Talk : Antenatal support thread for women who have chosen to terminate V

[treedelivery]

Welcome to the 5th thread.

An amazing day to begin a new journey together. The thread babies are arriving and we take this as a positive nod from the great karma controller - whoever and whatever that may be.

Good luck to our thread, to the souls who read, those who post, those who drop in to learn and hold hands.

Our cyber bench is a supportive place, we sit outside hospitals as strong but scared women go to ride their wave. We huddle in our cottage when the weather is bleak, stormy or biting cold.

When the sun shines on us we share stories of real life, gain strength and giggle together in times of warm weather.

Hi all

Been sick hence silence. But just wanted to say I hope the drugs are working a bit Coffee and that you are feeling a little more peaceful. If it helps I think the cremation and its aftermath will be a way of coming to a more peaceful state - the lead-up is horrible. I would plan something sort of positive to do after the service - not sure what but just something that will help you get through the day.

Allways, I hope you are okay - you have gone so quiet.

And ditto Babylily.

Still not 100% here but wanted to check in. I echo others though - Tree, are you okay? Thinking of you.

Hi Can't,so sorry to hear you are not well, hope you'll feel better soon, take care of yourself this week-end xx

The drugs have kicked in a bit and although I feel the pain underneath the surface, it has become less intense, and I am grateful for that. After the cremation we're going to Devon until Sunday, we just need to go away from home somewhere quiet.

I lurked on the sister thread and I saw Peanuthead's news. Peanuthead, if you are reading here as well, congratulations on this first milestone. I think I'm speaking for all of us here when I say that we are all happy for you and that it's so good to have some hopeful news, so don't hesitate to continue posting here as well if you feel like it. I hope you are coping well with coming off the anti-depressants. I can understand why the egg donation issue complicates things and I have nothing useful to say whatsoever, I just hope that once it all sinks in a bit more it will become easier.

Lots of love to everyone xx

Dearest Coffee
Just wanted to quickly reply to your message and say that I am impressed that you are managing to look after yourself so well honey.
Taking care of your spirit by alleviating some of the agony with medication is a very sensible self-protective action.
It will not take it away, not do you want it to I suspect, but it will help you keep your head above water I hope.
It takes time.
It just does.
And all of this, all of your hurt and anger and pain, it is all part of acknowledging the love, the hope and the loss. In time, you will make more sense of it all. Now is possibly not the time for that.
So, be gentle on yourself and hold on tight to your man and reach out here. I bet he has broad shoulders and helping you will help him. He will have time to mourn too when it feels right; he probably is doing so in his own way. But I do remember my LM feeling that he just had to help me, else he felt useless.
Love to you
Love to poorly Cantdo
Love to all
Bee xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

How you going Coffee? I hope the diazepam's continued to take the edge off for you. Bee has pretty much said all there is to say, and in a so much more eloquent way than I could hope to, so just wanting you to know that I'm thinking of you, and sending love, especially for tomorrow xx

Hope you're feeling a bit better Cant. No fun being under the weather with a toddler and heavily pregnant xx

Bezz, Allways, Babylily, Gina, and everyone, thinking of you all xxx

Hello Mishtabel
Hello Coffee.
Hello all of you special friends.
Had an enormous sobbing Mother's Day meltdown yesterday.
I imagine I was not the only one; so am sending love and warm thoughts and hoping that the future is brighter and kinder than the past year has been for lots of us.
Hold on tight to those who love you.
I am sorry for the sadness and anguish that some of you are feeling.
big big heartfelt love
Bee xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi everyone

Coffee, how are you? Wednesday draws closer - I am sure you are wrapped up in preparation. I wish you lots of strength tomorrow as you wait. And I can only speak from personal experience, but I found it touching and valorising that there was some kind of official ceremony to commemorate my babies who could never be. I hope it is the same for you.

Bee, Bee. Mother's Day. Flashback to Mother's Day 2009: I was pregnant, about 9 1/2 weeks, and I started to bleed. Spent Mother's Day trying to rest and having had scan arranged for the following morning. Went to scan to find everything appeared fine. Then of course 11 weeks later the anomaly scan showed the baby couldn't live. How ironic that I spent Mother's day begging silently for my baby to not be dead, only to have to go through the termination months later.
Yesterday didn't get me that badly. Maybe it's easier because I am so far pregnant now. Mainly though I think it's because I wasnt well and it all felt about my toddler anyway - it felt removed from all the horror somehow. But I completely understand the meltdown. How are you today, sweetie? and everyone else?

