Saving me or the baby.

[Whathefisgoingon]

I'm pregnant with our second, it’s very early days but DP and I got talking. I asked him what he would do if things turned bad during labour and only one of us could be saved. He said he would save the baby because it’s a “new life.”

I was pretty shocked. Obviously any situation like that would be tragic, but we have a 3 year old to think about and I feel the obvious choice would be to save his mum first. Am I wrong? How do you feel about this?

I appreciate it’s a very personal choice. If we didn’t have our son, I would choose to save the baby.

If you are in the uk then other adults can't make life or death decisions for you, only doctors can. Discussing a DNAR order with relatives is so they are informed, it's not asking them to decide, it's still ultimately a medical decision.

An unborn baby is only prioritised over the mother in an emergency if the mother's injuries are not survivable.

@Hardbackwriter Ok, well I did. I saw people talking about it and it got me thinking. My family made the choice to end my mothers life by taking her off life support, how am I supposed to know a spouse couldn’t make the same decision in the situation I’ve described.

I know know, which is reassuring!

The family wouldn't have been able to make that choice if the doctor wasn't in agreement.

Even when these cases go to court, the ruling usually concurs with the medical advice.

@lunar1 Yes, doctors were in agreement. Still, I don’t know anything more than that about it all, funnily enough I have (mostly) tried to keep away from it but this is why I did believe this could be a realistic scenario.

I agree with this.

Do you think he just said what he thought you wanted to hear? Only on this occasion got it wrong? I remember getting so upset with my dh when pg because he wouldn’t promise to save the baby (& yes, I did know even then it wouldn’t ever be a decision he’d have to make but hypothetically I wanted us on the same page!).

Now I’m not full of pg hormones I totally agree with him that he should save me though. Although of course in terms of the actual dc we have, either of us would literally kill the other to save them.

I agree with PP that is was a bit of a silly question to ask. Sounds like pregnancy hormones playing havoc.
I find it w but odd how detached some posters seem from their newborns/unborn babies. I loved my second the same as my first from the moment I saw him, it made know difference that I hadn't "gotten to know him".
If your relationship is otherwise good I would just let go of this one.

I've no idea how other countries work, but here there is no way he'd get to make that choice.

I agree with you though, when you have one child here, who is young enough to completely depend on you, I'd want the same as you.

That’s a slight twisting of the truth (by TikTok, not you).

In the US/Canada you can nominate a “surrogate decision maker” (not sure if it is the same term in the US). They then consent to procedures on your behalf, when you are not able to. They can also refuse procedures on your behalf. Very much like a lasting power of attorney for health over here.

So in theory, a husband who had been nominated as his wife’s SDM could refuse a life-saving c-section for his wife, because it would lead to his child being born pre-term/potentially dying. In reality, not delivering the baby/killing the mother isn’t going to do the unborn child’s health much good either, and I am pretty sure there must be some way of legally removing or just ignoring the SDM if they are actively preventing lifesaving care.

Certainly in Ontario, “Health care practitioners are not required to provide treatments that are medically inappropriate, such as those that are against generally accepted health care standards.” So you can ignore them if you need to.

It's something that DH might have been faced with when I was in labour & it all went wrong.

I remember telling him just before I was put under to have an emcs that he had to save the baby - not me.

It was horrific for him to witness it all & the consultant who had heard told him later that they would always save the mum if there had to be a choice.

We were both OK in the end & we talked about it much later after we'd had dc2 - hypothetically of course as it isn't something that we'd ever have control over.

I said that at the time I would have absolutely wanted dc1 to be saved above me, but when I was pregnant with dc2 it would have been a much harder decision as dc1 would still need a mum but then what about dc2???

So I get why you are upset, but its not something with a 'right' answer & I don't think you should be mad with him as it will never happen.

Enough people have already pointed out that this wouldn't be a choice, so I'm not repeating it, just acknowledging I've read that.

I agree with PP he was likely trying to say what he thought was the 'right' thing. If you think about it, you've been the person who has given up their body to bring this child into the world. He can't do that. It is possible he'd think that, if he said 'oh I'd save you,' you'd feel he was ignoring everything you have done.

I really doubt it means he's Henry VIII reincarnated, and sees the mothers of his potential children as expendable.

I’m sorry to hear about your mother. But again, this is a misunderstanding/poor communication from the medical team about the actual legal situation here.

In the UK, assuming no active Lasting Power of Attorney for Health is in place, medical decisions are made by the medical team in the patient’s best interests, if that patient no longer has capacity to make decisions for themselves. The family have to be informed as far as possible, but they cannot override the doctors’ decision. Sometimes we give people time to come to terms with the situation, but the family aren’t the ones making the decision.

Your family will have been called in to a family meeting to be told that your mother sadly had no prospect of recovery, and to be informed about the decision to stop life support. Your family didn’t make that decision themselves, completely unprompted, it had already been made by the medical team who were then meeting you in order to try to get you on board with it.

If you had gone to them off your own back and told them to take your mum off life support, when she was doing well and had a good chance of recovery, do you think the ICU team would have done it? No, not a chance, which tells you how much actual say families have over these decisions.

