Vanessa McLeod and her husband were thrilled to hear that they were going to have another beautiful baby girl, their second child.
But their happiness would turn to doubt and worry when a routine scan showed something the couple hadn’t been expecting.
Vanessa’s husband was at work, so the midwife asked both of them to come in early so she could talk about something she saw on the ultrasound. Vanessa was afraid of the worst.
“I just want to keep my baby. I just want to keep her,” as she waited for her midwife with her parents in the parking lot.
“She was already so deeply rooted in my heart. She was already a part of me. I was afraid of losing her. I felt like I could do anything at that moment, except lose her. I just wanted to keep her.”
Vanessa’s baby didn’t have hands or forearms, the doctors told her.
“This felt like a punch to the gut. It stole my breath. It keeled me over and the sobs tore out of me, and visions of my perfect little baby shattered,” Vanessa wrote on Love What Matters.
As Vanessa thought about what had happened, her dad told her, “She’s going to be a blessing to our family. I think our family needs someone like her. She is going to teach us so much.”
The doctors didn’t give Vanessa much comfort at her next appointments, which was sad.
“I felt like the doctors were telling me that it was over. That her life wasn’t viable, that we had lost all hope of bringing home a baby,” she said.
“I was shocked when the doctor suggested we terminate. THAT had never crossed my mind, but here they were, offering it. When my husband and I started to express that we wanted to keep her, the medical geneticist said, briskly and brutally, ‘But think about her quality of life. She’s going to have no hands.’”
Vanessa said she felt bad about wanting to keep her baby because the doctors made her worry about what kind of life the baby would have.
“I’ve always been pro-choice, but knew I could never personally have an abortion. But in that moment, I felt doubt,” she said.
“I remember looking at my husband, having so many questions and no answers. But he so firmly, passionately, and emphatically said to me, ‘I’ll do whatever I have to do to take care of her. I’ll build her anything. I want her. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll take care of her for the rest of her life.’”
And at that moment, they both knew that no matter what, their daughter was theirs to love and protect.
In February 2019, Vanessa from Vancouver, British Columbia, gave birth to a baby girl named Ivy four weeks early.
She said she was in good health and that the first time she saw her beautiful face, she “felt so much peace.”
Since then, Ivy has “grown leaps and bounds and met all of her milestones on time.” And when thinking about the doctors who suggested she had an abortion, Vanessa says she wished they “could hear the magical sound of [Ivy’s] giggles.”
Since then, Ivy has “grown leaps and bounds and met all of her milestones on time.” And when thinking about the doctors who suggested she had an abortion, Vanessa says she wished they “could hear the magical sound of [Ivy’s] giggles.”
‘Unequivocally, undeniably perfect’
Vanessa and her husband are excited about what the future will bring. Vanessa says that she wants to give Ivy “instill in her (Ivy) all the confidence she needs in herself to take on the world.”
Vanessa says that, despite what the doctors told her, she has found a lot of help for kids with different limbs. Ivy will grow and change with the help and love of her family, and she won’t miss anything she never had.
Vanessa wrote that the most important thing is that she will know she is “absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably perfect”.