When I was 39 years old, my second husband and I decided to have our second child together. We were a beautiful blended family. We had one beautiful son together; I had two sons from a previous marriage; and my husband had one son from a previous marriage also. Between the two of us, we were a family of four boys. Since we only had one child together between us, we wanted one more. So by the time our youngest son was 3 years old, I became pregnant again, and we were all very excited!
I couldn’t wait for my first OB visit so my husband and other children could listen to the baby’s heartbeat. It didn’t matter how many children I had already had. My husband and I loved kids and he is the best dad in the world in my opinion. I was a previous preschool teacher and a child care provider, so children were my whole world.
The moment my doctor placed the doppler over my belly, her face grew serious and my state of excitement and joy suddenly shifted into shock. She told me the baby’s heartbeat was very weak and it was barely beating. But all I heard was that beautiful thumping sound. I heard my own baby’s heart beat loud and clear, just as I had heard all the other times with my other pregnancies.
I questioned her at first. I said, “What do you mean? I can hear the heartbeat just fine. It sounds really good to me.”
My doctor said, “When you are 8-12 weeks, we should be hearing a totally different sounding heart beat. One that is much stronger and faster. This is not normal and its not going to turn out well.” She told me. “I am sorry, I recommend that we schedule a D and C. I am sorry, but the sooner you terminate this pregnancy, the better. It’s not a viable pregnancy and your body will eventually expel the fetus, but you don’t want to wait too long for that to happen”, she told me.
I looked at my husband. His face grew serious too. We were there for a party and a celebration, but now the reality shifted to the likeness of a funeral — but without all of the kindness, respect and decency that one would receive when planning a funeral. This was empty of compassion, emotion, love, or anything else. It was just a clinical visit that would soon end in a clinical procedure that would result in taking my unborn child’s life.
The saddest part of this whole story is I believed my doctor explicitly. I trusted her judgment. I didn’t think to question her beyond the first question I asked. She did a good job of rambling on information about how these things need to be terminated because there are likely chromosome abnormalities and that is why the heartbeat is so weak. This sounded so scary… imagining my child unable to walk in the future, or with disastrous problems that may result because my doctor said so. Not because there was any proof!
Little did I know, in the years that followed, that it is perfectly normal to detect a slow or weak heartbeat at 8 weeks gestation! A baby is developing and sometimes the heart rate won’t beat as fast or as strong until the pregnancy is further along. Sometimes the doctor has the gestation date all wrong and that is what most likely happened to me!
I believed my doctor who was either ill-informed or who had ill-intentions and doesn’t like middle aged women having too many children perhaps. I don’t know the reason why she pushed me into having an abortion, but she made me terrified not to. I thought the baby was already dead by the way she talked. All I know was when I went to the D & C appointment just two weeks later, I know my baby’s heart was still beating. I never bled or spotted. My body showed no signs of trying to expel my child. But I believed my doctor and thought these terrible things would happen any day and if I didn’t do this, or that I would have a still birth. And so I showed up to that D & C appointment and to this day I don’t understand how I could have been under such a spell by this doctor. How could I not have been able to use reason and think beyond her words? I don’t believe in abortion and would never ever choose such a thing. She never called this an abortion. She called it a miscarriage. She told me I was having a miscarriage, but I hadn’t.
No other tests were conducted and no other attempts were made to listen to the heartbeat again prior to or at the D & C appointment. How could a doctor be this careless and how could I be so stupid as to not question this decision?
To make matters worse, my husband and I tried to get pregnant again about one year later, thinking this time everything would be okay. But I had the same OBGYN 1 year later, and guess what she told me? You guessed it! She said, “My baby’s heartbeat was too weak and slow and I should terminate this pregnancy also.” I believed her a second time too.
To this day, I am punishing myself for being so stupid and for not having more faith in God, and putting people, medicine, and doctors in front of God. I had a very bad doctor who liked to play God. And I was a fool for believing in her. If I could go back in time, I would have found another OBGYN immediately. I would have tapped into my intuition and listened to my body. If my body was not naturally expelling my baby due to chromosome abnormalities or whatever, and if there was a heartbeat, then I would have carried my baby to full term and loved that baby until the end of time. That’s the kind of person I am. Believing in this doctor and allowing her to scare me with medical BS hypothesis, cost me two of my children’s lives.
