The Next Day

After a very long emotional day, I had cried myself to sleep and on February 15, 2006 I awoke around 04:00 with swollen eyes; my first thought was of my baby. Still trying to process what I had learned the prior day. I wanted to begin to journal how I was feeling. I knew I would not have him for a lifetime so I wanted to make note of every memory while he was still alive inside me. Memories of craving ham & cheese sandwiches, with salty Lay's chips, or sending his father out for Skittles and Starburts after midnight and craziest of all - having a sudden interest in watching football.

I would feel him kicking; it was as if there was nothing wrong. I did not know whether to "carry on as normal" or to begin to grieve. I felt guilty if I enjoyed the simple pleasures of eating a meal, or watching a television show, it was as if I had started to mourn.

In the days to come I would be faced with making the decision to terminate the pregnancy or continue to carry him, I had no idea, at that time, the pain my choice would cause me.

February 14, 2006

February 14, 2006 – a Valentine’s Day I will never forget – I had completed my doctor’s visit and was heading to my 20 week sonogram – was on my cell with my husband, longing for his reassurance that everything was going to be normal with the sonogram; for weeks I had been battling a “feeling”, “a mother’s instinct” that something was not right. I knew in my heart two things, I was carrying a boy and something with this pregnancy was not like the others. I couldn’t shake that nagging feeling and when the sonogram started I sensed my instincts were correct, and then I heard the technician say, “Something is wrong with your baby”. My world stopped at that very moment, as she continued I lay there trying to process what I had just heard – all I could bring myself to ask was “is the baby a boy?” The technician called in a doctor to confirm her diagnosis and then they contacted my doctor; I stood, at the end of a long hall that led to the exam rooms, with the phone to my ear. While patients were moving around me and carrying on with their visits, I heard my doctor state to me, “we can terminate the pregnancy and try again”. I walked out of the radiology center with my receipt in hand that had the words “anencephalic fetus” written on it. To me, you were my baby, Eric Curtis Meadows. You were not just a fetus without a name.

Anencephaly is a cephalic disorder that results from a neural tube defect that occurs when the cephalic (head) end of the neural tube fails to close.

Introduction

On May 11, 2006; at 32 weeks gestation, my son Eric Curtis Meadows was delivered stillborn. I had learned during a routine 20 week prenatal sonogram that my unborn child, my son, was "anencephalic" and he would not survive. Doctors advised that I terminate the pregnancy. Faced with that decision I prayerfully chose to continue on; uncertain of how the events of the weeks ahead of me would unfold and would I be able to survive the heartbreak and pain.

I was hurt, disappointed, confused and frightened, how could this have happened to me, to my baby? The mother of four healthy children - why was this pregnancy unlike the others? What had I done differently, was this my fault?