I wish I could say more about the situation, about the circumstances and everything, but privacy keeps me to the bare minimum.
There was a fetal demise. An early one. In my specialty I see everything, and it was my turn to come and help.
The first call person didn't answer their phone. So I came in the dead of night. The family, bless them, wanted to pray before we left to the O.R. I was delighted to pray together, it felt so right. I wish I could pray like that with the patient and their family before every case, honestly, I do.
The surgeon said what a beautiful child is was. I saw it too, I agreed. It was a tragedy. Everything was perfectly formed, small, but perfect.
He wanted to put it in formaldehyde and send it to pathology.
I said, politely, if it was mewl had lost the baby I would like to see it. I really would.
He paused.
We got into the save the mother part of the procedure, so nobody put the fetus into the formaldehyde yet.
He made sure we took pictures.
I mentioned again, more insistently, that if I was in the mother's situation, I would want to spend time with it and hold it.
He said before twenty weeks we just take pictures. A picture is good enough.
And PLOP! Into the formaldehyde.
I saw red.
This was the first instance in my career, as a woman, I felt that the medical profession had crossed a line. This is the woman's body, the husband's child, and they are going to grieve this loss. Why not let them decide what to do? At least offer them the possibility to say goodbye face to face, right?
Matter of factly the OB said, 'at this age you don't have to bury it.'
It.
Therein likes the problem.
Who decides what is an 'it'?
The representative of the medical establishment?
Or the parents who conceived the child?
Typically, in most of these incomplete miscarriages, the baby is removed in bits and pieces. I think that's why the beauty of this perfect child struck him--due to the delay of the first call, nature took it's course, and there really wasn't that much to do except look for retained placenta.
The nurse couldn't believe how he kept talking about the beauty of the baby even outside the O.R., down the hall. He wouldn't shut up about what he saw, how beautiful it was, how perfect. The face...
I planted the seed. I planted the seed of doubt in someone who undoubtedly has performed many, many many a D and E. You know, a TAB. A therapeutic abortion.
This isn't about abortion.
This is about the rights of the family in situations where there is fetal demise. Where I used to work, twins hardly bigger than this one, were held by the grandmother and mother, and we were asked about how cute they were. It was a little awkward to see the grieving so raw, but it was not insurmountable, and it certainly didn't interfere with care.
How many ways are we interfering with the natural grieving process? How many ways are we taking over the patient's right to autonomy, and to their wishes just because we have become so used to these tragedies that they are now routine?
I didn't expect to create change in this situation. I was given a voice, and I used it. I questioned authority, if you will.
You have no idea how influential the anesthesiologist can be to the functioning of the team, and how strong of an advocate for the patient they are when the patient is unable to speak for themselves.
I thank you dear Lord, for the surgery going perfectly. I thank you for the opportunity to be present for this couple, this family, in their time of need. Please console them with your perfect Love as they experience the grief and loss of the empty womb. Guide them to healing, perfect healing, with your Divine Grace. Please tell the little one in Heaven they did an excellent effort and they and their family did nothing wrong. It was not meant to be. Please open the hearts of those in the profession who have perhaps allowed them to close a little more than they realized. Thank you for hearing my call.
Thank you, for sending me a son. And a home. Thank you for my not being the same hungry I was back in the day. Thank you for your comfort, and guidance. Thank you for helping me not have to cook last night, for the wonderful meal at Denny's, where I was happy and content just to be.
God is good. Life is good.
I love you.
Ross
Carla experienced brutal and savage loss of a child just after she had given birth to our son. She had been told it was dead, she never heard it cry. She knew from having given birth to our daughter, that everything had been normal up until the birth.
She was denied the opportunity to view the baby's corpse.
Everyone told her she was crazy to want to see it.
But Carla, being psychic, knew in her heart her son had lived, and had been taken elsewhere. She had heard of things like this happening, not often, but from then on she kept to her own counsel, and wisely so.
Her very own husband and father of her child had betrayed her. I had been convinced due to my spiritual lineage to 'save the bloodline' from outside attack.
Never once did I consult or approach my Carla, for I knew what the answer was--'how can you be so ridiculous, give my my son, only I can raise him, and if we are all killed for it, so be it.'
Carla has the courage, when at the time, I did not.
This is what we had to heal, over the millennia.
This is our wound.
It is healed.
And now, it is only a blip, Carla passed the test--in speaking her mind, and speaking up when the time was ripe for it.
And then some...Carla is making it, creating it, holding the space, for the energy of all mothers who experience loss, to have the right to decide for themselves, then and there, what is right for them, to be encouraged to act upon their wishes, and to be respected for the sanctity of the contents of their womb--24/7, 365, across the globe--in childbirth and in fetal demise--what happens naturally. So that peace may inherit the hospital and medical center and women's birthing center and everything in between.
Abortion? The elective kind for something that is unwanted?
This we discuss not.
It does not pertain to us, or to any of the situation we described.
Please do not twist our words on anything.
Thank you.
clap! clap!
Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,
Peace,
Ross and Carla
The Couple
