Community comes out to support Abiding Care

EMILY GOJMERAC

REPORTER

The Abiding Care Pregnancy Resource Center is a place where women or even husbands and wives can go to get the best service when it comes to their pregnancy journeys.

Carrie Kraucyk, Director of Abiding Care, explained all of the resources that the center provides.

There are a lot of people in the area who don’t know or who have misconceptions about what the center provides. Several services are offered to point women and/or families in the direction of their choosing.

Abiding Care offers sexually transmitted diseases (STD) testing and treatment consultations for women. They offer testing for chlamydia, tropomyosin, and gonorrhea.

Even though they have two nurses on staff who come in one day a week, their job is not to diagnose, they can only detect certain problems, like a miscarriage, or an ectopic pregnancy. The only real treatment the center does is for STDs.

Abiding Care is not a government funded program, they get their funding from donations around the community, and fundraising events. Throughout the year, they have three major events that are their biggest fundraisers: the baby bottle campaign, their father/daughter dance, and the annual banquet.

Once they receive a positive pregnancy test, they then take the woman to get an ultrasound done. During the ultrasound, three major things occur, one that the pregnancy is where it is supposed to be [that the baby is in the uterus and not in the fallopian tubes, causing an ectopic pregnancy]. If the baby is not in the uterus, then they send the woman to the hospital to seek medical attention. They look for a heartbeat, and if there isn’t one, then they are also sent to the hospital to see if they are starting to miscarry. Once they hear a heartbeat, then they measure the femur bone to see how far along the woman is.

Some things can get overlooked during the initial ultrasound, when that happens, there is a medical director who oversees the center and re-reads all of the scans to see if anything was missed.

Most of the time, when a woman sees her baby on the ultrasound, she is then able to make an informed decision of what she would like to do with her child.

The center offers educational information on depression and anxiety, postpartum, and what they need to know as they are making their decisions. In the future they hope to open up more classes to help more women and families. To give the women something to work towards, the center has set up a point system. Whenever the women earn a certain amount of points, they are able to come and select something from the baby boutique that is theirs to keep at no cost to them.

“If the women start the classes early enough in their pregnancy, by the time the baby arrives, they should have everything they need for that child,” Kraucyk said.

Along with the baby boutique, there are baby baskets that are donated from local community members. For a donation of $30 minimum, community members can come in and pick out a basket that they could use for a baby shower or a gift basket.

Follow-up with the clients happens throughout the first year of the baby’s life to make sure they are getting their milestones.

Kraucyk stresses that “We can’t force the women who come to us to make a decision, but we can be by their side and support them in any way no matter what they decide.” Thursday night marked the annual Abiding Care Banquet. Wendy Budimlija welcomed the attendees by saying this was the largest turnout that they have had in a few years.

One of the success stories that was featured was about a young girl who was pregnant and didn’t know where to turn. She reached out to the Abiding Care Resource Center and after careful consideration, decided to give her baby up for adoption. Since then she has decided to choose an open adoption and is satisfied with the choice that she had made.

The highlight of the night was the keynote speaker, Mike Williams. Williams and his family serve in the Dominican Republic directing missions and touching the lives of several individuals with his story. He himself was a welfare child and the youngest of 5 children. His oldest brother was killed on the streets of Chicago, at 17 years old. His next brother died in a jail cell in Louisiana at 17. He has 2 sisters who are both drug addicts and hasn’t heard from either one of them in over 35 years. While his mom was still pregnant with him she made the difficult decision to give him up. She asked her mailman to take the baby because in her mind, he was the only Christian man she had ever met.

She asked the mailman to take her son because she wanted him to get out of the “hell hole” that they lived in so that he could have a true chance at life.

The mailman declined the offer to take the baby, but he said to William’s mom that he has a daughter and a son-in-law who will take him, because they can’t have children. The mailman’s daughter has multiple sclerosis and prayed for a child for 12 years.

Williams was adopted by that mailman’s daughter in Harvey Illinois.

Twelve years into his marriage, Williams and his wife wanted to adopt a child as a way to say ‘thank you’.

Today, his family is complete with three more children of their own.

Williams’ professional career has spanned from an author to several comedy albums. He can be heard daily on the SiriusXM’s Laugh USA.

“I thank God every day for the blessings he has given me,” Williams says.

Abiding Care Director Carrie Kraucyk explains how Abiding Care helps young women through their pregnancy journeys.