These zealous women didn’t know me, or the pain I was going through. Didn’t know that I was already a mother who desperately wanted another child. Didn’t know my fetus wasn’t healthy. Didn’t know I was a medical professional who of course understood her alternatives.
By Donna My son was my long awaited journey into motherhood. He was my lifeline the day my brother died and I thought the world was ending. He was the glimmer of hope that was offered to family members that horrible week that we had four family members die. He was my everything, and then he was gone. At the end of September 2005, my husband and I found out that we were expecting a child. We were excited to finally start a family. The following week my brother and cousin were killed in a car wreck, then my aunt died from cancer, and my […]
Anonymous It took almost two years to conceive our first child, Cade. We had him after seven rounds of clomid and one IUI. I got pregnant with Elise the month after I stopped nursing Cade, and the first time after my period came back. It was so easy. I was considered very low risk for everything and didn’t have my first ultrasound until 20 weeks. I was nervous, but also basking in how “normal” this pregnancy was. I got to celebrate and get nervous about how close in age my children would be (22 months). I was a lot sicker than I was with Cade, and I […]
By Heather I am not ready to talk about my baby yet, and all the things that went wrong, but I am ready for others who have to make that terrifying decision to know what I wish I had known. I was 28 weeks pregnant, much too far along to terminate my pregnancy my home state. I’d never even considered the politics and how they would embed themselves so deeply into my own life. I think it is horrible that when families are told that their baby has a condition that is incompatible with life—that they most likely will die in utero, but if not, live only […]
My husband and I weren’t yet trying for number three, but we always felt there would be one more baby for us. God had just decided it would be sooner than we’d thought. Little did we know where this was going to lead. My first trimester was met with extreme nausea and bleeding. Every time I had a heavy bleeding episode, I would think, This is it, this baby isn’t going to make it. My kind and understanding OB brought me in twice a week to see my baby, to let me know she was alive and kicking. Each time I saw her, I stared in […]
By Cynthia E. ER, Emergency Surgery & Anger Editor’s note: This part three of a four-part series. It is a brave and unflinchingly honest story involving a rare medical emergency during a clinic D&E, and we applaud the author for her courage in sharing it, and offer our condolences on the loss of her baby and her fertility. The ambulance arrived and they asked if I could move to the gurney. I asked the nurse. Can I? They moved me to the gurney and put me in the ambulance. I could see judgment in the paramedic’s eye. One of those looks like, if you hadn’t been such a bad person, […]
By Cynthia E. Clinic, Protesters & Disaster Editor’s note: This part two of a four-part series. It is a brave and unflinchingly honest story involving a rare medical emergency during a clinic D&E, and we applaud the author for her courage in sharing it, and offer our condolences on the loss of her baby and her fertility. The clinic warned me that there would be protesters but that they could not come onto the property. We nearly struck one when we were pulling onto the premises, and realized they were deliberately walking back and forth across the driveway, trying to block it. In the parking lot a lady yelled at us. […]