Sensitive: does anyone regret TMFR and wish they had CTT even with poor prognosis?

[working9while5]

I am trying to make a decision about testing.

I am really unsure about TMFR for me. Not because I have ANY moral, religious or ethical objections to TMFR (I don't) but because I just feel like I couldn't take a drug to stop the heart. Like I feel I literally would be plagued by it forevermore what if what if what it etc.

I also guess I would like to have the pregnancy if nothing else... and I am afraid that if people don't understand the pain of the loss of a full term child, I imagine they really don't get the grief involved in TMFR. I feel if it comes to it and I have to face this grief that I would rather know I could have maternity and paid time off work rather than being at work where I have seen bereavement just ignored and invisible.

Does this make sense? I know it is very sensitive and my heart goes out to anyone who has ever had to face this. I don't even know that I will, I just have some risk factors and a hefty anxiety disorder that makes me overthink these issues in pregnancy.

I apologise sincerely if it seems inappropriate to ask x

Sorry, I don't understand your abreviations - what do TMFR and CTT mean?

I get you though I am not sure a out what cctmeans.

I haven't been there.

I know I couldnt do it. Even if I knew my child couldnt live I couldn't take responsibility for stopping it. But I would never judge someone who could, and I do think I would want to know re testing.

CCT is continued to term isn't it?

O get you OP and yes it's a reasonable position that's right for some people and some families.

I have.

'I am really unsure about TMFR for me.'

I don't think TFMR is something that you can ever feel 'sure' about. I think feeling unsure is the default setting for most people.

What you're talking about is a late termination, if you have a severe problem or good accurate tests then an issue could be picked up earlier, and the process would be different.

Unless you don't have the tests at all, I don't think you can know what you would decide or how you could react. Anecdotally my consultant told me that many people who say they wouldn't terminate actually do when faced with the reality.

When it comes to the emotional side, do I regret it? - No. Do I feel comfortable with my decision? No, not yet....I'm still waiting for that.

Sorry if that sounded a bit analytical OP - I wish you the best of luck in your pregnancy, and hope your anxiety doesn't spoil what can be a very special time :)

Ineed to be totally clear here.

I support and respect others decisions. I know my own feelings but I can't be sure they are correct either. I don't want my feelings or thoughts to be used as a benchmark in any way.

And I suspect it's a touch of indecision in me that would let things go on.

Rufous I am so sorry you've been through it. I don't think there's any right or easy decision. It is ultimately tragic no matter what. I suppose I assume that what your consultant said is right... that hypotheticals are easy. So it boils down to whether I get the test and risk it... or don't get the test and face the pregnancy without it.

It comes down to the nature of my anxiety I guess. I am just trying to weigh up, while not really having a real clue having never been there, which route would be the one that would add the most and least suffering to the already devastating diagnosis. It's mainly about what I feel I could accommodate given where I am at right now as me, having had significant antenatal depression and OCD/PND. So it's like.. if I take this test and it leads to a situation where I have to make a decision is that worse than never having had to make a decision? (Crippling indecision is probably THE hallmark of my difficulties, combined with visual imagery of feared outcomes).

I actually am at the point I'd rather not even have a twenty week scan.. I know this is not rational but I am sort of in a weird place. I've come off meds.. and my mind is racing... and just like last time a catastrophic outcome seems an inevitability. I know this is bollocks. Yet it's there... What if what if what if. It's basically a bit nutty because on a deep level I know that you can only know when in that situation, you can't problem solve a hypothetical. I'm hoping it's just the last of the withdrawal.

Thank you for your answer. It makes sense. And that is the nub of it... could I make that decision one way or the other.. so I have the indecision about an early test yet know a late termination is going to be harder. And it would be indecision not moral, ethical, religious etc considerations. I'm really glad you don't regret your decision Rufous, but I am sorry you ever had to make it.

This is my third pregnancy and I'd hoped I might have learned to enjoy it by now but sadly no. I don't do pregnancy well!

Do you think it's possible that your concerns are actually symptomatic of your mental health declining a bit in pregnancy? Are you linked in with the perinatal mental health team at all? You sound really insightful in that you know your thoughts are part of the OCD cycle but it also sounds like you're struggling. Can you go to your GP or midwife to chat?

No it's not possible, it's pretty much what it is. The perinatal mental health team offer... well.. nothing in pregnancy. I've been rereferred and won't be seen for eight weeks. When I am seen, if it's anything like last time, the will expect me to spill my soul and will offer nothing but silent nodding and a report to other professionals in return. There is no intervention on offer. My GP is worse than useless. Had a lovely one but she's left the area and she suggested a replacement but the new one is incredibly dour and has no listening skills and basically reads the reports from last time and just peddles out all that. Midwife just says she feels it is beyond her.

I knew when I got pregnant I was walking back into this. It is pretty much how pregnancy goes for me. Crippling indecision. Catastrophic thinking. Rumination. I don't know really if it even counts as declining mh. It is just how I am in pregnancy. Pregnancy is tough in terms of so-called OCD because there has to be balance. You have to make certain decisions to a timescale... the nuchal test etc. There aren't clear obviously rational and obviously irrational ways of making these decisions (I am not really going to avoid the 20 week scan, for example, nor skip any antenatal appointments). It's just with the best treatment in the world, you can't undo the anxiety. It will be there, and the only thing to do is to live and function with it as best you can. This makes the support often pants. I had terrible indecision about what to do about birth last time.. I wanted an induction and a homebirth at one point but was plagued with doubt about both. Generally my 'support team' just smiled and nodded and didn't engage with my fears at all... but ultimately I did actually have to make the decision so it all seems a bit of a waste of my time and theirs. I get nothing out of talking it through with professionals, they just end up with notes to write, no one really can offer anything other than medication and that's frankly not recommended except where your life is being overtaken and you are not functioning.

In typical OCD you work your way up hierarchies to deal with your fears. In pregnancy the baby is coming, the date for the scan arrives etc... you have a decision to make and action to take and so sometimes you have to think about these things and weigh up your thoughts and fears in a way you might be able to postpone at a different time of life. This is not a bad thing necessarily.

I don't know. I think most women find this stuff hard and have secret dark thoughts about it. It doesn't really count as declining mental health unless it starts to take over your life. In many ways, with OCD exposing yourself to your fears is the most recommended route. Then you just have to feel the fear and not seek to neutralise it say, by seeking endless reassurance online (e.g posting this on twenty different fora or posting it fifty times this week and/or researching scholarly articles/asking a million experts their opinion etc). The key is to tread a line between completely avoiding thinking about your fears and thinking endlessly about them, bearing in mind the normal reality that nearly every pregnant woman worries about these things in the week before a test. I perhaps worry in a different way to some others.. but really professional help doesn't take it away or diminish it. I know that there are lines I am not to cross... so this will be what I post and not any other threads and I am not using Google Scholar. I'm also not suppressing my fears or images I have of catastrophe, just observing and letting them go by. So though it is not maybe great I am so afraid, it is what it is... and knowing that I need to make a decision about whether this test is a good or bad idea for me, whether taking it for reassurance invites additional vulnerability into my situation or whether avoiding it would be ultimately less healthy. There's no straightforward answer to that. So the challenge is to think it through in all its permutations and combinations, make a decision without compulsively researching it for hours on end an then stick to that and move on. If that makes sense.

Just wanted to say that you sound insightful and brave, and I hope you find a good way through.