This story was written in 2007 when Joyce was 5 years old.
Our family
We have two biological children. The first, our son, was born in 1998. We had no problems getting pregnant and he was born with no complications. (We later had his chromosomes tested and everything is normal.) We decided to add to our family after our son was a year old. I had a few miscarriages and the loss of a partial molar pregnancy (triploidy). Finally, at the end of year 2000, we got pregnant with our daughter.
Pregnancy, Labor, and Delivery
I was 32 years of age when we had our daughter. When we went in for the second trimester, level 2 ultrasound, we found out that we were going to have a girl. We were thrilled. The technician informed us that we needed to come back for another look; because of the way she was turned, they could not get good pictures of the heart. I suspected they saw more, but didn’t know. We went in again and were told that they got good pictures. A few days later we got a call from the OBGyn, saying that they had found something called echogenic foci in the ventricles of the heart, and that this was a soft marker for chromosome abnormality. They set us up to have an amnio and that is how we found out about the Triple X syndrome. We of course were devastated and imagined the worst. They also had a reading from the amnio, that indicated possible spina bifida. They wanted us to come in for another ultrasound, but we did not do it. She was a very still baby in the womb, so I worried everyday that she was going to be stillborn. She was finally delivered by c-section. She was one week overdue and when I went in for induction as she was breech. She was absolutely normal looking in every way. Later, we had her evaluated by a cardiologist. Her heart was also normal. We felt very blessed.
Milestones
Our daughter met all of her milestones on time. She walked at 12 months. She was quiet and slow to talk, so we enrolled her in a year of speech therapy. She potty trained during the day before the age of 3 and at night at the age of 5. She has not started school yet, but she already knows all of her ABCs (Upper & Lower case) and their sounds. She counts. She spells her first and last name and writes her first name. She knows her phone number and address. She rides a two wheeler and scooters. She roller-skates and uses Heelys. She will attend kindergarten, when she turns six. She has also just started swimming without a flotation device. She is 50 percentile for height. She is a typical girl for her age. In fact, she is ahead in most areas compared to where her brother was at the same age.
Emotional Development
She is the typical feminine girl. She does overreact when she doesn’t get her way, but this may not be out of the realm of normal for her age. She also sometimes cries for no reason. It may be when she is over tired. In social settings, she can be a bit over-sensitive. Again, this is well within the realm of normal. Only time will tell. She is young, so I will update more about her as she enters school. We are very sensitive to her needs and try to teach her coping mechanisms, so that she will be able to handle things at school.