One thing I have thought about though. In ending our babies' lives, we can sometimes feel horrendously guilty. But we acted as loving mothers to save them future pain. It is just utterly crap that to do that we had to deprive ourselves of being mothers in life, and turn ourselves into custodians of memory. But we did all act as loving mothers and we did what we could for our children. The problem being, it wasn't, couldnt be enough.

Allways, still thinking of you.

Mishtabel, you do so well to post amidst the busy schedule you must be leading. Thank you for coming to offer your gentle words.

Coffee - again, come and tell us how it's going.

Hello dear ladies. Oh Bee, I cried as well yesterday. Not a massive meltdown, but a sad, sad sinking feeling, the realisation that instead of being a "mother in waiting", I am a mother getting ready to say good-bye to a much loved baby. My heart goes out to you, if comforting words are failing me maybe I can just hold your hand?

Mishta and Can'tdo, thank you for your kind words. Can't, I hope you're feeling better? I lurked on the sister thread and saw you are due in April, this is so soon... though not soon enough for you, I bet.

I don't know how I feel... empty, for sure. Sad, useless, angry occasionally. Big realisation tonight, that I am so afraid of the funeral because it seems to me I'll lose Silvia. The thought that her body will be no more makes my own body ache. At the same time, she needs to be put to rest...

Tomorrow will be a heartbreaking day, and Wednesday even more so. Then we'll go away until Sunday, just go and hide in a B&B in Devon, away from home. Please spare a thought or a prayer for Silvia on Wednesday, it will mean so much for me to know you are there, virtually. And, as Bee said, we can only hope that the future is kinder.

Thinking of you all tonight, too many to mention by (nick)name. Thinking as well of all our babies, and how much sadder, but how much richer our lives are for having them in our hearts. xxxx

I cross-posted with your Can't, glad to see you seem to feel better. You are so right that we took our babies'pain upon ourselves. It's so ironic, we gave them life, but then had to take it away from them so they don't suffer. Crap indeed.

Oh girls, I'm sorry, I didn't realise yesterday was Mothers Day for you all (we don't have ours til May). Not sure what I would've had to say anyway, feels inappropriate to wish you a 'Happy Mothers Day' without your babies with you.

Coffee, I will indeed be thinking of Silvia on Wednesday (sorry, for some reason I was thinking it was on Tuesday), and also of you and your DH. If you don't mind, I will give Bella a special kiss and cuddle in memory of your little girl xxx

Hello Bee and Cant xxxx

Coffee, I will certainly be thinking of Silvia and you tomorrow. I agree this is her chance to be put to rest. But it's so so hard to get your head around. One thing someone said after my first lost baby which really helped me was that the funeral is another chance for you to show how much you love your child. I have to say it helped me because I really didn't want to go to the funeral. I made myself go because I told myself it was an act of love for the child I couldn't save. I still felt I wasn't good enough, because I cried, because DH carried the coffin and did a reading and I just shivered and cried, but still - I did my best.

It isn't time, yet, for you to look to the future. I promise that time comes, and when it does, we will be there too. This thread, to me, is how I've survived all of what has happened to me. It's given me the space and the understanding to write and think out loud and share. And Coffee - thank you very much for joining us. Part of the legacy of my babies, I think, is being able to reach out to people like you who have suffered similar sorts of loss. It's a privilege to know such brave women. Silvia's memory will live on in the person you become. I know that's not enough.

My baby is due in about a month. I am still strangely scared. I will write more about that at another time. For now, this is Silvia's time, and I am thinking of her, and you, today and tomorrow.

Hi Coffee,

I haven?t introduced myself before ? I mostly hang about on the other thread, I?m too anxious at the moment to be a regular visitor/poster here but I do swing by from time to time to check how everyone is doing (this place was a real life line to me when I sadly I stumbled across these wonderful ladies last August).

I just wanted to say that I?m so sorry for your loss and I will be thinking of you, your family and of course little Silvia tomorrow. Even though i know it will be so sad i hope you find it a special day too. You will never lose Silvia, she will always be part of your soul.

