support thread for women who have chosen to terminate IV

[bezzyk]

Hello ladies old and new.

Here's hoping this thread brings better luck and much happiness.

Lots of love

BK xx

Oh and Viv you pics are downnow? I think I saw them before though, lovely! My wedding dress was about £20 so do I win the meanest prize!? This was 11 years ago and it was a very thin silk one reduced considerably in a designer shop. I didn't need much as we got married in Gibraltar so nice and hot!

The shoes are fab too Viv. My 'expensive' shoes were nothing like yours!

As for the cvs, I don't regret not having it - having lost 2 babies I was terrified of losing another. However I am in a different position from Kittens and Viv because to be honest I have been worried more by the developmental problem potential, than by the chromosome one. And fluid has been a massive concern for me this time around (cos I didnt have any last time) and for some reason I worried that invasive testing might cause loss of fluid... Also it seemed to me that if I am pregnant with a baby with Turners and the Turners is very mild, which it can be (people can live relatively normal lives with Turners) then I'd rather not know and feel a choice was needed that I might regret. I don't know. It's all what makes you feel least anxious. And we're all going to decide differently on that score. I think though I understand what Viv's consultant said and I think you have to decide what feels right for you.

My consultant this time didnt suggest cvs/amnio, just repeated scans. They would show up Edwards/Patau (which haunt me too) although not necessarily,I think, Downs or Turners. However they do show abnormalities -I comfort myself with the theory that they would show up a chromosomal problem that would be life-threatening. But maybe I am wrong, I'm not an expert.

If I do get through this pregnancy with a healthy baby though, I will feel I owe my consultant a huge debt. He has been amazingly generous and I feel well looked after. I have to wait hours every time I go, but this is the NHS.

I feel pregnancy has changed forever for me. I'm so hesitant about it now, and so nervous. I still hate telling people. Don't get me wrong - I am incredibly grateful to be at this stage and I already feel very attached to the baby. I just can't shake the anxiety. And yet I am not an anxious person.

Anyway I'm not complaining. And I don't want to bang on about pregnancy either.

Bee, how are you doing? thinking of you. And Bezzy, and MrsBG, and everyone else. Specially Shangrila, if you see this.

PS I am loving Tree's and Viv's justifications of their expensive wedding dresses

You only do it once, right?

Our first pregnancy was not planned and had everything been okay, I would have been approx 30 weeks on my wedding day, so there's no way I would have been able to wear it. After doing the test, I think my first words were, "My dress. My beautiful dress."

In hindsight, I'd have given anything NOT to have worn it.

I bet you wish you could not have worn it...

Does anyone else find that losing babies is expensive? I kept wanting to spend money to compensate myself.

Yup. Apart from having an expensive taste in shoes, my vice is holidays. When I was in hospital having Gracie, I made DH promise me he'd take me to the Maldives this year - even though we're totally broke after the wedding.

If I do it again I am going to get an even pricier one, as new dh wil be a millionaire. Obviously

Droool at the shoes. All over laptop.

I wanted a pair of Jimmy's but I couldn't really, I'd have been 4 inches taller than dh on the day. T'was wierd though, I saw some in a magazine that I swooned over. Found out they were ^only* available in USA from Kate Spade. Sulked. Hated all others.

Then found them on Ebay at bargain £80 [$300 usually] the only ones ever to turn up, and in my size. I think they were the shoot pair . I always said I would dye them and wear them with jeans but can't bring myself to do it. Bit Like [[http://www.katespade.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3579514&cp=2632454.1876040 these] but with a sling back and bigger bow. Sigh for happy memories of glorious dressing up days.

So what you say about your dress. Giving anything not to be able to wear it Viv. It shows how you have all tasted the other side of the things we think matter. Wedding dresses don't matter. Life does.

Yup, Cantdo, VERY expensive! Being self employed my 3 pregnancies and their unfortunate endings have probably totalled up to 2-3 grand in lost work :-(

My day rate for some jobs can be similar to some people's weekly salary, although sadly I don't work every day so when it all balances out I'm generally pretty skint! So if I have to turn away a potential booking on a day that I have a scan, or termination, or the aftermath it's a lot of money I have to kiss goodbye to. Of course, 3 weeks can sometimes go by without a booking in the quiet patches but you can bet your life that I will always get an enquiry when any of the above are happening!

Those shoes are divine, Tree.

Kitten, hadn't realized you had had a mc as well as the two terminations. Horrible.

Viv, I'm jealous of the Maldives!

Bee, come back and talk to us...

I think Bee is travelling for work so is out of internet reach, rather than off thread iyswim?

Kitten, have you had 2 terminations and a mc, or one termination and mc? Sorry to be blunt, I don't want to blunder in the future you know?

