Dear Edith

I saw you as a bean on a screen and I knew you were mine. Your father thought you were Albert, like his own father, but I knew that you were Edith, to be named for my much loved grandmother.

You were not my first baby, Edith, but you were the start of something new that would hold us together somehow. After difficult first marriages for both of your parents, you were our first child together. How could your brothers and sisters not coalesce around you? How could your father and I not drag our wounded and scarred hearts and place them in yours? Wouldn’t you grow in hope’s shade and mend all the tears and disappointment that had come before you? 

There was a scare at eight weeks, a spot or two of scarlet blood. Reassured by the doctor that all would be well, I spent a few days in bed. I sat down more often, rather than trudging up and down the stairs laden with shopping and tried to ignore the tantrums and tears that surrounded me. 

Your father reassured us all that everything would be fine; he saw no problem looming, and I half-heartedly smiled. But then, seeing potential problems was not his best thing, so I silently bore a vague nagging sense of something dark and shapeless. 

I had been pregnant five times but had never been offered a scan at 20 weeks. I was wearing a pale gray dress, and you curved my front, a half ball, low—a swelling, but not impressively nor obviously. I hardly noticed it most days, proud that I could still sit on my haunches comfortably when I returned to my job, legs splayed, painting with other people’s wounded children, getting up easily from the floor. But I was not old, and I considered myself an experienced mother. I was pleased, in fact, that I was so lithe and fit, my bump so stylishly neat in the pale gray dress, its tightness clinging almost seductively across my tummy. The children waved me away in great style as we left for the appointment, and your father still said, “Albert” as we pulled into the hospital’s parking bay.

A very nice woman in a blue cardigan spent quite a while with chilly gel over my smugly neat bump. Her smile never wavered; the only odd thing was her silence. After some time, she left, saying only that she would ask someone else, as she couldn’t quite see everything. Your father and I were not worried, suppressing laughter at her ineptitude as soon as she left the room. 

The mood shifted as a man in a slightly dingy white coat came in, poking and prodding my tummy for quite a while. But your faint heartbeat sound was glorious to our ears, so we were not too worried. You were alive. The man in the dingy coat said we had to go to another hospital for a better scan—a clearer one as he was not sure but thought there might be a slight problem. I hung on to the word slight; your father looked confused.

We did not return home. Instead, we went straight to the other hospital in the city and were ushered into what looked like a dazzling science department. In hindsight, I realized I had read only Medicine and Birthright on the main door, but in actuality, the full name, “Birthright Research Centre for Fetal Medicine,” eluded my determination to be optimistic.

Walking into this marvelous high-tech palace, my confidence was buoyed. The “slight” issue would soon be put right. We did not have long to wait. A young woman doctor in a hijab swooped in, exposed my tummy, slathered it with more gloop, and proceeded to study the obviously superior ultrasound screen. After two minutes, she excused herself, and a male doctor came in. A large man with a strong Greek accent. He politely sat on a stool and took over the sweeping plastic ball. Within a minute, he turned to us and said, “This baby is not compatible with life.”

I remember the white walls, the hard bed, your father’s face frozen with shock, and the chill feeling of translucent wetness on my exposed belly. “Is it a girl or a boy?” I asked flatly.

“Female,” he barely looked up.

“So not even a girl, just a female?” I asked. After a throb of silence, we asked what was wrong. He turned to the screen and pointed to a seemingly endless list of flaws and catastrophes on you that we could neither recognize nor understand. He was not unkind, just brusque, and no matter how much we clamored for information, he responded in a monotone, his words incomprehensible to us. Finally, he said you likely had Trisomy 18, also known as Edwards Syndrome. My mind wandered briefly as to who this Edward was that had named this disaster, but the doctor interrupted my thoughts and informed us that the only way to confirm the diagnosis was an amniocentesis, a needle straight into the fluid you were floating obliviously in. Either way, it was hopeless; he told us it would be best to end your fluttering heart and that he was prepared to do so immediately. I sat up abruptly, my eyes flitting from the doctor’s solemn look to your father’s face. The urge to run out of that place was overwhelming, and I scrambled to reach for my handbag. I think I said “time” but it sounded like “tomorrow.”

I had woken up that morning thinking that I would make it back to work by lunch. But the world had shifted. I read the report over and over again and although a small part of me fought against the words, my rationality and pragmatism knew that I would end your staggering, stuttering life. But I also knew I needed a day to sit with you in all your damage, to weep for frailties, for pain, for the cruelty of nature, for the impending loss of you. While you were within me, I needed to breathe the breaths you would never breathe and cry the tears you would never cry. I needed the mishmash of family members to know that this ending was a choice and that sometimes, choices are hard but necessary. I needed to sleep with you for one night because I knew it would be the last one.

I do not know if you have the capacity for memory—wherever you are. I hope not. If you do, I hope you remember nothing of the next day. I will remember every second of it until my own end. The nine-hour labor. The kindness of the midwives, who put me far away from crying, fresh-smelling babies and balloon-toting relatives. That final gush of your arrival, and you fully encased in your caul that I ripped open between my spread legs.