On Photos, Cells & Babies in the First Trimester

On Wednesday October 19 2022, a series of Petri dish photos went viral.

On Wednesday October 19 2022, a series of Petri dish photos went viral.

Created by MYA Network and published by The Guardian, they depicted photos from abortions prior to 10 weeks pregnancy.

When I first saw them out of the corner of my eye while scrolling, I quit out of social media immediately — NOT because I don’t believe in or support abortion, but because I couldn’t handle the triggers to my own miscarriages + first trimester delivery — babies I tried desperately hard to conceive and to carry.

Now before I say anything more, I want to be VERY CLEAR about what I share and how I say what comes next.

Writing out this story has been impossibly hard, and also somehow I believe important for my own healing. 

While this is immaterial for this course, I find it critical to note that I am and always have been pro-choice AND pro-abortion. Abortion is healthcare. End of story.

Remember this. 

Next, I want to say this. It is very, very hard to parent children in heaven. There are very few opportunities to mother them, to advocate for them, to remind the world that they're still of critical nature to the center of your being. 

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This brings me to the story still working on me. 

In June 2021, after 10 months of trying to conceive on our own followed by 11 months of fertility treatments including two early miscarriages, surgery, two cancelled embryo transfer cycles, a mock cycle to complete an ERA, and another round of IVF including an egg retrieval while parenting our then two year old (IVF) miracle daughter, I was finally pregnant with our rainbow babies.

However, what should’ve felt like coming up for air after such a long time didn’t. There was no celebration. There were low beta numbers to start. The threat of a chemical pregnancy. Extra testing. Extra extra anxiety. There was early spotting, at 6 weeks and 2 days. There were two gestational sacs, followed then by only one beating heart. The anxiety grew. There was always what felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop. The inability to say out loud that I was pregnant. The lack of decision on if, how and when to announce. The celebration was missing. The fear was real. Every ultrasound started the same, with a racing heart and frantic prayers that there would still be a heartbeat. Then there was weeks of spotting. Vanishing twin syndrome. Fear of the unknown. Fear of everything. 

Why? In those moments, I’d never lost a pregnancy after increasing beta hcg numbers. But, I’d read the stories. I’d grieved with the friends — in person and across the internet, as they shared every possible wronging that could occur. As an infertility and postpartum doula, I was so much more educated this time around, and for a long time, I thought that education is what took away my rose colored glasses. I thought knowing more meant fearing more.

In retrospect, that was hardly the case.

In looking back, it’s become abundantly clear that my subconscious knew things that my brain did not, and in an effort to protect myself, or to perhaps try to cushion the blows that were about to come — I think I tried to protect myself. I think that without knowing I knew, without understanding, I somehow lived in the space where I was deeply grateful to be carrying life, but overwhelmingly fearful of losing it.

How complicated is that?

At 10 weeks 1 day pregnant, I had my first MFM appointment. I’d gone into preterm labor with my living daughter, and I have Crohn’s disease, so we knew that this pregnancy could have a bit more to monitor. I had an ultrasound, anxious but perfect. My husband was on FaceTime due to COVID policies. I met with the doctor afterwards and asked a thousand questions, including about pregnancy loss at that point. He said very directly, “there is a nominal chance after seeing a healthy growing baby and a strong heartbeat like you did today. Like, less than 5%.” I exhaled, a little bit anyway. And I walked out feeling like maybe, everything would be okay.

The next morning, I was scheduled to fly to Florida. To walk through an airport and get on an airplane for the first time in nearly 2 years, for the first time since COVID had begun, and for the first time without my daughter since her birth. I wasn't even flying for pleasure. I wasn't going on vacation. I was going to see a friend living with (holding on with) spreading stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. We had no idea how much time was left. I was so scared of missing those last words, that last hug.

I had no idea that there was so much more to be afraid of.

I was so caught up in my anxiety that my body trembled. At the time, I thought it was because of the actual flying, because of the COVID exposure, and because of the nature of the trip. I was going to spend time with a very close friend who possibly didn’t have very much time left. I knew the trip would be full of emotions and maybe a really hard goodbye, and I was suddenly questioning everything.

In the airport, and on the plane, and waiting for my luggage on the other end, I felt sick to my stomach. It wasn’t just the fear of COVID, or of being alone in transit. It wasn’t fear about reuniting with my friend, or what we’d share in the following days. It was fear about my baby. Even though I was assured that the baby was snuggled in tight, I felt so worried.

This came out of my mouth in the only way that could make logical sense at that moment — what if I get COVID and my baby dies? Or, what if the plane crashes and the baby and I don’t make it? It was my brain, constantly trying to understand what I was feeling, without being able to connect to the foresight it was truly experiencing.

