Magon Hoffman

What would you do if you were faced with an impossible choice during your pregnancy? Join me, Magon Hoffman, as I share the deeply personal and emotional journey I experienced with my second pregnancy. This episode is not just about my story; it's a reality check of the what many face when pregnancy doesn't go as planned.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I figured, if I was going to ask people to bravely share their abortion stories with me, that I should be willing to do so myself. So why not go first? My name is Megan Hoffman and I'm not only the host of this podcast, but I'm also someone who received an abortion. After Roe vs Wade was overturned, Back in September of 2023, I found out I was pregnant with my second child. I have PCOS and struggle with infertility, so you can imagine my surprise when the test came back positive after only three months of medication. For context, it took a full year to get pregnant with my first child, and even that is a short amount of time in the world of infertility. My first trimester was on par with what I experienced during my first pregnancy. I wasn't as sick, but the exhaustion was definitely there. I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's a pretty common experience to struggle during the early stages of pregnancy, especially when you've dealt with infertility. During both of my pregnancies, I remember feeling like I was just holding my breath, waiting for the golden week 13, the week when you're unofficially in the clear. Week 13 finally arrived and I still had a pit in my stomach. Everything seemed fine during doctor's appointments, but something was holding me back from telling our daughter or anyone other than our immediate family about the baby. Looking back, I often wonder if it was a mother's intuition that something was wrong or if it was just the same base level of fear that so many face when they know the realities of how difficult pregnancy can be.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Mid-november, at 14 weeks pregnant, I woke up in the middle of the night and knew for sure the amount of blood I saw meant I was having a miscarriage. I woke my husband up and he sat with me while we waited for 8am to roll around so he could call my doctor. The nurse explained to us that if I was having a miscarriage, there was nothing that could be done to stop it. I had a previously scheduled appointment for the following day and the nurse basically said, if the pain or blood got to be too much, to go to the emergency room. In the meantime, the next day I went to my appointment fully prepared to be told that there was no longer a heartbeat, and I was shocked to find out that the baby was actually fine. We even found out it was a girl.

Speaker 1: 2:17

So basically, what happened was a portion of my placenta had lifted from my cervix and caused a very large blood clot to form. My doctor said that the baby wasn't in danger and the hope would be that the blood clot doesn't get any bigger in size while at the same time the baby grows and sort of pancakes the blood clot against the cervix. To stop any further bleeding, I was put on partial bed rest, meaning I didn't have to physically stay in bed, but I couldn't do much of anything. I couldn't lift my daughter, I couldn't change out the laundry. I couldn't function at full capacity at work like I needed to. I started going to weekly appointments and week 15, 16, and 17 showed that the blood clot wasn't getting any worse and the baby was growing. At this point I still wasn't able to tell my daughter about the baby. I was trying to listen to my husband and mom and feel relief that things were progressing, but nothing felt right.

Speaker 1: 3:08

I was scheduled to have my anatomy scan at 18 weeks right before Christmas. We woke up that morning to snow and a call from the anatomy center that they were closing for the day and they would need to reschedule me for the following week. I can't imagine that there's a good time to receive the news we would eventually hear. But looking back, I am glad that we got to experience Christmas before it happened. It wasn't long into the anatomy scan that I knew something was wrong. The ultrasound tech was taking measurements of different parts of her body and all of them were measuring right at 19 weeks until they got to her head. When I saw the measurement of her head come out at 14 weeks five days it felt like something just clicked, Like all the bad news I'd been holding out for was finally here.

Speaker 1: 3:52

We learned that day that our daughter had anencephaly. She had no brain, no skull. It was a fatal diagnosis. Adding to the devastation, my placenta was now partially overlapping my cervix. The doctor explained that we had two options. Option one would be to wait until I reached 37 weeks and induce labor, ending in a possible C-section due to the placement of my placenta. Once our daughter was born, she would be placed on comfort care, meaning they would do what they could to make sure she wasn't in pain while we waited for her to die. The second option would be to leave the state and receive an abortion. He told us we didn't have to make a decision right then and that we could reach out whenever we did. We left the office and it didn't even take me the walk to the car to know that an abortion was the right option for me and my family. My husband was not only supportive in making sure that I knew the decision was mine to make, but he was also relieved when I told him what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 4:50

I spent the next week trying to reach the anatomy center and was ignored. I would later find out that the clinic had been trying to decode Oklahoma abortion laws to understand what they could and couldn't tell me without breaking those laws. Meanwhile, I was waiting for hours to get in touch with clinics, only to be told that the waitlist was so long and I wouldn't be able to get there in time before I was past their cutoff dates. I finally found a clinic that would not only be able to see me in time but that could also perform a c-section just in case one would be needed again due to the placement of my placenta.

Speaker 1: 5:22

During all of this, I was left with no help from my doctors here at home. I had to request my own medical files, handle everything on my own, just days after receiving the worst news a parent could ever hear. I remember knowing I felt sad, but being so overwhelmed by fear that I didn't have the capacity to address it. I was basically in fight or flight mode and it really just felt like the state of Oklahoma was kicking me while I was down. A week later, my husband and I traveled to New Mexico and received the two-day procedure. I remember the exact moment. I spoke with the doctor at the clinic and felt like I could breathe again. It was the first moment in weeks that I felt safe and that someone was finally going to help me get through this. It was in that moment that I knew I was going to see the other side of this and be okay.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Three weeks after my procedure, Lottie's ashes were delivered to my doorstep. I vaguely remember my husband jumping through hoops to make sure everything was done correctly so we could go back home. So we could go back home. I'll never forget the face of the delivery man when I answered the door and he told me that he had saw where the package was from and couldn't stand the thought of leaving it on my doorstep. Lottie's ashes sit on a shelf in our closet.

Speaker 1: 6:31

I spend a lot of time thinking about the day that we sit our daughter down and tell her about her sister. It's been over a year now and I still don't even know where I would start. I hope more than anything that the conversation includes a silver lining and that I can tell her she doesn't ever have to worry about going through what I went through. As parents, it sucks to know your children are going to experience heartbreak, but it's also empowering to think about the things that you can fight for on their behalf. Thank you for listening. Please take a moment to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review wherever you're listening from. Talk to you soon.