Antenatal support thread for women who have chosen to terminate VI

[Coffeeandchocolate]

Time for a new thread, ladies. May it continue to give us comfort, and help us find a special, sunny place in our hearts, where our babies are safely tucked in. May it bring good luck to everyone who posts or justs reads.

And to the old-timers, it?s so lovely to still have you here with us, reaching out.

Louzie, we had Leila cremated and have her ashes here at home with us. We were told that not all crematoriums are able to give remains. It depends on how carefully the cremation is done, I don't know the details but I think it may be to do with temperatures. We were given a choice of two crematoriums and so we chose the one that we knew would be able to give us Leilas ashes. There are very few ashes of course but it was the right thing for us as we didn't like the idea of burial anyway. Can you check directly with the crematorium? Hope you're doing ok, thinking of you

Hi Grandj and Cherrybug,

Thanks so much for your replies - I did a little research online last night and found out that I need a 'cooler' crematorium - some of the newer ones are too hot to leave any ashes. Couldn't bear this so will take advice from the funeral directors and if it means we have to travel to another town for the funeral we're happy to do that.

Fern is due to travel to our nearest city today for her PM and I'm planning on taking her myself. I thought that once I said goodbye at the hospital I wouldn't see her until before the funeral, but I feel such a huge pull to see her as much as I can before it's too late. The weather here is terible so I don't think it will happen today, but I'm comforted to know I'll see and hold my baby again at some point in the next couple of days.

Hi Louzie

burial vs cremation is a very personal thing. We chose burial because that's what we plan for ourselves. I understand your concerns about having your baby in one place and you in another but for us I'm not sure we could cope with having the remains with us.

Ghislaine
I understand completely what you're saying - one of the lessons I have learned over the last month is about how different we all are, how our choices in situations such as these are highly personal and how what might be so very right for one person is not the right decision for everyone.

I continue to be quite surprised with some of the decisions I am making at the moment.

I went with the funeral director and took Fern on the hour trip to the local city hospital today where she will have her PM. I carried her all the way there in a carry cot and had precious time with her once we were there - she looked absolutely perfect and I was able to really appreciate our time together. I'm hoping to help to bring her back when it's time next week.

Louzie - I'm glad you got some comfort from taking Fern to the hospital yesterday.

Grandj - hope you're feeling a little better today after a tough weekend. I guess we have to accept there will be good days and bad days. I've been feeling a little better over the last few days and I actually noticed yesterday that I felt happy. It struck me because I'd not truly felt that way in such a long time. When I have a hard day I always feel back to square one as the pain seems so fresh. But its little steps back and slightly bigger ones forward and so even though I'm not at the end of the tunnel yet, the light is there.

Peanut - sorry to hear about the hospital making you worry. I hope you get some answers from the tests and find your calmness returns. Good luck.

Hi to everyone else.

Hello everyone...
It has been a sad month since my brother and his wife had their termination, I've been passing through every now and then so I just thought I'd let you know how things have been going.
After deciding to have their own funeral for the baby, they found out from the CVS that their baby was a girl - they have named their daughter Poppy.
Poppy's funeral is this Friday and they have asked me to do a reading which I have agreed to so willingly, though I am afraid I will not be able to make it all the way through. I think it is beautiful though the first time I read it I cried - I hope you don't mind if I share it with you -

God called your name so softly
That only you could hear
And no-one heard the footsteps
Of Angels drawing near.
It broke our hearts to lose you
But you did not go alone
For part of us went with you
The day God called you home.

Thanks again to all of you who supported me and offered words of comfort and advice - x

A very quick fly-by hello. Two ill DD's and am very much sleep deprived!

Louzie I have been meaning to post you a message for a few days now, Im glad you got to see Fern again and that it was a positive experience for you. I hope you are bearing up ok. You sound like a very strong woman. These are the hardest days, Im nearly 3 months down the line from where you are now, it seems like a lifetime ago and although I still feel the pain and the loss, it is getting easier.

grangj and peanut - I hope you are both ok. It's so awful to have a set back and find yourself in that dark place again. Have been thinking of you xx

Mystified thank you for coming back on to post here again, have also been thinking of you, your brother and his wife. And thank you for sharing the poem, it is beautiful. I hope Friday goes as well as it can for you all. Poppy is a beautiful name. I hope you are bearing up ok.

