I am a loving and caring husband to my wife who had been diagnosed with SLE last two years ago. It was a big struggle for us as we don’t exactly know the cause of the disease and at first we don’t quite understand how to coup with it. We were working in Singapore but decided to come home to the Philippines to get some much needed support from our family. Time has passed and we got to stand back on our feet and she is already under remission, which is all good.

Another good news for us was we got pregnant wih our first child. We were so happy and excited about having to grow our family and start this exciting journey to parenthood. During the first trimester everything was fine she has a normal heartbeat, but during our 19th weeks our OB needed to refer us to a high risk preganancy specialist for us to get a second opinion. Then just after father’s day we went to the doctor and found out our little angel has Anecephaly, a fatal birth defect where the fetus failed to develop the skull and majority of the brain tissue is exposed to the embiotic fluid. We were speechless in the clinic, we don’t know what to ask or what to expect. Little by little the doctor explained what the condition is and what to expect after giving birth. The only words I heared was “the baby is not suitable for life”. I don’t know how to react, I needed to be strong for my wife who is already suffering from a devastating decease and now this happend to our poor little princess “Aphrodiety”, as we found out that it was a girl while the doctor continued to do the ultrasound. Our precious little angel was very energetic that day, she was perfect, almost... :( My heart broke into a million peices.

I promised myself never to show weakness in front of my wife as I want her to get some energy from me. The hardest part was that we are still in our fourth month and there are 5 more months to go until we can actually see our baby, which is very saddening as the defect is fatal and right after birth the baby dies :( Its like planting a plant from the beginning as a seed only to die after it sprouted. Its heart wrentching and no amount of pain killers can ammend this kind of trauma. But life goes on, I told my wife we can get through this. We haven’t really told anyone about this, as we don‘t want them to feel pity for us. We plan to only tell our families when we are nearing the due date.

Now we just need to be strong and prepare hospital bills and a place for our little princess to rest.