The Journey to Motherhood

My journey to motherhood was not the normal way, but I think today many people come to be mothers unconventionally. As a mother of four amazing children, I am 100% anti-abortion. This means I do not believe in killing an unborn child for any reason, not even rape or a fatal diagnosis for the baby. This came from a lifetime of personal experiences and from science. As a person of faith now I can say that my religion has only reinforced my already secular based beliefs. I conceived a child in rape, I was told my children could kill me, and I had a child who was supposed to die before he was ever born. This is my story about why I am against abortion, in all cases.

I was raised as a pro-“choice” atheist. I used quotes because I now know the phrase isn’t accurate at all. I didn’t become prolife until conceiving my oldest through rape. Doctors recommended abortion as the compassionate solution to my “situation”. She saved me when I saved her. She helped me to heal from a lifetime of trauma and pain. Pregnancy wasn’t easy at all. I had hyperemesis graviderum (a debilitating diagnosis where the patient vomits excessively) with my first pregnancy and though I wanted a natural birth, she was delivered via emergency c-section. It was so fast and overwhelming. She wanted to come early and the doctor said she was big enough to allow it. The labor lasted 3 days and the doctor tried to break the amniotic sac. When she did, my heart rate went up from pain, and my baby’s dropped down into the mid 40’s. I finally gave up on my dreams of a natural birth and had surgery to save her life. When I woke up, I saw the most beautiful, perfect baby I had ever seen. She was gorgeous! Like a perfect porcelain doll. In that moment, I knew I would do everything in my power to protect her, to love her, to be the best mother I could, and hopefully to raise her into an amazing woman. She showed me true love for the first time in my life. So far, she has become everything I wanted and more. Her heart is made of pure gold!

After she was three; I was baptized, and soon after that met the man who is now my husband at my church. Motherhood began with her, my joy, my hope, my everything! She led me to my beautiful life that I have now and never ONCE have I regretted sparing her life. Never have I seen my rapist’s face in her. Never has she been a bad person, to anyone. In fact, never have I endured the many arguments used by abortion access supporters. Her empathy and tenderness has surpassed anything I’ve ever seen in a person, even to this day. Aborting her would’ve denied the world one less amazing human being. One who’s value wasn’t any less in utero because of her age.

My next child was conceived with an IUD and for some unknown reason I continually went septic. They focused solely on the fact that I was pregnant and nothing else. I had severe abdominal pain accompanying my fevers and weakness. The doctor initially thought I miscarried and prepared me for a D&C (a procedure to remove the deceased baby), but I wanted to see the ultrasound first for myself. I am glad I did because I don’t dare to imagine what could have occurred if I hadn’t. I saw that my son wasn’t just alive, he was practically having a dance party! Of course, I told them at that point I wouldn’t be proceeding with the procedure. So, I was admitted, given antibiotics, fluids, and they ran several tests trying to figure out what was wrong with my baby. The physician never considered anything but the pregnancy as the cause of my pain and sepsis. She never did find a real answer but eventually recommend I terminate the pregnancy, stating sometimes the woman’s body knows more than science does and clearly my body was rejecting my baby because “it was defective”. She wasn’t treating my sepsis with an abortion, it is treated with antibiotics! That doctor was wanting to remove that variable which caused HER a potential liability lawsuit. No doctor wants to tell a woman her baby is defective by society’s standards.

Later on while still pregnant, we left Omaha and moved to Oregon to be near my husband’s family for support. Very soon after the move, I had my worst episode of pain and sepsis yet! We went to the hospital where my new OBGYN quickly found the true cause. I had gall stones which caused acute pancreatitis and sepsis. Had they found the stones early on in the pregnancy, I could’ve had a safe removal that wouldn’t endanger the baby. Since I was now passed 20 weeks, she said my options were to deliver pre-term and my child would most likely not live, or I could tough it out as long as I could tolerate with close monitoring, antibiotics, and pain medicine. I chose option 2, with my husband being of course terrified as sepsis was a threat to my life, and the best treatment was surgery. I could have delivered then, which would not have been an intentional murder of my child, but I chose to allow my son to grow more. We safely delivered via induction at 35 weeks and 5 days. My boy was 5lbs 13oz and totally healthy! I had surgery after I healed from delivery and they found over 37 stones. So many that they overflowed from the gall bladder and they had to dig out the rest of the stones from all of the connections surrounding it. My beautiful boy was worth the pain but had the original doctor explored other possibilities instead of blaming my child I never would’ve had to endure it that long.

