Ashley's
anencephalic Story

We were stunned.  That day was supposed to be the happiest day of our lives together.  Yet, in a few minutes, our dreams were shattered into a million pieces.  We were told that our lives were going to change forever and would never be the same.  The doctor told us that our daughter was anencephalic or that she would be born without a brain. We had no clue what that was.  The doctor softly, patiently proceeded to tell us in the best way possible that she could, that Ashley would die shortly after birth.  We basically had two options, continue with the pregnancy and have a baby that would be born without a brain or terminate the pregnancy.
We had come to Kalamazoo to find out if we were going to have twins.  Now, time seemed to stand still. The doctor left the room so that we could have a few minutes of time by ourselves.  The silence was overwhelming and loomed like a cloud around us.
Finally, one of us dared to break the silence, and we talked quietly about the options that she gave us.  What were we to do?  We didn’t know, and we didn’t even want to begin to guess.  We were in a state of shock.

After giving us a few minutes to overcome the shock, the doctor returned and we explored further the options that we were left with. She mentioned that we certainly didn’t have to make a decision right away and that we could make another appointment to discuss this further.  And then she left.

Finally, our bodies seem to float up out of our chairs. We slowly walked down the hall from the doctors office and arrived at the billing department. We tried to corral our crying so that everyone wouldn’t watch with such intensity. But it was certainly difficult if not impossible.  Already the eyes of everyone seemed as if they already knew that something was very wrong, yet they didn’t say a word. We didn’t know what to do.  Unfortunately, the wait for the elevator was much longer than we wished. The elevator opened its doors and rescued us from that hospital floor and we hurried to get in and disappear.  We said nothing to each other as we made the ride down three floors to the ground floor.  As the elevator doors opened, it finally dawned on us what was happening and both of us lost all control, weeping openly that our very first daughter was not going to live.