The hardest day of my life…
Today is April 25. I lived the first 29 years of my life not knowing that April 25 would be a day that I would one day both dread and cherish. I knew I wanted to make a blog post about today, but I have also been putting that off. Today is almost over. It’s currently 6:15pm and I told myself, “just do it.” Anytime I sit down and write a post about this day for Facebook and Instagram, I always end up crying. Sobbing actually. Which I obviously hate. I am not an “emotional” person. I would actually rather scratch the surface of my eyeball than cry. (There are LOTS of reasons for this, which we can unpack later on.) This aversion to emotions and tears makes talking about and writing about April 25 quite a problem.
On April 25, 2016 I gave birth to our first daughter. A little precious girl that I would have gladly given my entire life for. She lived around 30 minutes. We knew going into her birth that she would not make it. On April 25, 2016 I joined one of the coolest clubs in the world. I became a mom. That day I also joined another club, a club that no one wants to be a part of. I joined a club that in order to be a member of you have to had felt the deepest and most intense pain humanly possible. There is nothing like the pain of losing a child. It will never go away. It stings everyday of your life. The days get easier, but that pain is forever and always there. In your heart, in your soul, in your gut.
Embree should be 5 years old today. She should be about to enjoy her last summer before she starts kindergarten. She should be splashing in the pool and running around the yard with Caroline. But here we are, a family of three instead of four.
I often wonder, why us? Why me? Why are we the family that was hit with this tragedy? I know there is no logical answer to this, but yet it still plagues me. While there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened, or to save our Embree’s life, I have vowed to make sure that Embree’s legacy lives on. I will live my life making sure that people understand how the laws in this country make it EVEN MORE difficult for families like ours during the worst moment in their life.
Typing that last sentence I can already hear people in my head saying things like. “Oh here she goes again. Making everything about politics.” “I can’t believe she is using her story to push a political agenda.” (you might be wondering if people are actually saying things like this, they are. I promise. How do I know? They say it to me.. They say it in comments and pms.) To those thinking and saying these things... here is my answer. Hell yes I am. Yes I am telling our story to hopefully make someone stop and think how they vote. Hell yes I am hoping our story reaches the desk of lawmakers. Because women’s reproductive rights are under attack and the average person doesn’t know how laws labeled “pro-life” are actually not pro-life.
Below I am putting our story in detail from a Facebook post I wrote about 6 months ago.
This will show that April 25th is hard not only because it’s the day I lost my sweet Embree, but also because it’s a reminder that all over the US other moms and families are going through what we did. Other moms and families are being put in the same position we were, and are suffering because of it. How do I know it’s not just us? Because every time I post about our story I am flooded with messages from moms who have been there, right where I was on April 25, 2016. I will never stop sharing our story. I will never stop reminding people of Embree and everything she stands for.
Hey. It’s me. I have tried for the past few years to keep politics off of this space, but tonight it’s about to get a political. Kinda. Stay with me. I saw this article today about Senator Gary Peters and his abortion story. It reminded me why I am pro-choice and reminded me that people need to hear my story too. Some of you may have already heard my story, but I think it is a good reminder of how politics are used to control women’s bodies and how everything isn’t always what it seems on the surface. (Article link at the end)
4.5 years ago, I gave birth to my first born. Her name was Embree Eleanor Grammer. She was born via c-section on April 25, 2016. She weighed 4lbs 4oz. She was only 25 weeks gestation. She lived for approximately 20-30 minutes. She was born with a tumor that was roughly the size of a volleyball that was invading her body both externally and internally. It was sucking her blood supply, pushing her organs out of place, deforming her body, and overworking her heart. We found out about the tumor only 5 weeks prior. In that 5 weeks the tumor grew from about the size of a walnut to the volleyball. I grew along with it, from the tiny bump of a first time mom at 20 weeks to measuring the same as a pregnant woman who was roughly 36 weeks along. In 5 weeks.
That 5 weeks was the hardest 5 weeks of my life. We had sonograms twice weekly, traveled across the state to visit more specialists, and were told that essentially our sweet Embree would probably not make it. We had a choice to make. The state of Texas allows an abortion a time period after 20 weeks if the pregnancy is life threatening to the mother or if the fetus has “abnormalities.” We qualified for this. I have always been pro-choice, but I have never been pro-abortion for myself. While I agree that women have the right to do what is best for them, I myself wasn’t ever planning on getting an abortion. I also had hope. Hope that Embree would be healed. Hope that the tumor would stop growing. So we chose to push on with the pregnancy, hoping that Embree would have a chance. I was counting down to the age of viability, just hoping that if I could keep Embree cooking until then, maybe.... just maybe, modern medicine and prayers could keep her alive.