Twenty four hours later and the consistent light spotting I’d been experiencing due to vanishing twin syndrome turned into bright red bleeding. Paralyzed by fear, I called the doctor on call, knowing that it was Sunday night, and I was far from home and without my husband. I sobbed on the phone as she told me that she couldn’t assure me I wasn’t losing our growing baby without seeing an ultrasound. And I knew that at that moment, I couldn’t walk into an ER in Florida, alone and terrified to find out if my baby was still alive.

So, I prayed and I cried and I stayed up all night. I got on the first flight back home, all the while vigilantly checking the toilet. Was that blood too much blood? Was my growing baby going to die? Was I at risk of hemorrhaging?

To say I’ve never felt so actively terrified might be an understatement.

When I landed in Chicago, my husband picked me up at the airport and we went to OB triage at the hospital where I delivered our living daughter two years prior. The same one I planned to deliver this sweet baby at. We sat in a crowded waiting room amongst full term mamas in the height of labor, until we were finally called back. We waited and waited and waited, holding our breathing and squeezing each others hands, and finally on an internal ultrasound we saw a heartbeat.

Clots and clots of blood were scooped out from my insides. I was told my cervix was slightly dialated, and that I was likely experiencing a bizarre phenomenon — one where I was miscarrying the second baby, the vanishing twin, while still pregnant with the first. A miscarriage during a pregnancy. Who even knew that was a thing that was possible? Everything I’d been told, everything I’d read told me that if I lost one baby while keeping the other, my body would either absorb the first, or if the loss was further along, I’d deliver both babies together at term. I mean, that’s what I assumed would happen if we lost one baby during the pregnancy.

I was told that I probably wouldn’t lose the growing baby, but that nobody could be sure. That I had to follow up with my doctor, and that all I could do was go home and wait.

The next morning, I spoke to a nurse on the phone. She was rude and missing any shred of empathy that should’ve been required for her job. She told me that the MFM team wouldn’t see me for another week. Then, they’d do what they’d call a viability scan — to see if my then 12 week old baby was still alive inside of me.

It didn’t matter what they offered. Or how many times I called back. Or if I reached out to our reproductive endocrinologist to see if they’d provide me a reassurance scan, even though we’d already graduated from the fertility clinic. 

That night, 36 hours after seeing his heartbeat for the 6th time over 5 weeks, I delivered our son Noah. He was about two inches long and weighed approximately 2 ounces, matching in size to my index finger. His birth was quick and the trauma for us both was layered into what happened afterwards.

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Perhaps these are words that shouldn’t be shared, that should stay private in my heart and in my home, but I’m choosing to share them anyway.

In the hours and days after delivering my son, I frantically and desperately searched the internet for accounts of live miscarriage or pregnancy loss that looked like mine, and all I could find was ONE. There was no term to describe what happened to me - something different than a miscarriage and something different than a stillbirth too. So today, I’m adding to the noise, so the next parents in the height of their trauma know they’re not alone. If this part feels uncomfortable or too graphic, please feel free to skip it.

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Around 1:50 in the morning, I woke up feeling the urge to push. In my sleepy haze, being almost 11 weeks pregnant, I mistook the urge for one to pee, and walked to the restroom like normal. But then I felt it. It was a small contraction, followed by a large plop. And even though I was in shock, I knew. The toilet was filled with blood so thick I couldn't see anything else, but on instinct alone, I reached into the bowl, and blindly pulled out a very full handful — what turned out to be my son Noah, still attached to his placenta but no longer inside of it, along with the empty sac where his sister Victoria had started to grow, still attached in a way to where his roots had been planted.

The shock of hitting the cold water after being inside of my warm uterus must have been the only startling moment, the only pain or discomfort or wanting that my son ever experienced, and for that I am somewhat grateful. I held him in my hand as his heart stopped beating, and in a completely trauma induced haze, I set him down beside me on some toilet paper and screamed out for my husband.

How was it possible that I had just delivered our son, and watched him die? He was just growing safely inside of me. One minute we had a whole future planned for him, and the next, we were placing him inside a Tupperware container to bring to the doctor for testing.

How horrific.

How utterly traumatic, terribly transformative, and forever life altering.

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I had to pause after writing that, because it felt like a punch to the gut. A kick in the feels. A reminder of the gravity of what I’ve experienced, and how it has changed everything I am.

It’s been almost a year and a half since that moment, and while some days I can pretend that I’m functioning — I can go to work and be productive and run errands and parent my toddler and make dinner and do laundry and prepare for another day — other days I still feel completely shattered inside.

It’s like there’s this dramatic line drawn between who I was on August 3rd and every day beforehand, and who I became on August 4th and everything I’ve tried to survive since then. It feels perhaps impossible to explain to anyone who’s never held their dead baby.

