Pregnant, Baby with Abnormalities

Ask the Experts

Robbie Davis-Floyd

I am 22 weeks pregnant and have just found out that our baby has severe abnormalities that will not allow her to live more than a few days beyond her birth, and will more likely mean that I will have a late miscarriage before we reach term. My husband and I discussed our options to continue with the pregnancy or to terminate in length and have found peace in our choice to continue for as long as God or fate deems fit. We desperately wanted this baby. We are both young and healthy and have no problems with carrying our baby now. There are no signs of elevated blood pressure or any other prenancy related problems. We were wondering how long we should wait until after our baby is born to start trying again—not in time but in emotional state. My main worry is that we will become pregnant again without having a chance to grieve for our first baby, and that I will not be able to enjoy our second pregnancy in the same way as I was enjoying our current pregnancy before this terrible news, without wondering if this will happen again. We both want a baby to love and hold, not to replace the one we're about to lose, but to be able to share her memory with a sibling, and to take back our faith in the gift of life. Please help us in any way you can.

How long should you wait to become pregnant again? Just follow your hearts and your intuition.

I lost a baby to miscarriage from a Dalkon shield that prevented proper attachment of the placenta to the uterine wall at 5 and a half months. My belly was swollen and beautiful, the baby was moving, and I was very much in love with that child. The miscarriage was devastating and so was the grief afterwards, which hung on strong for months. My husband and I had thought to wait to get pregnant for a very long time, but one warm and humid night about two and a half months after the miscarriage, we had dinner at a very romantic Italian restaurant with some very excellent red wine, came home, and spontaneously started making love right after we walked in the door. I murmured to him that we should stop for a minute for me to get up and put on my diaphragm, and he murmured "yes we should," and we kept right on making love and I became pregnant again that night with my daughter Peyton. Later we realized that we simply were ready to have a baby and that thinking about it too much or trying to plan the right time to try again was not what we needed to do-we just needed to be in our bodies and hearts and respond to instinct.

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Pregnant, Baby with Abnormalities

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