My husband and I desperately wanted children and struggled to conceive. It took years, tens of thousands of dollars, many painful and invasive procedures, and indescribable disappointment and heartbreak to have the two children we so desperately wanted. While on our IVF journey to have our second child we experienced a chemical pregnancy and a failed round of IVF before learning the third round worked and I was pregnant.

At our first ultrasound we learned that both of the two embryos we had transferred had been implanted, and that one of the embryos had split after implanting, meaning two of the babies were identical twins sharing a placenta. We were fearful upon learning this news as this made our high risk pregnancy even riskier to the babies and to me.

At our next ultrasound we learned that while one baby looked healthy, the identical babies were not growing appropriately. One was growing much too fast and one was hardly growing. The identical babies would not survive, and would most likely cause a complete miscarriage, and threaten my health as well.

The only chance to save the third baby was to “reduce” the pregnancy, aborting the doomed identical babies in a controlled way, before they miscarried on their own, in order to attempt to save the third baby. Experiencing a multifetal reduction of two fetuses which could not survive the pregnancy, in order to give our healthy fetus a chance at life, was not a choice I ever imagined having to make. It is, however, a devastating choice I would make again and again to see my charismatic, feisty, and fearless daughter have the chance to live.