Continuing your Pregnancy with a diagnosis of "Incompatable With Life."

I want to know more stories of people who chose to continue pregnancies and why so I’m sharing my perspective.  If you want to share yours, that’s awesome.  If you want to have a political argument, go somewhere else.  Here is my reason I chose life.

Before I had any idea I’d have so many issues with pregnancy I thought abortions only happened when someone was raped or when a teenager or selfish career woman chose to put themselves first.  I thought this because that is all you find when you do research.  You don’t hear stories about why women chose life or chose abortions unless they were in some way unprepared to deal with caring for a new life.

In passing I’d heard that sometimes women experience stillbirths but they are so rare that you shouldn’t worry about them.  I thought that was something that happens to other women; the rare freak thrown into society.  I’ve always known I was a freak, just not a freak of nature.

When I found out my unborn baby was going to die from a laundry list of birth defects I had no idea how to react.  I was too shocked to tell the doctor on the first day but I would never choose abortion.  I know that now with certainty.  Before that day abortion was always hypothetical.  I can say with certainty that I would die before I would have one because I’ve often daydreamed I have the opportunity to give up my life to save my baby but that’s not reality.  My views have changed.  I know what empathy really is now. 

There are other freaks of nature out there so why don’t the pro-choice or pro-life people talk about our stories?  The closest I’ve ever heard someone coming to discuss someone like me is on the pro-choice side.  I’ve heard pro-women groups and people discussing what happens when you receive a diagnosis of, “incompatible with life.”  It’s a no-brainer.  Of course you would get an abortion.  Who wants to go through 9 months of carrying a baby who’s fated to die?

It’s a little harder to tackle that one and be pro-life.  I can’t stand in front of a women going through that kind of pain and tell them they have to choose life.  That is the real issue.  They want this baby and love this baby.  They are suffering and you know there is nothing you can do.  There is no pain management for the unborn.  There is only perinatal hospice to assure you that they will rest easy, if you are lucky enough to have a perinatal hospice.  So, you have the pro-lifers telling you a baby can feel pain as early as 8 weeks and you have a diagnosis that sounds painful.  Your doctor tries to console you by telling you they can’t feel pain but that isn’t what all the pro-life groups are showing you.  Who do you believe? 

It’s a harder road to choose death.  You want to do what’s best for your child.  I can easily see how you can choose abortion.  It is so glossed over.  I get the impression you could easily be shunned by both societies.  If you have an abortion you are not eligible for most baby loss support groups.  If you have an abortion the idea is that you grieve less and start over.  You need the brand of support from people who believe life begins at conception.  You try to get it from people who don’t.  I heard a heartbreaking story from a woman years ago who was suffering.  She aborted her wanted baby and was forced to go to an abortion support group when what she was going through was not what those women were going through.  What she needed was some assurance that she did what was right for her child but no one would give that to her the way she needed.  She heard more about regret and guilt from Christian groups than the grief of having a baby die.

A pitfall to the pro-choice movement is the MISSING Angels Bill.  When someone claims to be pro-woman and they deny the passing of this bill they are hypocrites.  My stillbirth has no place in your politics so get your sexism out of my business.  When this bill is voted down it says to me people are afraid to give me the right to acknowledge my child because it might have the possibility of denying another women her right to choose.  Her right to an abortion is more important than my right to a birth certificate.  32 states have passed the bill and I haven’t once heard someone in the pro-life movement use a birth certificate as a reason to overturn Roe Vs. Wade.  I live in Utah and not my native Illinois when I had my stillbirth so I have my certificate. 

Don’t think that the Christians get off so easy just because I get angry with the pro-choice movement.  They push their morals worse than anyone and they play the “hell” card every time you decide it’s ok to walk away from these choices.  You are separated from God if you can empathize with a women who chose to kill her baby.  My experience is that Christians are the most judgmental of your personal choices.  If there is any group who thinks my sex life is their business it’s them.  They don’t even have to tell you what they think.  They just tell you that they are praying you’ll have a baby and you know what their opinion is.  Some things are not black and white.  Having a genetic issue that would cause stillbirth or miscarriage 99% of the time is a grey area and I have the right to choose if I can handle trying over and over for that 1% shot. 

I took the third path.  I refuse to call myself pro-life or pro-choice because people on both sides have personally offended me.  I stayed pregnant.  I got to know my baby.  I was grieving and went a little crazy but I did the right thing for me.  I don’t regret it.  I’ve heard more women talk about how thankful they were for the time they had with their unborn child than not.  I’m thankful I had the opportunity to give birth and stay pregnant for as long as I did.  I wrote about it and was published in A Gift of Time.  That book is there to help women know they have the right to stay pregnant if they want to.  There doctors may tell them they have no choice but to abort.  Their church may tell them they have no choice but to continue but this book is a guide to help you choose what is best. 

You have to understand that a lot of doctors are so smart with the physical diagnosis that they are socially stupid about the mental effects continuing a pregnancy would have on a woman.  If you can forgive your fellow parishioners’ ignorance you can forgive your doctor.  They assume terminating a pregnancy will be easier on a person psychologically.  That idea assumes that love grows over time.  A mom with a 2 year old can’t love her child as much as a Mom with a 20 year old, right?  Wrong; any idiot can tell you love doesn’t work that way.  I was so bonded with my baby before he was born that I think about him every day.  I think about all my babies every day and will for the rest of my life.  I can’t replace him with another baby any more than I could replace my husband.  If someone dies you feel that grief.

What I wouldn’t have given for just 10 minutes with my children.  But it would never be enough.  I can’t barter with God for time.  I would always want more.  I got what I got.  Now, I’m far enough out from my loss that I can be thankful some people do get days or years with their children.  I can be thankful that people have been pushing for equality even in such an ignorant society.  I hear things in the news about people honoring their stillborn and miscarried babies and I can be in awe over how far we’ve come in women’s rights.  It wasn’t that long ago that your baby would be ripped from your arms before you could ever see them.  Now you can give your baby a bath, take pictures, have family visitations, funerals.  You name it and they will probably consider it.  That is amazing.

I had hope that my babies would defeat the odds but they didn’t.  What I got instead was a gift.  I got them in my life for as long as I could keep them and that is more than a lot of people get.