we got to hear their experiences. One cute little 2 year old boy had a very similar story to Jesse - he also had surgery performed by Dr. Mitchell, but he was 5 1/2 months old and they knew he had developed pulmonary hypertension. He had a cardiac arrest and was in the hospital a month. But now at 2 he is off the oxygen, but still has it when sick or sometimes at night, and is still taking Sildenafil. It was good to hear from others who no longer need oxygen. Maybe someday Jesse won't either. I did see 2 babies that were on oxygen and visited with them a little. I think we will try to go to some more DS functions, as the support was encouraging. Jesse's speech therapist and occupational therapist also attended the conference on Friday (the day for "professionals" to attend) so I look forward to discussing with them what they learned.
I hope you all enjoy the new pictures - Jesse's 1 year portraits taken at J.C. Penneys. I have included a couple pictures and a slide show of all the portraits. They were all so good that I couldn't decide which ones to buy, so I bought the entire CD with the copyright so that we would have them all!
Love,
Kristan
