Come Hither to Discuss Something Morbid

[SmidgenofaPigeon]

Please don’t bother with this is you’re offended by musings of the morbid kind. I know some people are. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

If I were to die randomly now, at 25 weeks pregnant, what would they do with my baby? Say I was in a car accident, and was declared brain dead in hospital, would they just keep me alive to grow the baby for longer, then deliver it and give it to my husband, or would that raise all sorts of ethical questions and just be very Gilead? Would he make the final call or would they go ahead and think well we will try to save the baby? Would the baby survive if I was brain dead? And obviously I’d have to stay technically ‘there’ but dead just to keep the baby alive. Which would be horrible. A soap opera must have done this as a storyline at some point. I think there was something like it in the Handmsid’s Tale?

There’s nothing wrong with me I promise. I do just enjoy thinking about morbid things. Like wondering if a chopped off head knows it’s been chopped off, and thinking of all the skeletons behind the walls of Bank tube station. I’ve got some beautiful taxidermy at home because I just like the fact that it’s a thing that was once alive and I can give it a nice home even though it’s dead

I’m sure there are others that have morbid wonderings too.

Thank you missconduct

Aye - you are likely right.

I would hope to pass out from fright but if I was to have a glimpse as I tumbled, I’d prefer it to be sky rather than a clarty basket 🧺

I would also think having your head chopped off makes your blood pressure drop so fast you’re not conscious for more than a second or two, but I read this account once about two guys driving in a car, and there’s a horrible crash, and the passenger ends up decapitated and his head rolls and the driver said you could see his expression change from confusion, to horror, and then desperate sadness all in the space of around 8 seconds.

That has made me feel terribly sad 😔

Interesting thread OP.

Im a lawyer and I did 6 months in clinical negligence - I vaguely remember that the law doesn’t seem to treat an unborn child as a human being. A hospital will treat the patient (mother) first and foremost even if that could result in the baby dying. If it’s one or the other then the mother will be the one that the hospital try and save.

If the mother is clinically dead then I suppose they would try and save the child.

With life support I’m not sure how that works in terms of degeneration. My DM was brain stem dead in her 50s whilst on life support but it still looked like she was breathing; her heart was beating, she was warm, etc. But it was all machine generated.

She was kept “alive” for 24 hours for organ donation purposes. I would imagine that other organs wouldn’t continue to function after brain stem death so I’m not sure really how long you could still be used as a vessel

In the US where commercial surrogacy is legal, I've seen it written into contracts how long the intended parents can keep the surrogate mother's body alive for in these circumstances.

If you were in a life threatening condition during pregnancy they would likely do a peri mortem Caesarean immediately- this is to increase the chances of your survival and not for the benefit of the fetus. Delivering the baby should release some of the stress on your organs and help you to survive.

When a person's brain has died they are legally dead after the first set of tests that diagnose it. The second set of tests confirms the findings of the first set. The ventilator keeps oxygen supply to the lungs, and the settings can be varied to ensure that sufficient carbon dioxide is exhaled. Often, though, powerful drugs are needed to maintain blood pressure, and those drugs in themselves can cause problems in the body, such as poor blood flow to the feet/legs and fingers/hands/arms. Most patients will progress into multi-organ failure over time, which is why SNODs (Specialist Nurses for Organ Donation) will arrive at the patient's beside and stay until they have found recipients for all of the viable organs - it's a bit of a race against time. The ICU nurses and doctors spend all of their time making sure that their patient (albeit legally dead) is cared for in the best way, to allow the relatives to grieve and to preserve the organs so the family's wishes can be fulfilled. So PP's are right that it's unlikely that a brain dead patient could be managed for a very long time to facilitate the maturation of a foetus. But patients in comas can remain very stable at times.

It's a real ethical dilemma, I think, but legally the mother is the patient.

@RodiganReed

In the US where commercial surrogacy is legal, I've seen it written into contracts how long the intended parents can keep the surrogate mother's body alive for in these circumstances.

That is really nasty. But then if you are paying for a ‘product’ you need stuff like that in the contract I guess.

@SmidgenofaPigeon

Thanks, that’s what I was wondering- If the baby is only 25 weeks it’s obviously better off being in for a bit longer, to give it a better chance of living, so would they keep me going just for that purpose or just get on with getting it out now and hope for the best? But keeping someone alive just to be an oven seems morally wrong.

Yes but it also seems morally wrong to let a baby potentially die when it could be saved if delivered a little later.....

I think they would go with the option that preserved viable life.

@HavelockVetinari

There have been very few cases where this has happened - it's incredibly rare. A brain dead person can't properly regulate their hormone balance, temperature, blood sugar or metabolism, and is at great risk of blood clots. It would be so unlikely to lead to a healthy birth outcome - if you were to die they'd try to deliver your 25-weeker immediately, but they wouldn't keep you alive to try to incubate it.

That's really interesting and I never really thought about it before... so when people described as 'brain dead' are kept on life support for years, are they actually at some slightly less 'dead' state or does medicine regulate those things for them?

