Living with Robbie

After I had returned to Dr. Zakreski’s office and he had drawn blood to test for a pregnancy, for the first time I was forced to realize that there was something in my life over which I had no control. In all the articles warning pregnant women against getting German measles, none explained what the consequences were of contracting it. I had a vague idea that this disease could cause mental retardation in babies. I didn’t know if there were other consequences. This was the time of so much publicity about the "Thalidomide babies", when infants born to mothers who had taken the drug Thalidomide were being born with missing limbs.

When I got home that day, I went upstairs and dug through the box of books I had saved from four years at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where I had majored in child psychology. In the box I found what I was looking for B listed among things which could adversely affect the developing fetus was Rubella. After it I had written, "can have legal abortion".

Once again I was seated in Dr. Zakreski’s office. When the door opened and he came in, I knew from his expression what he was going to tell me. The blood test indicated that I was, indeed, pregnant. The Gamma Globulin shot, which protects pregnant women who have been exposed to the Rubella virus, would be useless since I had already come down with the disease.

I asked what damage the virus might have done, explaining that I understood, in Massachusetts at least, it was apparently cause for an abortion. It was not that I wanted to terminate the pregnancy, I said, but if it was a reason for abortion, it must be really serious. Dr. Zakreski told me not to worry, that the chances of my baby being affected were only five to ten percent.

Driving home, I tried to imagine the changes in our lives that a handicapped baby might make. The only mentally handicapped people I had ever seen were at an institution for the retarded in Massachusetts where, as students, we had been taken as part of a field trip for one of my child psychology courses. The director of the institution had led one after another bewildered retarded person out on a stage so he could point out the different types of retardation, the physical characteristics, and life expectancies.

Suddenly I found I had to pull off the road. The tears streaming down my face made it impossible for me to see any longer.