support thread for women who have chosen to terminate II

[brightonbaby]

Erm, trying to create a new thread for us, ladies. Not sure if I've succeeded...

Thanks lins for the photography help - DH has read your post. It will be a bit strange but as you say, it will be the only chance we have to meet her, in person.

I'm feeling rather detached and spaced out just now. Perhaps partly due to being tired (not slept well for 2 weeks) and I've also got a cold. But it all feels v odd as I've stopped feeling pregnant, no breathlessness now. And as I've no bump, I have no sense of DD being here with me at all. However I have had a show, so I hope labour will start OK tomorrow. We're due at the hospital 9am, they settle us in (nice room, a little separate from others on labour ward) and then give me a pessary. If nothing happens, I will get another after 3-4 hours (oral this time). etc etc. Thank goodness not 4 at once, and no antibiotics.

Must go, DH has food ready, bless him. xx

Numpty, sleep well. xxxxx

Come back and tell us you are ok, if and when you are ready.
xxx

Numpty - I hope you are in bed and asleep. Sending vibes for a calm dignified birthing of your tiny girl. Good luck, we are stood right beside to you in cyber space.

Huge welcome to your dh, and a bravo for reading the post. Give him my warmest thoughts and am sending him vibes for a stout heart and comforting arms. Men have a huge, hard role to play. Very different to ours but so massive.

Lucky - sounds like you are in a bit of shock maybe, and not at rest just yet? Do correct me if am reading too much into it all!
Perhaps an adrenaline day today. Well done for getting through yet another day. Another day nearer to a calm and peaceful feeling, whenever it comes. I'm really glad your mum is able to be there, and is a help. I hope my daughters feel like this about me should they ever need support. What a relationship you must have.
Get rest Lucky, you are burning much fuel whilst experiencing these fast swirling emotions. Be good to yourself and keep checking in with us if it helps you.
Don't be surprised if you have an energy and emotional slump one day soon, it often comes after the busy coping and planning type of day you have had. All normal, natural and passing. x

Treedelivery without sounding too dramatic I have a feeling you are a little bit like a guardian angel to me right now. I think everything you have said is exactly right. I have crashed down from my hyped up day in tears on the shoulder of my ddddh. It is all too much.

I know your daughters will feel the same way should they ever need you in this way (although I hope hope hope that they never do). They are truly lucky to have a mama like you.

Nah mate you should encounter me at 7am. I is a mean mamma then!

You're in an adrenalin fight or flight loop Lucky, and it's utterly knackering. Your brain races and races to fill its self up with thoughts - to avoid pain - and then can't go on anymore and you hit the emotional wall. All the hormones leak out of your eyes, and in sweat, and you are left utterly wiped out. That triggers the race again, as the brain can't face being still and being able to think....and on it goes....

It will all slow down, I promise. But this is a pretty brutal part of it and very jarring and jagged.

I'm known for this bonkers advice of mine, but low lights, soft fabrics, gentle mushy food, quite sounds - these will help. It's hippy and true. People who experience post traumatic anything will talk of the bright lights and harsh sound and temperature. And you have undergone trauma, although I don't suggest you or anyone here has a posttraumatic stress disorder. But we can learn from this experience of others. I feel.

Have ranted on for ages, when all you really need is you and dh wrapped in a warm blanket and a box of soft tissue. Hang on tight to him, this too will pass. x

Night all.

Thinking of you Numpty, hope today wasn't more traumatic than you were prepared for.

How is everyone else?

BK xx

PS am over the moon, mini bez has done a wee in the potty!!!

Dear gentle Numpty
Welcome back dear lady and I hope that you were treated with dignity and gentleness as you deserve.
Hello to everyone - hello Bezzy.
And I agree with whoever it was who has been singing the praises of our Tree. She held me up by my fragile nerves when I was squashed and sore and raw and in agony. She is an angel.
It does get easier with time - never goes away but does get more containable. The balance of real life and the inner hell becomes evens out. In the early days the hell is all consuming.
Dear Canto - you are still in need of delicacy too and your loss is recent. We are still here for you.
And for Brighton Baby who does not have the distraction of a wee one to help her through the dark patches - your time will come and it will be a miracle.
with love
Bee xxxxxxx