We were not only closely monitoring Embree, but doctors were closely monitoring me. Even though Embree was still alive, she was not in good shape. She was developing Hydrops and I was at a risk of developing mirror syndrome. This would be life threatening to me if it fully developed. On April 22 I went to my second sonogram of the week and my doctors were concerned with the swelling in my feet. I was told that I had a decision to make. Not only was I starting to develop the beginnings of mirror syndrome, but we were 2 weeks away from 27 weeks. This was important because at 27 weeks, I would no longer be able to deliver Embree in Texas via c-section. Why? Because according to the law, by choosing to deliver Embree this early, I would be having an abortion. And while at 24.5 weeks I was still in the grey area of Texas Abortion law where I could deliver her, at 27 weeks I would not be. Surprised this is considered an abortion? Many are. Stay with me.
We decided to schedule our c-section for that Monday. I would be 25 weeks. We made it past the age of viability, but it was becoming obvious that she would not make it. We met with NICU doctors and they reviewed our case. They decided that they would not be attempting any life saving attempts on Embree after she was delivered. This meant officially, we were choosing to have an abortion. We were giving birth to our child early, knowing full well that she would not survive. This is what “late term abortion” looks like. Catch that political buzz word? I will explain more below.
As you can imagine, this was the worst and longest weekend of our life. We knew that in 2 days we would be meeting our daughter and letting her go. But it gets so much worse. Again, this is considered an abortion. A late term abortion. The State of Texas, like most states who have a large majority who claim to be “pro-life,” has many restrictions in place to prevent abortions from happening. Here is the thing about abortion legislation.... it doesn’t differentiate between what we were going through and what the “pro-life” groups think they are preventing. The laws in Texas stated that in order for us to give birth to Embree and have a chance to hold her while her soul still resided in her body, we had to do the following: 1. Our doctor had to apply for permission to perform the c-section from the state. This had to be done 24 hours before the surgery. We had to go to the hospital on the Saturday before we were to give birth, in the midst of our mourning, to sign a paper requesting an abortion. Put yourself in that situation. Forever, in the records of the State of Texas, there is a piece of paper that says that I aborted my precious Embree. 2. On top of filing this paperwork for us, our doctor also had to give me a pamphlet published by the State of Texas about the consequences of abortion. By law, she was required to give me a booklet that told me that if I had the abortion I would suffer from depression and anxiety for the rest of my life, have an increased risk of breast cancer, and possible be infertile in the future. Think I’m kidding? Have a look:
https://hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/services/health/women-children/womans-right-to-know.pdf
If you consider yourself “pro-life” you are probably thinking something like, “yes but your situation was different. This isn’t what I’m fighting against.” Or maybe you’re thinking “but I don’t consider this abortion.” Great. But the actual definition of abortion is “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.” So while YOU might not consider what we went through to be an “abortion,” it was. I had an abortion. I had a late-term abortion.
Why am I bringing this up? Why am I telling you this? Because when lawmakers and people fight to end “abortion,” they are talking about this too. When you hear about “late term abortions” taking place, THIS is what is happening. It’s not women who have carried babies to full term and then just deciding to have an abortion. It is women and families who are devastated that they are in a situation in which they have to decide whether to let a child suffer in the womb, or end their suffering. “Pro-life” laws are designed to make this process difficult. They are designed to but obstacles in place. This process is already difficult enough. Even women who are deciding to have an abortion at 8 weeks. It’s already a hard decision so why are we allowing people to torture them too.
Every time people talk about saving the babies and being pro-life, I cringe on the inside. Not because I don’t want to save babies, but because I want to save babies. Save babies from suffering that they are made to endure because some man who has no medical training has decided that he knows women’s bodies better than doctors. I cringe because I know as a survivor of these terrible “pro-life” laws that these laws are being used to trick women in America to vote against their own interest in hopes that they are saving the unborn. I cringe every time I hear people call those who vote in favor of Pro-Choice laws... “murderers”, because they are saying I murdered my Embree.
I chose to deliver Embree on April 25, 2016 via c-section. I chose late-term abortion. I did so because it was the only way I could hold my baby girl while she was still alive. It was the only way I could encounter her soul until we are together again in heaven. This is why I am Pro-choice. Remember Embree and I when you vote.
Article: https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a34339956/senator-gary-peters-abortion/