Reflecting on Neonatal Loss: Losing Our Baby in Idaho Could Have Cost Me My Life
By Tasha and Will Hussman
Never did we imagine that we would face pregnancy complications that threatened the life of the mother of our family.
Two months after moving with our two young children to Maryland, Tasha found herself a patient on the hospital floor where she worked, far away from our families back in Idaho. She had just started a new chapter in her nursing career as a perinatal nurse on a busy high-risk maternity unit at a prestigious teaching hospital. Our family was also preparing to welcome a deeply wanted third child.
Over Mother’s Day weekend, Tasha began noticing cramping and unusual fatigue. She was 19 weeks pregnant. With a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old at home, holiday activities, and a string of demanding 12-hour shifts behind her, initially we assumed she was simply exhausted.
At the end of the weekend, we decided she should go to her labor and delivery unit, just to be safe.
Quickly, we learned that something far more serious was happening. She had been in silent labor for approximately 24 hours and had progressed to a point where medical efforts to stop it would not be successful.
We were devastated and in shock. We were presented with our options, including going home to observe if labor continued to progress or remaining in the hospital under observation and with the use of misoprostol to progress labor, a drug used in abortive procedures. We desperately needed the guidance of the medical team around us, so we chose to stay.
We also had to confront the reality that our baby might be born alive but was too premature to survive outside the womb.
We soon learned that Tasha also had a concealed placental abruption, which resulted in a sudden massive hemorrhage during labor.
Tasha was rushed to the operating room. Under anesthesia, she underwent a dilation and evacuation, also known as a surgical abortion, after losing nearly half of her total blood volume.
Our son, Benjamin, was born during that emergency. At 7:00 p.m., he entered this world. At 8:20 p.m., as Tasha recovered from a life-threatening hemorrhage, his heart stopped in her arms.
Tasha survived because of the fast action of her doctors and nurses. Our son did not. That night changed our lives and hearts forever.
It also changed the way we think about maternal health, reproductive care, and the decisions families and physicians sometimes have to make when a pregnancy or fetus cannot continue safely. These conversations deserve more nuance than any political slogans can provide. A healthy mother is absolutely foundational to a healthy community and Idaho’s current laws fall short in protecting this vulnerable population.
Idaho's abortion law is well-intentioned to protect unborn life. That goal is important to many Idaho families, and deserves to be part of an honest public conversation. But experiences like ours raise the question of how we go about protecting unborn life without leaving physicians and mothers without the ability to respond to dangerous and rapidly changing pregnancy complications?
Benjamin and Tasha did not fit neatly into a political category.
Our family was not seeking an abortion. We wanted our baby. And yet, Tasha developed a condition that put her own life in danger while her pregnancy was inevitably ending, with our two young children to think about. Abortive drugs and measures were used to save Tasha’s life.
Today, if Tasha experienced that kind of pregnancy in Idaho, the outcome could have cost her life, left Will widowed and our then-3 and 6-year-olds motherless. A doctor in Idaho, cautioned by Idaho law, could have sent Tasha home, resulting in a delay in care to stop a hemorrhage, or they might have attempted to stall labor and try to carry the baby to a viable state significantly increasing her risk of infection and sepsis. Even with immediate access to emergency care, she lost almost half her blood volume and required emergency surgery.
Idaho needs a serious conversation about how its laws address medical emergencies, pregnancy loss, and the judgment of physicians caring for critically ill women. We owe it to our families to mirror the laws of neighboring, pro-life states like Utah by passing Proposition 1.
Tasha Blazzard Hussman and Will Hussman are parents of three, and born and raised in Idaho in the LDS faith. Will is a cyber analyst and member of the Idaho National Guard. Tasha’s 17-year nursing career has focused intently on caring and advocating for maternal and pediatric populations in Idaho and around the country. She currently serves as a committee member for Postpartum Support International and the Idaho Maternal Mortality Review Committee. This opinion is their own and not reflective of any organization.
