Baby Angel

Today is a sad day.

Last week I got a call from one of our staff that one of our girls was going to the hospital and that we needed to meet her there immediately. Despite having a sonogram, multiple counseling sessions, and being in constant contact with us she decided that she couldn’t have her baby and wanted to abort. She procured the RU-486 abortion pills and took the first tablet. The first series of tablets is a high dose of progesterone which blocks the hormones that go to the unborn child, ultimately leading to starvation of the baby. However, after taking the first tablet she changed her mind and decided that she wanted to keep her baby.

As we were in the cab on the way to the hospital we thought that it was a miracle that she wanted to keep her baby but knew that there was a chance that it was too late. We were both anxious to see her sonogram and the baby’s heartbeat. After spending the night in the emergency room with her the doctor comes over and takes us back to the sonogram room and almost immediately we can see the constant thump, thump, thump of the baby’s heartbeat. At that moment we laughed, cried, and hugged knowing that even though we weren’t out of the woods yet there was a good chance her baby could live since the first RU-486 pill didn’t seem to work. As we walked out of the hospital that morning we were met by a sunrise as bright as our hopes for our girl and her baby.

This week I’ve been on the road with Chris and a few other interns but today I was informed that our girl hemorrhaged and lost her baby. I was crushed. At first I had a hard time accepting the news. I didn’t want to believe that something that had seemingly ended so well actually turned out to be so tragic. And even though tears escaped my eyes, I had to remind myself that everything possible was done to save our girl’s baby and that this wasn’t anyone’s fault. It’s really easy to take the whole world onto your shoulders in our line of work because we want to reach every girl and save every baby and when we don’t it’s like we failed. But I had to remind myself that that this is just how God decided it was going to be. If I had the final say I would have picked a different ending but because God works outside of time he could see what would have become of the baby whereas I cannot. Maybe the baby would have had some adverse side effects where as God had planned for her to be perfectly normal so instead of subjecting an innocent to the pain of living a life compromised by the ill use of free will He called her home instead. Even though this could be seen as a tragic loss we have to remember that while her time on Earth was short we now have a baby angel interceding for her mommy and the people who worked so hard to try and save her life.