Broken Hearts
The memory is fuzzy. I can’t recall the doctor’s name. She was young, pretty, and kind. But, she was basically a stranger. A stranger who was asking me and my wife to make the hardest decision of our lives. More on that in a moment.
The consensus is that Maeve wasn’t doing well. She wasn’t growing. She wasn’t thriving in her momma’s belly. Bodhi was hitting all of his growth targets no problemo. Twin sis was just having a tough time keeping up with bro. He was hogging all of the good stuff 😉
We had also recently seen a pediatric cardiologist who found heart irregularities in both babies. The Doc explained everything, including the possibility of surgery. The thought of our tiny babies needing open heart surgery scared us half to death. More crying. More pain. More sadness. I started to feel like my world was made of glass, and every doctor we met had a hammer. Tap… crack… tap… crack… only a matter of time…
The Choice
The judgement of Solomon tells the tale of two women fighting over a child. As the story goes, both women give birth to a child in the night, but one of the babies dies before dawn. The women both claim that the living baby is their own, and the dead child belongs to the other. King Solomon asks someone to bring him a sword so he may cut the baby in half to be shared equally. The real mother begs that the baby’s life be spared, and that he be given to the other woman. She was willing to give the child away to save his life.
Most parents would do anything to save their child. What would they do when faced with a choice like this?
- Emergency surgery now to try to save your daughter, but risk losing both twins in the process.
- Let things progress naturally, which will increase your son’s chance of survival, but not your daughter’s.
It was the hardest decision we had ever faced. I recall the room being dark. The doctor did her best to show empathy before leaving Brooke and I alone to discuss the matter. She did a pretty good job for a stranger. Brooke cried. I cried. Brooke trembled. I trembled. We just wanted our twins to be healthy. We wanted both of them to be healthy.