All my love Katie xxx

Dearest Coffee
Dearest Cantdo, Mishta, Katiecubs
Oh sweetie Coffee my heart aches for you and I feel your pain and confusion and fear of saying goodbye. It was not the same for me as mine were both surgical terminations at 13 weeks and so I had no funeral or service. I was so scared that I may have had to give birth and let go of a baby. But now, having known all these women and babies here I almost feel as if I was deprived of the tiny getting to know and goodbye. That my babies are somehow forever trapped in a screen, that they were never even allowed into the earth's real three dimensions even if for a brief moment.
I have slipped back a bit and feel teary and heartbroken again. Maybe this is not helpful to hear but I think it shows how the waves are sometimes calm and gentle and sometimes stormy and brutal.
It is almost exactly a year since
I posted my very first post on that initial innocent thread. My LM was away, I was pregnant and petrified of another diagnosis of abnormality. I clung here, met Tree and Justa and Lins. And also some less supportive, more judgy types. And then on April 1st, another procedure, another agonising loss.
But do you know, the most painful bit? It is when I think back to the very first baby. October 08, the fetal medecine unit on Harley Street. A scan. We were all hopeful, my LM went off to put more money in the meter. The scanographer so very quiet. And over and over again scanning a wriggling baby. And asking me to get up and move about so she could get a better angle. How could I not have sensed her fear?
The most, most painful bit for me was that the cord was wrapped around the baby's leg. I wanted to crawl in and gently unravel it.
I remember my LM coming back up the corridor with a smile on his face, desperate to be a daddy. And my face crumpling.
Sobbing.
One in two chances of Down's Syndrome.
I felt like a lioness protecting my baby.
I did not know what best to do for my lion cub.
I spent four or five days in torture.
And somehow, god knows how, how do we do it?
Somehow I decided to end the baby's life. For my exisiting children, for the baby when it would be an adult and we would not be there. It hurts all over again, freshly so. Anniversaries are so hard.
On Sunday night, I had a strange reliving of the early days of diagnosis and loss. Nowadays I rarely cry spontaneously about it with no trigger. But on Sunday evening, after a moment of tenderness, I sobbed in his arms as if I had just lost the baby. MY whole body squeezed with pain. And almost it felt good to feel it again. Somehow those tears and that physical agony are my only connection to our baby.
So, Cantdo, you are totally right darling lady. This is where we feel that pain again, where we help others to navigate through it too.
Coffeecup, I wish I could hold your hand; it would help me too.
Big cuddle coming your way right now
Bee xxxxxxxxxxxx

Hello everyone

I too had a Mothers Day melt down which was not helped by my Dad basically telling me to "sort it out" as he was in a really foul mood.

Coffee I am thinking of you and beautiful Silvia. I will be tomorrow as well. xxxx

I have been thinking a lot about the time we spent in the hospital the numbness and pain and I can't seem to get past that at the moment. Especially when all of those people around me want me to "be better"....

I don't feel I can express myself today! love to everyone
xxxxxxxxxxxx

Hello Gina
Sometimes you only need a few words to express it and you have. Tough days, even when the sun is shining as it is here today.

Take care of yourself and if you cannot. then let someone else take care of you.
with love
Bee xxx

Hello

Just a quick post to say that I'm thinking of you coffee, hope tomorrow passes peacefully.

Much love

BK xx

PS Hello to all. Sorry I'm not around much, I'm trying my very best to move on. I think of you all constantly though xx

PPS
I too had a mother's day meltdown xx

Quick post from me too. I am sorry to hear all the meltdowns. I agree with Bee - sometimes we don't know how to say things and we don't need to. Especially here, where we all understand. It isnt a case of sorting things out - it's muddling through, I think, with help.

Coffee - I will be thinking of you and Silvia tomorrow.

Thank you to all of you. Very weird evening here. Will write more to everyone soon, but just wanted to say how much I appreciate all your support, and how much it means to us. Such a sad time for our thread, and so many anniversaries... Much love xxxx

Reading the recent posts made me cry again today; hadn't felt it for ages, but when I read the rawness that others are feeling again, it brought it back.

Coffeechoc, I am thinking of you and your DH. Tomorrow WILL be a sad, sad day for you - how could it be otherwise? But I found that the funeral helped me as well; knowing I had sent Iola off in the way that we had, releasing her, freeing her. She knows, I am sure, how much we are sorry about all that came to pass during her short time with us - and I'm sure your Silvia does too. One day, when I am more organised, I am going to plant snowdrops for Iola. There will be other ways for you to remember Silvia - you are not having to let go entirely. And as Bee says, the waves we feel now will ebb and flow - they will subside and sometimes return.

And to Bee and Gina, Bezzy, Katie and Cant and Mishtabel - much love to you all. xxx

Thinking also of Allways and Babylily, both so quiet... xxx

Just logged on one more time before switching off for the evening and saw your post, Numpty Mum. Thank you to you too for your gentle words xxxx

Coffee, my thoughts are with you and your DH, and of course, baby Silvia xxxxx

Very short post, as reception is patchy here. Just to say thank you again, I can't really express how much it meant to me to know your thoughts have been with us. We are ok, very sad of course but the service was beautiful and meaningful. Sending you all lots of love xxxx

Thanks for letting us know you're ok Coffee. I know I've been thinking about you.

I hope you have something special planned for this afternoon, to celebrate Silvia. I'm sure she'd want it that way.

Am thinking about you Coffee.... much love xxxx