When Heath White discovered his baby would have Down syndrome he wanted his wife to have an abortion.  But, after she was born his little girl not only changed his life but his way of thinking.  Heath tells his story on Faithit.com in a bid to stop others making the mistake he nearly made.

In a moving video Heath tells of how he wrote a letter to his daughter to confess his true feelings of the moment he discovered she would be born with Down syndrome. He had tried to persuade his wife to abort the child and admits he felt like he was getting “a broken baby”.

The letter begins…..

Dear Paisley, I wanted to take a second to let you know about the emotional roller-coaster you’ve put me through…..

It was a confession letter to a person he had tried to run from but now runs towards.

The letter continues

“I was afraid you’d someday find out how scared and selfish I used to be. The more I thought about it the more I wanted you to know the truth.”

Heath tells how he was a man who had succeeded at everything in life and had expected his child to be perfect too. At school he had been a top athlete and a top student. He went on to study law and then trained to become an Air Force pilot.

Four years after he married his wife became pregnant with their first child and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. One year later they were expecting again – they were hoping for a brother for their first child. But pre-natal tests showed that the child had Down syndrome.

This meant that the baby had an extra chromosome that delays and limits development physically and mentally. This includes speech and language development.

After learning that their child had the condition Heath’s wife tells of how she feared he would leave her and that he would probably want to abort the baby. Her fears were confirmed as he says he tried to make her have an abortion. He admits he was concerned about what people would think and that they would ask what weakness in him had caused it.

His wife describes how that in his eyes “this was not the family he was supposed to have, it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t right.”

In the video Heath says “I’ve got genetically superior genes, I’m a winner with winner’s blood. Learning you’re going to have a child with Down syndrome is like experiencing a death, that’s what I felt like, like I was getting a broken baby. All I could think was why me?”

The turning point came after a few months when he realised and accepted that Paisley was just like any other child – she had changed him.

Heath says: “Nobody knew the way I felt before she was born. If I can help one family, one person, from having to live with the guilt and almost making the mistake I almost made it’s going to be worth the pain that Paisley will feel later in life and knowing the way I felt.”

Down syndrome can affect a child’s development of speech and language in a number of ways. Down syndrome education describes how children with Down syndrome typically have delayed spoken language in relation to their understanding of language which can lead to frustration for the child because of an inability to adequately express themselves. They can show specific difficulties in sentence structure and grammar and difficulties with speech. This language delay can lead to a delay in the child’s learning processes. For more information go to www.dseinternational.org

To watch the video follow the link: http://www.faithit.com/this-guy-writes-a-confession-letter-to-his-down-syndrome-daughter-that-will-break-your-heart-in-100-ways/