I was happier than ever, having found my faith, my husband, my children. Even though I was pro-life, I wasn’t involved much with the cause, aside from donating to a local pregnancy resource center and foster care. I also was a volunteer soccer and baseball coach for low-income or at-risk children. I also donated often to the local domestic violence shelter and was very involved with my church. My position at church was a leadership role over the children of the congregation. I felt pro-life was more than just saying it. I wanted to help in every area that I could. I wanted to be the person I didn’t have growing up and I wanted to teach my children to serve people from all walks of life. 

I conceived our third child while taking the Yaz pill. At this point, I had given up trying to understand why birth control didn’t work well for me and just celebrated God’s blessing for our family. I had been totally against having a hysterectomy but wasn’t sure I wanted more children since I already had two complicated pregnancies. I was so happy with my two, that I was worried I couldn’t fit more love for one more. Was I so wrong! We were foster parents at the time and the pregnancy was overall smooth sailing compared to the first two. I had hyperemesis graviderum and PTSD with my first and of course my second was especially chaotic trying to find answers. I had two healthy children though and so my assumption was this one would be healthy too. My 20-week ultrasound was perfect! We had our second baby boy growing within me and we chose the name Gideon from the Bible. Gideon was a warrior and in Judges 6:23 the Lord promised he would not die as He encouraged Gideon to bravely battle in His name. Not long after my normal and healthy 20-week ultrasound, I noticed some strange feelings of dread that my baby was in danger. I had small symptoms but nothing that couldn’t be easily explained away with a healthy and advancing pregnancy. My sweet OBGYN at that time said I was likely just having some anxiety because of my complex history. She was kind and reassuring. She was a Christian woman and she advised me to pray and take comfort in His many blessings in this pregnancy so far. Unfortunately, I couldn’t shake the feeling and my symptoms worsened. My heart was racing and I seemed to be swelling excessively. I puffed up in my face, arms, feet, everywhere! I’ve been blessed to gain minimal weight each pregnancy but I felt like I was ballooning! I knew this wasn’t normal for me. 

I went in for an urgent visit, which my doctor did just to comfort me all was well with my baby, and I had gained over 20 pounds in just 10 days! Now she was a little concerned. She did labs and an ultrasound. When she performed the imaging, she had a very worried look on her face. She wasn’t good at hiding her concern one bit. I have a medical background and knew my little boy’s ultrasound wasn’t right. And by her face, I knew something was off. I began to have tears sneak out and I asked what it was. My son had a big black circle within his abdomen. She didn’t know what it was. She labeled it a mass and said she would send the imaging to the bigger city a little under two hours away to the maternal fetal medicine office. I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia because of my tachycardia, high blood pressure, swelling, and labs. I was now once again labeled a high-risk pregnancy. The MFM(abbreviation for maternal fetal medicine high risk doctor) wanted us to go to him which in this time of year wasn’t the safest journey. Mountains and blizzards were between us and them. We went and got another ultrasound, more labs, but no more answers. They sent the imaging to the university hospital in Portland which is 5 hours north of us with perfect weather. They didn’t know what this was either. So, they sent everything to the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where they still took 5 days to do the diagnosis. I was put in the hospital for close monitoring as well because we do not have a NICU locally and I was too early on to hope for a good outcome for our son if my body rejected him. Mayo Clinic gave their news, and it wasn’t good. They gave our son a 0% chance at life and said the longer he was inside of me the higher the risk to my life. The worry was sepsis and the pre-eclampsia. The treatment option should have been delivery not abortion! Luckily, my primary OBGYN doctor supported me and never once suggested abortion as an option because she knew it wasn’t a treatment. Of course, she was so scared for me AND my baby! This was something NONE of the doctors in Oregon had ever dealt with. The simple way to explain it was our son’s intestines burst for some unknown reason, as it is too rare to understand, and his body miraculously built a calcified shell around the area, filling with stool and infection. He had a large sac within his body, and should it rupture at any time his death would be pretty instantaneous. Then my risk of sepsis would have begun which takes time. Just like a woman who miscarries and can’t pass her baby on her own without medical intervention.