Hello BB

Missed you last week

Glad you're back
BK xx

Hello Beeeeee! xxx

Hi Bezz
Yes am back from my single parent to three boys week and I really enjoyed myself. The boys and their best friend from next door play so seamlessly together and we did all those British seaside things - crabbing, body boarding, cycling, eating masses of sweeties.
It was strengthening to realise that can manage on own - have never had holiday alone before -it relaxed me somehow.
Confessionally - the loss and lack of a baby, of a bump was less acute and I know why. When I am with my Lovely Man, I feel his lack of being a daddy so hugely. I feel his loss; maybe even more than he does. And without his obvious lack of fathering possibilities, I felt quite complete in a way. I am a mummy. I have three children. I have had them a long time. I work well with them.
Suffolk is a part of the country I know so well- so I did not have that slight trepidation and reserve about a new holiday. We visited villages and beaches that I have been taking them to for years - which took me back to their sweet babyhoods and young childhoods whilst I also appreciated their new found confidence at cycling into the next village alone.
This is not to say that I am not still prone to sorrow and loss and confusion - you know I am. But I felt liberated and able to enjoy their loveliness - that has been contaminated by the loss. Not ruined by it. But touched by it? Yes.
So. Life goes on. I read the new sadnesses of Lucky and Numpty and know that I am no longer in the eye of the storm. I am on a quietly sunny, sometimes cloudy beach with my children and occasionally it pours down. But even during the summer storms I am not so vulnerable to meltdown.
New ladies, it does pass. It will be part of you and may even strengthen you. Reach out here if you feel you are breaking.
Bezz - your tone is cheerful and busy. Am I right?
bee xxxx

Hello Lins
How lovely to have you so back and so present on the thread - seems you were away for a while. I missed you.
So glad everything going so well now - is deserved and good.
hugs
Beee

I'm ok thanks BB, funny what you should say about the 'eye of the storm' though. I was reading our first thread and my very first posts, and, as you say, i no longer feel that despair, the clouds are now moving over and the son is starting to shine through.

BK x

Oh I know - that first thread -sometimes i can not read it- especially my very first one from the pregnancy section.
Such pain.
And now there are women here going through it and it is all not at all bearable for anyone. I hope some comfort can be found here for those in the eye of it all.

errr...should have typed 'sun is shining through'....whoops...

I ate my body weight in food this weekend....not to mention too much alcohol and too many late nights. Was great though. I'm getting good use of our babysitting service. Woman that came on last 2 occasions is a health visitor. Doesn't get better than that!

Love to everyone, better get back to minibez, she's been abandoned on the potty.

BK xx

Thinking of you, Numpty. I hope you get the chance to hold your little girl and tell her you loved her.

I am past the storm too - in some ways I never really felt the storm, though. What has tormented me is a sense of emptiness rather than anger. Though there is anger there too! Today I felt especially empty. Postholiday emptiness, perchance?

Busier, your holiday sounds fab. Have you kept up with the folic acid???

Oh and well done Minibez! wondering when to start MiniCan't...

I have kept up with it yes.
Not sure that will be brave enough to try yet though. But somehow taking it keeps me in a more positive state of mind. I feel as if am at least doing something - it may not be the solution for me in the way that it was for Shangrila, but it is worth holding onto in a state where there is little hope.
I am sorry you have the empty feeling - is a very understandable emotion - you have been emptied.
My storm analogy is not even that I was angry in fact. It sums up more, to me, the misery, the darkness, the bleak sad, sorrow state. The anger came in bursts but not usually in the storm really. Ignore me - I feel I am rambling incoherently. Makes sense to me but not necessarily translatable into general human words.
The storm was over my head - like in a cartoon.

laptop battery about to go but Hi all and thinking of all of us. xxx

Will read and catchup asap, and find blooming power pack for computer

I see what you mean, BB, about the storm. Think I was enstormed, too, in that sense. Still am, a bit.

Good about the folic acid. It could be your solution too. And it is good to have something to hold onto. Hold onto that hope, Busier.

