I went into labour with our second child in February 1994. We gave birth to a boy. My husband and I already had a girl. So we were very happy to be rounding out our family with his birth.

My husband actually jumped for joy. After all, isn’t it most fathers’ desire to want a boy? We were on top of the world. But our excitement was short lived. Within a few minutes after his birth, we were told our son had Down syndrome. How could this be?

The pregnancy. The labour. The delivery. They were all normal. All uneventful. The typical maternity tests that I had undergone were also normal.

Weren’t babies with Down syndrome born to older mothers? I was only 29 years old. At that age, the chance of me giving birth to a child with Down syndrome was 1 in 800. Those were very low odds.

But there we were. Two young parents with this 1 in 800 chance infant to raise – and with no road map to guide us. At that time, we didn’t have the world wide web to google even the most simplest of questions such as: What is Down syndrome?

After his birth, a social worker in the hospital gave me a binder full of material on the subject. Most of it was doom and gloom: people with Down syndrome have lower levels of intelligence; the majority of them have heart defects; they have a flat face and their eyes are slanted; they will never lead a normal life; and they will likely die young. After reading all of this, I thought that life as I knew it was over. Little did I realize that life had just begun.

Over the past 22 years, we have been on a journey with our son along a road less traveled. This journey has been anything but normal. He is very short. He is of severely low intelligence. He has a flat face, slanted eyes, and several of his adult teeth are missing.

He’s also been diagnosed with Autism. This brings with it other symptoms, such as obsessive compulsive tendencies and severely limited speech. He even puts his clothes on inside out and backwards. In fact, if it were up to him he wouldn’t even wear clothes. Despite all of this, we wouldn’t want him to be any other way!

This is because he’s the most kind, fun-loving, intuitive, and gentle person you’d ever meet. Being him is being human!

I will be chronicling our life’s journey with our son–among a whole host of other topics on disability–on my blog, Disability Matters. We will be posting essential and relevant information about living with a disability. In this way, Disability Matters will be a source of common unity: a community wherein we can share and benefit from our experiences of life with a disability. I hope you will tune in, turn on, and most of all, share your stories about life with a disability.