GiGi’s Impact | Lancaster, PA.

Starting a Playhouse is a labor of love. Just like any grass root effort, opening a Playhouse in your community requires a lot of passion, dedication and help from a lot of hands. However, on that day when your Playhouse opens for the first time, and you see hundreds of people packed into your Playhouse offering to do whatever they can to help make the Playhouse a success – all your hard work will be worth it. Today we are excited to give you a peek into a family who are excited for the opening of GiGi’s Playhouse Lancaster! The start up team is doing a great job building awareness, if you are in the area and would like to learn more please visit them HERE.

Meet Savannah, the youngest member of the Oldhouser family. She is joined by two wonderful brothers Brayden and Everett.

Our journey with Savannah so far is nothing short of wonderful. We love her sweet personality and how she is really starting to interact with her brothers…she adores them and laughs with them often! GiGi’s Playhouse sounds like a wonderful opportunity for us all to continue to learn and grow with our new extended family. We are so excited to see what the future holds!

Savannah will be 1 on June 8th, we found out about Savannah’s trisomy 21 after opting for the first trimester screening. We were excited to have any extra ultrasounds to see our baby, so at first it was just another routine sonogram. When measuring the fluid at the base of baby’s neck, it was in a higher range so we were whisked away to another room to meet with a genetic counselor. The atmosphere for us quickly went from exciting to scary. By all means, our counselors were very professional in educating us on what that could mean. We were told that higher measurements could be an indicator pointing to a host of genetic abnormalities, Down syndrome included, but others much more worrisome and fatal. We both decided to go for further invasive testing that same day so that we had a clear answer as to why they saw some red flags. Within the hour they did a procedure called a cvs where they used a needle to collect a sample from the placenta to send off and get tested. We were told that would give them the most accurate, matter-of fact answer, and also we would find out the gender. Then we had a one week wait of worry. In that time, we talked to our family, read too much online, and worried some more. I think the dominating feeling that week was just fear of losing our baby. The day we had that ultrasound, she was sucking her thumb! Exactly one week later we were on speaker phone with our genetic counselor, and she said that there was a reason for their suspicion, our baby did in fact have trisomy 21.

I remember clearly that I was a little scared, but my husband looked devastated. The only other thing I could think of asking our counselor was, “but you know the gender right?” I asked her if it was a girl, and she confirmed that yes, we will have a baby girl!!

After that phone call, we talked about a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. I was more okay about this than I thought I would be. I think I was just so relieved to know that it wasn’t a fatal diagnosis like some people unfortunately go through. I cannot even imagine.  My husband had some valid concerns, and some of them were how would it affect our finances? He is a successful small business owner and worried it could somehow put us at risk for failure. Also, how would it affect our other two boys? Will they still get enough from us if we’re required to spend more time with their sister and would that be unfair to them? We both quickly agreed that no matter what, we absolutely would not terminate the pregnancy.  Finances will be fine, and as far as our boys go, it will be a learning experience for them, us all and hopefully just be another thing that molds them into awesome people.

As parents, it is a priceless feeling to have such a great network and support system around that this community gives. Everybody that we have met so far has been so welcoming. It’s a great feeling being around others who have been in your shoes at one point or another and are graciously accepting. We have said before that it really does seem like we are in a secret little club that we are lucky to be in.

Some of the ways Savannah gives her #bestofall is in her sweet personality.  It took her a bit longer than her brothers to smile, but now that she does, she gives them away freely.  We will take all that she’s willing to give! The biggest way that Savannah surprised people is by the fact that she took right to breastfeeding.  We knew before birth that she would undergo surgery for duodenal atresia (an intestinal obstruction) and wouldn’t be able to eat by mouth until some recovery time had passed. I had nursed both of her brothers, so this was really something that I wanted to do, but had heard lots of mixed stories on breastfeeding a baby with down syndrome. Just over a week after surgery, she was ready to have some milk. I had been pumping and storing up a supply for her since birth and she took her first bottle okay. At her next feeding, her NICU nurse eagerly supported me in nursing her. Savannah did great! She latched on with no problem and although she didn’t nurse too long, she did an excellent job. I still think of that moment often. That NICU nurse Collete at Penn State Hershey Medical center was incredibly encouraging, and was the first person to make me realize that it is a rare thing to see a baby with downs syndrome nurse so well. She was not the last medical professional to tell me the same thing. And at almost a year old, she is a thriving little girl who is on her way to eating soft table foods, while still nursing like a champ.

Thank you Lauren for sharing you beautiful girl with the GiGi’s family, we are so excited ot see Savannah grown, learn & achieve!

If you would like more information on starting a GiGi’s Playhouse in your community please visit us HERE