TTC after baby loss / stillbirth

to all of you.

I was in the same situation last year (the thread title was probably exactly the same) after my daughter died neonatally, and my previous pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. I did go on to conceive again and now have a little baby. It doesn’t make my baby dying any less painful or unbearable but there is a huge comfort to be had in having another baby and I sincerely hope you all have that same comfort very soon.

@ReeRi bless you that sounds really tough, don't think I would have been strong enough to watch that, I hope you are feeling okay after it. Well, it turns out they were indents because AF arrived today, on the plus side my LP is back to being as long as it was before I had DS, but I am so mad with myself for caving & testing early & even more mad at the silly indents, coupled with the fact our son would have been 4 months old today, I'm feeling super emotional today too. When did you return to work after losing your daughter? It's been a thought of mind, but a scary one really. I'm glad it's helping you focus.

@Blippolbblopp I'm so sorry you lost your little boy, it's a terrible experience to have to go through. I'm glad you found heading in having your other children but it still much feel so raw sometimes still. I'm sure these feelings we are experiencing will never go away, we just learn how to cope with them in our own ways.

Im sorry about your daughter ReeRi

I gave birth to my first baby at 25 weeks and he died 2 hours after he was born. He will be 7 in March and it still hurts. When i had my DS he had 2 boy cousins born in the following July and November, it was awful. One of the anomoly scans was the day after my DS's funeral, it was all so hard. Its been 7 years and im getting upset remembering how tough it all was

I was 21 when i had my baby, ill be 30 in the next 2 years and it still hurts and i still miss him

I had him on Mothers Day in 2013, it was horrible Mothers day has always been bitter sweet since because although the date changes, i gave birth on mothers day

I had 2 miscarriges after DS and fell pregnant with my DD 13 months after DS. I had an early scan with her as id had 3 losses in less than a year amd they told me i had PCOS. So i was even more worried of another miscarrige, but the pregnancy went well and DD will be 5 very soon

13 months after having DD i fell pregnant again. This time to another DS. I was paranoid the whole pregnancy, id convinced myself due to the PCOS that DD was my only, i was shocked that DS came along

I wasnt well throughout DS's pregnancy, i had prenatal depression and was so worried he was going to die. When he was born he was the absolute double of his brother, same nose, eyes, mouth dipped slightly, same shaped head, ( was induced with DS as he had stopped growing ) my brain couldnt take it, i kept accidently calling him by his brothers name to him and to others,

He looked exactly like his brother, my first son weighed 1lb 5oz and was 33cm long. My second son was 4lb 14oz and 29cm long. Looking back now i can see why my brain got confused

Its all so sad and i am so sorry to anyone who has to go through it. Because theres usually not any answers is there?

Having my DD healed me until my DS came along and it brought back bad memories,

Im so sorry about your daughter, the pain never goes away but you slowly learn to live with it, some days it is still overwhelming and others it is copeable

My DD has the same initials as her big brother and my DS has his brothers name as a middle name so that even though he's not here, hes still part of us all l, i know he is anyway, but this way they both have some sort of connection to him x

@booandbumpp hi again, I'm glad you made your way over, and again so sorry about losing Teddy. It's an impossible thing to face, losing a child, yet here we all are battling through. We lost our son at 6 days old, he went for his life saving operation which went to plan but sadly on transferring him back to the NICU things started to go terribly wrong and he had a cardiac arrest they just couldn't bring him back from. He really was the most beautiful little baby I had ever seen, perfect in every way. It breaks my heart so much thinking about all of the 'just ifs' and picturing how life should be at the moment, sometimes there isn't an explanation for everything and just terrible things happen to good people!

@ReeRi what a lovely weight, I bet she was beautiful too, saying hello and goodbye in the same breath must have been so difficult on your heart. Hope you are coping okay in the TWW, will you test again or wait for AF? I think AF is round the corner for me & excepted those silly FRER tests must have been indents😣

@ReeRi I am sorry to hear about your daughter. What was her name?
Teddy had a heart condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. He lived all his life - except 3 days at home - in hospital. He had open heart surgery, and several cardiac catheters. In the end he had a heart attack going under GA for his second open heart surgery.
Yes - we will always be parents to teddy but I guess being parents to a child we get to take home and look after is the parenting we imagined when we got pregnant. It took us 18 months to get pregnant with Teddy. I have also had a MMC at 9 weeks 4 years ago.
It's just starting to feel like I'll never get to take a baby home and watch them grow up.

Hi! @lunamoon1 pointed me in the direction of this thread (thank you!) and I will take some time to read the previous posts but I wanted to say hello as I feel like I'm going mad recently.
My first born son, Teddy, died in March this year at 5 and a half months old. His birthday was October 14th.
My partner and I have recently started to ttc again. It's horrible. I wish it wasn't. I'm anxious every month - I'm terrified of a BFP & a BFN. But we both want a baby, we both want to be parents.
I'm on CD 26 - my cycles are usually 31 days. I'm fighting the urge to POAS. How does everyone cope with the anxiety and stress of the end of a cycle?!

