Reductions: the secret abortions

I went for fertility treatments for a number of months - a total of 4 cycles - and that was one of the things we told our doctor we would NOT do. We also would not go for the treatments that involved anything other than DH having regular relations (IUI, AI, etc.). We both felt that our babies should be born of a natural act between the two of us or else God just really didn't want us to have any more kids. We were OK with that. So I ended up doing 3 cycles of fertility shots. The first cycle went really well and we ended up with 10 eggs that were released and the doctor said that's excellent - we should get pregnant. Well, I didn't. The next cycle, I had 20 eggs that matured and the doctor said to send DH away and to not do ANYTHING for the next week just to be sure that we didn't conceive on that cycle since that had a VERY high risk of a high order multiple. I then went on to have another cycle with 8 good eggs and conceived one baby but miscarried. We decided to put everything on hold for a bit. I went back a few months later and started on a new treatment - with no shots - and became pregnant the first cycle (with just one egg) but again miscarried that baby due to not knowing the full story with this brand new treatment (it was later found that you should continue the medication through the pregnancy and not stop taking it but I stopped taking it on the orders of the doctor).

So, I've struggled with infertility and have gone through the beginning of the further intervention that is available. I can understand why some women - even those who are pro-life - choose to selectively reduce because of the raw emotion and years long struggle to finally have a child of your own. After going through literally years of disappointment each time you find you are not pregnant, to find out you're finally pregnant is amazing! Then you find out that there are 8 babies in there and you KNOW that 8 babies cannot make it to term and you will lose each and every one of them - so you make the decision to reduce the number to 2 to give them the best chance possible. All of the babies would die for sure. Do you chose to take some of the lives to save the others??? This is a very difficult choice to make (and one that I would not have made myself) and while I am adamently pro-life, I do understand these women's decisions. I do not understand when it's twins, triplets or even quads because there's a good chance they will make it. I think up to 6 or 7 babies have made it too but it's a really rare case and the majority of times, these pregnancies will be lost.

 

That's just sad.

Oh - and the highest order multiple birth that had all babies survive was 7 babies. There have been births with 8 where 7 lived but the one didn't make it.

I think you can kind of compare this idea of high oder multiple reduction (I'm not talking twins or even triplets) - if there is a huge chance all babies will die, do you just let them die or give a few a better chance to make it? I can think of transferring that to real life - you're in a boat that is sinking. You have 2 life jackets and 7 children. Do you let them all drown or do you do your best to save a few of them? You cannot physically save them all so you do what you can to save who you can.

It's a decision that I was grateful to not have to make but had we gotten to that situation, I don't think I could have chosen to terminate any of them. But I CAN understand the thinking behind it and I honestly leave it up to God to judge all of that.

 

IF I did IVF, I would only allow up to 3 eggs to be implanted at a time but I can see people doing that, failing then implanting more the next time because it just costs so much money each cycle! In my case, I had 10 eggs mature but none of them were fertilized but if they had, I could have very easily had a high order multiple. It just really taught me that it is totally God who allows a baby to be conceived because with 10 eggs and everything else perfect, we still did not conceive. It was not the time. It was an amazing time for me.