My wife and I went through this about 9 years ago, a genetic anomaly overlooked on an ultrasound, then brought to our attention in the 19th week. At the time we were dealing with an 18-month old showing signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

While our child may have lived, he would have been severely disabled and have no independent life, for a very short life, and a very expensive life with the required medical interventions.

We had only 4 days to come to terms with a decision, we decided to end the pregnancy. This allowed us to focus on our attention on our son and get him the interventions that he needed and he is now a high functioning individual in a normal classroom. If we had our second son, our first would not have had the opportunity to succeed, but I digress as this is all 20/20 hindsight.

The emotional trauma of this ordeal resulted in us only having one child, we were older parents and our son was the result of IVF. Our second (terminated) pregnancy was natural and unexpected. A baby we truly waned, but a decision that had no winning choice.

A fallout of this choice is that my wife could not foresee another pregnancy, even with screened embryos…all our son now wants is a sibling…and our hearts are still torn by this decision.