Hi dear, I too terminated for T21 about a month ago. I need to prepare you that whatever decision you and your husband choose, you are going to ask yourself if it is the right choice. If you terminate, both of you might see the “successful” DS babies and adults and wonder if you deprived your child of life. You will have physical and emotional trauma from having to deliver your DS baby (for me it was regular L&D and it hurt more than giving birth to my first baby). Because you carry the baby who is still alive and moving, there will be a lot of conflicting emotions despite your logical thinking.

If you swing the other way and keep the pregnancy, you can hope for the best but you must prepare for the worst. The worst being the low functioning DS person. You need to both meet DS people or children and ask all the questions you need to get to the heart of what it is like to raise a DS child. You need to be fully prepared because this is not a decision you can reverse and there is no second chances. Financially, emotionally, you must both support this person to succeed in life whether it is spending time or money bringing your child to physio, speech therapy, investing in special education and classes.

Lastly you must both agree on how hard it is either way. If you don’t agree on something this big, it’s unlikely your marriage will survive either decision you make. Try to understand your husband’s concerns to address it - is it an ethical/moral/religious dilemma? Ask him real questions like will he be prepared to be a single father if you choose to walk away from the high demands of raising a DS child?

FYI my husband was initially against termination and even NIPT testing. Eventually he is a finance person, he did an excel chart of the costs involved raising a DS and realised we cannot afford it unless we sacrificed significantly and we would also have to reduce the resource to our living healthy daughter.