@ReeRi that's true, it's always so windy in Edinburgh, fingers crossed the rain stays off for you. Get yourself to the Royal Mile & The Grassmarket if you can over in Old Town, it's beautiful all the old buildings and architecture! Lovely, make the most of it. I was pretty excited to test this morning because of yesterday's faint (but definite line) but a stark white BNF this morning, that's what I get for testing so early. Fingers crossed we are both still in with a chance tho!

Hope everyone has a nice weekend planned x

@ReeRi what will you be getting up to? There's so many nice bars and restaurants around, will you be doing any 'tourist' things? There's an amazing cheese & wine bar called Pickles, very rustic & cosy, you can't book tho so it can be a wait sometimes depending on where you go Sorry about the BNF, I totally got my hopes up this cycle too. You're not out til AF shows tho, fingers crossed it doesn't!

I stupidly tested around 7/8 DPO, thought I could see a hint of a line & tested again this afternoon & saw something a tiny bit more convincing but now I think it's just wishful thinking.. trying to hold out a few more days before testing again. So silly I know!

@ReeRi that's a lovely idea to head to Edinburgh for Christmas, I used to live in Edinburgh up until last year it's such a lovely city.

@sh84 it's such a horrible feeling isn't it, always feeling like there must be something wrong. Totally understand that about work & im sure they would too, it's too big a thing for you to face at the moment, and if you can't ever again then that's okay too

@riceandwhisky that's a good point I never really thought of it like that, by changing to vaping you had such a positive change on your body for your little girl so please don't feel you did anything wrong. I remember walking into the hospital the morning of my c-section, knowing our little boy wasn't well, and seeing an expectant mother sitting on a hospital chair smoking, it took all my strength not to explode! & I bet she went on to have a perfectly healthy baby, not that I would wish her anything else, but it's just not fair!

@Pandora71 oh what a big task you undertook, well done for being able even partly to do that, an unbelievably draining thing to have to do, small steps. It's so tough this time of year without our babies, especially with your daughters birthday being so close to Christmas, my heart goes out to you and I hope your are finding strength even in the smallest of ways

It is truly horrific that anyone is posting on this thread tbh, each of us has suffered a loss but in different ways & we’re all in the same place, hurting, grieving, ttc after loss when all we want is our babies. None of chose this. A friend said to me a while ago- I don’t know how you are doing this & that was my answer- because I wasn’t given a choice

@ReeRi good idea to go away and do something different for Christmas. I’m desperate not to have our “usual” Christmas here at home. DD was born just before Christmas and we had the perfect Christmas at home together with her. I just can’t face it without her.

@ReeRi @sh84 your bodies did not fail your babies. It isn’t your fault. Awful random things happen and babies die. I can’t imagine how you must feel to think that had you had a c section (no reason to) the day before your baby would be here. It’s just fucking horrible.

I think like this about my DD. Had I woken up and checked her at the right moment I could have maybe saved her. Even thought I had no reason to think there was anything wrong and there is was no detectable reason for her death. We have to try and not torture ourselves with the what-ifs. Life and death are cruel. We are truly unlucky and our stories are tragedies.

Thanks for the tag. The last few weeks have been up and down. We cleared out our daughter’s room, the room where she died, that had become a dumping ground for all the baby stuff. It was horrible and we didn’t finish. The cot where she died is still there and I want it to go to the top, even though there is nothing wrong with it. I couldn’t face looking through the clothes. We are getting the room replastered and painted on Monday.

We’ve also been on holiday, which was mostly really good to be away and enjoy some sunshine. Coming back to this weather, winter, Christmas, DD’s looming 1st birthday and politics has been grim.

We are still ttc but I haven’t been doing opks so as usual no idea where I am in my cycle. CD26 with irregular cycles.

I mean neglecting at childbirth specifically

@ReeRi @sh84
You're both right, I need to take my time with the ashes and do something nice for her. I'm not sure that I would want them at home, we don't have a place of our own yet so the only place we could keep her would be the bedroom and I don't think that's right. I have a long time to decide so I will just take it one step at a time.

@lunamoon1 I know google does no good, I keep thinking about how many careless people have got pregnant without realising, smoking, drinking, drug use and still went on to have healthy children. The only thing I did when I got pregnant with Mia was vaping and for some reason I keep thinking it was maybe something chemical in that that's caused it. Since losing her, I've gone back to vaping as it's been so stressful and now trying again so I'm cutting it down to eventually give it up before ovulation. Fingers crossed I have a strong will. At the NIPT test our sonographer said that there are women out there in the world that are very malnourished because of their living conditions and still have children. That's really stuck with me.

On a separate note I've seen a lot of posts recently with my hospital about neglecting children. 2 of them came from girls I went to school with. It's making me feel like I now definitely don't want to go back there!

@lunamoon1 totally get where your coming from with the feeling infertile, in a weird way I want to have another baby to prove my body isn’t broken, that I can still carry a baby properly. I can’t face my job as I just feel a bit like why do they get their babies & I didn’t get mine, not that I’d wish this on anyone but, don’t really know how to finish that sentence tbh. Part of me thinks I should relax & just go with the flow the other part of me is so desperate that I’ll try anything to help me get pregnant