support thread for women who have chosen to terminate III

[Cantdothisagain]

This thread is for any woman who has chosen to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason. It follows on from

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/antenatal_tests_choices/770313-support-thread-for-women-who-have-chosen-to-term inate-II

everyone is welcome, old friends and new.

Hi to everyone from the old thread and hope you find me!

That is such a beautiful and amazing dress, tree, and so nice that you already used it for your other DD, much more of a family heirloom.

I hate clothes shopping too. Keep getting lured by Brora sale but have no cash. At all.

Off to cosy in bed and read books...

Wow Tree, as Numpty says, that is such a beautiful dress. I just posted on your hotel thread. Did you decide on your outfit?

Numpty, I have also been doing a lot of internet window shopping. Distracts the mind somewhat.

I am proud to say I cried today when I went for a manicure, a treat from my mum. They put on that bloody depressing song by The Cars, Who's going to drive you home. It made me but I am more that a) I cried in public, and b) such a cheesy song brought it on.

Guess you have to smile really.

Oh Lucky. Well done on getting out and having things going on though. ANd accepting that this will encroach and pop into your head. At odd times!

My healthy Chinese meal has arrived, the one that will help me loose a stone

Oh Tree THE DRESS! It's so so so beautiful!!! How lovely to have something you can use as an heirloom. Mini Bez was christened in a family gown that's been floating around for over 100 years, she looked beautiful in it.

Lucky - I need to make a dreadful confession. I downloaded a whole load of songs onto my iPod, the power ballads that make you want to wail. Every now and again, I feel that I NEED to cry. Not sure why, anyway, I'll put them on while I'm driving and have a good old howl. I often feel much better afterwards.

I've got my brother and his kids arriving later today, and I'll be taking care of the kids for the week, as they struggle with child care during school hols. So, not sure how much I'll be around. Please don't worry! I'm doing really well at the moment.

Have a good weekend everyone

BK xx

Morning all
Bee here.
Tree- I would love to see Hatts in her precious gown - she will be a picture and you will be the radiant and wonderful mummy you are.
I am having a bit of a low moment.
Not sure how to get to the feeling but it is an upsetting one. Feel need to cry and sob but somehow am too far away from the event to do so much crying; although just writing that i need to has brought tears to my eyes. I find I cry reading the stories of others, particularly if Lins is upset.
Feel bad. Think I may be feeling guilty Tree for the first time. Here come the ploppy tears. Four months later I feel terribly guilty. Like have done such a very bad thing and if it wasn't for testing I would never have been put in the postion, none of us would.
Will be back

Oh Bee, I am so sorry you are feeling like this. I think guilt is such a hard emotion to work out. Sometimes I find it is often accompanied by anger. Four months is not such a long time. Life may carry on but it does not always mean you have continued with it at the same pace.

I am not surprised you feel upset by the other posters, Lins especially. You have been on this road together for a while now. All of your stories are heartbreaking.

Can't think of anything v wise to say at the mo with regards to the testing. One thing comes to mind though. When I had my scan the first thing someone said to me, mil i think, was 'well in my day we didn't have scans'. Not helpful, and actually completely irrelevant. I suppose what I am trying to say is whether you had the tests or not, the diagnosis would still be the same. And you made the decision that was right for you. However, it still doesn't belittle your sadness in any way or make your loss any less.

x

Hey Bee, am off out for a bit. Will check in you later. Go and find the biggest chocolate croissant you can.

Thank you Lucky - i think it is the holiday time. The first time I had a break from work, we had a pretty shitty holiday to Spain.
This is the first time i have just been at home. My week in Suffolk was a true holiday from everything, including myself.
I just have such a heavy feeling. When it was early and raw like you guys I could rant and sob and that was cathartic.
Now this week? It has been mounting; the anxiety and could not work out why really. But increasingly I have a feeling that i have done a bad thing. Not the wrong thing. But a bad thing. It weighs heavily. I feel so sick with anxiety. And this is not new for me - I do suffer intermittently and have done for years.
So, not breezey or funny at all today.
Fraught and tense and anxious and breathing all wrong and trapped in it.
Sorry ladies - I know am not alone in this. I know Lins is struggling too, and Numpty... so recent for you my love.
And Cantdo - thank you for your messages and i will reply very, very soon.

Oh Bee. I am sorry that you feel this way. I suppose these feelings come and go but the important thing is to recognize how you feel, when you feel it and not dismiss it. To work with how you feel, go with it and then hopefully come out the other side. I'm sorry if this reads as total babble, it's just how I think when I am in a bottomless pit and kept going by DH's ongoing mantra of 'go with the flow'.

I appreciate too the shock when these heavy times return. The raw ache is gone, the world seems to be tootling along as normal and then - wham - out of the blue a trigger will bring it all bubbling to the surface. In some ways, the pain seems deeper, more unfathomable.

As for the guilt thing - I've never myself gone there but I live with the acknowledgement that one day I might have these thoughts. And for every kind soul (and there will be countless) who reassures you that it's not a bad thing, you will still feel how you feel.

