This is in response to a blog post on RealChoice. I’m including it here because, for some reason, the post isn’t saying it’s going through (usually it says it was saved and may take a moment to appear; this time it doesn’t say anything — not even an error message). I’m assuming it either had too many links or was too long, or both.

Baby Marcella died on Aug. 5, 2008, of cardiac arrest due to complications of pneumonia. She was over 18 months old.

Here is an older entry on her and anencephaly in general, with some interesting links, especially the parent-site of these stories of babies with anencephaly. There are 40 stories, and I read all of them in the first 4 columns: Gracie reacted to the lemon-flavored wet wipe put in her mouth to moisten it; Sarah lived 11 days; Ira’s story was written by Ina May Gaskin, hippie midwife — after he was born and discovered to be anencephalic, they took him to the hospital so that he could have whatever care could be given, and they found out after 5 days they weren’t giving him any food or water, so they brought him back to The Farm where he lived another 5 days; Michael David lived 13 days.

You may possibly be interested in the linked birth-death records from the CDC for 2003-2004. I just ran a query, and it shows 7 anencephalic babies living past 28 days. Unfortunately, all post-neonatal deaths (28-365 days) are lumped together, and it doesn’t show if any lived longer than that; also stillbirths and abortions are not counted, but if all babies who survive a pre-term induction are given a birth certificate, then they will be included.

This is touching, written by the mother of an anencephalic baby.