Perinatal Hospice:.

The news devastated B.J., a single mother expecting her fifth child. Prenatal tests showed that her unborn baby had Trisomy 13, a chromosomal disorder that is almost always fatal.

In today's increasingly high-tech medical world, such diagnoses are more and more common. Emotionally vulnerable at such times, parents are easily swayed by the opinions of diagnosticians and physicians.

Sometimes overtly but more often subtly, the message is sent that everyone - - the family and the baby - - is "better off" if the child is aborted. After all, the child is going to "die anyway," parents are told.

Having already suffered through the deaths of two of her children in accidents, B.J. did not think she could handle bringing the baby to term only to see him die. Considering an abortion, she called a local crisis pregnancy center for help. Knowing that an abortion would do nothing to lessen her grief, the center referred B.J. to Alexandra's House, a new kind of hospice in Kansas City, Missouri.

"Perinatal hospices" are a relatively new but important development whose noble goal it is to support parents during the emotional turmoil that is a part of pregnancy and birth of babies diagnosed with serious, if not necessarily always fatal, disorders. They provide an alternative to the "solution" of abortion, a decision that often only heightens the guilt of parents who may already be blaming themselves for producing an "imperfect" child.

Alexandra's House founder Patti Lewis followed B.J. throughout her pregnancy, providing spiritual, emotional, and practical support. B.J. and Lewis developed a birth plan together, went to medical appointments, and prepared for labor and delivery.

Lewis said B.J. asked her to let her hold her baby only if he survived the birth, fearing that she couldn't bear to see him if he didn't. The baby boy died during labor.