Sometimes we need to not be breezy or funny. Sometimes, painful though it is, we just need to be.

Big, understanding hugs. xxxx

Thank you both.
I just feel like someone is sitting on my chest - crushing my spirit.
Is it guilt? I have not often used that word in relation to the experiences - but it is something like it. Soemthing about the responsibility, the heaviness, the choice, the sorrow, the distance between the events and now and how I can not get in touch with it so well yet it is still there and today badly so. So am just teary, flat, flattened, worn down.
Where does it come from? Who knows. A break from the all consuming nature of work, reliving my story here, talking at therapy (had not been for few weeks), and just that it is there. And it is upsetting me.
I have to write the words down - it is the only way for me.

Bee. My Bee.

I think you will write a book you know. You have one [or 10?] in you.

I also think - now don't hate me - that the early time after the event is the 'easy bit' That time might be a few hours or few months, depends on how quickly a person processes stuff.
Then comes the really fucking drab bit. Just learning to live with it. Whatever it is. The panic and the fear and the anger and the overwhelming saddness are all consuming and take over and make you do what they need you to. That is what I man by the 'easy' bit. Obviously they are not easy, but you see my point

When that is over you are left with a weight. A thing to carry with you.

oh this is not helping is it? Its a hard truth and how does me writing about it help?

Feck. All I can say is I hear you. And Lins too. This is it, this is grief. Living with a loss. There will be days like this and they are rational and understandable.

Thats why I wrote this, to show how rational it is you feel like you are being sat on.

This too will pass. Huge huge hugs Bee.

Guilt. About the decision made, or the guilt of loosing someone or something? Or both? I feel when someone looses anybody there is guilt. What were the last words I said, why didn't I tell them that, where is that picture, I never took them there, and so on. Guilt is part of loss isn't it? If we had totally completed a relationship with someone, there was nothing else to say or do or feel, then we may well not have grief on their passing.
You lost babies, hope and dreams, in a unique and almost a new way.
Your grief and your guilt will always be bound up together, so when you feel one you will feel the other too.

This is not part of the make up of our brains - this 'antenatal testing and choices'.
Our brains, culture and society have no idea how to process and deal with this experience. Bearing that in mind you are all doing an amazing job of recovering. I, for one, am in total awe of your abilities to see your reality and meet it. Lots simply couldn't be here you know. You are working hard to feel better. You are doing ok. Hang on by fingertips if you have to.
Bee is you want to talk about the decisions you have made you know I am there and you can email me. You can say anything to me, you know that. That goes for all here.

'Puter battery going to die, so am pressing post without proof reading or checking for heartless comments and gaffs, forgive my wandering brain.

I have power pack

What a mega post .

Sorry. x

oh oh I've killed the thread!

Or you are all enjoying the weekend and have lives?? What???????????

Having pulled to bits read my mega post, I didn't write what was in my head in the conclusion of this point

'...........relationship with someone, there was nothing else to say or do or feel, then we may well not have grief on their passing.'

I'd like to add that we will nearly always have something left to say or do or feel. Hence loosing someone or something is nearly always a grieving process.

Apologies for harping on and for this addition. I am mindful of the fragile states we or anyone out there might be in. I wish to tread gently.

I am gratefully comforted by the idea that most will not read or concentrate on my rambles

Dear Tree
Have read it and not at all befuddled by your words - I never am.
But can feel myself building into a crescendo of intense feeling.
I know what Lins means about the housework etc. Somehow the chaos of my house is really unsettling me further.
This sounds trivial - some workmen came yesterday to put a loft hatch in. They have filthied my lovely fairly newly painted walls and paintwork ( the latter lovingly, caringly performed by my dad) and I am absolutely devastated. The black, Victorian filth, A Hundred Years of Soot, has coated everything. Everything spoiled.
And somehow it lights a fuse that is slowly sizzling in my head. Baby, supposed to bring joy and connection and love, diagnosis, termination. Filth, contamination, spoiltness.
Do you see Tree?
Is pathetice - but am now crying and hoovering the filth and being snappy with my beautiful boys and hate my lovely man who has gone to football.
Is it guilt, or loss or shock. Whoever it was who said that the human instinct and brain is not somehow programmed to deal with this process of testing, decisions and results was right.
Am all over the place.
Can feel the meltdown coming on.

I understand.

Melt if you have to. Let it out and be furious about your walls. Take a cloth to them and vent the energy. Beat a pillow. Just fecking scream.

Wish I was near, I'd come and you could scream at me.

Or if you don't want to vent and collapse into it - keep breathing deeply and in time, keep moving and swaying. Maybe stride up and down the road till you feel the tension ease up.

Either way just chanel it Bee. It's energy and it has to move on and be used for something other than this, the brink of panic and maddness. Just move it in another direction away from where you are now.

All will be well, hang in by your fingers.

That is good advice Tree - it needs channelling. I did take the boys swimming and yes maybe I need to march up and down the road.
Else will all end in enormous meltdown with LM and that is not good for either of us.

Well, depends how you look at it.

