Being kept alive for the sake of the unborn baby..

[QueenofmyPrinces]

A bit random, but just after some other people’s thoughts about a discussion I had with my husband last night and some of our friends.

We had all been watching Kill Bill and were chatting about the fact that the main character had been shot whilst pregnant, and was in a coma for ‘x’ amount of time and then when she woke up she saw her bump wasn’t there - I guess she assumed the baby had died but in the second film, she learns that the baby didn’t die and had been living with the father for 6 years.

I then said that if I was pregnant, and something happened to me that resulted in me being clinically dead, I would want doctors to put me on a ventilator, to keep me ‘alive’ in order to preserve my baby‘s life and then deliver it at 40 weeks.

DH said that hypothetically he would want the same as we would both want the baby to be allowed to live even if something happened to me.

One of our friends was pretty horrified by the idea though and said she couldn’t put her finger on the reason why, but she just didn’t like the thought of it.

I asked why wouldn’t she want the doctors to keep her ventilated to keep the baby safe and ultimately be born, but she couldn’t give a specific reason and just said it didn’t seem right.

We didn’t get into any big debate about it or anything but I’m just interested in what other people think.

I would absolutely want to be “kept alive” to enable the safe delivery of my baby and allow it to have a chance at life.

AIBU to think most women would feel like that?

Would doctors be allowed to do that? Or do they have to prioritise the mother over the unborn baby despite her wishes?

The mother is the patient and the patient's best interests must be at the heart of any decision the medical team make. In a scenario where it is not an emergency and the patient has capacity to make a decision, e.g., a pregnant woman with cancer delaying chemotherapy until after the birth, then they can present her with the pros and cons of each choice available to her but the ultimate decision is her own. In an emergency situation where the patient does not have capacity to make a decision then they must act in her best interests and prioritise her life. The baby is not a patient until it is born.

It’s a bit Handmaid’s Tale.

No I wouldn't want to be kept alive, I'm not an incubator and this wouldn't be a healthy scenario for the baby anyway. It would also be awful for my partner and existing children to have me in some sort of limbo between life and death, unable to grieve or try to move on.

I don't think it's any more macabre than organ donation tbh.

Organ donation is done fairly quickly after death, within hours, and life support is only used for as long as it takes to move the patient to theatre. No one is kept on life support for weeks on end in order to make a donation.

I can remember thinking how horrific it was keeping a poor woman alive, just so the baby could be saved.

I was horrified when first pregnant.

Now I can understand why people do this, and would want to.

However, I hoped that I would matter, not just an unborn baby.

And generally, no-one is kept on life support to keep a baby alive.

Baby is either delivered, or not. If very close go viability, and medical circumstances allow it could be possible to wait. But unlikely.

The scenarios proposed by some PPs are just not in the bounds of possibility. And the rare cases mentioned here are different entirely.

In movies, it’s all shots of the husband and his family, all happy wit the saved baby.
No shots of the poor dead mother and her family.

Personally if I was to die, I wouldn’t have wanted my husbands family anywhere near my child 🤣🤣😀

I would only agree for life support if I was in persistent vegetative state. If I die I would like to be buried ASAP. If the doctors think they can save the baby then perform an emergency c-section, if not I prefer to be buried with my baby inside of me. I’m not an incubator and imaginary baby is not an experiment. Being grown inside a corpse can’t be healthy, I don’t care if it is prolonged by 1 day, my imaginary baby is not open for experimentation and neither is my corpse.

C'mon @Notnowokay those scenarios are not possible 🤨

A baby can not be 'grown within a corpse'.

Seriously read the thread & actually some of these posts are pretty distasteful now.

Id do it and later than 24 weeks I’d wmat to be kept alive till baby had a higher survival rate than at 24 w

I think it i was quite heavily pregnant and it was the fathers wishes to have the baby born then yes, but if under 24wks then no, I’d let baby go with me

What would happen in a scenario like this where the woman explicitly said she wanted the baby to be the priority, and they should try and save the baby’s life over her own?

can you imagine?

"Oh err.. stop resusitating my wife, she just said to me out of earshot she wants the baby to come first"

The baby isn't a patient until it is born, therefore a unborn baby cannot be prioritised over its mother, even with a capacity assessed advance statement expressing this wish.

Bad as it sounds if i were to be kept alive by machine while pregnant id want them to be switched off

@AliasGrape I am so sorry that happened to you and your Mum

My gut reaction on reading the OP was, yes, why not.

It’s really not that simple though. For starters, science has simply not evolved far enough to keep our bodies ‘alive’ once brain function has ceased, at least not after the first week anyway. To be very blunt, it is simply forcing oxygenated blood and around a corpse whilst fire fighting infections and administering artificial hormones. The dead body cannot even heat itself, so even maintaining something approximating a normal temperature is a challenge.

This is an informative but rather sobering article

Leaving aside the psychological implications for child and family, a healthy child seems very unlikely under those circumstances.

I do get the initial ‘save the baby’ gut reaction, but the sensible thing would seem to be to deliver the baby if viable, and spare it from suffering by letting it die naturally with its mother if not.

I think it would be a very cruel situation to be born into. I can't imagine a person living with the knowledge of their birth.

I don't remember the name but there was a UK case some years ago, where the mother had a stroke.
The mother was kept alive for a week or so, until the baby could be born.
Sadly, I don't remember all the details. The baby was delivered by c section some weeks early.
I think they kept the mother alive, until the medical profession thought delivery of the baby was viable.
This was with the cooperation of her husband and family.
Obviously, other posters links show this has happened several times.
I think there was a balance, in how long to keep the mother alive, and the earliest date, they could safely deliver the baby.
I just remember the case

It’s hypothetical isn’t it

Before viability the baby isn’t likely to survive
After viability it would be delivered

I'd never know so whatever the relatives decided.

There was an episode of Law and Order when a woman was essentially alive by machine as it were. Her family paid a man to rape the woman so she would get pregnant. The parents of the woman didnt want to lose their own only chance of a grandchild. (Woman was pregnant prior but was in a car accident which killed her unborn and left her brain dead)

That episode has always stuck with me.

There was an episode of Law and Order when a woman was essentially alive by machine as it were. Her family paid a man to rape the woman so she would get pregnant. The parents of the woman didnt want to lose their own only chance of a grandchild. (Woman was pregnant prior but was in a car accident which killed her unborn and left her brain dead)

Jesus Christ - that’s an awful thing to imagine!!

When i was pregnant with my youngest neither my baby nor i was expected to survive, it was agreed that if it all went pear shape they would fight for my life and not for the baby. It was the worst decision i have ever had to make, but i had to put my other children first. we decided that if anything happened to me before 30 weeks,they would let us both die, after that if i died they would try and save the baby.
Thankfully we both survived

Yep, Law and Order often took real life cases, so I imagine that it was based on a true story.

The amount of people saying ‘I’d want to be kept alive’ is staggering.

You can’t be kept alive when you’re dead. Your organs can be forced into working but you’re gone, and your organs will be failing, body decomposing. If your brain is dead nothing will work properly, at all.

I saw that Law & Order episode, never forgotten it, 't'was horrible.