Vegetables are for eating

Cross posted at Terrible Palsy

There is a moral to this story. I think it is don’t drop in on friends unannounced.

But anyway . . .

. . . Hubby and I had taken the boys down the beach. It was a lovely morning but we had a squall come over the top of us and got drenched in the mad rush to get everyone off the beach and into the car. We were driving around, trying to decide what to do next. As we were in the area, we decided to drop in and see if some friends were home. We hadn’t seen them for a while. We knew that they were expecting their third child. A happy surprise given that the other two kids were almost in their teens.

Due to her “advanced” years, her pregnancy was being closely watched. The 13 week scan had shown a higher risk of down syndrome so she had gone off to have the amniocentesis. At the time, I had remarked to hubby that you only have the amnio if you care what the results are. Hubby’s response was “Jac, not everyone is up to the challenge”.

While we were outside, hubby and I were thinking out loud as to how far pregnant she would now be. We figured that it was somewhere between 6 – 9 months. We were expecting a big fat pregnant woman.

And yet, when she answered the door, my first reaction was to think – Gee, she is carrying really tiny.

Sure, she had a bit of a tummy but not 6 months worth. Hubby and I were terribly confused. We had no idea what was going on. Whether we had just got our dates wrong and she really wasn’t as far pregnant as we thought. It wasn’t until she told us that she was having another curette next week that the penny dropped and I realised that there was no way she could be pregnant.

Turns out that the amnio went well. They found out that they were having another pink bundle. At the morphology scan at 20 weeks, the technician walked back into the room after performing the scan and announced that this baby isn’t going to go to university.

Our friends were confused. What does that mean?

The rest of their day was consumed by a myriad of medical appointments. The baby had a hole in her heart and fluid on the brain. The term “vegetable” was thrown loosely around by the Drs. They were rushed into making a decision. And the inevitable result followed.

Our friends were understandably left upset and confused by the whole process. They are continuing to go through the grieving process.

When I started having complications during my pregnancy with Moo, I was told by my GP to have a termination to save myself from the pain of losing my child.

I thought it was a stupid thing to say. No matter which way I went, according to her, I was still going to lose my child. So how would having a termination make that somehow different? Because I chose it?

So, this is for those of you reading from the Northern Hemisphere. The senate committee is proposing a Bill for Prenatal/Postnatal Diagnosis Act. You can sign the petition showing your support here.

Back to my friends, I’m not here to criticize them or their decision in anyway. I do think that they were pushed into a decision. But this post could also be called, why I don’t like Doctors – reason 351.