If you are turning to him and pouring it all out, than its actually very flattering that you can do this. He will see you trust him in your dark places.

I think sky is good - get out and get some weather and sky. I think energy can just fly off, rather than being used up inside and trapped in the house. That leaves that strange empty frazzled atmosphere in the house. I always feel like that after I have been upset. That washed out unsettled feeling. Urgh.

I'm sure the paintwork will clean though Bee. It will be washable. Maybe LM could do this for you, or a lovely child? Just make it ok for you.

Much love Bee. You are doing good, you are riding it out.

Bee, I'm here. Back from helping my parents move house. I've just caught up and am so sad that you're sad. Please don't torture yourself. You are such a kind, loving mother who has been forced to face awful sadness and loss, and horrible choices where 'not making a choice' is a choice and it's all so confusing and messy. I hate, HATE that we had to experience any of this.

Like Tree said so beautifully (not rambly at all), this is a completely unique, new way of losing someone. No-one tells you that this can happen, or if they do, you don't really know until it happens. None of us would ever, EVER have contemplated being in a situation like this. And it weighs so, so heavily.
I could sense in your last few posts that a wave was beginning to break over you. Sit tight and stay here and write as much as you need to. We love reading your words, sad or not, because you articulate so well what the feelings are that come and go (they leave too, remember) and, while I realise that no two situations are alike, with this sort of loss, I think we feel the same sort of things.
I truly believe it's the sheer shock of it all hitting you now that you've stopped for the holidays and maybe going back to therapy bringing it to the fore. It's completely natural in these busy, hectic, 'get-on-with-it' lives of ours to fall down when kicked hard by sadness, trauma and loss. And you're falling a little, but please know that it will be all right. It will be all right. And we're here to listen. I wish we could escape for a night to our cottage and sit round the comfy sofas; we'd listen, you could talk and talk and we could cry in each others laps and hold tight.

Yes, what Tree said. Try to leave the house and get some air. When I was feeling so low for that week a short time ago, I couldn't leave the house for days. It made it worse. When I finally was forced to go outside, the space around me took away some of the drama of it all. I could breathe more easily and that helps.

That is not generally what happens though Tree. I start to move around the house and my overwhelming feelings drag around behind me like a ball and chain. I cry. He looks utterly bewildered often.
I am going to stop now airing my self indulgence here and give someone else space to feel bad.
Like you say, like I do know, there are days like these. For all of us.
It will pass but thank you so much Tree for listening to my rantings.

Dearest dearest Brighton Baby - thank you too for your empathetic words - I do know that you know too. It is so hard isn't it? No-one, nothing can prepare you and even if you knew someone who was trying for a baby, who would even dream of telling them, warning them. This is why we are here. Without you all, without you knowing, I would be on the edge of a very crazy spot indeed.
So, I am going to go through the motions of the day. I remember other dark grey days like these, rainy too, when the feelings overwhelmed. I guess it will not be the last.
If only our virtual cottage were not virtual.

Hi ladies

and specially Bee. There is so much to say but I don't know if it helps. I'm with Tree. Loss is guilt-inducing in itself, because we couldn't save the person we loved. But more than that - I feel as soon as they tell you your baby has problems, you become guilty. There's no right or wrong decision then and either decision could make you feel guilty. We all have to live with that. But we all did the best thing for our families (not for us personally, necessarily) and we all did what we thought was right. We aren't really guilty. To blame is the whole situation - Tree's right, we don't understand these antenatal choices till we're thrown into the middle of them. And even then it's awful.

And Bee - you, me Lins, Shangrila - we've been there twice. At least. It makes it even worse. At least it makes the idea of a happy ending seem even less likely. But look, Lins and Shangrila are getting there - you can too.

In any case we're all here. I wish you could have all been with me on a windy Northumbrian beach today, paddling in the icy North Sea, dancing with DD in the water, feeling the wind on our hair. Then we could have repaired to a lovely warm cottage for hot chocolate and banana cake (then wine!!) and comforted each other. We're all here, Bee, to listen to you, because you have been here for us - you brought me to this thread and I will always owe you for that. Take care.

Thank you GO - you have brought the tears again but this is no bad thing.
I tried going for a walk - dragged my weight with me. In fact not dragged but carried as it sits right on my chest, not below me.
A walk through the streets of inner city London does nothing for the spirit however. And it is pouring and can not make the house feel happy,
You are right - it is a wave. Another one.
It will wash away, the waters will calm. I need something restful on the mind - peace.
It is somehow worse for me than the early days; because they had something much more real, connected to the baby, a precious pain. This is much more brutal to me.
I am very very glad to be in your prayers GO.
I know you have had a tough week too - is there any news to share on your ongoing health situation? Do not talk about it if do not want to. It is the weekend and maybe you need a rest from yourself.
Hugs well received and hugely reciprocated

Hi Bee

Cross posted! Sorry the walk didnt help. I recommend the beach (see my other message). I am sending calm vibes... maybe a warm bath with bubbles? submerge your head and block out the world?
I am thinking of you.