In a column for Salon.com, Helena Holgersson-Shorter writes about The baby who didn’t make it:
By the time we were finally ushered into the ultrasound room my husband and I were engaged in a sotto voce round of bickering — can’t believe you messed up the time/stop ruining this for me — only to be struck silent by the magical appearance of our baby on the screen.
It was another girl. Another girl, even though I’d secretly hoped for a boy, even though everyone felt compelled to tell me they ” felt” it was a boy. I tried to squelch my unreasonable disappointment by concentrating on my daughter as she appeared to me: adorable little hands and feet, a flash of a formative face. But the ultrasound technician wouldn’t stop talking.
“Come back here, you little bugger,” she said, increasing my niggling sense of unease. “Wow, this baby’s an uncooperative one.”
It wasn’t until she finally left to get the doctor that my husband and I began to relax. We wondered which of our beautiful girls this one would resemble: tall and composed Lailah, with her mysterious almond eyes? Free-spirited Lucero, with her wild mane and mischievous grin? Petite Annike, with her delicate features and blond hair? Then the doctor entered.
Then they were dealt a devastating blow when the doctor informed them that their daughter’s heart was not developing properly, there was a legion on her brain, “no evidence of a pinky finger and, sure enough, the amniocentesis results came back positive for Trisomy 18. Her prognosis was “unsurvivable.” The next step? An abortion…at 5 months:
I had to go to a doctor with whom I’d previously had a bad experience — the only OB in the area qualified to do late-term terminations, apparently — and repeatedly paid my absurdly high copay to have seaweed inserted into my cervix, then return starving and dehydrated the next day (no food or drink after midnight, five-months-pregnant lady!) to be further dilated, before rushing off to the hospital to be promptly mishandled, ignored and given insufficient pain medication as I labored in mental and physical anguish for the interminable hours leading up to the medical termination of what would have been our very much loved, and much wanted, fourth daughter.
She goes on to describe the “recovery” process, which included, “Three unwashed weeks of lying in bed; months without food, without appetite.”
How many of us have heard expecting parents say, “as long as he/she is healthy, that’s all that matters, that’s all we really care about”? I’m not saying that shouldn’t be the hope of every parent. But, what if the child is not “healthy”? Why do we give up on life when it does not meet our expectations…when it needs us the most? Give Parents Perinatal Hospice Option Instead of Abortion.
Related: Santorum: Daughter w/ Trisomy 18 “Worth Every Tear”