Now We have Two....

I was sitting down to type and a friend emailed me to ask how things were going. I decided that the best thing to do was to post what I wrote to him:

We were supposed to have our next scan on March 10, which, in India, was last night. I hardly slept last night in anticipation. When I got up this morning and there was no word, I decided to call Dr. Patel tonight.

I called her about a half hour ago. Right away she told me that the procedure had already been done yesterday. The baby's heartbeat stopped while they watched it. When Crystal comes, Dr Patel is going to scan again to make sure that all is well, and that the baby is indeed dead. Right now all is well with Panna (our surrogate) and the other babies though she made me nervous when she said that there was something (I did not understand what that "something" was) that she still needs to do to make sure that Panna does not abort the other two.

I asked her how she chose which one to abort. She said that she chose the least robust one.

I must admit that I was shocked to have her say that it had already been done. Crystal and I predicted that this was what she would do. To be honest, I am very grateful to her. I feels that this was very compassionate of her - at least it feels that way to me. On one hand, I am very relieved that we did not need to give our "okay" like we would have here in the US. It would have been sheer agony to say the words" yes, we need to do the reduction", which is probably why I have avoided calling since our last scan. I would have felt like an emperor who signs a death sentence and someone's life is now taken. She did the "deed" to our child without our giving our verbal "consent." Still, I suppose our silence on the matter was as good as a verbal consent.

She said that she would send the scan of the two live fetuses and one dead one. I am feeling like I don't want her to, but then again, maybe I can use it to do a funeral of some sort for the little one who had to go. It is so very sad. We knew that this was a possibility by putting in four, but really hoped it would not amount to this. Well it did.

There are all the "reasons" why this was necessary, but still....

My heart aches right now. That is all I can say about that in this moment.

Najla