“Lying on the cold hospital bed, waiting for the doctor, the chiseled man’s mother looked at me with disgust, ‘I knew you weren’t strong enough to carry a boy,’ she whispered into my ear.”
‘The chiseled man leaned over to me and whispered, ’We’re getting rid of it right?’ It was one of those remarks that sink to the bottom of your stomach. How dare he suggest this and why now?’
‘It was midnight and everyone was asleep. I texted my friend, ‘Come quick! I need you. Lots of blood.’ I prayed she’d wake to the sound of her phone.’
“On a whim, I decided to download a dating app. I came across a man who was in the Army. I knew he was ‘the one’ the moment I saw his photo. At first sight, I was in love. Something I had never felt before.”
‘He introduced me to his parents as ‘the woman he wants to marry.’ Our marriage shocked them. When I held our baby girl in my arms, skin to skin, everything was perfect. Until it wasn’t.’
“He wanted to bid on me but didn’t have enough money at the time. He couldn’t go home with regret. He walked over to me.”
‘But that won’t be the case for you,’ he said. I was 18 weeks pregnant when I was told to ‘just terminate’ the life of my unborn baby.
“I was told to terminate his life because there was very little chance he would survive pregnancy. And if by some miracle he did, he would most certainly endure a life of suffering marked by severe disabilities.”
‘The doctors looked at my parents. ‘We have no idea how this child is still alive.’ At that moment, the relief was greater than the fear. They were finally going to help me.’
“We didn’t know how hard it would be on my body. And what if I got pregnant with twins? That would make an already high risk pregnancy, that much more high risk.”
‘Let him move, God,’ I would silently plead over and over. We endured 9 long months of uncertainty. I easily lose patience and become consumed with exhaustion.’
“For me, it was 9 months of living in fear that each kick from within, each twinge, each flutter, would be the last. And for him, it was 9 months of surviving in a womb that had left his two previous siblings without breath, a womb that had seen more death than life.”
‘I grabbed my belly and screamed, ‘YOU’RE WRONG MY BABY GIRL IS FINE YOU WILL SEE!’ My heart started racing. I asked again, in a panic. ‘Please let me see my baby?!’
“A month after my first ultrasound, my boyfriend started getting sick. I finally made him go to the doctor because he started puking up blood.”
‘At our 12 week scan the doctors confirmed there were two strong heartbeats. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We had made it, and made it with twins no less!’
“The doctor pulled us aside. I could tell from the look on her face she didn’t have good news. The heartbeat was strong, yes, but they had detected an ‘abnormality’ on one of the twins’ scans.”
‘I cannot express what it feels like to carry around a dead baby for a month. I wanted to claw out of my body.’: After her month-long miscarriage, woman says she would ‘never wish this pain on anyone’
“Our doctor joked about the possibility of seeing triplets on the ultrasound. I was dizzy, so very dizzy. I laid down on the table and exposed my stomach. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for my heart to be broken again. He put the wand on my stomach, and I knew instantly. I couldn’t see a baby. My doctor was quiet. I told him there was nothing there. It wasn’t a question. I knew.”
‘I’m not pregnant. Yes, that’s an ultrasound, with my name, a recent date, but I am not pregnant…well, not anymore.’
“Why is my body not strong enough? What is wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? Why is this happening to me? What if I can’t have anymore kids, will my husband leave me?”
