I was twenty-four years old and sixteen weeks pregnant when I found out he was gone. I was sixteen weeks pregnant which is labelled as not counting, not a child, just a fetus.... So, at sixteen weeks pregnant, I was sent home with drugs to help bring forth this fetus. At home I laboured in my bathtub for four and a half hours, doped up on multiple Tylenol Fours, and with not even a follow-up doctor's appointment.
Two weeks later, without even being able to get dressed that morning, I found myself in another doctor's office crying for help. Post traumatic stress she said- is it devastating to lose a child, even a child not yet considered a child.
I will tell you, he was a child. When my body was done dispelling this lost life, I held him. I held a full baby, lost somewhere between eight and sixteen weeks. I saw his formed body, his eyes, his little arms and feet. A baby encased so perfectly in his embryonic sac. When it was all over I wrapped him in a towel, put him in a shoe box, and threw him away. I threw my child away. Since he was not considered a child, I had nowhere to mourn, nowhere to bury him. I knew he was already with God, and I let him go in the most painful and undignified way.
All the time I count my children up. I have four living breathing children now. I have two that have gone. I was a mother then, just as I am now. I felt that little soul inside myself. Each time I have carried a child, they have totalled my children for medical history, and each time I have to explain.... I have had two missed miscarriages (as is labelled the way I lost my children) and four children.
Why do my babies not count as babies? Just maybe, then we would have to ask some real and honest questions of our pro-choice culture. Having babies, wanted or unwanted, is hard. Losing conceived babies at any point in time is hard. They are all life, just as we began. I am a mother of six.