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Now remember the photos I mentioned above, the ones shared by the MYA Network and The Guardian.

The photos that depicted tissue from abortions prior to 10 weeks pregnancy.

Those photos aren't real to me. They can't be. Not when I look at the photos of my sweet son Noah, who was not a clump of cells or pieces of tissue. He had two perfect arms and two legs, ten tiny fingers and ten tiny, but easily discernible toes. He had two eyes and a mouth and ears and a nose that was forming. He had a heart, one that in fact beat a few times right in front of my very eyes even after he was delivered, while I helplessly held him in my hand. 

I was so heartbroken by the photos shared by the MYA Network that I chose to again, mother my son in one of the only ways I knew how. With a trigger warning photo, I wrote the following on social media, alongside three unedited images of Noah shortly after his birth at 10 weeks, 6 days gestation. 

*Trigger Warning: These photos may seem abrasive, jarring uncomfortable and also devastatingly beautiful. I never planned to share these photos publicly, but today there's a very specific and important reason I'm doing so. If you'd rather not see, please choose not to scroll. (Note to be clear, no photos are attached to this post for this class)

I share this not to be graphic, not for sympathy, and NOT to exploit my son. In fact, I never ever expected to make these photos public. They were always only for me. But today, this week, in light of the virtual petri dish photos, I feel a strong obligation to show anyone who hasn’t experienced this a front row seat to what a BABY looks like towards the end of the first trimester. 

I shared two quotes from the Guardian's post, referring to their photos and their abortion process. 

To be completely honest, these quotes at first gutted me. NOT because of what you think. I want, no, I DEMAND safe and easy ability for ANYONE to CHOOSE abortion. Regardless of circumstance. I even would hope that anyone who needs, wants, elects or is forced to have an abortion could feel this way — that their experience is NOT scary or terrifying.

AND ALSO, that wasn’t my experience. I wasn’t trying to have an abortion. I think that’s a critical thing to remind you. In fact, by the time I got pregnant with Noah and Victoria, I’d gone through years of trying to conceive on my own, years of fertility testing, 4 failed IUI procedures, two egg retrievals, three early miscarriages, one successful pregnancy in 2019 (our sweet daughter Brooklyn), nearly 800 injections, and more dollars and tears than I could possibly quantify. The twins were what we’d planned as the completion of our family, the pieces we knew were still missing, and although my early days of pregnancy were filled with worry and fear, and although Victoria died in utero around 7 weeks gestation, Noah was the miracle baby I’d done EVERYTHING in my power to conceive and carry. Spontaneously delivering him and watching him die was NOTHING like having, choosing or needing an abortion.

AND, I also feel like it’s critical to show the stark difference between “photos taken from the cells of the gestational sac” during the first trimester of pregnancy, and the baby that is truly growing and forming inside of that sac.

I read all of these things, and I think about how in reality, I actually fully support the work that the MYA Network (https://myanetwork.org/) which offers safe access to early abortion. AND then I remembered that my experience is/was so different than other peoples. People whose babies had already stated the degradation process, people who perhaps saw nothing or only something doctor selected after a D&C procedure, etc. And for them, for these individuals, perhaps it’s easier or necessary or simply how their brain works to think about what they lost or what was removed or what changed to be just like a benign mass, a growth, something broken, something physical like in any other part of their body — and I completely, fully understand that.

I’ve gone through so much therapy, and so much intensive work to navigate the thoughts, feelings and emotions surrounding the trauma of what I experienced with our twins dying, and these petri dish photos, they just didn’t sit well with me. They ached, because they don’t actually tell the whole story, or the whole truth. Just a part. And as someone with a Masters Degree in Public Health and a very vested interest in healthcare and patient advocacy, I also know the truth has many sides, and for some, like me, it’s critical to see them all.

➡️ One last reminder - I FULLY, 100% support both and all decisions individuals make about their family planning AND THEIR RESPONSES TO THE OFTEN UNTHINKABLE THAT CAN HAPPEN ALONG THE WAY. Again, I am pro-choice. Pro-abortion. Pro TMFR. Pro IVF. Pro Surrogacy. Pro Adoption. PRO WHATEVER IS RIGHT, NECESSARY AND MEDICALLY SAFE FOR YOU/YOUR FAMILY.

🖤To Noah, Victoria, Adina, Mara + all of the babies who’ve passed, been lost, and died — those we desperately prayed to keep and those we knew couldn’t stay or grow or become. This brutal honesty and transparency is for you.

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Lastly: I am open to conversation and questions in the comments below, but I’m also being crystal clear that anything unkind or harmful will be marked as such — both on social media and in any real life relationships we have as well.