November 17, 2003
On April 7th 1994 my husband Steven and I said our vows. We were starting our new wonderful life together. We were young, only eighteen and nineteen years old, in college, and working full time jobs. Steven was studying to be a lawyer, and me a nurse.
On April 2nd 1995, I bought a home pregnancy test. My period was late and I was hoping I wasn't pregnant. Well, the test came out positive, so I went to the doctor, who said I was about five weeks pregnant, and due around December 18th. I was crushed, how would we have time for a baby? We both wanted to graduate so we could get better jobs, and neither of us would ever be home to care for a baby.
Steven and I talked it through, and we couldn't decide what to do. We brought it to his mother, who suggested we give the baby up for adoption, but we couldn't come to an agreement on that. How could we carry a baby for nine months then give it away? How could we even afford to go through nine months of pregnancy?
Finally, my doctor suggested we have an abortion. A "quick, simple way to be rid of the problem for only a couple hundred dollars," he said. Well, we were both young and only thinking of ourselves, and we agreed this would be best for us, and the baby.
On May 12th 1995, I was ten weeks along in the pregnancy, we went to the clinic to have an abortion. I had never felt more scared in my life. We waited what seemed like forever before a doctor finally came out and told me I could come in.
We walked down a long hallway into a small room. I looked around at the bare walls. I placed my hand on my stomach, and said to my baby, "I'm sorry." That's when the doctor who would be performing the abortion walked in and told me to lie down.
It seemed like seconds later that I woke up in a well-lit room, my husband by my side.
I remember I felt an empty pit in my stomach, where my baby once laid. I felt so helpless and alone, I wanted to just go back to sleep and never wake up, but I couldn't. What was done was done, and my baby was dead.
Weeks went by and, slowly, we realized what we had done. We saw other parents with their children, other pregnant women, and it made us cry. We missed our precious little baby, the tiny soul that grew underneath my heart for ten short weeks.
We decided that our baby deserved a name, and we named him, Lane Thomas.
A couple years went by and we had a beautiful baby boy, Landen Paul. He was the most precious being we had ever seen in our lives. When I looked into his eyes, the first thing I thought of was Lane.
I wondered what he would have looked like, or if he was apart of Landen. Steven too had the same thoughts. After having one more son, Luke Alexander, we truly understood what we had terminated from our lives, forever.
It's been a long, hard journey since we sent our precious baby Lane to Heaven. We feel so guilty and ashamed for what we did.
People have told us that our new babies are Lane, but every baby is unique, one of a kind. One baby can never replace another. You will never replace a baby that you aborted. Its tiny soul is always apart of you. We can only hope now that our baby will forgive us, and we can hold him in heaven.
