How do you justify yourself as a mother when the first choice you make as a mother is to kill your fetus? To terminate the life living inside of you? To end their life and all of their future potential?

How do I justify my decisions as a mother to my living children? How do I trust myself?

Yes. He would have had a life full of medical problems.

Yes. There was already talk of surgeries in utero. Of procedures to save him and fix him before he was even born.

Yes. That would have been the first of many procedures and interventions, of that I am sure.

Yes. It would have been a life of constant worry and concern for his health and wellbeing.

Yes. It would have been constant financial concerns to make sure he was cared for even after our own deaths.

Yes. It would have been all consuming if he was brought into the world.

Yes. If we had brought him into this world, you, our second child, never would have been born. And you are the best choice I have ever made. A life without you seems completely unfathomable.

You, my second child are the best decision I have ever made. But in order to have you, to hold you, and snuggle you --- first I had to say goodbye to him. First came that choice. That decision.

It feels like I had to say goodbye to him to say hello to you.

But does any of that make it right? Justify it?

I don't think I can ever say yes. To say that it was right. That it was ok. And yet, I do not think that it was wrong.

It was the most difficult decision of my life. One that I stand by. One that I think I would make again under the same circumstances.

So why, so many years later, do I question myself? Perhaps there is no right answer. No peace in this choice. And I will live with that. I will hold him in my heart forever. Grieve him anew a million times over.