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Brendan O'Connor: My world fell apart after girl's Down syndrome diagnosis

RTE star Brendan O’Connor has revealed his world went “dark” after discovering his youngest daughter had Down syndrome.

The Saturday Night Show host and wife Sarah were told the news just after Mary’s birth in August, 2010.

The 44-year-old said: “That day it got very dark very quickly and it was dim.

“When I think back now, I see it kind of dim and slightly dark and then I guess the light comes back, probably after six months, a year.”

But Brendan – who also has another six-year-old daughter Anna – was encouraged after a doctor told him and his wife to take Mary home and love her.

The Cork man said: “He said, ‘If you had a sick child, it would affect the child’s development, it would disrupt your family. That’s what sick children do. You don’t have a sick child here. Take her home, love her, she’ll fit into the family perfectly.’

“They do. They fit into the family fine, they don’t disrupt anything. They’re fairly healthy.

“It was the same thing except you feel like you’ve been to a funeral in a way.

“The cliché that people say about it is that that you’re grieving the child you didn’t have.”

Speaking on the Marian Finucane Show, Brendan revealed he now has come to terms with the illness insisting he is “very lucky” to have her.

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