The Rest of Week One: Our Decision Not to Terminate
Our Takeaway: Cherish and invest in our family and friends/community because they will serve a significant role in helping us through the tough times.
The next day, Blake and I both worked from home. When we work from home, we sit across from each other at our kitchen table. I remember putting makeup on that morning. I think I was trying to act “normal,” but that ended up being pretty pointless. It seemed we were still a bit in shock for most of the morning and through lunchtime. I don’t remember talking much. I just remember sitting there working and crying (pretty consistently) while listening to Hillsong United. Blake didn’t cry much at all. He had a different way of dealing with the hurt. He was probably still trying to be strong for me.
It was about 2 o’clock when I got a call from my doctor. She wanted to know what we were thinking. We honestly had not thought about any of the coming days at that point. We were still trying to come to grips with the news from the day before, so I was a little caught off guard that she expected us to have an idea of how we wanted to go forward. I realized during the conversation that time is of the essence when termination of a pregnancy is an option, and that was where the urgency was coming from. Blake and I had originally discussed giving ourselves three weeks to pray and listen to God before we made any decisions. But it turns out, termination procedures get more complicated around weeks 12 or 13, and we were 13 weeks on that day. I asked my doctor some questions, but the doctors always seemed to say only what they believed or knew to be true at the time. They couldn’t tell us the severity of our child’s condition, which was one of the things we wanted to know. They wouldn’t compare our case with other cases they had seen either. They would mostly just repeat to us what was seen on the sonogram, the statistics that they were aware of and the results of any testing they had received to that point, which really is completely understandable. And contrary to some of the stories I have read, our doctors truly did want our baby’s future to be our decision, and we did not feel any significantly strong pressure to make a decision one way or the other. However, we felt a bit rushed during the process, and the doctors definitely made sure we were aware of the grave statistics that are out there. They wanted to make sure that our expectations for the future were realistic.
And while our doctors did a good job in trying not to sway our opinion so that the decision for moving forward would be fully ours, Blake and I didn’t want our baby’s future to be our decision. We wanted it to be God’s decision, but God’s timeline didn’t seem to be lining up with the urgent timeline that was being presented to us.
Before we got off the phone, our doctor mentioned that if we wanted to take a diagnostic test, then we needed to go ahead and call the specialist’s office and get that scheduled for Monday. Everything just seemed like it had to happen right then. It was overwhelming as it hadn’t even been 24 hours since we left the specialist’s office. I told her we still needed to think about our options and that I would call her back.
After another 2 hours of tears, I talked to my dad on the phone. I will never forget him saying, “Dana, God’s will is going to be done because you and Blake are genuinely seeking to do what He is calling you to do. If you’re not supposed to go through with a termination of this pregnancy, then He will not let you go through with it.” Those words provided me with comfort and with a confidence I had not felt before.
Not too long after the phone call with my dad and after some discussions with Blake, I ended up calling our doctor back and scheduling the termination for the coming Thursday. In our minds, we knew we could still back out. We would give ourselves until that Thursday morning to make the final decision. We also thought getting something on the calendar might keep the doctors from consistently reaching out for the next few days which would hopefully give us a little more space to pray and think through everything.
Many of our best friends and family members were instrumental in keeping us sane in those first few days and weeks. Words fail to express the gratitude that we have for our community around us.
Every single person was so supportive and admitting of their lack of understanding related to what we were going through. We were truly blown away by their humility and their ability to support whatever decision we were going to make, regardless of what they may have believed. I believe that it was this kind of genuine and non-judgmental support that provided Blake and I with the clarity that we needed as we struggled through this humanly-impossible decision-making process.
Blake:
I had many phones calls from friends giving great advice. One that stuck out to me was from a friend, Ike. He said “live in such a way that when you tell your story, you’ll never have to change a thing.” I just paused. That is timeless advice that can be applied to every decision we make in life.
We knew that the diagnostic testing was going to be expensive, and we had no idea what portion of that procedure would be covered by insurance. We spent the weekend considering what additional information that test could provide and if it was worth it to us.
We prayed and prayed most of those few days. And I will be completely honest, we prayed for a miscarriage. And then we prayed for a miracle and complete healing. At times, we had discussions over what we should even be praying for. We were grateful to know that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us in those moments — when we don’t know what to pray for. What we did know was that a decision of that magnitude was not one we wanted to take into our own hands, so we begged for God to intervene and make the decision for us, which at the time, looked like a miscarriage.
