Four years have passed since Ginesta went through the hardest test of her life: interrupting the pregnancy of her first daughter, Dàlia, at 23 weeks gestation due to a congenital malformation.
Even today, during the interview, she is unable to hold back the tears when talking about her little girl and the anguish that involved “having to decide between a Legal Interruption of Pregnancy (ILE) of a baby so dear and desired before birth, or to continue go ahead with the pregnancy knowing that your daughter, if she survives childbirth, will have serious physical and mental consequences that will have her going in and out of hospitals without quality of life and you will have to see her suffer and die ”.
As one comrade says, “Any choice you make is a cliff, and you can only decide which one to jump into.”
A late diagnosis
Ginesta Urbano from Barcelona says that Dàlia was the result of two years of seeking pregnancy, so when her husband and her were assured at the 16-week ultrasound that the baby was perfect, they were not happy.
She was 30 years old and she was going to make her dream come true until, in the morphological ultrasound, which was at 21 weeks and five days of gestation, her world fell apart. The doctor explained that the girl had the most serious form of Spina Bifida and, after confirming it with more tests a week later, he told them about the options they had:
“Operate in the uterus, without ensuring that with the intervention she could have some quality of life, not even if she would survive the operation or delivery; continue with the pregnancy without doing anything, which ensured serious sequelae and constant operations for life; or the termination of pregnancy ”.
Ginesta confesses with pain that she searched the Internet, in a state of shock, for testimonies from mothers who had gone through similar cases and who could guide her, but could not find them. So after finding out about the kind of Spina Bifida that her little girl had, she opted for the third option “and by no means the easiest” when she realized that “sooner or later she would have to bury her, since the life expectancy did not exceed the 30 years, in the best of cases, and watching her suffer ”.
“Everything happened very quickly, since we could not wait any longer to avoid going through the medical court, which would further lengthen the agony of knowing that the pregnancy would not go to the end.”
“Give birth knowing that your baby will not live”
And the day arrived. She remembers that as soon as she and her husband arrived, they were taken directly to the delivery room, with time to listen to a couple on monitors: “It hurt a lot, because they were going to have their baby and I wasn’t.”
“They recommended that I have my daughter for vaginal delivery, something that shocked me a lot at first, although later I understood that it was the best way to do it, since in this way both the body and the mind are aware of what is happening and it facilitates the subsequent grieving process. “
But in his words, as his voice breaks when he remembers it, “everything is so hard!” She explains how she was immediately given epidural anesthesia and once it took effect, the medical team came in to stop the girl’s heart.
She admits that luckily her husband was with her and they were able to spend the moment together, “with the support of the nurse who took care of us and who was incredibly affectionate.”
Later, it was the turn to take the intravaginal pills and wait: “In total I think there were 4 doses, supporting the fever they cause.” They also broke her bag of waters to speed up the delivery. And the moment of his birth arrived. “They took her to the bathroom to clean her up a bit and they brought her to us wrapped in a sheet, with a cap made of compressive mesh. They allowed us to spend a while with her, until later they transferred me to a room alone.”
She points out that her first thought was not to see her daughter after the intervention, convinced that it would be worse:
“Everyone referred to her as a fetus, and it wasn’t until the psychologist and the midwife came to see me that they encouraged me to see my baby. Fortunately, I listened to them, because otherwise I would never have forgiven myself ”.
He admits that while he held her in his arms, he thought about picking up the phone and taking a picture of her because “she was so pretty, so complete,” but that he didn’t dare “because he was afraid that the medical staff would come in and scold me .” And that, although “they treated me with great affection, respect and empathy.”
“I got pregnant without managing the previous duel”
The days, the weeks passed and Ginesta did not raise her head. So, as he tells us, he decided to write down his feelings, what was going through his head, since he was unable to verbalize them.
“I created a private blog because I needed to tell myself what I was feeling. Shortly after, I decided to make it public with the idea of being able to help other women who had to face this difficult test. “
And it seems that he was right, because he explains that they began to write to him and to thank him for his initiative, assuring that “they felt identified in my words.”
But writing did not cure her. Even so, six months after her loss, after the doctors assured her that “there was no genetic cause, but a multifactorial origin in Dàlia’s Spina Bifida” , they decided to look for a second pregnancy, which arrived in less than a month . But unfortunately, who was going to be her rainbow baby, she quickly lost herself : “I started to bleed and they couldn’t do anything.”
She acknowledges that she believed she would not recover: she had lost two babies in six months , so she decided “not to seek motherhood and let it be what it had to be .” And fate decided for her, because she became pregnant again quickly and “without having managed the previous duel well.” And joy did not make an appearance:
“I was just thinking about when they would tell me that something was wrong, that my daughter would not be born. By meeting other women who had also had to terminate their pregnancy, you discover how many things can go wrong, even past the first trimester when the risk of miscarriage is supposed to be the highest. “
She confesses that she also experienced all these fears alone, because she did not feel comfortable talking about her new pregnancy to other grieving mothers who had gone through the same experience as her and were unable to become pregnant.
So afterward, she went through postpartum depression without actually connecting with her daughter Élia. She explains that she could only think of her older sister, to the point that when she breastfed her, she became obsessed with having milk left for the older one : “Then, I looked at the crib and had to admit that it wasn’t there.”
Even with these obstacles, Ginesta acknowledges that she had a lucid point eight to nine months after delivery and realized that something was not right:
“It’s not your fault, it was just bad luck.”
“After the uncontrolled rage of the beginning and after a lot of work, you go on to admit that the malformation that your daughter suffered is not your fault, that you have taken good care of yourself during pregnancy, which, as the doctors assure, was only a matter of bad luck because its origin was multifactorial.
Over the years, you end up assuming that things happen and that you can’t help it, and that you’ll only get over it if you try to turn the page. “
They are very thoughtful and possible words after a long time of psychological treatment and personal evolution that he has reflected for three years in his ‘Therapy Blog’, “because I started it as a therapy .” Explain that between the first and the last post you can feel the changes you have gone through, until you reach the current moment.
And those messages from other women on her blog, thanking her for sharing her story, talking about how identified they felt with those sincere words that were born from the pain of loss, encouraged her to compile her blog entries into a book : “ His father’s feet ”.
And, as Ginesta explains, she needed to have a photograph of her baby, and she moved heaven and earth until she was able to get the one taken from her before the autopsy at the hospital: * “No one can judge until they go through it. “*
“Against your heart”
“A contracor” (“Reluctantly” or “against the heart”) is the Catalan name of the Association that Ginesta founded in full confinement along with other women who have gone through the same heartbreaking experience as her. He has already completed his first anniversary of life.
As Ginesta explains, her intention is to make visible a little-known reality, that of ILE, which is “a decision against the heart, because it is about a very loved and desired baby.”
This is reflected in the presentation of this association, where they recognize that:
“Women who suffer these losses carry on our shoulders the weight of social taboo, stigma, misunderstanding and disavowal of our grief because, if we have decided to do so, why should it hurt us?”
She explains, very excited, that she was fortunate that in the hospital they treated her with great empathy and helped her in everything, but “there are hospitals that refuse to carry out the intervention when they declare themselves conscientious objectors, others that treat women like a number, places where they don’t allow you to be accompanied even with a mobile phone or that don’t give you the option of meeting your children. “
Photos | iStock and Ginesta Urbano
In Babies and More | “When I got home I had to face an empty crib”, the painful words of a mother who lost her baby during childbirth, “To you and all the babies you left us early”: a memorial to remember the unborn children
