After years of fertility treatments and the adoption of two babies, Nancy unexpectedly found herself pregnant at the age of 42. Noting that she and her husband would be in their 60s when the baby entered high school, Nancy says:
“What kind of sick joke is God playing on me? I’m a weary mother of two with a high-pressure job and a house that’s falling apart! I can’t raise another child.”
She decides to have an abortion.
“if I’m going to have an abortion, I have to learn something from the experience. I can’t just look at this pregnancy as a mistake. I’m going to change my life in positive ways because of it. I write a list of all the things that having this child will keep me from doing — traveling, making career changes, fixing up our house, and especially spending quality time with my first two children — and I vow to make good on them. I can be a class parent, take the girls on day trips, be more present in their lives. A life that recently seemed overbooked suddenly appears wide open.
I reach out to friends who I think will support my decision. It’s amazing how many of them have had abortions that I didn’t know about. Although I can see hesitation in their faces — in one case real strain — I manage to block it out. Feeling bolstered, I make an appointment for a “termination consultation.” The appointment is a week away, so I can always back out. I stop taking the prenatal vitamins. They only make the nausea worse.”
…..
Two days later, I go to my termination consultation. Two minutes into the conversation, I know I don’t have the heart to go through with an abortion. Maybe I never did. I look at the sonogram screen and am shocked to see the baby has arms and a head. Four weeks ago, in my doctor’s office, it looked like a grain of rice. I walk out into the sunshine and realize I’m having another child.
A week later I’m sorting through summer clothes and packing some up for charity. Roma keeps taking things out of the giveaway bag, and I get annoyed. “But Mom,” she says, “We need to save these for the baby.” John and I haven’t said a word to her, but she already knows.”
Her daughter has sense that her mother is pregnant without a word being said. If the mother had had an abortion, how would this have affected her daughter, who was aware of the baby? Many times, the siblings of aborted babies suffer depression. Read the testimony of one sibling.
Nancy “”I’m What?”Accidentally pregnant at 42, I faced the hardest decision of my life” Parenting http://www.parenting.com/article/im-what?page=0,0&src=syn&dom=aolhp&dartkw=aolhp
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