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Background: Being told that their child has Down’s syndrome in the hospital after giving birth can be a profound and stressful life experience for parents. Parents’ experiences of the communication with healthcare personnel can therefore be crucial to how they deal with their emotional responses in the post-natal period and can impact on the parent-child interaction. Objective: The purpose of the article is to disseminate knowledge about the experiences of parents of children with Down’s syndrome in terms of the communication with hospital healthcare personnel in the post-natal period. Furthermore, we want to show how such communication impacts on how parents deal with their own emotional responses. Method: The study has a qualitative design with a phenomenological and narrative approach. We conducted narrative in-depth interviews with eight biological parents of children with Down’s syndrome aged between two and ten years. None of the parents knew that the child had Down’s syndrome before giving birth. The collected data was analysed using a narrative analysis method. Results: Through the main narrative of ‘not being seen as a whole person’, the parents spoke about their sense of abandonment, feeling excluded from communications, being referred to a computer to find information about the diagnosis of their child, and being talked to by the healthcare personnel in a way they found burdensome. In contrast, the parents recounted through the narrative of ‘being a fellow human being’ specific situations where the healthcare personnel’s attitude helped them to feel that both they and their child were treated as fellow human beings. Conclusion: The study indicates that the communication with healthcare personnel in the post-natal period has a strong emotional impact on parents. The study also suggests that parents need a style of communication that makes them feel that their child and their own responses are validated and supported.

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