Aibu for choosing mother rather than unborn baby?

[Bells3032]

I'm currently 20 weeks pregnant. Having one of those hypothetical conversations regarding what would your partner do if something happened and it was your life v unborn baby's life. I said 100% he should chose me. Friend was surprised and said she'd chose her unborn baby over her.

Said it makes more sense to choose the mother as she's less "replaceable" for lack of a better sense (not that a baby is replaceable but hopefully you know what I mean) and the only person who'd be more upset at losing the baby than me would be me.

Am I just a horribly in maternal person.

Which would you chose?

"Said it makes more sense to choose the mother as she's less "replaceable" for lack of a better sense (not that a baby is replaceable but hopefully you know what I mean) and the only person who'd be more upset at losing the baby than me would be me. ".

Actually I've seen this argument used another way, a man who said he could more easily replace a wife than his child. This wasn't I don't think because he didn't care about or love his wife. It was more that the love for a child is unconditional, that he had made that child and that made it so his responsibility was to the child he had given life to (his belief being that it was fully made and formed and it could survive if just born, it wasn't a few week old foetus that couldn't live by itself). Obviously the choice should lie with the mother, and some might think this misogynistic or wrong, but it just another way of looking at it that men and women can have multiple partners and multiple marriages but the love they have for their own child that they have made and have responsibility to (obviously you can say you have responsibility to a partner, but it isnt quite the same as what you might feel for a child) doesn't usually stop.

So I think it is BU to say that the only person who would miss the baby more than the mother is the mother. Because that child had a father too, and only he knows if his wife is less replaceable than his baby when the baby is just seconds from being born (and most people would say that the second it's out its understandable to pick the baby, because it's then a newborn.).

Disclaimer - This is not to say what I would do, or what people should do. It's just another look at it and no one knows what they'd think until it happened and choice should be there.

If the child is very close to being born there's no longer a dilemma regarding who to choose, is there?

My DH chose me over our dd.

She was our first child.

Very glad he did tbh.

@justasking111

My friends husband faced this decision at the hospital he told them to save his wife. It's a hard one

No. That’s really not how it is. At all I’m afraid thingd has been miscommunicated, understandably in fraught circumstances

@GrandDuchessRomanov

My DH chose me over our dd.

She was our first child.

Very glad he did tbh.

No Partners aren’t given that stark choice unborn child or mum?

@GrandDuchessRomanov

My DH chose me over our dd.

She was our first child.

Very glad he did tbh.

He didn't. The doctors did, and they will choose the mother every time because she is their patient. You DH was not asked.

It's likely the conversation went something like this:

Husband, in waiting area, wife taken off in emergency situation. Member of medical team comes in.

Husband: is everything okay?

Medic: I came out for a quick update as we're aware you've been waiting for quite a while with no news

Husband: are they alright?

Medic: The situation right now is fairly serious, your wife is so we've given and we're hopeful that these will work to

Husband: please prioritise my wife/please prioritise our baby (delete as applicable)

Medic: We're doing all that we can, if is not successful then we will attempt

Husband: please just save my wife/save our baby

Medic: We'll update you again as soon as we're able

Husband thinks he's been asked and has made a choice then when his wife/his baby/both come through it alive he thinks its because he picked them when really what happened is that the medical team did what they were trained to do, what they were required by law to do, and the Husband had no choice in it whatsoever.

Look at it this way. A few days after my baby was born, he needed a blood transfusion from me. I got in an argument on line with a right-to-lifer where I asked if I should legally be required to give my baby blood. He said, um, well any mother would surely want to. I said that's not the question. He finally admitted that no, he did not think that mothers of born children should have to give their babies life-saving transfusions. But the only difference between the baby that he would have been desperate that I provide blood to two days earlier and the baby he thought I had no obligation to was that the baby he thought I had no responsibility for was an actual living baby. In fact, he didn't think I needed to provide a fingernail, a hair sample, anything. Why? Because once the baby could actually live on its own, once it was actually a baby, then the father could provide all of those things as well.

My first baby, I would have chosen him, but as PPs have said, now he's here, being here for him is my priority.

Also like another PP though, I had years of infertility, so my baby wasn't as "replaceable" in the way you mean. I couldn't simply have another, I desperately wanted him, and losing him might have meant being childless.

Yes couples have this conversation but that is a conversation it's not binding in any way.

In UK (not sure about NI though) you get personhood when you are born.

It would be a totally horrific decision to give to the partner. I mean it would most likely fuck them up. How could it not? Having to decide whether the woman he loves dies. Or their baby. I mean come on. It would just be cruel in the extreme.

In places where the foetus is seen as having personhood/ abortion is seen murder, there have been and are really awful consequences.

In the OPs original post it was a theoretical conversation. The bloke said he would choose the baby.

I'm assuming that this was a random conversation.

That's really shit. Did he say this in front of his partner?

If there was a random chat about this and DH said oh right I'd choose for her to die. I mean that's just awful. Who comes out with that? No well if this and the other and if she said that's what she wanted.

Just straight up yep no problem there I would choose for her to die.

In response to OP. That's very weird. And awful.

