So what happened next? It seemed as if every time we went for a scan they were finding some new abnormality. We weren’t being given a fatal prognosis, but we didn’t know whether he’d last to term or go on and survive. And that was the crux of our angst. We found ourselves coming to the conclusion that we didn’t want him to have a life of suffering. Surely it would be kinder, certainly not for us, but for the baby, to end the pregnancy?
So that’s how I found myself, at 20 wks gone, sat in a room in the Fetal Medicine Department, taking a pill which would soften the cervix in preparation for birth. I returned to the department two days later, after the pill had taken effect, and went in to the same ultrasound room where all our scans had taken place. There, in a similar procedure to the CVS, the consultant put a needle into my tummy and gave our baby an injection into his heart to stop it beating. Now, the thing is, when they do that, they may as well put the needle into your own heart for all the difference it makes. A few moments before, our baby, a boy, was moving. And now he is not. And we’ve done that. Oh my god.
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