Rigshospitalet. A week of meetings.
The specialist was a head OBGYN at our main hospital. She was handsome, authoritative, precise and serious. An alpha-female. She was not happy like the nurse. We weren’t “just” expecting triplets, we were expecting monochorionic triamniotic triplets. Identical triplets, sharing a placenta. It was an extremely high-risk pregnancy, and we had to consider whether we wished to continue, or decide on an abortion. With identical triplets, a selective reduction is not an option. It’s an all or nothing situation.
To make a decision like this, a decision that might not only have an impact on all future aspects of your own life, but of three future lives as well, is a monster. To weigh the risk of handicaps, the risk of death, and of any scenario between and beyond, means that the severity of parenthood kicks in early. The responsibility is enormous, and you have yet to learn, just how much your back can carry, before it breaks.
I would love to say, that we never considered a termination. But we did. We were so scared.
But in the end – after a week’s worth of meetings, consultations and a visit to the NICU – we decided to go ahead. On the one hand, we had three healthy thirteen week old fetuses, identical and conceived against all calculable odds. On the other hand, we had just lost Shrimpsy, a singleton that ought to have been smooth sailing, yet didn’t make it past its eighth week. It seemed to us, that there was no telling, no measure of reason, which could guide us to the right decision. So we ended up following our hearts, and putting our lives in the hands of our Alpha-obstetrician.
∼ TDD 2015 ∼
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