“Although I was pregnant with what I believed to be a baby girl, I knew I wouldn’t be for much longer. Shortly before dropping my daughter off at school that morning, my water had broken.”
‘Mommy, when will I have a sister?,’ she asked. As my eyes welled up with tears, I said, ‘I don’t know honey. You’ll have to talk to God about that.’
‘The doctor knelt beside my bed with our baby. ‘There are things I want to point out to you.’ Those words hit me hard. ‘No she’s perfect. That’s not possible – she was already tested for that.’
“This was not how it was supposed to be. I was grieving the perfect baby I had in my head for 10 months. I felt pity for not only myself, but her. I wanted to know ‘why us?’”
‘I’m finally happy, and now I’m going to die?’ I was losing blood from somewhere. My heart sank. I was terrified. All I could think about were my children and my husband.’
“My periods were out of control, I did nothing but bleed constantly. I would fill overnight pads within an hour. I stayed in pain, it was unbearable. My husband came home on his lunch and found me doubled over in the floor, unable to move.”
‘I lay in bed with wires and IV’s attached to me. A nurse walked in, armed with a breast pump. ‘You need to start pumping,’ she said. Excuse me?’
“A confused expression took over my face. I was barely alive.”
‘She said, ‘I’m sorry. There’s something wrong with your little girls’ chest.’
“The ultrasound tech couldn’t tell me what was wrong, she wouldn’t even tell me the gender of my baby. She kept making excuses to leave the room. I knew something was wrong, I had seen all of my sisters’ ultrasounds before, her babies never looked the way mine did.”
‘This is dwarfism and I’m 99% certain the result will be fatal.’ There it was. A bomb. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t talk, I didn’t understand at all. She was perfect.’
“As she rambled, completely ignorant of the fact I was in my own puddle of tears, she wrung her hands. It was horrible. At that point, my mother stepped in. She and my husband scooped me out of the chair and we left, never to return.”
‘Did you have genetic testing done?’ I went into panic mode. My cheeks got hot, mouth dry and how did my tongue suddenly get too big for my mouth? I said no. ‘Do you see something?’
“I stared deep into my friend’s eyes, begging, ‘is he okay? I can’t see his face.’ My husband reluctantly showed me. He knew what I yet didn’t. No one did. No one believed us. I said it. I said what I had been internalizing all along.”
‘Her skin hardened within seconds. After hardening, it began to split. Behind the curtain, I sensed their frantic panic. My husband’s silence scared me. He kept saying, ‘It’s bad.’
“He told me, ‘Jennie, I looked in her eyes, and she has the most beautiful soul.’ Broken is the only way to describe the feeling as they placed her in my arms. They had never seen anything like this. She was fine; everything was perfect, and then it wasn’t — just like that.”
‘As I read their story, I cried. Not because I was regretting giving ‘my’ babies to someone else, but because I knew they were the ones meant to raise these kids.’
“We didn’t care if he/she was married, their religion, their sexual preference…we just wanted to make sure it was someone who would love these children. It wouldn’t be long before we were matched with someone.”
‘I heard rumbling uncharacteristic of the bathroom. Shouting ensued. I burst in to discover my son had hurled a suitcase into the shower at his sister.’
“I heard a frantic screaming from upstairs. My daughter had gone into the bathroom to use the toilet. This provoked the unbridled anger of her brother. Infuriated, he stood and peed on her in retribution.”
