All sense of control is gone. Your life is spiraling and you have no way to get off this hideous ride. Either through an early screening or early problems, or possibly via ultrasound, you have been told that your “fetus” isn’t compatible with life. But, wait. Someone may propose a way out. Someone may offer you the chance to take back control of your life.
You might be inclined to take control of the day you must say goodbye to your baby. Let’s ignore the false positive possibility of the screening, and assume you have a child who will truly die within moments, hours, or days of live birth, if he makes it to birth. The grief of holding your child in your arms and then watching him take his last breath is something that brings indescribable sorrow and pain. That’s the truth. But, the bigger truth is that although my pain is immeasurable and my heart breaks many times a day wishing to hold him again, I do not live with the regret of wondering if I should have carried him to birth.
I can speak about this not in the abstract but in the reality of having had to make a major decision, a decision that some would call murder. 14 months before Jedidiah was born and died, I had a tubal pregnancy, one that was causing so much pain and internal bleeding that I couldn’t have someone sit with me because their movements on the other side of the couch caused the pain to become almost unbearable. By the time I realized that my pain was due to a life growing inside me, I knew that something was very wrong. It was a Friday, the first Friday of many painful Fridays in the next 14 months. I had to make the decision to have surgery to save my life and end my child’s (which, yes, would have ended in death either way), or wait until the baby had died within me, which may not have come until I had already died myself.
I don’t write all that to justify to you my decision. I write all that to say that no matter how I justify that decision, I live not only with the grief of never holding my little one, never feeling her wiggle inside me, but also with the agonizing guilt of having ended her life. It doesn’t matter who agrees with me and who doesn’t. I alone live with the guilt and regret.
If your life is not in danger, I beg you to consider carrying your son or daughter to birth, or until his or her natural death. Please, I do not write that lightly. I know the pain of saying goodbye to your living, breathing, dying child, but I also know the endless joy of sensing him move inside, of learning his wake/sleep patterns in utero, of holding him, of caressing his skin, of seeing lives changed because of his short, sweet, precious life. Don’t miss out on that joy because of fear of the grief. The trade-off isn’t worth it.
PLEASE NOTE: If you choose abortion, please know that I still love you. My personal beliefs aside, the moment you saw a positive sign on that pregnancy test, your life was forever changed no matter how the pregnancy ends. There are support groups and closed forums for mothers who choose abortion. If I can remember which sites those were on, I will send them to you if you ask. **Please do not shut out the grieving process or allow cruel people to keep you from grieving the loss of your baby.**
We are Jedidiah. 