When we hear about mothers dying during childbirth, we tend to assume the stories took place at least 100 years ago. And yet, as shocking as it is to believe, in the United States, maternal-mortality rates are steadily rising. In fact, despite advancements in modern medicine and state-of-the-art hospitals, the maternal-mortality rate more than doubled between 1991 and 2014. In light of this, one woman recently took to Reddit to share a conversation she had with her husband about what he should do if he's ever faced with the decision of saving her life or her baby's. If a complication were to arise during labor, she asked him to choose her — but her friends are giving her flack for it.
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The conversation first came up several years ago, when the woman was pregnant with her first child.
She suffered from gestational diabetes at the time, and she had to undergo a scheduled cesarean to ensure a safe delivery. The entire situation got her thinking about worst-case scenarios, which is what led her to have a serious talk with her husband.
"Before going in to the hospital I talked with my husband that if something where to happened and he needed to choose between myself and our baby to please choose me," she shared in her Reddit post. "He got quiet but said that he agreed and that please let me mother know about what we talked [about]."
Thankfully, the birth went fine and the woman delivered her daughter safely. But when she began thinking about baby No. 2, the topic came up again at an end-of-year party.
When a friend asked her if she was ready for another nine months of pregnancy, the poster answered honestly.
"I said that I do want another baby and that pregnancy doesn’t scare me such as giving birth again," she relayed. "I said that I straight told my husband again that I’m scared that something may happened to me during the birth and in the hopes of giving my daughter a sibling I could leave her without a mother. That the original agreement stands that he needs to choose me if that’s the case."
But instead of her friends joining in in agreement, the poster was surprised to be met with a whole lot of pushback.
"My friends where disgusted with my thinking and said that i was an a–hole to my husband in asking him to basically kill his baby (those where the exact words), that I was a very negative person and that I needed to rethink my thoughts," she recalled.
But in this mom's mind, she was merely thinking practically about a situation that's undoubtedly difficult but could potentially alter the course of her life and her husband's.
"I’m a person that likes to be prepared for the worse case scenario and hope for the best," she explained. "I didn’t want my husband to be blindsided with who to choose and to have the answer on the spot. Nobody likes to think in what could go wrong specially in a pregnancy but I need to think every possible case that we could encounter."
In posting to Reddit, the mom might have expected more judgment from strangers. But instead, people overwhelmingly supported her.
"NTA — it's your f—ing life," one person wrote. "You can make another baby, there can't be another you. Also, if your husband agreed, it's none of their business."
"Exactly," someone else added. "A widow father with two kids will have a lower quality of life than a healthy mother and father with just one child. I’m not looking down on single fathers by the way! I just think the family would be happier if the mother was alive. They can choose to have future kids but they can’t choose to bring the mother back to life if she dies."
"I’m fully aware I might sound like a monster here," another person commented, "but the mom has a developed identity and life and people who love her and whose lives have been enriched by her. Not a baby just born."
Another person agreed. "This is a perfectly reasonable response that most people throughout history would agree with, not monstrous at all. For some reason we now live in this weird cult of motherhood as sacrifice, which is what makes your comment seem unusual when it shouldn't be."
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Others agreed with her — but only to a point.
"I'm pregnant with my third. I told my husband if it’s between me and the kids, choose the kids. If it’s between me and the fetus, choose me," one woman wrote. "I will not leave my babies motherless if I can help it. I just won’t. Their quality of life matters. Losing the baby would devastate me and my husband, but it is better for our family as a whole. Losing me wouldn’t be."
But in the end, the people of Reddit spoke loud and clear: her body, HER choice.
More importantly, she shouldn't be made to feel morbid or "negative" for having serious conversations with her spouse about things that matter.
"As awful as it is to think about, your spouse should know your wishes during these types of situations," one person wrote. "It's similar to end of life care, extreme life saving/life preserving measures, etc. in that your next of kin should know what you would want if you are unable to make the decision yourself. These are conversations that are necessary to have especially when faced with an already difficult pregnancy/birth."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
