by ANONYMOUS
Ironically my wife is away for work this week and I choose to go back through my daughter Esther’s little box.
Esther was born and died on the 14-01-2011.
Her little box contains her birth detail card, the newspaper on that day, all the cards from family and friend. Alongside the box on a shelf sits a pink teddy, a small quilt and the ashes of our beautiful daughter.
We were faced with the decision to terminate our pregnancy – a story not told out loud.
Here is her story.
I am a builder and my wife is an industrial officer. We both work really hard and balance our work and family life. At the time we had two boys. Henry was 7 and Joshua was 5.
My wife and I had decided to put off telling people about the pregnancy, as there was restructuring going on in her work and it seemed more sensible to keep it quiet.
So that year on Christmas day we told our family that we were expecting a baby due on the 1st of May which made my wife around 20 weeks pregnant.
She did not end up having the 20 week scan until the middle of January which made her 23 weeks pregnant. In those three weeks from Christmas to the 20 week scan, we told our friends and work colleagues. As you would expect, everyone was excited for us and pleased. I didn’t think anything of it and we were in the clear. We’d made it past the 12 and 15 week milestones and had no other problems with the other two babies.
I had remained pretty much out of it, the pregnancy that is. I’d been there before. My wife would say, can you feel that? I’d hold my hand on her tummy for a short while then retract it after giving little time. In my head thinking that was nothing compared to the kicking that would be coming in the later part of the pregnancy. So for me, I had not really started to bond with our baby at all. I had not been to any of the scans or trips to the obstetrician. Thinking I had the rest of the child life bond with it.
My wife had a great idea that as a family we should go to 20 week scan so our other two boys could see the baby. The boys were on school holidays and I agreed it would be good.
So we all went. Our doctor was scanning around and showing the boys and I was none the wiser, but my wife seemed to think he was spending too much time on the scan compared to others. From memory, the boys had to go to toilet and he said to us, “it’s probably nothing but I would like you to have another scan in the hospital.” So within a couple of hours we were in our city’s major hospital having more scans on the baby. We figure that there was no point worrying until we had something worry about.
Top Comments
Thank you for sharing your story. My daughter was born in September last year and she would have been 6 month in March. We too made the impossible choice of interrupting the pregnancy as our beautiful daughter had Trisomy 18 and only one chamber in her heart as opposed to four, My husband is in the air-force and is currently deployed in Afghanistan and at the time we found out what was going on with our daughter he was away on predeployment training. We only had a week as our window of opportunity before he had to leave again so we felt that time against us from the start. I know the guilt you feel even though we made the best decision that we could given the situation we were presented with. There is not one day that goes by when I don't think of our daughter and wish things were different as the ache of her loss and the longing for her here with us is very hard especially with my husband being away.
Sending light and love to all that have and will have to make this horrible decision and I hope that in time it will be easier to bare.
Dear Anonymous, I shared a similar story under the "What it feels like to lose a baby" story on 14 October, with the heading "I have never shared my story". You are very brave man to share your story. I wish my own partner had been so supportive. 11 years on and he is now blaming me for that decision made so long ago. My other beautiful children have made life not just bearable but wonderful - but I still love my little girl, my first child, she will always be in my heart. I wish you every happiness in life, thank you so very much for sharing your story.