In the midwifery part of my nursing training back in late 70s / early 80s we were told to save the mother, both pre and post delivery

My DH would be totally fucked up by being asked that. I'm sure he's not the only one.

We don't have death penalty here. But it's ok to give a standard man the decision whether to kill his partner he loves or the baby? I mean that's just off the scale not right. It would fuck most people up.

And if he says baby.

He has to live with the decision to end her life. The child has to live with the knowledge she died giving birth. And if full info, that they were chosen and that meant her death. And that their dad made that decision.

Just no no no. Psychologically it's a disaster all round.

And what kind of man in a random conversation says yep I'd choose for my partner to die...?

That's really not normal. At all.

I don't know if I posted earlier. But for the docs etc in the situation.

To have to watch a grown woman with a whole life and family and etc die. Because you've been told that's what to do.

I mean that's terrible.

And others have pointed out that's not what happens.. Because the woman is the patient. And that's how it should be.

In areas where the foetus is seen as an equal person it has led to terrible things. Women dying unnecessarily. And that appalling situation in Ireland where the woman was dead and was given no dignity. And her family were exposed to an utterly grotesque situation.

There’s the anecdote at the end of that “This is Going to Hurt” book where the husband of the woman who died during labour (and the baby survived) told the doctor they’d saved the wrong one. Not sure if there was ever really a choice anyone could make in reality but it’s certainly a chilling thought.

He was very upset. Understandably.

Was that a choice made by docs or they just couldn't save her.

It's good that the law has clear rules for the docs to follow.

It's good that men aren't asked to choose because it's going to fuck them up.

Was that response to me? I can’t remember the specifics, but yes, the man was very distressed that his wife had died, and I think he believed a choice had been made, but in reality it hadn’t and things happened as they happened.

From what I remember the pregnant patient dropped dead in from of the doctors eyes, and they had immediately performed a c-section (assume resuscitation of the mother was ongoing at this point) and the baby survived but the mother didn’t.

@HTKB

Also - it’s massively unfair to be having these unneeded conversations with your partner. Can you imagine being told who to choose in a life or death situation, or worse, being told it’s your choice whether to save the woman you love or your unborn baby!

If you do feel the need for such a conversation - and, trying not to be a birch, but I think we all know the type of woman that would instigate this conversation drama queens - tell them to keep their head down and let the doctor get on with it.

If a partner even tried to intervene in an emergency situation, security would be called and they would be removed from the ward.

Agree 💯

Lots of save the baby virtue signalling here.

There's a few people telling porky pies on this thread...

The doctor coming into the room to tell Dad that they can either save his partner or the unborn baby, and he has to choose which, is something that happens in TV land.

@ZealAndArdour you might be aware of this already, but immediate c-section is a key part of maternal resuscitation - there’s a higher chance of successful CPR once the baby’s out. They aren’t doing it for the baby’s sake, though obviously if there’s a paediatrician on site they will sort the baby out separately.

If you actually think about it for a few seconds, it should be blindingly obvious that a partner isn’t given the choice to tell anyone to let their wife/partner die.

@Changethetoner

How many of us have declined a paracetemol when pregnant, despite a banging headache? Chose to avoid certain risky foods (soft cheeses, pate). How many chose to come off eg. anti-depressants when pregnant, just in case the medicine damaged the foetus? Or chose to delay chemo, despite having agressive cancer, because it likely would harm the foetus?

I can see the thinking behind "saving the baby over the mother" as an extension of scenarios like these, which many of us have already been through. The maternal instinct is (often) strong, and lots of us would rather we suffer, even die, rather than our baby.

I think avoiding parents during pregnancy is not in any way comparable to choosing to die to save an unborn child.

The only example on your list even vaguely relevant is the chemo example, and I expect there are plenty of women who would choose to terminate a pregnancy in order to access chemotherapy if in the early stages of pregnancy. I am pretty certain I would.
Late stages is obviously a more difficult decision but I suppose it's a shorter wait and the baby could be delivered early.

When I was pregnant with my first DC I told my husband that in such a scenario he should save the baby.

As it happened that baby died before birth (full term stillbirth). Of course I was devastated but I do remember thinking at one point that it might have been worse if I had died and baby had lived as that baby would be in the world without me and I couldn't bear the thought of not being here for my child. At least the baby wasnt suffering. We were.

My first pregnancy I said to save the baby but as soon as I was a mother then no....the needs of existing children come first and they need a mum.

This POV just goes to prove that even women who reckon they’d ‘save the baby’, place less ‘value’ (for want of a better word) on the life of the unborn. (And thus probably wouldn’t save the baby if they were actually staring death in the face).

Otherwise it makes no sense to say you’d prioritise the baby from a first pregnancy but for subsequent pregnancies you’d prioritise yourself. Why? The baby in the first pregnancy would also be left motherless and as a (possibly premature) newborn, would arguably need her more than older children would. So why would you abandon a newborn baby to the world without a mother, but not older, existing children?

Because we value the life of the born over the unborn, both in law and instinctively. Thus we choose the mother. All the rest is martyr-ish nonsense.

Id choose myself but it would be an awful decision.I have dd to look after.