'There are no words for the heartbreak': Mother forced to give birth at 22 weeks and watch baby die

Summary: A woman in Nebraska's water broke at 21 weeks, and the fetus at that point had no chance of survival. A new law in Nebraska meant that she had to wait until the baby came out naturally, which was ten days later, and then hold the child for fifteen minutes while it suffocated, due to its lungs beind underdeveloped.

‘While we waited, we tried to pray, but we didn’t know what to pray for. So we spent our days and nights telling our daughter how much we loved her, how sorry we were, and how we wished we could do something different.”

So they were praying to have had the ability to abort the baby instead of letting it be born naturally. I find it hard to feel sympathy here.

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"I don’t understand why a foetis cannot be anesthetized before a necessary abortion."

They don't anesthetize the baby during abortions because to do so would be to acknowledge that the baby does feel pain. They want people to believe that it is simply a lump of flesh that can be casually disposed of.

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The death of a baby is tragic, whether it happens after the baby is born or before. It’s easy to imagine that you could have spared yourself they agony of experiencing it by having an abortion, but then you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to hold the baby tell her how much you loved her. When thing get really tough, it’s best to count your blessings, no matter how difficult it may seem to find them.

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Having my daughter stillborn at 42 weeks gives me an understanding of what the family went through. Right now they’re probably working through the blame/guilt phase but later on they will cherish the photos they have of their child and both they and any future children they might have will be comforted to know they loved that little one to the very end.

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One reason that we always made sure we had a pro-life OB/GYN was so that we never had to worry that the doctor would give up on life when there was still room for hope. We would not have given birth in a hospital other than a Catholic hospital. And with our first being stillborn at 42 weeks for unknown reasons, we had to use hospitals with a NICU - a lot of which are Catholic hospitals because they do value human life.

I wonder where this baby was born.

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I think they are looking to *blame* someone, to relieve their own guilty feelings. Seems as if they would have aborted the baby,no matter what.

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I don't understand why plans weren't made to treat this baby immediately since the docs were aware of what was expected. It doesn't sound as if the medical personnel tried or the mother would not have been holding the baby.

I would think that they feel abandoned (and blaming it on the law) in that they had an extra ten days of anticipating the death of their baby with no hope of survival.

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My nephews were born at 23 weeks...glad they didn’t have this doctor.

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I’m willing to give these parents some slack because of what they’re going through, but I’d sure like to know what the doctors were thinking. Their judgment was not clouded by grief and hormones, but could be clouded by guilt or an agenda. That’s the risk of being attended by “pro-choice” doctors.

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My understanding is that if the doctors have advance warning of a seriously premature birth there are medications they can give to enhance/speed up lung development.

There’s not a lot of information in this article, but I question the doctors’ commitment to try to preserve the life of this child.

Maybe somebody who knows more can give us more perspective.

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There are NO necessary abortions. By definition during an abortion the baby is killed before he is extracted. They either scramble their little brains or chop them to bits.

There is simply no situation in which the health of the mother is in such a precarious position that you need to abort, and yet you have time to waste killing the baby.

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So wait...they wanted to abort the baby so it wouldn’t experience pain? What the heck do these people think the baby would have felt if they’d aborted it?

It sounds to me less like they cared about whether the baby was in pain and more like they are upset they had to watch their baby die? Are they crazy? They had fifteen minutes with their child...that’s more than some people ever get. They would rather murder a child than hold their own baby for even a brief moment?

These people are rotten and selfish.

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This entire article is a farce. These people couldn't DRIVE to one of the adjoining states if this was that much of a burden? The state of Nebraska can be WALKED in the a matter of five days in any direction. Regardless of location, they could have DRIVEN to any adjoining state in less than two hours.
Regardless, this is all about HER wants and desires. As soon as a problem arose and the child may have been less than perfect, she wanted OUT! They are the typical Westerner, Fat, stupid, spoiled and selfish.

As far as all the pain, my wife and I have buried a child who had special needs. Not once was I unhappy about any of the time we where afforded to spend with him.

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I have no sympathy for their lack of choosing to deliberately kill their unborn child. The entire story is contrived at best. Are they house bound? Could they not take the 10 days to crawl to Des Moines, IA or another adjoining State. Did their doctor legitimately NOT put her on bed rest and give her drugs to help with the child's lung development/ She went home for ten days, and walked around d the house cursing the state for the lack of an abortion? We are to believe this Bull$hit? Our twin sons where born at an early age less than thirty one weeks. My wife was on medication to help with their lung development, they never even needed O2 in the NICU at less than 3 1/2 #'s each.They where so small my size 10 wedding ring went all the way up to their shoulders. They turn one year old May 6 and are close to twenty pounds a piece.