Ligament laxity, illustrated

Ligament laxity simply means that your ligaments are loose, or as I like to say about Emma and Ella, they are extra stretchy. Ligament laxity, or even hyperligamentous laxity, is fairly common in people with Down syndrome. This means that those girls can do the splits without stretching and it won't hurt. It can have deleterious orthopedic efforts, but for us it just means that they can get their little bodies into some funny positions that the rest of us can't without killing ourselves!

Case in point:

Here's a short video with a better view of our human pretzel, Ella! Yes, that is my Texas twang recorded for posterity.