Your thoughts: strength from sadness

By Lianne Lasry on 23 November 2018 Midwives Magazine Abortion

Lianne Lasry re-examined her outlook when faced with the courage and dignity of a mother undergoing a termination.

Twenty years ago, I left South Africa as an NQM for a year’s adventure away from home. Two years later, I had made my home in Europe and was requalifying as a midwife on a busy labour ward.

During those six months, I cared for many women, and some of the events have stayed with me through the years. One of my most vivid memories, however, is not of a birth, but the termination of a pregnancy.

The mother was in her early thirties. She had had three normal births in the past. She also had a pre-existing cardiac condition that had worsened with each pregnancy. She was from a culture I still found foreign, where women wanted many children, and did not use contraception. Another child would be putting her life at risk. But her oral contraceptive had failed and resulted in a fourth pregnancy.

She had decided to persevere with the pregnancy, hoping to carry the pregnancy until the fetus was viable. As a relatively new midwife, I wondered why would she put herself at risk for another pregnancy.

I met her on the labour ward. She was over 20 weeks pregnant. Her cardiac output was insufficient, and doctors had recommended immediate termination of pregnancy as vital for her survival.

I had put her on a CTG monitor. She looked up at me and said: ‘That’s for the contractions, isn’t it?’ I replied that it was. She gave me a sad smile and said, simply: ‘You won’t be putting on a monitor for the baby’s heartbeat.’

I could only sadly shake my head. My training as a midwife had never prepared me for moments like these.

Her mother stayed with her throughout the birth, saying little, but clearly giving her strength and courage.

When she felt pressure, I lifted the sheet and caught the tiny, perfectly formed little body in my gloved hands. This impossibly small baby, still warm from his mother’s body, who would never draw his first breath.

As I write this, I can still feel her sadness, and her mother’s strength.

In the sluice room, I looked at the body of that little boy. At his gentle eyes that would never open, the hands he would never move.

Something began to change in me at that moment. I hope it was an awareness that every child is a human being, accidentally conceived or not. That even if I couldn’t understand why this woman had taken the decision to carry the pregnancy as far as she could, this was her choice, and as a midwife, my job was to support her choice. That to this woman, an unplanned pregnancy was not just a health risk but a child, with the possibility of joy and love that mothering him would bring.

I hope I grew from that experience. I know I stopped judging women’s choices as I had before. My new understanding was born out of the pain of a woman who bravely did what she felt was right, leaving me with memories that changed the way I saw my practice.

Lianne Lasry is a registered midwife and nurse, now living in Gibraltar