Kittens
Honey no time to read all this properly but just saw your post re 11/12 weeks thing.
Love - get thee for a dating scan asap - I think you have one planned anyway - and then say you want it as early as is humanly possible. I had mine done at 11 weeks too so do not see what the problem is. The earliest they can do a cvs, should you decide to go down that road, is 11 plus 3 days in anycase. For goodness sake, do these people have any idea of what it is like to wait?
I would call them. Burst into tears. Should not be too hard.
Makes me so cross. Unnecessary waiting is so cruel.
Will be back to read when am recovered from my gruelling two day training in Banbury - am totally wiped out. See lots of lovely contributions to the ongoing Bee and pregnancy debate thing and I so very much appreciate your time and effort and thought girls.
Hope all warm and snuggly. I have arrived home in foul mood and have barked at LM who is cowering in the sitting room. Oh dear.
Bloody babies.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Welcome home BB. Busy Bee you are.

Bee, thanks, I just got my dating/reassurance scan date this morning which will be on the 20th. The midwife who emailed me said once they'd done that they will decided when to do my Nuchal/CVS Screening so I will make another appeal. My midwife said that Mr Pandya expressly requested to see me at 12 weeks so maybe he has reason for that. We'll see.

Yes, Tree, I had a m/c with my first pregnancy. Stopped developing at 8wks but started bleeding at 10 and found out at 11wks whilst on holiday in Spain. Then 2 terminations for Downs, the second one being extremely traumatic on top of everything else because they 'outsourced' me to the Marie Stopes clinic which was a miserable and degrading experience where I was roughly handled and talked to fairly aggressively in the theatre just before they put me under. Horrible! Then found out after lots of cramps and bleeding over the next few weeks that they had left me a 'souvenir' so ended up being admitted back to UCH for an ERPC. Fun and games :-/

I somehow managed to stay pretty pragmatic through all of this for most of the time but some of the time I just can't help just thinking "oh for f* sake, give me a break!"

HI Kitty Cat
A break would be good wouldn't it? Like, hello?, enough shite thank you very much. Sorry to hear your mum suffering too - you must be such a comfort to her.
I so remember the whole fraught trauma of waiting - you are right it is like suspended animation; exactly right. I don't know. I just don't. It seems to me that you are not yet forty, that you genuinely deserve a break with this whole pregnancy lark. You have been taking mega FA or regular hon, cannot remember?
In the end, you are pregnant.
That is good, isn't it?
You can conceive and in fact you have a ninety percent chance of having a healthy baby. That's pretty good. It was enough to motivate me; problem of course being that I miscarried. Feel saturated with it all now. Just cannot engage with it anymore fully - cannot imagine it somehow.
Sending you lots of huge hugs and wishing that time would fast forward for you - from me over here about two miles from.... you!!!
Bee xxxxxx

Bless you Bee, up the road .

Well, not yet 40 no, I have 3 more days to say that! Eeek!

Yes, I seem to conceive fairly easily which is good. It feels like small consolation though sometimes. You know, lots of my friends say "Well that's great, you can get pregnant really easily. That's got to be a good thing." But it's only a good thing if it results in a healthy little one at the end of it all. I mean what good does it do getting pregnant repeatedly only to go through so much pain each time? Oh gawd, I'm not in such a good mood today! Maybe you guessed

I have just had a great tonic though. OH's mum just took us to see Annie get your gun with Jane Horrocks which was such good fun and made me grin all the way through. Just what I needed.

Funny, I put OH meaning other half but then realised that OH is also OH's initials.

Oh my. To both of you.

Bee you sound exhausted.

kittens, you sound so strong. A break, yes. A big fat one. Surely.

Yes please! I want to go to France in March and have a joint celebration with my mum (she lives there).

Kittens, you do sound remarkably strong. I also had one of my very best friends say to me over the Christmas break that "It's great that I can get pregnant so easily and I'm far luckier than our other friend who took 12 months to conceive her DS" ... I have to admit that one took my breath away a bit...

Morning everyone else. Hope you're not too badly affected by the snow - it seems to have moved on from Manchester so it's a lovely day here today x

Oh Kittens, you've had a hard, hard year . I do hope things are going OK just now. I read someone else saying that each day they got through, they did something to celebrate/mark it... but on the other hand, sometimes it's nice for the days to blur a little and not know so acutely how long the wait is until the next step. But on the other hand you need to know when the next step IS, so I hope you get that scan date sorted.

I've been worrying about my 15wk scan today (3pm). I keep thinking the baby will be dead, because that's what I saw at my 15wk scan with Iola (with same lovely consultant). I can't find it in me to be hopeful about this pregnancy yet, though I'm not constantly worried either, just in limbo-land. Also I had the swine flu jab after the 12wk scan and now regret it because I see others saying they're waiting until all organs have formed. I guess it was OK to have the jab when I did, otherwise the leaflet/doctor would say not to. But still, any cause for concern rattles me just now... I wish I was back at the days of my pregnancy with DS when it was only the birth that worried me . However on a positive note, DH is now going to be able to come to the scan, so I won't be alone.

