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Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks
http://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-an-abortion-at-1781972395Elizabeth (name has been changed to protect her privacy) is 35. She grew up in the South, currently lives in Brooklyn, and has been married for two years. After a previous miscarriage at 10 weeks, she was overjoyed to find herself pregnant for a second time. At 31 weeks, she found out that the baby boy she was carrying wouldn’t be able to breathe outside the womb and would not survive. And at 32 weeks, she flew to Colorado to get a shot that would start the process of a third-trimester abortion; she then flew back to New York to finish the delivery. We talked on the phone two weeks into her recovery.
(snip)
It was around 16 weeks, I think, when we got the scan that looked like his feet were turned in—like club feet. Our doctor said he was OK, that we’d just keep watching it. Then, also around that time, we found out that I had a weird umbilical cord, or velamentous cord insertion. Normally, an umbilical cord is implanted in the center of a placenta; mine was way on the edge. That affects blood flow, affects how blood and nutrients get to the baby, so they put me on rest. And, unrelated, I was also bleeding—these huge bleeds that looked like I was having a heavy period.
(snip)
We went back to get a growth scan, and we saw the growth had fallen off a cliff. And this was the first time that we had been presented with this idea that there was something deeply wrong with the baby that had nothing to do with me. Until that point, all the really bad news had been with me, and my weird body. He had been thriving despite the environment. But on this scan, he’d gone from the 37th percentile to the 8th. And he wasn’t swallowing.
(snip)
And this is the one where the doctor told you that the baby wouldn’t be able to breathe.
Yes. With the feet turning in, the hands clenched, the not swallowing, the doctor told us that he suspected there was something muscular going on—something deeply, deeply wrong.
(snip)
It was around 16 weeks, I think, when we got the scan that looked like his feet were turned in—like club feet. Our doctor said he was OK, that we’d just keep watching it. Then, also around that time, we found out that I had a weird umbilical cord, or velamentous cord insertion. Normally, an umbilical cord is implanted in the center of a placenta; mine was way on the edge. That affects blood flow, affects how blood and nutrients get to the baby, so they put me on rest. And, unrelated, I was also bleeding—these huge bleeds that looked like I was having a heavy period.
(snip)
We went back to get a growth scan, and we saw the growth had fallen off a cliff. And this was the first time that we had been presented with this idea that there was something deeply wrong with the baby that had nothing to do with me. Until that point, all the really bad news had been with me, and my weird body. He had been thriving despite the environment. But on this scan, he’d gone from the 37th percentile to the 8th. And he wasn’t swallowing.
(snip)
And this is the one where the doctor told you that the baby wouldn’t be able to breathe.
Yes. With the feet turning in, the hands clenched, the not swallowing, the doctor told us that he suspected there was something muscular going on—something deeply, deeply wrong.
A long, painful, important read, with information on how to donate to Dr. Hern's clinic.
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