to ttc if I think I will abort if the HG sets in again?

[ICBINEG]

So DH and I have conceived immediately on two occasions, one early miscarriage and one birth. I had hideous soul destroying sickness almost all of the way through pregnancy. We are beginning to start thinking about having another child, but I feel almost certain I couldn't go through another pregnancy like the last one. My understanding of HG is that it is unlikely to strike twice (although you are slightly more likely to get it if you had it before) and that each pregnancy may be fine or not.

So is it unreasonable to ttc if I think I might abort due to HG?

If we conceive and then I get horribly sick is it unreasonable to abort and try again?

Given we would only ever have one more child and seem to be able to conceive at will this might be more a case of choosing to bring to term the baby that doesn't make me horrendously sick for 9 months rather than wasting life etc.

I'm not sure I can really buy into that argument though....

(ps. if you are of the never abort under any circumstances camp then please don't bother posting...I know that opinion exists and am not in the slightest bit swayed by it. I am interested in hearing from other with grey zone opinions on abortion as to which side of their personal line this falls).

How many times would you be willing to get pregnant and abort until you got one that didn't make you sick?

I was thinking about my miscarriage last night. If I hadn't had that then I wouldn't have my lovely DD.

I got a child out of the process but it wasn't the first I conceived. Do I really need to be in deep mourning for the first proto-child when in reality if that baby had survived I wouldn't have my DD?

How different will it really feel if the same thing happens again, but on my decision rather than by luck?

I am hearing a lot on this thread that it will feel massively different which I have a lot of respect for - and massive thanks to everyone who has shared their experience to warn me of that.

doodle

At the moment I am leaning towards not ttc at all.

Although it seems massively (perhaps overly) risk averse given I have an 80% chance of being fine with a second pregnancy.

oops posted too soon.

I think if I even got it once more I would swing the statistics to the point that it was more likely than not that I would get it again. I wouldn't ttc if I thought there was anywhere near a 50:50 chance of needing to terminate.

this may have been said already (it's a long thread and i have skim read it) but have you considered the emotional impact of potential multiple terminations on your husband and your marriage?

You say that you didn't feel there was a baby inside you till a fair way through the pregnancy, but is the same true of your husband? is he going to be able to provide the emotional support you need if he doesn't actually support your actions? and moreover, is he going to be happy to keep playing his (vital) part in the pregnancy process knowing that there is a reasonable chance that you might want to terminate if things got too bad? While i agree it is your right to choose whether to continue with a pregnancy, you have to remember that he will have a lot invested in this too. Whiel you feel you will be able to terminate and then try to fall pregnant again straight away, he may not be quite so keen.

I do know exactly how miserable HG can be. I have had 3 awful pregnancies with HG. Even with a highly supportive GP, who worked hard to help me find appropriate treatment it was still lonely and isolating. I have had weeks and weeks (and weeks) in bed with HG and months and months off work. In all that time it never crossed my mind to abort. Ever.

There is a lot of bile on this thread based on the idea that HG is something I 'didn't like', that was transient and it's effects limited to the 8 months of pregnancy.

I didn't dislike it, it shattered my confidence and ruined my life.
I am very much still feeling the effects day in day out as are my DH and (whether she knows it or not,) my DD.

I am glad there are people out there that survived HG without feeling it damaged their mental stability. I am very glad they thought the end product made up for process of getting it. But that isn't how I feel at all.

Could it be too that so many of us (50 - 80%) have experienced morning sickness, or general pregnancy sickness, which can certainly make you feel pretty rough, but so few (is it less than 2% ?) have experienced HG with all it's horrors.

So comments like "having a baby is all about putting their needs before your own - I don't think you're cut out for it" sound to me like they're coming from
that sort of experience.

brian xpost there. I have not spoken to DH yet, as I am unsure of my own feelings regarding this.

This thread has been great in terms of highlighting the gap between thinking you would be prepared to abort and actually being prepared to abort when you get there.

I don't know how I can know what I would feel.

I have been trying to isolate exactly what was so damaging to me about the experience. I think a large part of it was going from being a person that people could rely on to get the job done (and a good job at that) to someone that constantly needed bailing out of trouble and filling in for. Again my work was great but I feel I let down so very many people and some of them still work for me, so the feeling never leaves.

Hi Icbineg - I hope you will try to remember that 80% + chance of a healthy (HG free) pregnancy from the research paper AF linked to.

It probably seems to you that you are likely to get it again, and most people here seem to be posting with that mind set too. But sounds like that is not the case ? And you could talk the probabilities and possibilities through with an expert ? I'm sure they would be more sympathetic and much less shocked by your pragmatism than many posters here (on what is understandably an emotive issue)

op I get what you are saying.

But having an abortion destroyed me. If it was that bad then if I were you I would not ttc.

You would not go through hg again. I wouldn't go through an abortion again.

