- I'm a mom of four, and one of my children is medically complex.
- I knew I couldn't handle two children with different disabilities, so I sought further testing.
- I'm grateful I had the chance to get the right answers in time.
My second pregnancy was a welcome surprise. When I saw the two pink lines appear on a pregnancy test soon after my daughter was born, I was stunned but prepared to welcome another child into our family.
My first child is medically complex with multiple disabilities. With a new baby, I knew I would have a lot to navigate in the coming months.
The first call I made after learning I was pregnant wasn't to my husband but to my daughter's geneticist. I wanted to schedule prenatal testing as soon as possible. I was hoping for reassurance that my baby was healthy. If not, I wanted time to prepare and put a medical team in place before birth, something I wasn't able to do for my daughter.
I scheduled a CVS , an invasive procedure that takes a piece of the placenta, as soon as I could, along with a series of other tests. When the results came back, they were inconclusive, and I thought my son could have a rare genetic disorder as well. This news was jarring.
We couldn't properly care for 2 medically complex children
Although I wanted this baby, the reality that I might be handling two medically complex children washed over me like a tsunami. I had already been driven from the workforce because of a lack of childcare for medically complex children with disabilities.
Financially, it would have been impossible to pay for the care of two children with significant needs. There were not enough hours in the day to undertake the time-consuming task of going to the number of appointments that would have been required, along with the subsequent fights with insurance.
We were already so close to our breaking point and without an adequate social safety net. Bringing another medically complex child with disabilities into our family seemed like an insurmountable task.
I sought another test before deciding what to do with my pregnancy
My obstetrician told me that I could schedule another test that would give me a more definitive answer, but that I had to wait several weeks until the test could safely be performed.
I had a choice to make.
Despondent, I visited Planned Parenthood so that I could be informed of all my options. I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I learned that although choosing to wait for additional test results would take me right up to the cutoff for terminating my pregnancy, I had the time to wait, to gather more information, to think.
I used that time to research resources that might be available to my children, to think through different scenarios, and to come to terms with my own complex emotions.
Waiting for definitive test results was hard. The weeks between prenatal tests were stressful, filled with tears and sleepless nights. But they are weeks I'm grateful to have had. Had the prospect of a safe and legal abortion later in pregnancy not been available to me, there's a real possibility that I would have chosen to terminate my pregnancy, and I would never have gotten to know my happy, healthy, and handsome son.
Potential abortion laws in several states in the US would take away the possibility for many women to terminate pregnancies after six weeks, which is earlier than when genetic testing is done.
With the recent news that incorrect prenatal results are stunningly common, I'm more convinced than ever that all women deserve the same opportunity I had to carefully consider their options with their physicians and their partners, to have agency over their own bodies and lives.