An Obstetrician Killed My Baby

This story contains themes or mentions of sexual violence, physical violence, and mental health problems.

A waterlogged breeze wisps through my ex-mother-in-law’s lace veil, which hangs over her mascara-streaked eyes, and bats away her tears for her. Beside her, my ex-father-in-law and ex-husband stare at me, their eyes accusing, silently conveying a message that says, “You know you're guilty. We know you killed your baby.” I look back down at the tiny coffin being placed into the ground, surrounded by my family. I forced myself to come to the funeral. I didn’t want to. I never would have come if my lawyer hadn't insisted. “It looks better if you go,” he said. “What mother wouldn’t attend their own child’s funeral?”

What about a mother who always longed to be one? Who yearned for a baby of her own every time she saw her nieces and nephews. A mother who met someone in a coffee shop, someone she would learn could be the perfect father. A mother and a father who dated for two years before the father proposed to the mother in front of her childhood home. A father and a mother who got married in a church under lilies, like the mother specifically requested, saying “I do,” not only to each other but to the life they would build together. A mother and a father who said, “Why don’t we take a year before we try to have a baby,” and proceeded to take a long vacation in Italy for their honeymoon. A mother and a father who spent an exuberant year together before finally agreeing, “Let’s give it a go,” only to wait another year and to take six pregnancy tests to find out the mother hadn’t gotten pregnant. A mother who made an appointment with a specialist to figure out why she couldn’t have children like everyone else. Like all the mothers she calls her patients that have babies at her hospital every day. A mother and a father who had to sit in a cushy room and get told that the mother might never be a mother as if the comfy chairs would make a difference. A father who supported a mother and told her they would keep trying, he wouldn’t give up on her. A mother and a father who took two more years trying to have a baby before starting to consider adoption. A mother and a father who filled out documents that told their stories, hoping another mother out there would entrust them with her baby. A mother and a father who waited a year with no call about another mother choosing them. A mother and a father who started to feel hopeless, but tried, nevertheless. 

But it wasn’t the same. The mother and the father began to fight. The father wanted children, the mother wanted children, the mother couldn’t get pregnant, she never asked for this. The father needed children, the mother needed a child, just one, any child would do, she said, even though she didn’t realize she didn’t mean it. A mother who walked out and went to a bar after a fight with a father and drank her sorrows away. A mother who got so drunk, a man at the bar who would never be a father walked her out to his car and placed her in the back seat. A mother who blacked out just after hearing the locks of a car door and when she came to, that mother didn’t want to be a mother anymore. A mother who woke up the next morning on the side of the road outside of a closed veterinary clinic, her makeup smeared, her self image smeared as well. A mother who was still dizzy and hungover who realized what had happened last night and covered her mouth to cover up her gasping sobs. A mother who went home and never told a father what had happened in a small apartment she can’t remember much of besides the odd paint color of the ceiling and a fuzzy face her brain refused to recall. A mother who took a long shower and cried as she tried to wash away all traces of what a man who wasn’t her husband did to her. A mother who now had to live with the fact that a man at a bar had taken her will to live, her will to love, her will to have a child. A man who would become the father of a child, but would never be that child’s father. He didn’t deserve to be. 

A mother who celebrated with a father about her finally being pregnant. The father and her crying, his tears of joy, hers of despair. A mother and a father who went through the pregnancy on the outside like a normal married couple would, but on the inside the mother struggled with depression. She had this gut feeling that she was carrying a baby that another man forced on her. She hadn’t gotten a test though, she couldn’t, she needed a tiny bit of hope to cling onto. Hope that her husband was possibly her baby's father. A mother who at eight months pregnant got a paternity test only to find out the father of her baby was just a man. A mother who worked all day for years helping other mothers give birth to their babies. A mother who couldn’t do life anymore. A mother who instead of sacrificing herself, sacrificed the man’s baby. It wasn’t her baby anymore. A mother who killed her baby at eight months pregnant, a mother who knew it was illegal and did it anyway. The father and her crying, his tears of despair, hers of joy. 

A mother and a father who got divorced while the mother was in a hospital bed. A father who listened to a doctor accuse the mother of taking medication to kill her own child who was still inside of her. A mother who could have waited a month according to a father, a mother knowing she couldn’t, not anymore. 

A woman released on bail set by her mother and father, stands across from a father. A woman who smiles through her tears, looks down at a tiny coffin and whispers, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be your mother.”