Good luck with your scan Numpty. Scans put the fear of god into me these days! I can't even watch someone have one on telly. And, I bloody hate it when people put up their scan photos on facebook too! Just that image sends a shiver down my spine :-/

I'm sure all will be fine with the swine flu jab. Like you say, they wouldn't have done it if they thought it would endanger your baby.

Let us know how you get on this afternoon. Great that your DH can come with you after all.

Hello everyone from snowbound Wales

All has been ok here, my absences down to an (overlong) Christmas/NY stay in Mid Wales with rellies, accompanied by ongoing snow, tantrums galore and worst of all - no Internet access. Got home late last night and this morning we were confronted with yet another blanket of snow, so schools closed and no rest for Yours Truly. I'm beginning to think this Maternity Leave malarkey is pure myth. I haven't worked now since early December but am still to have a day of rest. Bump Boy is set to arrive within the next 3 weeks, I will stamp my very puffy feet very very loudly if I don't manage just a couple of lie-ins by then. We still may be on for a CS, if the placenta stays put and should know more in a few days. One last scan to find out. Eeek emoticon. Hello to Cant, Mishta, Lins and any others in the waiting room. You all seem incredibly calm. I have been letting the side down terribly, haven't I?

So sorry not to have been around. Justa, I read your piece about your delivery with total shock and escalating anger. Although it doesn't change what happened, I hope your boy is settling in and that family life, at least, is getting smoother.

Special hello to kitten and big congratulations on your pregnancy. I think we spoke briefly before when you posted a while back. I have a similar history to you and Bee - probably worse as amongst my lost pgs, I have 2 x tx for T21 and a MMC, later karyotped as T21 as well. As has been mentioned, I am the biggest of believers in megadose folic acid. My DH did some considerable research on this at the time of my first diagnosis and later corresponded with an expert in the field. We concluded that the best course of action for me, under these circumstances would be to take higher strength FA, supplemented with additional B12, building up these levels for up to 6 months. I think you've done the same, haven't you?

I am now 37+ weeks, no guarantees still of course. My CVS showed a normal karyotype and scans to date have all been ok. I cannot put this down to vitamin supplementation because we simply don't know. But I felt so much more confident because I knew I had done all I could. If I were ever going to do this again (and that is something I am absolutely, totally 100% sure is never, ever going to happen), I would do the folic acid thing.

I went straight to CVS, at 11+3. With my history, I was always going to have the earliest and most definitive testing. (This was private, and under the most bizarre of circumstances was arranged very swiftly and easily. Are there any private options available to you, either nuchal or CVS?) Anyway, there's my story, sorry it's so long. If there are any parallels with your experience or anything you want to know, just ask away. I so hope you get good news of your mum, too. A real testing time for you but maybe 2010 will mark a tremendous turning point.

I'm hogging the board, so I'll sign off. My friend has just phoned me to let me know that school is again closed tomorrow . Deep joy in the deep snow! but I will try to mumsnet again to find out how you are all doing.

Hugs and hi's to Tree, Bee, Eulalia, Bezzy, Katie, Viv and the many, many others who have found a home here. Speak soon xxxx

Oh and Numpty too. Unforgiveable to forget!

Best of luck with your scan and come back with your news. Bench is chilly today, but I'll be waiting to hear with an old lady flask of cocoa in hand! x

Shangrila, good to hear you're doing ok and that your karotype has been normal this time. Wow, so brave of you to try again after finding that out! Yes, I remember you kindly sent me a private message last time I was on. I have been taking the 5mg Folic Acid since then but didn't know about the B12 thing. What dose are you taking? It would be good to know more about that, although the chromosomal outcome will have already been decided now I guess.

The snow is quite pretty but I do wish it would stop. At this rate nobody's going to show up to my party !

Big sigh of relief here. Baby alive. This one always worries me every scan because it's a lot less active than DS, let alone Iola... However checklist good: heart beating, 4 chambers; head OK, brain OK with 2 halves. Kidneys NOT showing in particular, which is good as that was a marker with Iola. Got a nice look at hands and face, again all looking fine .

So it looks like we ARE going to have a healthy baby . Will still get a scan at 20wks, at the start of Feb; but I'm going to go ahead with the booking in appointment now, so will perhaps start to believe that a baby will be the outcome.

Thanks for braving the bench in this cold weather! I've just had a latte to warm up. It's barely getting above freezing most days up here - but it's lovely sunny crisp weather (and less deadly on the ice after the snow!).

xx NM