I hope everyone else is ok xx

Sorry! That should have said Grandj, not grangj - speed typing before DD's wake up!

Hi NatzCNL
It was really interesting to see you describe me as a strong woman - that's really the last thing I feel right now. I guess I've been posting about the positive experiences I've been having, but not mentioning the negatives much.

I'm finding my mood really unpredictable at the moment - some times are surprisingly like normality, and then a second later I could just break down. Luckily my dh is home so I'm able to be upset away from my other children.

I plan to see Fern again before her funeral, but I'm petrified about what happens after that - how am I supposed to cope when I don't have the opportunity to ever see her again?

And what about when dh goes back to work? Last night I found myself in the supermarket - I wanted to print out some photos of Fern, but the photo booth was broken. So while I was there I grabbed some shopping, and found myself in tears in the middle of the store. It just hurt so bad to be doing something 'normal'. I'm not ready to try to be normal - I don't know how I'm ever going to be normal again.

It's great for me to read the experiences of mummies who are some time down the line - it reassures me that i will get there someday, even though it feels like I never will.

Louzie, you will surprise yourself with your inner strength, and it shows in your posts. We all know that there are days or moments when all that strength just disappears.
I understand what you are saying about doing 'normal' things and not feeling ready. Eventually normality just makes it way back, but things will always be different. I think about Cara and talk about her without crying now. There are still times when this isn't the case of course. I read her medical reports to remind myself why everything happened, and strangely that helps.
Dont force yourself back into normality, healing is a long process and there are no rules as to how long it takes. It's not a straight forward process and there are many set backs, just be kind to yourself and accept help where it is offered xx

Hope everyone is ok - this thread has been quiet over the weekend.

I've been quite low over the last few days following a period of more positivity. Had our follow up appointment last Thursday at the hospital and it just brought it all back. Since then I've been thinking a lot about Leila and wishing things had of been different. I keep thinking of the unfairness of it all and wishing I still had my baby.

I've also been having the tinest amount of sporadic bleeding and dont know whats going on. Its hardly any so isn't a sign of AF. Its the first bleeding I've had since I stopped bleeding after giving birth so at first I was glad, thinking things were getting back to normal but now I dont know whats going on as it's so little and keeps stopping and starting. It's depressing as I just really want to have a period so we can start TTC properly again and at least then I'll feel we are moving forward a bit.

So all in all pretty fed up, I'm longing to get pregnant again and am full of fear it isn't going to happen. Anyway sorry for such a 'me' post and I hope you're all ok.

Hi Cherrybug,

I'm so sorry you've had a difficult few days. I hate how unpredictable it is - often I have no idea I'm going to feel so sad until it actually happens.

I understand all the feelings you have right now for Leila - I just want my baby Fern back. It's her funeral tomorrow so we spent time with her today for the last time. I'm so scared of saying goodbye to her for the final time tomorrow.

It makes sense to me that it might take a while for AF to come back properly - just like after a full term pregnancy. Hopefully it will happen quickly because I can tell you want to TTC, but don't be worried if it takes a few months to settle in - with all the hormones you have right now (physical and emotional), it is unsurprising. Do you have a good health visitor or gp you can talk it over with?

Take care.

Louzie - just a quick note to say I hope the funeral goes as well as it possibly can today. Take comfort in your family and the love you have for your baby girl Fern. I'll be thinking of you.

I'm still pretty down in the dumps. Still have weird light bleeding thats not coming to much and not particularly looking forward to Christmas. Was thinking the bleeding may be contributing to my mood -ie. hormones. But it will pass - being snowed in doesn't help, too much time to think.

Hi to everyone else - hope all well.

Louzie - I am thinking of you today at the funeral of your lovely daughter. I hope you can get some comfort at the affirmation of how much she means to you and all of your family.

Hi Cherrybug, I'm sorry you're feeling down. I can completely understand as I'm feeling exactly the same. On the surface I seem ok - partly I think because everyone expects me to be "feeling better" and so I put on a sort of act. But the fact is that I just feel so sad and desperate that my babies have gone. Such a terrible, awful year, it's no wonder none of us can feel any joy about Christmas.

