"She overcame everything that was meant to destroy her"

My journey through a terminated pregnancy and beyond.

A few years ago I hit a rock bottom that stung so hard I felt like I had nothing else left to give. That life itself had nothing to offer me, and that I would feel pain to the point of not feeling anything at all.

It was 2018, my husband and I decided to make the bold decision to move across the country. I would be leaving a busy successful practice, my family and friends, and a comfort I had grown to enjoy. It wasn't an easy decision, but ultimately we felt it would be the best choice for us and our son. Four days before my husband was to fly out to Vancouver and get things set up, I got a call from my doctor.

You see, I was pregnant at the time with our daughter, my second pregnancy after giving birth to my son in 2016. The call was blunt and concerning. We dropped my son off at daycare the next morning and both went into the office. Once we sat down they told us that upon our last ultrasound, they detected a congenital diaphragmatic hernia. I hadn't heard much about the condition and to be fair it's quite uncommon, one in every 3000 pregnancies or so. We asked as many questions about it as we could but mostly sat in silence and disbelief. I told him we were due to fly in a few days and I wasn't really sure how to even process the news let alone the steps going forward. They said they would get us in to the hospital to discuss everything with the team there before we depart.

That night, of course, we went on google and tried researching everything we could about the condition. Like many things, there was variability and the survival rate and outcome depended on how complex the hernia was. It got to be a lot of information and I had to stop looking at it all after a while. My head, my heart, my body just hurt from even thinking about it. The following day we were in the local maternal fetal medicine department being briefed.

A full day of tests and moving from room to room we finally sat down with a team of about 6 doctors and nurses who told us that our daughter lively had a 70% chance of survival. Those numbers were better than I imagined. Walking into the office just hours before I was convinced that this pregnancy wasn't going to continue. And so they sent all the imaging and paperwork to Vancouver and a few days later we flew out.

We were staying with our Aunt and Uncle as we hadn't found a place to live yet. Luckily they watched my son while I was able to get an appointment just a few days after arriving with the material fetal medicine team here. This time my husband couldn't join me because it was his first day of work and there was no one to take his cover let alone the optics of having to take your first day of work off. So there I was, alone, doing the same full day of tests and briefings. I actually had a high school friend living here at the time that I decided to message and say hi while in the waiting room. Turns out, she was around the corner and when I told her what was happening she showed up 30 minutes later and waited with me. We hadn't seen in each other in years and yet here we were, together at BC women's reminiscing of simpler times.

The tests went well and all, but in the last briefing with the doctors they noted that from their findings, they put the survival rate at 10% due to the liver head ratio and the severity of the hernia. What the actual f&*!.

I sank. I sank so deep I didn't even know where I was. Is this actually happening? Im alone in this room and you're now telling me there's a very low chance this child will even survive? I left the room and cried. I had been so composed up to this point. So composed that even the doctors noted how level headed and calm I seemed through it all. Well, it caught up to me. I had no idea what to do. I called my husband right away and we both sort of knew what we needed to do. What was offered from the beginning but never really thought about when an initial 70% survival rate was attached to it. But this, now, in a new city, alone, well this now changed everything.

One thing the doctors kept noting was to consider how this will impact your family. And honestly it was what made the different decision the right decision at the time. We had no home. We had only one income. We had little support and minimal strength. There was the option to continue with all of this not knowing what was to come, the option to go to the states for a possible procedure to have surgery in utero and increase the survival rate by 20% (not an option at all for us, really), or to just say goodbye now and accept it was an unfortunate outcome at an unfortunate time.

When I got back to our aunt and uncles after that day, I noted bright red bleeding when I went to the bathroom. Not common when you're 23 weeks pregnant. In a way, I almost wanted it to be a sign that she was letting go too. All night I tossed and turned. All I could think about was how much I didn't want to be pregnant anymore. And so the next day, I called and booked a termination for the following week.

The process itself was fine. Basically I was being induced to birth. The after moment of having a still born and holding her in my hands though, I was not prepared for. I didn't cry during labour. I think my body kept me from feeling anything, though I did and it was painful. But leaving the hospital with a box instead of a baby and coming home that night, I cried for hours. For days actually, honestly probably weeks if not more. I still tear up thinking of her and what could have or didn't come to light from it all. I don't regret the decisions we made, because at that time it was the right choice. I just wish things could have been different and that I didn't even need to make that choice.

My husband reminds me that out of it all, we still were able to have another child and he wouldn't have been here if things were different, so I try and look at things from that perspective. Our second son ended up having a congenital anomaly as well, an unbalanced AVSD. This time around I wasn't prepared to say goodbye to another child so we went through it all and after 2 heart surgeries he's doing well. That story will be for another post though...

Thanks for listening. I hope this helped you in any part or path of your own journey.

Reach out if you ever want to chat. I'm here to listen.

Dr. Natalia Ytsma, ND