We went to church that Sunday hoping to hear from God. There were several parts of the message that stood out to us including a question that was posed to the audience: “Are you considering something that you’ve never considered before?” Even though our situation didn’t seem to fully fit what was being discussed, that question certainly hit home with us. Then we closed with the song “The Lord Our God.” The chorus of that song repeats “we won’t move without You” over and over. As I sang those words, I wondered if I was beginning to get a glimpse of the answer I was looking for. Andy (our pastor) reiterated that we should not move until we are led {by God}.
Blake:
That weekend was as mentally challenging as it was emotionally challenging. I remember one prayer asking for our baby to suffer as little as possible. Once we finished the prayer I remember us realizing that might be a miscarriage and saying out loud, “did we just pray for a miscarriage?” We were praying for things we never thought we’d pray for.
The silver lining was that Dana and I were leaning into each other in such a deep way that we were actually drawing closer to each other and to God. In our first year of marriage, we’re walking through one of the hardest things we’ll ever face as couple.
The next day, after some discussions, Blake and I decided to go through with the diagnostic procedure (it is called a CVS test). The blood test and the detailed ultrasound that we had been through are only considered screenings — they are not diagnostic tests. We felt that the CVS test would provide more concrete results and would aid in our decision-making. In hindsight, the results honestly had no impact on our decision-making. We scheduled that appointment on Monday, and they got us in the same day. The procedure was really uncomfortable, but it didn’t take too long (it felt longer than it really was). They said they would call us with preliminary results on Wednesday.
That same day, I received a call confirming an appointment that I had on Tuesday (the next day). I had no idea I had an appointment, but apparently I needed to be there at 9am for a pre-op appointment in preparation for the termination procedure that we had scheduled for Thursday.
On Tuesday, I went in for the appointment. I was signing some paperwork, and the man behind the desk asked me for payment for the procedure. I said, “Can I please wait to pay for this until Thursday because I might not go through with it?” He said that was fine and handed me the papers and told me to go back and sit in the lobby and wait for someone else to call me back. As I was sitting there reading through the paper work, that was the beginning of the most emotional 24 or so hours of my life. I was sitting by myself in that lobby crying quietly when a lady called me back for blood work. She asked if I was there due to a miscarriage, and I told her that I was not there due to a miscarriage but that my baby had Trisomy 18. She was truly and genuinely crushed for me. I could see it on her face. And I lost it for the rest of the appointment. I told her there was a possibility I was going to back out, so she was telling me how long my blood work would be good in case I did and was trying to comfort me as best she knew how.
It has been really encouraging to watch so many complete strangers genuinely sympathize with us, and while it usually makes me more emotional when they react this way, it has provided comfort witnessing that kind of sincere care and compassion.
After my pre-op appointment, on that Tuesday afternoon and into that evening, I sat on our couch carrying the heaviest weight I have ever felt. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t do much of anything. I couldn’t believe we had come to this. Taking our own child’s life was currently on the table as an option. This was our baby. This baby was growing inside of me. We saw the heartbeat, and we saw movement. This was God’s creation. The man I loved created this life with me, and we were considering taking that life into our own hands. My mind couldn’t imagine what that would feel like for us going forward. But then I would have moments of imagining our child suffering at birth, and that was incredibly difficult to think about as well. I was sobbing over everything. It was all so extremely unbearable to think about.
Ultimately, we decided that this was not a decision we could make. For us and for our future, we realized that this decision could only be made by God.
I kept thinking about that song and the words were on repeat in my head. “We won’t move without you.” I didn’t sleep at all that night. The next morning, I called my doctor and cancelled the termination procedure that was scheduled for the next day. For the first time since we found out about everything, I felt peace. And it was immediate. I got off the phone, and my tears stopped. The weight was gone. I felt like we had fully given everything to God in that moment, and he took all of it from us immediately. This was true peace and rest for my soul. There was no doubt in my mind that we made the right decision, and since then, we have never looked back.
I will admit I was afraid of what people might think if we shared that we had the termination scheduled, but I think it’s so important to be honest about how much we struggled through deciding what we believed was truly best for our child.
Reflecting on that week, we know God spoke to us despite thinking we hadn’t heard much from Him. I think Blake said it perfectly. He said “The Holy Spirit lives within us, and the feelings and emotions that we experienced during that week was the Holy Spirit speaking to us and leading us to the decision that God wanted us to make, which was to let Him make the decision in His time.” And I cannot help but think about my dad’s words as well; “Dana, God’s will is going to be done because you and Blake are genuinely seeking to do what He is calling you to do. If you’re not supposed to go through with a termination of this pregnancy, then He will not let you go through with it.” Wow. He was so right, and that’s exactly what happened.
I’ll finish with this verse that Blake recently sent me that helps remind me that no matter my understanding, God is at work through this difficult season.
“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” Ecclesiastes 11:5
