By Jessica Easthope
Stand-up comedian Keith Alberstadt makes people laugh and smile for a living. These days, he gets that joy back tenfold at home.
“The negative messaging and the jokes and whatever, I’m going to use my platform to give people the other view, the positive messaging of what it’s like having somebody with Down Syndrome in your life,” he tells Currents News.
Keith and his wife Leslie live in Bloomfield, New Jersey with their three kids: four- year-old Eleanor, three- year-old Eileen and one- year-old Joseph. When Leslie was 20 weeks pregnant with Eileen, she got a terrifying call.
“There was just doom and gloom. She still said the term ‘termination’ twice in that phone call. The phone call was less than five minutes. It’s just… it was sad,” Leslie recalls.
Before Eileen was born, her Down Syndrome diagnosis left Keith and Leslie with a lot of questions.
“One thing that I learned ever since the diagnosis was, how much to trust God,” he says.
“God knows what he’s doing, and she’s so perfect with Down Syndrome,” adds Leslie.
Just shy of four months old, Eileen had heart surgery. But today she’s thriving and competing with Keith for funniest member of the family. He says he’s happy to take second place.
“Once we had a daughter with Down Syndrome, we became advocates. And it became something that I wanted to talk about on stage,” he explains.
“Here there’s this seed planted, and with Keith’s comedy, if you meet Eileen and then you get a prenatal diagnosis later on, you’re gonna think of Eileen,” Leslie says of her husband’s work.
As Eileen grows so does Leslie and Keith’s advocacy, not only for their daughter but for every child whose life has been undervalued.
“Let’s give the parents resources earlier,” Leslie suggests, offering a different perspective: “Congratulations, I hear your child has Down Syndrome. Congratulations,”
That way, when Keith steps on stage he knows Down Syndrome has made his heart and his platform larger, and that’s no joke.