For the Love of Oscar – Sarah Roberts Book Review

Being a Down Syndrome advocate is a huge part of my life and it has been a huge part of the journey of my blog. When Rory was born, we were thrown in at the deep end and over the last 4 years, we have grown so much as a family and been on this wild adventure that is learning all about a life that includes Down Syndrome. From the very beginning, we started to follow a blog called Don’t Be Sorry . Now Sarah, the wonderful mummy behind the blog, has released her own book and this is what I think!

This is the first book about someone else’s life involving Down syndrome that I have read and I didn’t know what to expect. Reading about someone else’s experience of having a loved one with DS creates all kinds of emotions and that is really hard to explain. When Rory was born, we were thrown in at the deep end and we knew nothing about Down Syndrome and while reading, For the Love of Oscar, it was incredible to find that all the emotions that we felt as a family are the same ones that Sarah and her family also felt when they were thrown in the same deep end too.

It wasn’t even just the Down Syndrome diagnosis that connect with me. As a mummy who has experienced an emergency C-section, I felt emotion reading about Sarah’s experience of one too. It is such an amazing feeling to know that you are not alone and that other people feel the same or similar emotions that what you felt about an experience in your life.

Now, I am a sibling and not a parent to a child with DS but I still connected 100% with Sarah’s book. There was tears and laugher as I read it. To read about Oscar’s adventures and being able to compare them to Rory’s and to know that certain things are completely ‘normal’. I don’t like that word but For the Love of Oscar, made our life and the experiences that we have had feel like the norm. The struggles and the times where you just put your head in your hands and think that life is testing you are ‘normal’ and in some way, they come with the DS diagnosis. I guess that is us connecting with the book and at some points, I honestly thought that I was reading a book on my family and our life.

It was at that point too that I realised that this book could change lives of parents and families who have just received the DS diagnosis or families at are struggling or need some reassurance at some point. Sarah’s blog has been a life line for families and her book is going to be no different. At the end of every chapter, she includes comments from her blog and in the middle of the book, she has included family photos. A lovely personal touch that will help families connect with the book even more.

I don’t know if it was because I was heavily pregnant at the time of reading this book but it brought a tear to my eye when I realised that the book also has 21 chapters. 21, being a big number when it comes to Down Syndrome.

For the Love of Oscar is an incredible book and I couldn’t put it down after I started reading it. It is definitely one that I would recommend to anyone, Down Syndrome diagnosis or not!

It is available from Amazon now!