moral question: would you have more kids?

[SandrA9810]

we've known since we were kids we could have a kid like my brother. But my mother chose to be oblivious to how my brother wound up with syndrome G. And he's the first with a severe handicap. My sister's oldest was not planned, and like I said, the father ditched early in the pregnancy. And of course he wasn't diagnosed till he was about 2. But this all happened prior to the next child. She was tested and knew she was a carrier. Not that his gene some how got mutated with no reason.

I believe that there's a possibility for them to be self functioning adults. But i don't see the attention given. And how do you give that attention with 6 of them?? I feel sorry for the fourth one too, cause she is normal. Is she gonna resent her mother, or wind up like her? Is her life gonna be put on the back burner because the other ones still act like 3yr olds??

 

[Colleen27]

For me, it would depend on the seriousness of the disorder and the probability of passing it along. My family has its fair share of genetic demons - dyslexia, adult-onset diabetes that can't be avoided through healthy living/weight control, ADHD, Alzheimers - but none of those things preclude a normal, fairly healthy, rewarding life. Something more serious, particularly issues that mean lifelong impairment, pain, or early death, would make me think twice about whether to have children at all.

 

[Arielle22]

If I had a child who required a lot of care and specialized attention, I would not have another child. Not necessarily because I was afraid of future children having the same condition but because I would not be able to give the the same attention as the older sibling.

My nephew was born at 26 weeks. Due to problems in utero he did not receive proper nutrition and was under 2 lbs when born. It was touch and go for a long time and he spent 133 days in the hospital. He is 16 months old and had a G tube and multiple doctor appointments.

My sister would like another child but will not until my nephew is at a point where he doesn't need such intense care. She will also be tested prior to another pregnancy to make sure the issues were a chance occurrence and not reoccuring. If the issues are reoccurring she will not have more children.

 

[NY Disney fan]

This thread reminds me: on last week's America's Got Talent there were two sisters who sang. Both sisters had cystic fibrosis ( a wicked disease if you ask me). Turns out, that their parents had 4 children and ALL of them had cystic fibrosis. I'm like damn, you had 4 kids knowing they will not live past the age of 25-30?

 

[AshleyW]

This thread reminds me: on last week's America's Got Talent there were two sisters who sang. Both sisters had cystic fibrosis ( a wicked disease if you ask me). Turns out, that their parents had 4 children and ALL of them had cystic fibrosis. I'm like damn, you had 4 kids knowing they will not live past the age of 25-30?

I saw that too!! I had a really hard time seeing that. One of my best friends had CF and died at 27 -- he was an only child. Seeing what he and his family and friends went through - I cannot imagine choosing to have 4 kids with CF, especially after the first 1 or 2 were born with it.

 

[CF'er]

Well.... if you look at my user name..... I have CF myself. In itself it's not a death sentence. I am 43, have 2 bio kids (3 counting my son who died) and work full time. But saying all that I did NOT want my kids to have it. There is no saying how severe their disease might be. Also, the physical and financial strain on the rest of us. Plus the guilt of watching a child suffer when I could have prevented it.

But this is me and my families choice. You have to do what's right for you.

 

[daughtersrus]

If you knew you had a genetic mental disorder (like autism), would you have more kids without trying to prevent the disorder from passing on??

I know there are a few mom's on here of disabled kids, and all of them would say they wouldn't change a thing about their child, that they love them no matter what. But I can't say I've met a mother of more than one genetically disabled kid (unless they adopted them). And i'm not talking about kids that wind up handicap because of something happening at birth time.

I personally don't want to have any biological kids because I know the risk I have of having disabled kids. I don't want to make their life any harder, or worry about their care when I can no longer care for them.

I'm the mom of three. My youngest has a very rare genetic disease. During our search for answers, the geneticist told us that it's estimated that every human carries approx 10-30 disease causing recessive genes. That means that if their partner also carries the same recessive gene, each pregnancy has a 25% chance of having the disease, 50% chance of being a carrier and 25% change of being a non-carrier.

For us, it took over 7 years of actively searching for a diagnosis. During this time, all three of us (DD, DH and myself) had "normal" chromosome and genetic testing. Most of the diseases will not show up on testing even though they are genetic. The only way we got the answer was because the 5th geneticist suspected that the disease fell into a particular category (lysosomal storage diseases) so he send her sample to a specialist for testing.

Our older girls have a 50% risk of being a carrier but because it's so rare, their chances are not any greater than anyone else for having a child with the disease since their partner would also have to be a carrier.

We looked into getting them tested to see if they are carriers, but the doctors (and insurance) would not agree to do it. They said that it's an ethical decision that they should be able to make when they are adults (both are over 18 now and neither has been tested).

To answer the original question, we always wanted 3 children so for us, there really wasn't a decision to be made as we had our 3.

 

[cm8]

Autism is a bad example to use since they don't actually know if it is genetic. My son is autistic. My DD is the younger one and completely healthy. When having either child, autism was not what I worried about. My nephew has PKU, a genetic disorder. We know that the family has the gene to pass it on. I still had kids. If you always don't do something because of the what if, then you would never do anything at all. Don't leave the house today, you might get hit by a car. See....you would never leave the house. I think you have to take into account what you might pass on and what the quality of life would be for the child. I watch DD for signs of autism like crazy but she doesn't show any. Thankfully, DS is on the high end of the spectrum and is very high functioning. We knew it was a possibility with DD too.

, I really agree with your statement!