I think you are under estimating the damage aborting a healthy child will have.

juggling That might be part of it....or it may just be that people have different threshold for what they can tolerate...or different more resilient personalities. I am sure everyone know someone who was destroyed by something that other people shrugged off (with difficulty). It doesn't mean that one person is better than another, just different.

In this case I am just trying to acknowledge and deal with a problem that might be very specific to me (although I have read of many instances of people terminating due to HG and other 'survivable' pregnancy related illnesses).

People on this thread seem okay with the idea of me risking my sanity on a 1:5 chance of getting HG, but not okay with me risking a 1:5 chance of choosing an abortion....

It sounds like you are traumatised by what happened before, if it is still affecting you so much even now it is over (as for example with birth trauma). I don't think getting pregnant again, experiencing the horror of HG again and aborting the baby will be remotely healing for you, in fact, if you are still very distressed by what you experienced, it's likely to reactivate it. I think you need counselling, you sound shell-shocked and still affected by this experience, and until this is dealt with or at least you have got some of your upset and distress out, I don't think ttc is a good idea.

argh xpost again. Yes I can't know what that would be like, or how it would make me feel. I am taking away from this thread what a missive hanging variable that is.

tiggy and jug how can you have produced such massively different rates for recurrence?

From an ethics point of view, I'm 100% pro-choice, so I don't have a problem if you have no abortions, you have 1 abortion or you have 20. I would be very worried about your own emotional wellbeing (and perhaps your lifestyle) if you felt you needed 20 abortions, but I'm not about to start putting caveats on in what situations you can terminate a pregnancy. The Mother's right to bodily autonomy always come first.

However, in this situation, I think that you really need to speak to a professional and work out exactly what your plan of action will be if the HG happens again, what they can do to help you, and where you will draw the line if it's gets too much. Have you considered some counselling to look at exactly how the HG made you feel and how you can perhaps mitigate those fears if it does happen again?

And- if having HG means risking your sanity, don't do it, you don't have to. I know plenty of people who had an experience first time around (e.g. terrible birth trauma, post-natal psychosis) which made them say that taking that chance to have it again wasn't worth it. I think if you really feel your relationship with your dd is still affected by the trauma of HG, then it is that that needs dealing with.

Most people aren't saying take the chance of anything, they are saying that a repeat of HG plus abortion would likely be very traumatic for you, in fact, the more you have said, the more I am convinced that it would indeed be very traumatic for you, and not because of the abortion necessarily (you would have to experience HG to get to that stage which is your worst fear).

mumsy I think you absolutely correct. When I wrote the post about letting people down I started crying and haven't stopped.

There is no way I should be considering ttc while in this sort of state. I can't even believe I considered it.

I hadn't realised how raw it all still is.

I had a horrible pregnancy with bad morning sickness (throwing up all day, couldn't eat couldn't drink) spd and carpal tunnel. It took me 2 years to even think about ttc again and 2 and a half before we did start to ttc again. I'm terrified my pregnancy will be as bad again as it was hell but I wouldn't terminate even if it was the same again or worse. I just wouldn't I've already been trying for 8 months and I don't care how ill I am if I want a child then I will have that child. That is how I feel.
I would say if you think you'd terminate then maybe leave it a bit longer before you ttc again. Maybe get some counselling to help you deal with the effects that hg had on you. I am pro choice but the thought of thinking of aborting a potentially healthy baby before you're even pregnant just feels a bit wrong to me. I feel terribly sorry for you but think you need to get some help before it gets to having to make that choice.

I am very pro-choice, but in the circumstances you describe I would be very sad indeed if abortion was being used as a "cure" for a pg related illness.

If you want another child but cannot take the risk of a horrendous pg, there are other options you could explore (surrogacy, adoption) to complete your family. None are easy, but perhaps not necessarily harder than aborting a healthy baby, with all that that entails physically, mentally and emotionally.

Xposts with several people.

Oh bless you, you know what, you sound to me really traumatised about it all, similar to birth trauma, and I really think this is something that can be helped by counselling/seeing someone who specializes in this area. I'm so sorry you are still suffering over this, but I do think it can be helped and that is what you need to focus on. The rest will take care of itself later on.

Sorry, x-posted. OP, good luck

Icineg - I'm the same with DS2, I had a miscarriage before him, and I wouldn't have him if I hadn't had the miscarriage. I am SAD about the miscarriage as it was a crap experience, but I don't mourn the child that could have been. I know others do, but I don't and never have. But then I never 'saw' the foetus on a scan, as due to a missed miscarriage there was nothing to see in the scan, but for 12 weeks I believed I was pregnant. Did that make a difference? I don't know. I also NEVER refer to 3 pregancies (except for medical forms when pregnant with DS2) or a 3rd child (have heard others call them angel babies). To me I had 2 pregnancies and have 2 children.

So I think you already have a different mind set to some others, and would handle it differently. The question is, would it be differently enough to go through an abortion and to deal with it afterwards?

YABU, you cannot pick and choose what preg symptons would suit you. Don't ttc if you think you would abort.