Mayette Q. Tabada
MATAMATA

October 7, 2004
Little ghosts

WHEN J. told me over the phone that C. had decided to terminate the pregnancy, I just made a mmm at first. Over the past months, J. had dropped a tidbit here, a comment there: C. and hubby were expecting a boy; the baby's things were perfect matches in blue.

All this nursery static prevented me from correctly hearing that recent tests showed C.'s fetus as having an extra chromosome, which meant mental and physical abnormalities.

C. and hubby had already decided they were not pushing through with the pregnancy.

Only a few days ago, while C. was at work, she felt her son kick. About to be a soccer legend, I thought. Some kid who would never leave alone a ball or a rain puddle.

But we would never have the chance to know. At 23 weeks, his parents were giving up: no to a lifetime of struggle, no to juggling with sanity, no to a life very different from what others were enjoying. I wondered what they would do with the perfectly matched wardrobe in powder blue.

C. and hubby were just waiting for the hospital ethics committee to rule whether the fetus was short of 24 weeks, the legal limit for terminating pregnancies in that country. It made me crazy to think that if the sperm had intercepted a week earlier the ole egg, C. would have to keep her son, extra misbehaving chromosome or not.

J. said that since it was not our choice to make, we would have an easier time deciding and judging. If J. was better at being a human being, it wasn't because she was pontificating.

A working mother who started a new life in a country where the closest relative is a tedious train ride away, my friend is mother to a smart and winsome seven-year-old, as well as to a little ghost.

Last July, an excessively long period of bleeding revealed that J.'s pregnancy hormones were doubling every other day. A medical specialist required emergency surgery to terminate the ectopic pregnancy that was threatening J.'s life.

Unusual for an ectopic, J's embryo had implanted itself, not in the tubes, but in the uterus; and not on the uterine wall but on a muscle.

Little ghost, little ghost, did you know that despite nature's quirky choice, your mother never stopped asking, up to the moment she was wheeled into the operating theater until she had to be sedated, if she could keep you? If science could slip a camera inside J.'s belly button to find where you were, surely it could devise a way to bring you to full term without killing her?

Science, J. learned, is only finite. What may be the only true match for nature's vagaries is a mother's insight. When I saw my old classmate, G., months ago, she looked wan and tired. I thought it was just because she was due to give birth.

But from an ultrasound test, G learned that her fourth-month-old fetus had many cysts growing on her body. The doctors evaluated the chances of survival after birth as very poor; of life without disability, as zero.

G. was helpless but she could still do one thing: little ghost, little ghost, she waited for you. She bore you without bitterness until the ultrasound detected no more heartbeats. She went through hours of induced labor, bearing down to release you, giving birth only to witness your rebirth.

Little ghosts, though you may be so tiny, only a blood test can detect you. Little ghosts, though you may be so delicate, you floated from this life to the next. Faith made you tangible, love gave you family. Little ghosts, watch over all the wee ones, that they may not become ghosts before it is their time.

(In J.'s last overseas call, C. and spouse have decided to keep the baby. They have named their son. gguu@lycos.com/ 0917-3226131)