Hi all.
Girls, I have to say that I am really struggling at the moment. Everyone is so pleased that our scans went well but I just can't feel it. I don't feel anything. And I love the fact that people are pleased on our behalf, but I am feeling really depressed.
I don't feel much connection to this baby, and when I do, I'm just stressing about whether it is a boy or a girl. ( a major issue that I'm not sure I can explain here without sounding loopy). I feel 'pregnant' but in my mind that is a separate thing to 'expecting a baby'. Does this make any sense? I feel so overwhelmed with everyday life, I just don't know where to start.
My Dh took Dd to a 40th birthday party on saturday, and because that family had had swine flu in the week I didn't go. And the relief at being left alone between lunchtime and 7pm was...like a holiday. I pottered and rested and did a bit of housework. But really I need a full week of that to even get back to any sense of normality.
Normal stuff that I would do - cut the grass, clean, pay bills, shop etc, just seem insurmountable mountains. We want to move house and the one we like has just come back on the market after a year, but we need to put ours on the market too. Which involves cleaning, tidying, a bit of DIY and general de-cluttering. Don't even know where to start. I am so tired, and feel so sick, and my back is a nightmare. I have no energy to do anything and I feel pathetic and useless.
I told all this to Dh and he is very sympathetic. He said the combination of morning sickness, poorly back and it only being 4 months since we lost Daisy is bound to make anyone feel crap. He is doing his best to hold us all together, and is taking 2 days off this week to work on the house.
I'm so depressed. I can't be bothered to invite any of Dd friends round and am relying on playdates at their houses instead, but goodwill only goes so far I guess.
I know that for us, trying again straight after Daisy was the right thing to do, but it does mean that grief and morning sickness overlap. It makes my head pound and I don't know what to do.
Sorry to come on here and offload, but not sure who else to tell.
Yours, rather pitifully, Lins xx

Oh Lins.

I'm digesting your post and searching my brain for advice. I wanted to reply asap though to say you are heard and I'm so sorry you feel like this.

Dearest dearest Linsy Pinsy
Darling - this makes total total sense.
It really does. I was wondering if your recent quietness was a state of frozen- ness. And boy, have you been through some very, very painful stuff.
It is so very recent that you lost Daisy darling and I am welling up now remembering you and her, and you then and how she touched us all so much.
It is only four months.
I know exactly.
When I was pregnant last time, I held the grief back from the first baby - not purposefully, not at all, just as a way of functioning. Being pregnant was like a drug or an artificial state, and the weariness and sickness and fear were all consuming.
Sweetie -you have just faced your worst nightmare again. Even though this baby is healthy, you were confronted with the odds that maybe, just maybe, it was not. You had to face Kings again for goodness sake, and the possibility of more invasive procedures and all of it.
And maybe now that you know the baby is okay, maybe there is the little, tiny voice of Daisy popping back. Why not her, why did she not make it?
Is terribly, terribly upsetting time.
Not maybe a time to be moving home darling.
Your wee house and garden sound so lovely and I think there will be a time for new homes, and cleaning and nesting.
Right now you need rest poppet you really do.Your lovely husband sees this, and if it were me in this state, what would you advice me to do?
Let the housework go, do the minimum, keep the kitchen and sitting room fresh and neat. Hide the laundry, do some weeping, have a nap in the afternoon when little one naps, if she still does.
You will get there, but the journey could be none other than painful. It is inevitable after what you have been through.
We are here.
I do love you Lins.
Beeee
xxxxxxx

Linspins, I am so sorry you are feeling like this. But I also think it is completely understandable to feel less than overjoyed after what you have experienced. I imagine you still are in the throes of grief, even though you are pregnant with a much wanted baby.

Being pregnant again despite giving the all clear may still serve as a reminder of what has been and what might have been. I imagine Saturday afternoon gave you space to not have to think or do or face anything. It must be so hard to do normal life when you have lost two of your beautiful babies.

The grass may grow longer, the house may get dustier and you may get a couple of reminders for those bills, but it can all wait. Give yourself the space if that's what you need. Get under the duvet and watch cbeebies with your daughter if that gives you space to regroup a little.

Do you think you would feel better if it was a boy? Like it would be completely a different experience to before?

I just wanted you to know I am thinking of you. I am in awe and admiration of what you have got through and how you remain calm and sane and obviously a very caring mother.