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.
No comments:
Post a Comment