My wife and I have been trying for years to have children. Last November, we finally tried in vitro fertilization, hoping that the tightly controlled procedure would alleviate whatever unknown problems there seemed to be. Now, IVF is something of a gamble, where multiple embryos are implanted with the hope that one or two will make it. In our case, we implanted four… and three took. An occurrence which is not really very fortunate, as that many babies bring an increased risk of miscarriage and birth defects. We decided to have these three reduced to twins, a difficult decision not made lightly. For those of you who believe that was a sin (and, really, I can’t say that I completely disagree with that position) perhaps you’ll see the rest of this story as exemplifying the last part of Numbers 14:18.
I really, really hated that. But we made the best decision we could, and hoped that everything would work out.
Alas, in mid-January my wife experienced some bleeding. At first, we thought that this was a normal result of the reduction operation, but when she lost what appeared to be about a pint of blood all at once, we checked into the hospital. The obstetricians weren’t really sure what was wrong, and were a hairsbreadth from terminating the pregnancy then and there, but finally decided to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Perhaps it would have been better had they followed their first impulse. In any case, after a number of scares (at least three times where my wife thought she was miscarrying), the mystery bleed disappeared.
After a month in the hospital, my wife was discharged. It seemed like the twins were OK, so we hoped that everything would work out.
A few weeks after that, my wife woke me up in the middle of the night in a panic. “We have to go to the hospital; I think my water broke.” We rushed back to the hospital; luckily (sort of) it seemed to be a repeat of the previous hemorrhaging. This time, it wasn’t really so massive, so my wife was discharged in a day or so.
The obstetricians prescribed complete bed rest, 24/7 (a solution which seemed to have worked during the previous hospital stay). We went home, rearranged the furniture in the bedroom, and hoped that everything would work out.
Then, late last week, my wife experienced some spotting. This didn’t seem like a big deal, but we called into the hospital, and they recommended we come in. This was Saturday afternoon. First thing the OB did was perform an exam. Her words were something of a shock. “Well, your cervix is dilated to 4, and I can see the sack protruding.”
If you don’t know, that’s a Bad Thing. We knew it was a Bad Thing. We asked what the odds were that things would turn out OK. The doctor was evasive, “Well, you’re 21 weeks, you could make it another three to where the twins are viable, you might not, you never really know, it really depends on the case.” The problem with doctors being evasive is that it’s pretty easy to read between the lines.
They kept my wife in the hospital, of course. She was pretty stable over the next day or so. On Monday, the staff high-risk OB came in and looked over the case. He visited us mid-morning. His interpretation of the odds was a little more blunt. “I don’t want to sugar-coat it for you. Out of every 100 women I see in your condition, maybe five will deliver a viable baby.”
I guess that really didn’t surprise me, but I crossed my fingers and hoped that, even with only a five percent chance, everything would work out.
My wife still seemed stable, and I hoped she would be for a while, so I went into work on Tuesday. Around two I got a call. My wife was experiencing more regular contractions and had been moved to another room. I left for the hospital immediately.
As afternoon progressed into evening, it became increasingly apparent that everything was not going to work out. My sister-in-law (a mental health social worker) visited. We had a conversation in the hall, and she said “I hate to bring this up, but if the worst happens, you might want to make sure the nurses leave the twins in the room for a while. It often helps, in the healing process, to look at the babies for a minute and gain a sense of closure.” Honestly, I told her, I think that would be a little too upsetting for me. Things are bad enough as they are. But it might help my wife, so I’ll keep it in mind.
Later, my mother (an OB nurse) called. We chatted briefly and quietly, and she made the same point my sister-in-law made. After she hung up, I thought about what she said. If the worst happened, I really didn’t like the idea of seeing my dead children, but I decided I owed them at least this. I would never be able to hold them, or play with them, or help them with their homework, or watch them get married, or protect them from harm, or anything else a father could do for his children, so I should do what little I could.
As you might expect, everything did not work out. Contractions and cramping increased, and finally a little after 8:00 my wife’s water broke. I held her hand as she gave birth to a little girl, my little girl, our little girl. She died immediately. I saw her move on her own, just a little, before I averted my gaze. The nurses cleaned her up and swaddled her in a towel and asked if we wanted to see her. We said yes. We both looked at her for just a minute, crying, before the nurse laid her in the incubator.
Mercifully, it was only half an hour or so later when my wife gave birth to our little baby boy, who also died immediately. I held my wife’s hand as he was born. When the nurse showed him to us, we looked at his swaddled form for a minute. “Do you want me to leave him in the room?” asked the nurse. “Put him with his sister,” said my wife, crying. “At least they can be together for a little while.”
A little while later, after some other necessary procedures, the nurse quietly approached us. “Would you like to hold them both?” she asked. She brought the swaddled forms of my dead children over to the bed. “I’ll leave for a little while.”
I looked at my children, crying. The boy had some of my features. The girl, a little smaller, looked something like my wife, and a little like my wife’s mother. We looked at them for a while, the grief building up. “It would have been so perfect,” sobbed my wife. “A little boy and a little girl. And they didn’t even get a chance.” She cried more, unable to speak. I held my wife’s hand, and I did the only thing I could as a father, gazing at my children, holding them in my memory. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to them. “I’m so sorry.” I don’t even know what I was sorry for, but I was. We cried some more, gazing at them. When we had looked our fill, my wife asked me to put them back in the incubator.
I picked up my dead children, tears rolling down my cheeks, and carried them in my arms to the incubator. They would have been so perfect. I’m sorry.