@InsanityRocks so sorry to hear about your friend and her baby that is absolutely heartbreaking.

To whoever it was asked about a baby going toba partner, I assume it's like the birth certificate. An unmarried man can't register the baby alone but a married man can. Maybe a court needs DNA evidence before he can have the baby. What would happen if it was donor sperm or not his dc, I don't know.

I haven't caught the whole thread yet so she might have already been mentioned but...anyone with a morbid streak should check out Caitlin Doughty - Ask a Mortician on YouTube.

Her videos are some of the most interesting things I've watched and she's pretty funny too!

https://youtube.com/c/AskAMortician

@MinnieMountain

Doesn’t Catholicism say that an unbaptised baby goes into limbo? So if you were catholic and the baby died with you it wouldn’t join you in heaven.

They did until until 2007 reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL2028721620070420

It's not really THAT rare tbh.
There are a few a year now, especially the last few years. Some of them required life to be maintained for quite a long time.

Have a look at the case of Frankielen Padilha, who suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage when she was 9w premature with twins! Both babies were delivered albiet prematurely, and are doing well.

Similar lengths of time to gestate have been seen in Portugal and Czech Republic (amongst others I expect) and numerous of shorter gestations. Although not guaranteed, it seems there is a decent chance of survival for these babies, the question is I guess, whether for early gestations it is right or not?

[quote SmidgenofaPigeon]@WeWantAMackerelNotASprat yes I mean obviously he’d take the baby but I mean would he have any say- like please try and deliver it now so my wife can die in peace or, no I want to give it the best chance, leave it for a few weeks.

So sorry to hear that @InsanityRocks[/quote]
Oh I understand now!!

They would keep the mother's corpse 'alive' briefly to maximise the chances of safe delivery for the baby.

But it's not like on films, or like a persistent vegetative state. The body is dead, and despite intervention it has you can only keep some systems limping along but there is continuing failure.

Bottom line is that babies aren't separate people before they are born, but people will do a great deal to maximise the survival of a viable foetus if there is catastrophe to a pregnant woman. But keeping someone dead as an incubator isn't pretty and peaceful, it's intensive and even repulsive (when things happen like decay of extremities)

If you were Anne Bolyean etc, what do you think they felt before they were beheaded? Do you think they believed they were going to God do would be less scared? Or would they get that feeling, whdn everything seems loud and other worldly and not really happening?

@iceni I wonder all the time! Especially things like Lady Jane Grey’s execution where if she converted to Catholicism she had a chance of being pardoned- but she refused. So obviously she must have felt she’d go to hell if she didn’t stick to her religion. But she was only 16 so must have been terrified in the moment. With Anne I think it’s reported there was a moment where the swordsman says ‘fetch me my sword’ so she looked around, but he already had the sword so it was a ruse to get her to turn her head so he could do it swiftly when she thought she had a few more moments. But still walking down to that scaffold- I don’t know how you’d make your legs do it!

It cannot possibly be generalised. If you died in front of them, there would be immediate decisions about viability, likelihood of surviving as a healthy infant and availability of adult and neonatal intensive care beds.
Those ITU beds are too precious to maintain a pregnancy after death except in the most exceptional circumstances. Most maternal deaths outside of hospital result in foetal death.
In hospital, it would be about possibilities for transplant organs and whether the baby was still alive and unharmed. That would be very, very, rare.

smidge, I also wonder about planes crashes too and what were they thinking.

Literally no mother would prefer her baby to die unnecessarily with her so they could be immediately together in heaven I'm religious and would want my baby to live and grow up ans join me in heaven later, anyone would.

Also of COURSE the mother would be kept alive jf possible to help the baby survive? Is this that much of a big question? Seems like a no brainer to me, I'm shocked that people would turn off a pregnant mothers life support and risk her baby.

@Carpedimum I think decapitated people are ‘aware’ for a few seconds after.

That’s why when Marie-Antoinette was guillotined they held her head up towards the crowd. It was believed she could still see the crowd.

I’m not sure that be the case in a slow decapitation. You’d lose too much blood and die before your head comes off.

@SmidgenofaPigeon

Thanks, that’s what I was wondering- If the baby is only 25 weeks it’s obviously better off being in for a bit longer, to give it a better chance of living, so would they keep me going just for that purpose or just get on with getting it out now and hope for the best? But keeping someone alive just to be an oven seems morally wrong.

In the UK a foetus has no legal entity until it is born. They would not keep you on LS to keep something that doesn't exist, alive. Harsh, but true.

@aibubaby

That's really interesting and I never really thought about it before... so when people described as 'brain dead' are kept on life support for years, are they actually at some slightly less 'dead' state or does medicine regulate those things for them?

No. The brain is dead. The body is artificially kept alive by ECMO -extracorporeal membrane oxygenation - which takes place of the heart to pump blood, but also the body will be on dialysis etc. My DH was on ECMO for 10 days but he was in an artificially induced coma to facilitate revovery.