Struggling with Mental Health after abortion

[AllOptionsExhausted]

Would anyone be willling to share their methods of moving on/dealing with grief after an abortion? I had an abortion 3 years ago and I'm still really struggling with the grief - I think about the baby multiple times per day and cry a few times per week. I have been to 5 different psychologists and none of them have really been able to help me. I had a psychologist appointment today (pregnancy loss specialist) where she basically told me that she doesn't know what else to do for me but she's going to try and talk to other professionals and do some research and see what she can come up with and its just made me think that I'm a hopeless case and I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life. I'm desperate to move on a get out of this depression but I don't know how to. If anyone can suggest anything I could try I'd be willing to give it a go.

[LotteLupin]

The only thing that helped me was having another baby. Then another one. And I would have a hundred if I could. But I know one would always be missing.

It helped me to give my first child status. To acknowledge her life. To frame my thoughts with the simple acknowledgement that I have three children, but didn't get to meet my first child.

If you allow your child the status of their existence (however brief), then somehow that allows them to fit into the same category as anyone who you love who isn't here any more.

There is sooooooooo much pressure as a woman to consider abortion a simple procedure of little significance, and it is completely unfashionable ever to refer to the life lost as a baby or child. I don't think this helps. It didn't help me. It made me more upset, as my instincts were the opposite.

In the end I though fuck what everyone else thinks or what I'm supposed to think if I'm cool/sensible. I know how this felt and I know what it was. The brutality of it shocked me to the core, and it literally terrified me that such an act could have been carried out under the auspices of our medical institution.

So I made my own path to recovery. I have three children. One isn't here. That I didn't get to see and love my child's face, hands, toes ... I put the blame for that squarely with the outrageous flouting (day in, day out) of the explicit boundaries of the Abortion Act. What was done to me was effectively illegal. No, I was never a genuine candidate for abortion according to the precise terms of the Act, and nor are many, many of the women who receive abortions in the UK. It should not have happened. But the deliberate and conscious abuse of the law is institutionalised, unfortunately.

So, although my anger at having been a victim, along with my child, of what I consider a pretty much criminally-flawed system will never be extinguished, I am satisfied that I know what happened and can deal with this as effectively an assault against my person.

Something violent was done to me that was not legal. My child is not here. I have two children who are. I have three children.

That's what has helped me.

And of course, through the pregnancy and lives of both my others, there's always the shadow in my mind of what has not been for my first child, what has been lost. But she has her place in my heart, and nobody, nobody can take her from me.

[something2say]

Aww, bless you both. And your children.

Me I live with my miscarriage and termination, therefore two babies, with sadness and feeling sorry that I let their lives start without being sure I could go forward.

When I think of it, I know they exist and I love them and I'll see them when I pass over.

But like a few other things, they are sadnesses that I must accept and live with and honour happens but not all the time.

I'd say to the op.....do a celebration and then work to move on. And I mean work. Decide to replace thoughts. When you have a thought, consciously remember that you're moving on and then consciously dwell on your replacement thought. I've found this works. X

[AllOptionsExhausted]

We have another child now who is probably one of the easiest babies around so I've got nothing to complain about there and having him did offer some respite from the thoughts about the abortion but after a few months everything came flooding back and I find myself crying more than before. Now I know what I missed out on with the first baby and it kills me that I missed out on so many special moments and that my son will never know his sibling. I also find that there is a lot more attention drawn to my first child, people like to make polite conversation about babies and I'm often asked if he is my first and it's a question that I just don't know how to answer.

Like you said @LotteLupin I do consider myself to have 2 children but I know that if I say that I have 2 it will probably lead to questions about my first child that I don't want to answer, i feel massively ashamed of what I've done and would never be able to admit it to anyone.

I was offered the opportunity to go to a support group for pregnancy loss but I turned it down as there is no way I would be able to share my story and I would feel a fraud amongst people who had experienced still birth and miscarriage and I couldn't even begin to think of what they would think of me for choosing to end my baby's life when all of them were suffering as their baby had been unjustly taken away from them.

Thank you for your support, I'm going to focus on working hard to move on and be a good mother to the child that I have.