We ignored the many warnings about genotype when we were about to get married. Our families were even against the marriage when they realised we were both AS. But we were stubborn. We were madly in love and we believed that God would perform a miracle for us. We thought we were expressing faith and being positive. My wife is very prayerful and we committed our decision to the Lord. Thing is, we had dated for 6 years. We had come too far to just let the issue of genotype separate us. We made a major mistake by not checking for our genotypes when we started dating. That could have saved us a lot of pain and heartache in years to come.
We married in July 2013 and we started our married lives trusting God for the best. Our first child was born in 2014. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. But she has sickle cell, and life hasn’t been easy for my wife and I. The trips to the hospitals, making sure she takes her medications everyday, restricting her from endulging in strainous activity. Her pain crisis are severe and it is just unbearable seeing her in so much pain and not being able to do much for her.
Then our second child was born. We hoped that he didn’t have sickle cell because there were also chances he could be AA or AS. But we were not lucky. He also has sickle cell and it seems that his crisis come more severely and he is thinner and falls ill a lot. My wife and I decided it wasn’t worth it. We couldn’t continue decieving ourselves. We have decided to get a divorce. It was a very tough decision to make. We have been through so much together. But it will not be fair to these kids if we keep bringing them into this world to experience all of this pain. You should see it when both of them have a sickle cell crisis and have to be admitted at the hospital at the same time. Our finances are depleted. It has even affected how we relate to each other and the work we do.
We have therefore made a decision to annul the marriage and go our separate ways. We will try our very bests to take care of our children and be good parents to them. In the midst of deciding all this, my wife informed me she was pregnant again. I am a Christian man. I hold firm beliefs against abortion. I know it is murder. I know it isn’t right. But in this case, I have told my wife that it is best we abort this child. We can’t risk bringing another sickle cell child into this world. That will be wickedness and we don’t want to do that. It is better we terminate the pregnancy now. My wife doesn’t want to undergo the process of abortion. She is still sticking to her morals after all our two other kids have gone through with their health. I don’t understand why she will not reason with me. Women miscarry all the time and since her pregnancy is in its early stage, it will just look like a normal miscarriage. She shouldn’t make a big deal out of this at all. Am I in the right here? Is there something I am not seeing? Before you judge me for telling my wife to abort my child, make sure you know how it feels like to have at least two sickle cell children.
