That Terrible Thing That Happened To You Just Might Save Someone Else

Two decades ago, I was pregnant with what Mr. Andi and I hoped would be our first child. The previous fall I’d had a first trimester miscarriage, but this time I’d made it to the second trimester and thought I was out of the woods. I went in for a checkup and my doctor, a soft-spoken gentleman old enough to be my dad, chided me for using pregnancy as an excuse to eat too much because I had gained eleven pounds in a month. I left his office with hurt feelings and frustration. I knew I wasn’t overeating – the opposite was true, in fact, because a handful of saltine crackers would trigger intense reflux.

At that same appointment, my doctor ordered the triple screen test. Several days later, the office called and recommended we see a genetic specialist at a different hospital because the test suggested a potential problem. Mr. Andi and I were firmly pro-life, so although we agreed to the appointment, we determined ahead of time that we would not consider abortion and we were even resistant to the idea of amniocentesis because of the potential risk to the baby.

The appointment with the genetics specialist was a nightmare from beginning to end. The doctor talked fast without really telling us anything. He assumed we would do the amniocentesis, rather than discussing it with us and helping us make an informed decision. We told him that we would not abort, even if our baby had Down syndrome (the only chromosomal abnormality with which we were familiar at the time), so we didn’t think an amnio would be all that helpful.

Then he pulled out the big guns.

He said he was sure that whatever was wrong with our baby was very serious – so serious that not only was the baby at risk, but I could die, too. He framed the situation in terms of two options: amnio or death. We did the amnio.

When the results came in, we returned to the genetics office. The diagnosis was triploid syndrome, a very rare chromosomal abnormality. Instead of having three copies of one chromosome (like Down syndrome, which is an extra copy of the 21^st chromosome), the baby had an extra copy of ALL chromosomes. Triploid syndrome is, as the medical nomenclature goes, “not compatible with life”, and just as he had done with the amnio, the doctor assumed we would have an abortion. Again, he gave us only two options: abortion or death.

Instead, we called my doctor.

We knew both he and the hospital where he practiced didn’t do abortions, and we were determined not to go back to the genetics doctor. He agreed to deliver our baby, despite the risks and the fact that I was growing sicker with each passing day, and in the end that’s what happened.

My whole body was swollen, my blood pressure was skyrocketing, and my skin tone had turned the ashy gray of death. Our baby was delivered on July 13, 1999, just over a week after we had received the amnio results. The delivery was difficult and dangerous, including an unexpected emergency that could have killed me. My mother, standing next to the bed, thought someone had turned a faucet on full blast and turned to see that it wasn’t a faucet making that noise, but a massive hemorrhage. My blood pressure bottomed out, and Mr. Andi thought he was going to lose both his child and his wife on the same day. I survived; our daughter had died in utero.

Many of our friends don’t even know about this first child; it’s not something I talk about much. I have photos of her tucked away in an album, but I don’t look at them often. For years I tried to put it completely behind me, but I can’t, at least not completely. It’s now almost twenty years later, and I’m happy and healthy with two amazing children, but July 13 never passes without a bit of mourning for that lost child.

But that’s not the end of the story. 

Nine years after that difficult July day, we moved to Mayberry, 250 miles from the hospital where that first child (and, later, Sarah Kate) was born. Two years after that, Nathan came along. Two more years passed until he began private speech therapy about a mile from our house with a wonderful therapist named Grayson. She’s around my age and over time we found out we had a number of things in common, so we became friendly.

After one of Nathan’s sessions, we were chatting. He was her last appointment of the day so we had a little more time than usual – I think we were talking about the blog. I mentioned something in passing about having had a child before Sarah Kate and Nathan who had triploid syndrome. I didn’t expect her, even as a pediatric therapist, to know what it was because I’ve never met anyone who has ever heard of it – including my ob/gyn when our baby was diagnosed – but when I said the words, her face changed.

“I think you saved my life,” she said.

One of the things Grayson and I have in common is we lived in the same city for awhile. A couple of years after our baby died, Grayson was pregnant. She was with a different doctor, but based at the same hospital where our baby was born. She became very ill and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. 

A group of doctors at the hospital met to talk about her case, and one of them had a hunch. He had seen one other case in his career that was similar, just a couple of years before at the same hospital. The timeline matched up perfectly. It was my doctor. I was the case. The information he was able to provide from his experience delivering my baby allowed Grayson’s doctor to not only identify the problem, but to know what to do to keep her safe. To save her life.

Until that conversation with Grayson, I couldn’t see what God’s plan was. 

But fifteen years after that fateful day, God let me see that what we went through did have a purpose. He allowed that person whose life I had unknowingly saved to cross my path and have a positive impact on my family. Before I heard Grayson’s story, July 13 was always a difficult day that I had to power through, but now that I can see the good that my experience brought to someone else – and the way that good came full circle to affect my own life – I don’t dread July 13 anymore. It’s now a day of melancholy rather than a day of grief and anxiety. But the circle continues, because each spring for the past few years I’ve been a featured speaker for speech-language pathology students at the local university – Grayson recommended me because she felt I had a message that the students need to hear.

We may never know what the plan was while we walk this earth. I know I’m one of the lucky ones because God revealed to me a part of the plan, even if it was many years later. He won’t always, but that’s okay. 

Because I know he has a plan for me, and he has one for you, too.

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Image Courtesy Pixabay