"I'm carrying my baby with a rare terminal illness to birth"

SWNS

A mum has decided to give birth to her baby with a rare terminal illness despite doctors' warnings he likely won't survive more than a day.  Madysen Wilcox, 29 and her husband Darrin, 34, were shocked to hear third baby had alobar holoprosencephaly - a brain disorder - at their 18 week scan.  They were told the condition was fatal - and in the unlikely scenario he survived to birth, his life would be very short.  And after initially deciding to terminate the pregnancy they changed their mind.  Against the odds, Madysen will give birth to her son, Charlie, on Friday (4/10) via a scheduled induction.  With just 1 in 10,000 cases making it to birth, he is unlikely to survive much longer.  But the couple from Smithfield, Utah, are going ahead after praying for answers.

Transcript

00:00🎵Upbeat Music🎵

00:27I'm currently 31 weeks pregnant with my son Charlie who has a terminal diagnosis.

00:32When I break this news to people they obviously have a lot of questions for me

00:36and one of those questions that I've been getting asked lately is

00:40do you have a hard time when people ask you about your baby bump or about your pregnancy

00:44like strangers? When I was first told that Charlie was not going to live long

00:50I remember thinking how am I going to deal with that exact question? How am I going to have

00:55strangers approach me at the grocery store and say congratulations and ask me when I'm due?

01:00The whole shebang. So when we got our diagnosis the next day I told Darren I was like I'm never

01:08leaving the house. We're no longer going out. I'm not going to the store. I'm not going to church.

01:13I'm not meeting up with friends. I told him I'm not going to family events. I don't want

01:17anyone to see me pregnant. Later that day I even went to a clothing store and I bought

01:24double XL shirts and I was just going to hide my pregnancy for the entirety of it.

01:30That was my plan. Obviously things have changed a lot now but that really did help in the beginning.

01:36So for the first few weeks I really did only wear huge baggy t-shirts and very baggy clothes

01:43to the point where you could not tell at all if I was pregnant and that helped me a lot to just kind

01:49of get through the grieving of finding out the diagnosis and then also you know it did help me

01:55get out of the house instead of staying inside because that was also really concerning to Darren.

01:59He was concerned that if I stayed inside you know that would be even worse for my mental state and

02:06so getting out with those huge baggy shirts helped immensely. Then as I began to cope with

02:12the diagnosis and kind of accept the reality of things I started to kind of change my mindset and

02:19I felt better about sharing Charlie's story and about telling people that I was pregnant. I

02:24realized that breaking the news to people about his situation, our situation, wasn't as hard as

02:29I thought it would be but I think giving myself that time to cope and grieve really helped me

02:36get to the place where I'm at now where I'm super open about my story. I can share it with anyone.

02:41I can talk to anybody about it and I'm more than willing to like answer questions about it and stuff.

02:45In fact, I love when people ask me about Charlie and I love talking about him because I've gotten

02:51to the point now where I just realize this is his story, this is his life, and this is all we get

02:57with him. So sharing his story, sharing his story, sharing his story, sharing his story, sharing his story,

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