I called Dmitri my miracle baby. My wife and I had decided a little over a year earlier that we wanted another child, a sibling for our elementary-aged daughter. Five IUIs and multiple purchases of frozen cryobank sperm later, I’d had four unsuccessful attempts and a first trimester miscarriage. I knew how common miscarriage was, but the loss shattered me and my wife. When I got pregnant with Dmitri, I was in consultations with my fertility specialist for IVF. I had stubbornly asked my doctor if I could try one final IUI while we waited to start IVF, and she said we could certainly try, but she levelled with me that the chances of a successful IUI on my 6th attempt were 5-8%.
My little 5-8% showed up as a faint line on a pregnancy test after I’d spent a Saturday running an event for work. I was convinced I had my “rainbow baby”, our happy ending that would complete our family. During the pregnancy when I had miscarried, I’d felt anxious a good bit of the time, feeling like something was off. By contrast, my pregnancy with Boop (as we had bump-named our baby) felt charmed. I went for hikes thinking about the baby growing inside me, my wife and I debated baby names, and our daughter was so excited to be a big sister.
One evening shortly before 12 weeks, my wife and I went on a date and I bought a maternity dress at our favorite vintage store. When we came home, I checked the online portal and saw that our NIPT results were ready. The news that our baby was high risk for Trisomy 21 was delivered to us not by a human but by an online chatbot – which then proceeded to ask us if we would rate our satisfaction with it. My wife and I were both heartbroken, and while we debated what we would do if the diagnosis was definitive, we knew we needed more information to make that decision. We did agree that we would name our baby boy Dmitri, after our favourite classical music composer, Dmitri Shostakovich.
During the ultrasound scans that followed at my OB’s office and maternal-fetal medicine, we were informed that Dmitri had a nuchal translucency reading of 12mm and a cystic hygroma. The doctors emphasized that there was no way to know the severity of our baby’s condition from this information, but they told us that the ultrasound together with our NIPT pointed clearly to the diagnosis of Down Syndrome.
My wife and I each arrived at the decision of TFMR, but for somewhat different reasons. My wife believed that Dmitri would have a very difficult life ahead of him, whereas I felt the need to own that some of my reasons were more self-focused. I loved Dmitri more than I can describe, but I could not see myself as a lifelong caregiver. We both struggled with the question of what would happen to Dmitri if he reached the final stages of his life when we were either elderly or already gone. Paradoxically, clarity on our decision allowed us to reconnect with Dmitri leading up to the termination. When we weren’t sure what we would do, I’d distanced myself emotionally from the pregnancy. On the way to one of the ultrasounds during that uncertain period I remember silently begging the baby I’d miscarried to please take his little brother to be with him so that I wouldn’t have to make that decision. By the time we had our last ultrasound, however, I remember being grateful for the chance to see him curled up in my uterus one more time.
Due to restrictive abortion laws in our state, my wife and I drove 11 hours (with our elementary schooler, who knew she was losing her baby brother, in tow) to another state for me to have a D&C at 14.5 weeks, during Mother’s Day weekend. I was fortunate to have more support and resources than many who face this type of loss, but it was still the most difficult and isolating experience of my life. Sadly, a close friend of mine had lost her baby to TFMR less than a year earlier, and she was my lifeline during this time, both in terms of emotional and practical support. My wife and I spoke with a counselor who specialized in TFMR, and I continued to meet with my regular therapist to process the loss. While all of this support made a huge difference, nothing could remove the pain of my baby’s loss.
Dmitri taught me that you can never know what you will do in a situation until you are faced with it. I had not thought I would end a pregnancy over a Down Syndrome diagnosis, and I had said as much out loud before I was actually in that situation. Ending my pregnancy with Dmitri forced me to face contradictions in my values, as I had to accept that I had chosen not to parent a child who would have had mild to moderate intellectual disability along with physical health problems; yet, I believe that a person with Down Syndrome is just as deserving of respect, love, and dignity as a typically developing person. From my point of view, there is no single “right” choice in this situation; my wife and I made the heartbreaking choice that we felt was best for us and our family, and I recognise and respect that it’s not the choice everyone would have made.
I wrote this post partly because, when I was in my initial stages of grief, reading other TFMR parents’ stories helped me feel less alone. Somewhere, I came across the writing of another parent who said that the TFMR community is not all that small, and the LGBTQ+ community isn’t either, but the intersection of both can feel like a very specific group. I do think that being a queer couple meant that there were some unique aspects of our loss, especially for my wife. She’s Dmitri’s mom too, but as the non-gestational mom her experience was unlike that of gestational moms but also very different from that of dads. She and I were sometimes at a disconnect because she felt isolated; for example, I’d had health professionals taking care of me during my D&C, whereas she had to drop me off and experience the knowledge of Dmitri’s loss alone. Yet, there were aspects of being the gestational mom – feeling like my body had failed me twice, the loss of my bump – that I felt my wife could not fully understand. Our grief also took different timelines. My wife often cried alone in her cubicle at work during the first month or two after we lost Dmitri, and I know she stifled her grief at home a lot in an effort to take care of me and our daughter. While I certainly felt grief during that early time, Dmitri’s loss didn’t fully hit me until his due date over five months later. Finally, as a queer couple there are extra steps necessary to become a parent (which is also true for many straight couples facing infertility), as well as the implicit or explicit need to prove to ourselves or to society that we are good parents; this added another layer to the grief over ending a wanted pregnancy.
I do NOT believe that things happen for a reason. There is no “reason” to explain why my family lost Dmitri, but it is important to me to feel that Dmitri’s existence had meaning. Around the time of Dmitri’s due date, I acted in a local community theater play. I was drawn to the play because it focused on an LGBTQ+ young person’s relationship with his family, but the play also dealt with themes of loss and grief. In the show, I played an elderly woman whose son dies suddenly; his energy is then ‘recycled’ into another character, and when my character realizes this, she is able to share a hug with her son and briefly connect with him after he is gone. In my personal belief system, I don’t believe that Dmitri can return in quite this way, but I have been able to recognize pieces of meaning and connection. For example, I saw pieces of that meaning in the non-judgmental support I received from my friends and co-workers after Dmitri’s loss, and I feel that Dmitri has made me more grateful for the people in my life. I will think of him every time I hear a Shostakovich symphony, when I visit the places we hiked together when I was pregnant with him, and when I look up at the oak tree we planted in the backyard in honor of Dmitri and the baby we lost to miscarriage.
We love you, our Boop. We will always be your Mama and Mommy, and you will always be our third child.
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