The MFM aggressively pursued abortion. He even threatened to drop me as a patient. Sadly, because of where I live I had no other options within reason. He and I butted heads, so he tried to convince my husband to “make me be more reasonable”. Of course that did nothing but cause us to further dislike him. My OB called the MFM up and said she would help monitor me closely, but also firmly told him my faith in God was the most important thing to me with the things I’ve endured in life. She also explained that I am well educated medically so she believed I would be safe. I ended up signing medical liability waivers to have the high-risk team seeing me three times a week and I saw my primary OBGYN twice a week. If anything were to occur on a Saturday or Sunday, I was instructed to rush to the Labor & Delivery just 5 minutes from my home. To cut this story down drastically, our Gideon decided to come early at 27 weeks during a snow storm where the life flight had to wait 5 hours and I had anaphylaxis from Nifedipine, a preterm labor-stopping medication. We were blessed as my body responded to magnesium and I got a not-so-lovely steroid shot in the tushy. My husband wasn’t able to go on the flight as the plane was too small, so he had to drive a treacherous almost 9 hours in blizzards through the mountains to Portland. I had delivered without him. Our son was alive and as stabilized as they could manage, but he needed immediate surgery that they didn’t believe he would live through. They asked if we even wanted to put him through the surgery as he was so small and weak. I think they felt letting him die was the most compassionate option. He already looked dead. My husband had arrived just before the surgery and we said a prayer for him. We saw him only briefly, alive, but we couldn’t touch or hold him.

Our Gideon survived, it was a long road but he lived! After the surgery which removed the big sac, he was well under 2lbs. and 13 or 14″ long. I don’t recall his exact length but he was not much more than a foot long. Over a year in the hospital, many surgeries, lots of sacrifice, a big trip to Mayo Clinic, and a switch to a doctor locally who listened to mom, Gideon is not just alive but thriving! He is soon going to be 4. Something they said he would never see was his first birthday. Then his second. Now he is a big brother, free of feeding tubes, ostomy bags, and any medications other than a multivitamin. His life, though not easy to begin with, isn’t less valuable because he struggled. The medical bills we paid for wouldn’t have justified killing him either. As hard as it was to watch my child suffer, he is stronger because of it. None of those variables warranted his death.

While Gideon was going through his between life and death first year, I ran a prayers page for him. So many around the nation and then the world prayed for him every time he became critical. Every surgery. He had sparked my interest in getting more involved with the pro-life world because I was now so filled with fire passion to protect the unborn! I was blogging here and there but primarily talking to pregnant girls and women with a complicated diagnosis for them or their baby, helping them understand the steps they can take to keep them and their child safe. I believed and now even more so that abortion is NEVER necessary to save a woman. After my third was here and doing well I knew I had to do more!

As Gideon grew so did my activism for life and for women. I wanted the world to know the truth about abortion. That it was never okay! Then, I had another baby. This time I had opted for no hormonal birth controls after learning how they can kill a child already conceived. So, in a way she was kind of planned. Planned in the sense that I finally accepted sex can ALWAYS lead to pregnancy with or without birth control. And now that I knew they can kill an already conceived child I wasn’t willing to use it. Our daughter was a healthy 30-week baby who needed nothing but to gain a little weight. No oxygen and she was a whopping 4lbs and 19” long! I was a proud mother of four great kids who according to some shouldn’t be here.

To summarize my thoughts, I am restating what I learned first-hand, delivery is always an option. Many great actively practicing OBGYNs agree, like my close friends Dr. William Lile and Dr. Nativida Etienne-Maule, and countless others. A mother’s symptoms and health problems can and should be treated during pregnancy. Sadly, her baby may pass away from some forms of treatment, but it isn’t guaranteed, and it wasn’t an intentional killing of the child. Many babies survive and thrive even with mothers going through chemo, surgery, or taking certain medications. So, that spiraled into my now being a full-time advocate with my entire family (husband and 4 children). We travel the country fighting for laws to be changed, helping women get resources, and getting them local support networks. I work with Save The 1 and 40 days for Life, as well as several other organizations fighting to end abortion. I continue to see miracles with each passing day, not just with my children, but now with other people’s children that have been spared an abortion as well. We can not undo what has already been done but we can battle with all of our might for the change. Will you join us in fighting for these innocent human beings? Will you shout out for equality for all? Please don’t give up. Fight with me so that I can raise my children in a world that does not discriminate any person because of their age, race, gender, disability, or way of conception.