Choosing Naia: A Family's Journey »

Mitchell Zuckoff spent more than a decade as an award-winning writer for the Boston Globe and now teaches journalism at Boston University. He is the coauthor of Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders. Zuckoff lives near Boston with his wife, Boston Globe photographer Suzanne Kreiter, and their two daughters.

A dramatic and carefully detailed account of one family's journey through the maze of genetic counseling, medical technology, and disability rights; destined to become required reading for anyone touched by any of these issues.

Publishers Weekly

For a series of Boston Globe articles in 1999, reporter Zuckoff interviewed Greg and Tierney Fairchild, a happily married, interracial professional couple who went for the usual prenatal screenings and came away with some very bad news: the fetus carried a major heart defect that could signal Down syndrome. Zuckoff's compassionate and informative medical cliff-hanger draws on extensive interviews with the Fairchilds, their families, friends and medical practitioners, as well as broad research into the history and science of issues related to the developmentally disabled. The story opens with Tierney's joyous "positive" result on the home pregnancy test. All is going well until, during a routine ultrasound, a doctor declares, "I think we have a problem here." More tests confirm the Down syndrome diagnosis. Up against Connecticut's 24-week deadline for elective abortions, the couple struggles with complicated ethical and practical concerns, since the newborn would have to undergo major open-heart surgery and face lifelong retardation, in addition to other medical problems. In the end, they decide this will simply be one more challenge they'll face together. After Naia's birth, the Fairchilds struggle to keep her alive and fight to strengthen her for heart surgery, while working to develop her social and mental skills to the best of her abilities, which turn out to be great indeed. While Zuckoff's focus stays on the couple, he broadens the usefulness of their story with asides on the history of the treatment of retardation, including the legal and medical issues such cases raise, with endnotes detailing his sources and an appendix listing resources for people needing further guidance. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Prologue




Part I

1.
"Don't worry, Mom. Everything will be fine."

2.
"If you are going to cry, you cry later. It blinds your eyes."

3.
"I'm just so sick of having to deal with discrimination."

4.
"The miracle you pray for might not be the miracle you receive."

5.
"I'm really sorry to have to tell you this."

6.
"What do people usually do?"

7.
"This child will cause trauma and tragedy from the first breath."

8.
"So, you're just going to go with the abortionist?"

9.
"No problem."

10.

"There's nothing to be sorry about. I'm not sorry."

PART II

11.


"I can't remember the last time the baby kicked."

12:


"We don't have more time."

13:


"Hello sweet baby. Hello."

14:


"We had to give her the chance to make it."

15:


"What do the other nine people know that we don't?"

16:


"She's not pink."

17:


"I didn't get my kiss from Naia this morning."

18:


"It's like her birth, when she didn't cry."

19:


"Naia is a miracle just as she is."

20:


"DA-DA!"

PART III

21:


"We have the encyclopedia, but we don't have Hamlet."

22:


"You kind of know you can live through it."

23:


"Naia! Come back!"

24:


"Your family is always there for you."

25:


"I think we should talk about it more."


Appendix: Down Syndrome, Birth Defects, and Prenatal Testing Resources

Author's Note

Sources

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments