Ms Aileen O'Donovan:

We had a slightly different start to our journey with our child with Down's syndrome. Jack was born about two weeks early and was not diagnosed at birth. He was about 11 to 12 weeks old when he was diagnosed. He was born very healthy, and while he was a bit small, he had good muscle tone, so the doctors were not really looking for any issues. We were at home at about eight weeks and his older brother asked whether Jack had Down's syndrome. We said he just looked the way he did, although the question had kind of been in our heads. He then became a bit unwell after his first vaccinations with the GP. I work with the GP, so I went to her the following day. I sat there saying "Well" and she sat there saying "Well", and when I asked whether my child had Down's syndrome, she said she thought he did.

We went to the hospital that day purely because he was unwell and we met the paediatrician. She took bloods the following week and that is how we got a diagnosis, which we got on Wednesday. When we left the hospital, we were a bit shell shocked. We were not totally unprepared because Barry has a nephew with Down's syndrome so we were aware of some of the things that go with having a child with Down's syndrome. I rang my GP, who is also my boss, and told her that we have a diagnosis now. The following Monday, we had services in our kitchen. We were inundated with weekly services until 2013. We had two years of amazing services and then the changeover happened. We had a very different start to our journey, but thankfully our services were good at the start.