2 hours later, I get a call from my GP (My husband and I were halfway through dinner).

The GP asked if me and my husband were home together and I said yes, and then asked us to come into the practice as soon as possible. This was when I started to feel like something wasn’t right. We headed to see my doctor (who kindly stayed back after hours to see us.)

When we sat down, he said straight away that he isn’t going to sugar coat it; the results came back from my scan and it was detected that my baby had severe spina bifida. I will never forget sitting in that room, hearing his words but feeling like I was watching someone else’s story and not mine. I just remember thinking ‘But I’m halfway? But I’ve pushed through the worst of it? How is it fair that I’ve endured all these weeks of vomiting only for it to not even matter?’
The doctor explained to us that we could continue the pregnancy, although the two likely outcomes would be that the baby would either die in my womb, or pass away almost instantly after birth. He also said that we could terminate, if that’s what we wished and advised us to take the weekend to think of next steps. However, upon hearing that our baby would essentially die painfully in front of us or pass in my womb if I continued the pregnancy, both me and my husband already knew what we wanted to do and confirmed that we would terminate.

In terms of choosing to abort, I am extremely thankful that the choice available. To be told that your son would not survive the pregnancy, or die in extreme pain if born is extremely terrifying and upsetting. Our first challenge as parents was to choose the more peaceful path for our son’s life.

From this experience, I have met other parents who have also been faced with these impossible circumstances, plus other women who have had abortions for many different reasons.
And what I am certain of is that the choice to abort or not should ALWAYS be available. No story is ever the same, no pregnancy is the same and no set of one’s circumstances are the same. And so there should never be judgement as to why someone chooses to have an abortion.

Thankyou again for reading my story. Knowing that my experience could potentially help or comfort someone else makes my healing journey better. We did not have a name as such for my son (we kept his sex a surprise, so didn’t know he was a boy), however we gave him a nickname which was inspired by my very minimal diet at the time.
Due to being so sick, nibbling on small squares of cheese was one of the only ways I could get any calories, and so we dubbed our baby ‘Gromit’, after the classic stop motion tv show ‘Wallace and Gromit’ (who loved cheese).