We’ve had five pregnancies, all affected by a syndrome called Mekal Gruber. It’s where the baby will survive in me because of the cord feeding them but will 100% die during or after childbirth.
They are severely deformed ,where the back of the head doesn’t form and the brain grows on the outside, no fluid around them and almost always organ failure. My first pregnancy went full term and I had to have the baby because it was five months when we found out. The second and third pregnancies were also affected but, thankfully, I miscarried. But the fourth pregnancy we found out that it had happened again. We had to find out about a termination on our own as the doctors wouldn’t even talk or give advice to us on this subject. They said anything they said to us could cost them their jobs.
We ended up going over to an appalling clinic in the UK where we were treated awfully and pushed out the door 15 minutes after the termination. There were people outside throwing holy water on us and praying for us. I was so drowsy and sore. Then we had to go to the airport for our flight back home. All in costing us around €2,000.
Unfortunately, we decided to try for a baby one more time, as the doctors kept telling us we had a 1 in 4 chance in every pregnancy of this happening so we thought we’d try once more. It happened again just in February of this year. At our 12-week scan, we were told in the hospital in Dublin that it had happened again even to the amazement of the Consultant. She just couldn’t believe that this had happened again.
She kindly gave us information on the Liverpool clinic and we were once again making arrangements to fly over to have the termination. Another €2,000 spent that we didn’t have, only to discover that the baby had died and they wouldn’t do the termination. So we spent all that money for nothing and had to spend the next two days walking around Liverpool with a baby inside me and had to come home to have the tablet.
All this could be so much avoided if they would just make this legal. Something has to be done and I am supportive of change with this. Something has to be done.
