A busy mom with three kids learned the hard way that her three children tested positive for trisomy 21, more commonly known as Down Syndrome. Now, mother Ashley Zambelli is scrambling to take care of her three little ones, who all have special needs, only to learn that she has been dealing with the same challenge all her life. That’s right – after giving birth to three children with Down Syndrome, Ashley came to realize that she had the condition, too.
Ashley frequently creates content for the Chinese-owned and -operated social media platform TikTok. In a tell-all video, Ashley explains that her third child had tested positive for the specific gene mutation that causes Down syndrome. After all three of her children tested positive for the gene mutation, Ashley decided to get herself tested for it as well, thinking it was a long shot. However, the test came back with decisive evidence to suggest that Ashley also has Down syndrome and has been giving birth to children who were at high risk of developing the disease themselves.
Ashley’s three young girls are three young girls, Lillian, Evelyn, and Katherine.
“Our oldest daughter Lillian has trisomy 21, and we can’t wait to see [her and her sibling] grow up together, including our second daughter, Evelyn, who does not have Down syndrome,” Mom said. “We are also very excited to see the person Evelyn grows to become since there’s just something special about having siblings with Down syndrome.”
In a series of videos uploaded to the Chinese video-sharing platform, Ashley wrote, “My geneticist SHOCKED I’m having a baby with trisomy 21 for the 3rd time.”
In her TikTok videos, Ashley explains that she is a busy mother of three little ones. Her first two children were the first of her babies to test positive for the gene mutation associated with Down syndrome or trisomy 21. She then got pregnant a third time, and that unborn baby tested positive for the same gene mutation. Unfortunately, that pregnancy ended in a loss, and the baby did not come into the world. However, Ashley’s geneticist found it so strange that she had created three children, all with Down syndrome, that she was prompted to get herself checked out as a result. And the news that she also had Down syndrome, albeit a mild version, shocked her to her core.
“Finding out I was pregnant with another baby that has trisomy 21 was definitely a shock to all of us,” Zambelli tells PEOPLE exclusively. “It’s not unheard of to conceive one to two since Down syndrome is, as far as we know, usually caused by a randomly failed separation of chromosomes during mitosis. But to have more than one or two? That’s when this might not be a ‘random’ mutation.”
The news that Ashley also had Down syndrome explained a lot to her.
“When I got the call [with the diagnosis], I was happy! I’ve always had some miscellaneous complications throughout my life that never made sense to doctors, but now they do,” Zambelli tells PEOPLE.