Making a Decision

We talked to a lot of people. We asked a lot of questions. We read a lot. Gathering information, hearing experiences, and getting opinions was helpful, but it certainly wasn't going to make a decision any easier. In fact, it didn't do anything for the decision. That's not meant to say we didn't value what we learned, it just, in retrospect, had no impact whatsoever on our decision. Ultimately we made that call based on our opinion of ourselves.

My mantra throughout this process has been, "No matter what you think you'll do in a given situation, you have no idea what you'll actually do until you have no choice but the make the decision." We had no choice but to make the decision and it ultimately had to be made based on what we needed to do to move on with our lives.

For both of us, after much deliberation, what we needed to do to move on was meet the baby.

Our options are limited to begin with, but determining we want to meet the baby narrows those options to two: induce before 24 weeks, go through labor, and deliver a premature baby with little chance of being born alive; or carry the baby as long as possible (hopefully to term) and deliver what we hope to be a viable baby. In those terms, for us, the decision was clear.

Tonight we met with a doctor who specializes in delivery of sick babies. It seems he was under the impression that our decision was for an induction in the next few days. What we actually wanted to do was discuss our options with one additional doctor. After a brief, late evening meeting in Cherry Hill, we had finally come to an absolute decision. Carry the baby to term.

We decided that we wanted to let nature take its course and, if we're lucky, we'll get to spend some wuality time with our baby. For us, as soon as we made the decision to carry the baby to term, we could start spending time with her [the doctor in Cherry Hill was actually the first person we asked to tell us the sex of the baby].

Tonight, on the drive home from Cherry Hill, Molly Elizabeth got her name.