fascinating

A dear friend of mine gave me a book, after we lost Isaac, that brought a lot of comfort. I decided to break it out and read it again, as the beginning chapters focus a lot on miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, etc. The book is called Gone Too Soon. I remember reading it for the first time, and coming across a particular passage about a doctor removing a pregnancy from a fallopian tube. His account has always stayed with me, but now that it's so close to home, I felt inclined to find and reread the passage. I find it altogether fascinating and thought I'd share it here:

Eleven years ago, while giving an anesthetic for a ruptured tubal pregnancy (at two months), I was handed what I believe to be the smallest human being ever seen. The embryo sac was intact and transparent. Within the sac was a tiny (1/3 inch) human male swimming extremely vigorously in the amniotic fluid, while attached to the wall by the umbilical cord. This tiny human was perfectly developed with long, tapering fingers, feet, and toes. It was almost transparent as regards the skin, and the delicate arteries and veins were prominent to the ends of the fingers. The baby was extremely alive and swam about the sac with a natural swimmer's stroke. This tiny human did not look at all like the photos and drawings of "embryos" which I have seen, nor did it look like the few embryos I have been able to observe since then, obviously because this one was alive. When the sac was opened, the tiny human immediately lost it's life and took on the appearance of what is accepted as the appearance of an embryo at this stage (blunt extremities, etc.).