I'm sorry your mum died

If it makes a difference, life support isn't turned off if there's any possibility of survival. The patient is already essentially dead, with machines artificially performing some biological functions.

This

how on Earth do these discussions even come up?

I have seen one example of save-the-baby over save-the-mother actually happening, albeit nearly 20 years ago now, and not an acute problem during labour situation either. It was a situation where the mother was diagnosed with cancer (forget which), and a decision was made to not start aggressive treatment until the baby could be delivered premature but with some chance of survival. The mother did die, but her baby was doing well enough to be nearly ready for discharge by that point. Very sad, but clearly both parents will have had a little time in which seek advice and make that decision together.

I would never choose my own life over my baby… so I’d want my husband to choose the baby. Sorry

@GrassWillBeGreener A patient with capacity always has the option of refusing treatment (chemo in that sad case) - but if the mother had not been conscious (so not able to refuse on her own behalf) her husband would not have been able to refuse for her, and she’d have been given it.

It is a decision between the patient and their medical team, nobody else (not accusing you of saying otherwise, just making it explicit).

My grandfather was given the choice between my grandmother’s life or her baby’s (my DF), but that was in the middle of a storm in rural Lincolnshire in 1939, so not really relevant to a modern day scenario. He chose his wife I’m glad to say, and even gladder to say that the doctor managed to save both of them 😁

I don't think people are being very nice to you, OP. It doesn't matter where you saw the question, or even whether this would be a realistic scenario (I agree that it wouldn't). This is still a concerning and unpleasant thing for DH to have said.

On the way home from the hospital with a newborn I would (had car sunk, had I not been somewhat crippled by a c-section) have tried to save my husband and not the baby. A few weeks / months later that answer would have been different. A newborn baby is not someone you love more than your spouse, unless you don't care very much about your spouse.

I agree with you that it doesn't matter whether or not this is realistic scenario.

But, you know, not everyone is like you. For some people, it is not concerning and unpleasant for the husband to say this. Clearly, some women would find it comforting and helpful. Likewise, you are not the only person who has ever had a baby: you can't say, as if you're laying down the law, that 'A newborn baby is not someone you love more than your spouse, unless you don't care very much about your spouse'.

Some people (mothers and fathers) love their unborn children intensely, for whatever reason. Some people (mothers and fathers) find love comes slowly. I'm not actually sure that 'love' is the guiding factor in making ethical decisions about survival.

Yeah, that’s nonsense. In the US the mother is the first priority. Dramatic decisions of whether to save mother or baby may make for good television but they are nearly nonexistent in developed countries.

Agreed. For me, I would have wanted my husband to say what the OP’s husband did.

After the birth of our second, my husband stayed with me whilst something was done and the baby was on the other side of the room. I was even unhappy about that and when pregnant again, told him to ignore me and stay with the baby if it happened again.

In the hypothetical, unrealistic scenario in the OP, I don’t think there is a correct answer.

I asked him what he would do if things turned bad during labour and only one of us could be saved. He said he would save the baby because it’s a “new life.”

What a redundant conversation. Who would think he would get a choice at all? And why? I think people have their centuries mixed up if they think this can happen in any country with a first world health system. Also, very odd he would think he would have this ‘power’. If I asked my DH the same question, moot now as baby days are long gone, he would shrug and say ‘how the fuck do I know, I’m not an ob, wouldn’t they make that decision’. And he’s an idiot😂.

@GrassWillBeGreener I have seen one example of save-the-baby over save-the-mother actually happening, albeit nearly 20 years ago now, and not an acute problem during labour situation either. It was a situation where the mother was diagnosed with cancer (forget which), and a decision was made to not start aggressive treatment until the baby could be delivered premature but with some chance of survival. The mother did die, but her baby was doing well enough to be nearly ready for discharge by that point. Very sad, but clearly both parents will have had a little time in which seek advice and make that decision together

You are talking apples and oranges. Your scenario has nothing to do with OP’s. You cannot force treatment on someone, a patient has to consent. In this case the mother had a perfect right not to consent. Or, maybe the team knew it was a done deal and the conversation was that one scenario meant the mum would still die but would likely be given extra time with death of fetus, and in the other scenario the mum would would still die and sooner but fetus would likely make it to a viable gestation. In these situations it’s definitely a consultative process - for the woman. It’s nowhere near the same situation as the OP where a man, (with no expert medical qualification, and not involved in management of the case), is being asked whose life he would like saved today, his partner’s or child’s.

@Whathefisgoingon My family made the choice to end my mothers life by taking her off life support, how am I supposed to know a spouse couldn’t make the same decision in the situation I’ve described.

Except that never actually happened if you live in the UK or similar. @Saschka has summed it up perfectly. That decision had already been made. It’s discussed with you in a way you perceive as being consultative but is to ‘drive’ you to understanding that it is the best outcome and why, so you are comfortable and on board. People are odd in this situation, I’ve heard many times people recount the ‘choice’ they made when talking with other relatives wanting debriefs or whatnot, but that was never the case, they never actually made a choice, just agreed with the one presented to them as being the way it would move forward as the best course of action.