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?

Keep me artificially on machines and ventilator until my baby can be safely born. Every single time.

I don't care if it is 1 or 7 months. I'm dead I have no cares. If my body slowly goes, well the doctors will make decision on balance when best to take baby out. I'm not there anymore.

You're a long time dead so I don't worry about my funeral being delayed.
It is sad. But there's a new baby in there who deserves the best chance.

I don't agree with PPs commenting that it will give the surviving child psychological problems to keep their mother artificially alive until their birth.

They do not need to know.
No-one should traumatise them by saying 'your mother's body was kept alive by machines so you could be born' , you tell them 'Mummy hung on long enough as she loved you so so much'.

Given that women have been kept alive for several months (I was just reading about once case where mum died from a stroke at 9w pregnant, her twins were born healthy 4 months later) it's not fanciful or theoretical.

For what it's worth, if I'm dead but my baby can be saved, then I'd want it saved. I'd want it to have every chance at life.

As another Irish person who grew up,was pregnant and gave birth under the 8th it sickens me that these debates are being brought up even hypothetically.

Even if someone had in writing that they wanted to be an incubator, did they say that before becoming pregnant or after. I ask because it's a very,very slippery slope as where the rights are, who gets a say, who's more 'worthy' of being saved. We lived under those laws and their consequences killed women.

Do you refuse Chemo because it will damage the fetus knowing refusal could result in your death before viability? What percentage chance is the risk you're willing to take? Who gets to decide if you're hit by a bus, in a coma with no relatives or paperwork to express your views?

Honestly,I know it wasn't the intention OP and I can see how it seems like an interesting conversation but it is sickening when you've had to live it.

No-one is reading the links, are they? You will be riddled with bacterial and fungal infections as your organs shut down and begin to rot. Your kidneys will shut down so that you need dialysis. You will be covered in pressure sores and these in turn will become infected. Your blood pressure will fluctuate out of control, your body will fill with fluids.
To stop you dying you will receive a cocktail of drugs, many dangerous to your developing fetus.
Why on earth would you want to keep your fetus alive in such a terrible l, hostile environment?
Well it's not possible but honestly what most of you are discussing is science fiction stuff.

Very interesting discussion.

I'll add only this story of a baby born long after mother's death (I think mother had a stroke) www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/baby-brain-death-mother-birth-doctors-czech-republic-brno-hospital-a9089861.html

I'm actually not sure what I'd want myself. I'd probably wanted to child to live. In the case from the link, they say the decision was on the family.

Would they still perform the section if the baby was under the gestational age of viability, in the knowledge the baby would die?

Yes, it literally happens while chest compressions are going on. Grim to watch. Paeds team will attend to resuscitate the baby as far as is practicable, but the focus of everyone else is the mother.

If you are pregnant and didn’t have your flu jab, you may want to check out what happens when pregnant women develop severe respiratory failure/get admitted to ICU (ie long before anyone is diagnosing brain death) - again, urgent section to save your life, and if the baby isn’t viable then tough shit. Seeing that happen to somebody certainly convinced me to have all my vaccinations when pregnant.

I understand the drive to do anything to keep your baby safe, and felt the same during my pregnancy. Personally I would chuck myself under a bus to save DS right now, so of course I don’t really care what happens to my already-dead body if it would allow him a better chance of survival. But it would just never arise, it’s science fiction.

www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2017/07/11/brain-dead-woman-kept-alive-for-months-so-she-could-deliver-twins/amp/

Remind me again why this is deemed to be science fiction and purely hypothetical?

Why are medical & biological facts so hard to grasp here?

because the mother's heart is involved.

What? @SeaEagleFeather

Assuming the baby had someone (my husband, my family, etc.) to care for it when it was born, of course I'd want it to live! I can't imagine begrudging the use of my body to sustain my child for as long as necessary.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that there was a discussion on MN about whether or not people were bothered by the automatic opt-in for organ donation. If someone would be fine with that, why not this? For the sake of your own child?

Thinking about it another way would you then be murdering a baby say mother was 12 weeks pregnant? Nothing to do with abortion just musing

@EarringsandLipstick

Where mother-heart and emotion are concerned over so very primeval an issue as our babies, sometimes actual facts (and sense) fly out of the head. Partly education, and partly the almost unstoppable instinct to protect our babies.

Once you're dead you can't be kept alive. Perhaps if they used the slightly more accurate terminology "oxygenate the corpse" it wouldn't seem like some last act of bravery, because it wouldn't be the mothers act at all.

I think most people can empathise with wanting a foetus to live, I just disagree with the 'at any cost' bit. What could it do to mental health down the line to know you were incubated in your mother's corpse? Not a lot of positives, I suspect.

@Didshereally - your dead corpse would not sustain a foetus for 7 months.

Various links posters have included reference this, including leading court cases

Or, more prosaically, Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_somatic_support_after_brain_death

Yes, it literally happens while chest compressions are going on. Grim to watch. Paeds team will attend to resuscitate the baby as far as is practicable, but the focus of everyone else is the mother.

Grim is right. But if they don't do the section both mother and baby will die. With the section, the woman has at least a tiny chance. And we can try to give the baby one.

I also wouldn't give two hoots if I were dead and pregnant. I'd want the baby to use my body to survive and for my family to respect that.

I would want to be kept alive for as long as it took to deliver a live baby. I'm actually quite shocked anyone wouldn't want that.

I think most people can empathise with wanting a foetus to live, I just disagree with the 'at any cost' bit.

I agree. The discussion should be less about 'can we?' and more focused on 'should we?'.

I would rather have as dignified a death as possible and my family get the closure they need to enable them to move on (as much as it is possible to do so). I wouldn't want them to be caught up in a long, drawn out process of protracted grief and anxiety. If I ever was to get pregnant again - which won't happen, a pregnancy would kill me - I would want my life prioritised as I have an obligation to my existing children.

@EarringsandLipstick

if you look at the posts, a lot of them are about people -want-, not what is possible; and if there is even a whisper of hope that their baby could survive, they'll go for it; no matter how unrealistic.

it doesn't do to underestimate the power of the instinct to protect your baby.

If the baby is viable, or almost viable- ie around 24 weeks- keep me alive as long as possible to give the baby the best chance of survival, yes.
Before around 20 weeks ? No.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5667260/

From 20 weeks to 33, after going into labour. This was a vaginal birth . Baby was a good weight and healthy.

I would want to be kept alive and the baby given a chance at life. The thought of it is horrendous though.

Hugtheduggee

Brain death remains a hopeless condition for patients, but a brain‐dead woman may still be able to naturally deliver a healthy baby

I actually find that chilling. They didn't need the word brain in there, death would've sufficed. It's like they're saying: oh well, one patient is dead, let's completely disregard any of the decency normally afforded the rest of the species in death and treat the body as we please.

What if she hadn't wanted a vaginal delivery? What might happen to that child psychologically when they learn about the details of their birth at a later date? It could be fine, but it might not be.

..... this was a vaginal birth

How on earth did they manage that?

Lots of PP are referring to viability / getting baby to viability etc.

Viability is 24 weeks, but statistically very few babies born at this gestation will survive, and if they do they'll be much more at risk of life changing health issues.

So keeping a woman alive "until viability" isn't realistic.

The odds improve as the fetus gets closer to term.

Keeping a woman artificially alive to get from (say) 22 to 24 weeks is going to have a much less successful outcome than (say) a woman who is taken I'll at 30 weeks but baby is delivered immediately.