Did I have an abortion?

Gonna skip ahead a few days but will go back to them.  Disclaimer - I am adamantly pro-choice and pass no judgment on anyone who feels differently about their pregnancy than I felt about mine.  I am talking about my pregnancy and mine alone in this blog, no one elses.

One of the big questions in my mind for the next days was what procedure did I actually have? 

No one actually told me what the surgical procedure was called.  So I was left wondering, did I have an abortion?  My girls still had heartbeats when I was put under for surgery.  So while no one ever said that word to me, is that what happened?  During my time in the ER, I was asked a few times what surgeries I had undergone during my life.  If I went into the ER with another pregnancy, would I have to list that word as one of my surgeries?  Is that word going to be in my medical record?  How can I survive the knowledge of aborting the girls I so desperately wanted?


My pregnancy was aborted, but the medical procedure has a more technical name so I don't actually have to use that word when going over my medical history.

After a couple of days at home, I went to look at some of the paperwork I was sent home with because I couldn't remember what medications I was supposed to take at that time.  And I decided to go through all of the paperwork and wallow a bit as I reviewed it.

K asked if I really wanted to do that and sat with me while I did.

I cried as I looked at all of the sympathy cards from the hospital staff, and the little knitted hats that were included in the sympathy package.  And then the medical stuff.  And that's where I found that my procedure was a D&E.  I probably know what that stands for since I've looked it up since then, but I don't remember at the moment.

But what convinced me was the commemorative birth certificate for Charlotte and Christina.  Almost a silly thing to even exist.   Commemorative birth certificate.  Not a government acknowledgeable certificate of their lives because there was no death certificate to go with it.

But it exists because they were born.  They didn't have lungs yet, so neither of them took a breath.  They were born and died in the process of being born.  For every moment they were inside me, they were alive.  And I didn't do anything to stop their hearts from beating.

I waver between believing that and not believing that.  I had to birth them at some point, and they had no lungs to survive that process so there was nothing that would save them.  On the other hand, were they meant to die at 1pm?  1:15pm?  2 hours later?  What about another 24 hours?

There is no way of defining when the final moment would have been for them to be able to live their last heart beat while still saving my life.  And that will kill me a little bit every day.