I think your bleeding sounds normal, although I know how frustrating it is. After I lost my first baby, I had light bleeding on an off for the first month, I think it was just my body getting back into itself. Have you tried Agnus Castus? You can get it from health shops and it's supposed to help regulate your cycle. I took it last time and my cycle then got back to normal, although who knows whether it made any difference - in a way it just helped to feel like I was doing something positive. Lots of love to you x

Hi Ladies,

Cherrybug and Grandj - thanks so much for your warm wishes today.

Fern's service was so much harder than I ever could have expected. I managed to hold her in her special basket in the car and carry her in by myself, but only because my husband was holding me up. I felt like everything physical was such a struggle - breathing, walking, all the things I would usually take for granted.

In saying that, her service was beautiful, and even though I didn't look up at my friends and family, I knew they were there and could feel and hear their love, support and tears for our precious baby Fern.

And now I'm just empty. I slept for a while this afternoon, but now I just feel physically unwell - like someone has thrown me against a wall. Every part of my body aches, my head hurts so I can't think or speak - thank goodness I can vent how I'm feeling here. I've had weeks and weeks of the emotional turmoil, but had no idea how physically unwell I would feel today.

Sending love out to all the lovely mummies.

So much sadness and loss here. Grand, you are so right about Christmas - it feels so wrong to celebrate when your baby has died. Yet somehow, two years ago, I had lost my first lost baby in the October, and I actually found Christmas helped me get through, because there was something to focus on doing for my DD1, then one year old.

Louzie, your love for Fern shines through. May she rest in peace. I think the body's shutting down is a good thing - you need to let some of the anger and pain out somehow.

Cherry, hello here as on the other thread.

One thing that helped me immeasurably when I found this thread, after my second lost baby, was imagining that our lost babies could be together, looking after each other, not all alone. It sounds a bit batty, I know, but I hated the idea of my babies being alone. I'm not religious, or batty, by the way, I just needed to find a way of thinking about my little girls that wasn't imagining their bodies all alone without me. Now I can imagine my little ones protecting these later lost babies, somewhere.

OK that sounded a bit mad but I just wanted to offer it up.

Oh Louzie, poor you. Its so hard, and so unfair. I'm glad your family were all there with you and I'm so so sorry again that you have to go through this.

And cantdothisagain, you don't sound mad at all. One of the main reasons I had a hospital cremation for James, my second lost baby, was so he could be in the same place as Grace and they could be together. If that's not batty then I don't know what is.

One of the most heartbreaking things that my daughter said to me when I was trying to explain to her why some babies had to go away was "but how can they go without their mummies?" I guess the best thing, if they can't be with us, is that they can be together, playing somewhere. Your message made me cry x

Grandji - thanks for the Agnus Castus tip. I think my bleeding may actually be AF as its become a bit heavier and hasn't stopped again. I'm really hoping so anyway.

I feel the same as you in terms of having to put on a 'getting on with it' demeanour. I think people are often good at being supportive in the midst of crisis but when that's over and they are around you when you just feel flat and joyless its harder for people to know how to help. So we compensate by putting on a brave face. It's probably a good thing otherwise we'd drown in sadness but thank goodness for this thread where at least we can all completely understand what the aftermath is truly like.

Louzie - I hope you're managing ok today. I think Cant is right, the way you felt physically is probably all the emotional pain coming out. I hope you got a good nights sleep last night. I'm glad the service was beautiful. I know exactly what you mean about the importance of feeling the love and sorrow of your family around you. That was very important to me too, to know that Leila was properly acknowledged as part of our family.

Cant - your idea about babies being together is nice and I'm glad that brought you comfort. I suppose I feel Leila is carried within me and all around me. She hasn't gone really, she's just not with me in the usual physical way. She's in the smiles of her sister and the hugs of her father. I know that sounds utterly soppy! But to me she is that kind of pure love that trancends the physical lives we have. I remember when I lost my father (whom I was very close to) having the same kind of wonderings as to where he had gone and what it all meant. And I concluded that he's still with me in a way I just cant see. I still think of him and what he'd say to guide me in many situations and I still feel his love.

Anyway sorry, I guess I'm sounding a bit far out now! Loss certainly makes you realise that there are many things we dont really understand.

Lots of love to everyone else

Hello everyone.

I'm very glad last week has been and gone. I think my body must be very sensitive to my unconscious emotions; on both my due date and on Saturday when we visited the cemetery I felt awful, like my body was made of lead or being pressed under a wall, even though I didn't cry or feel the overwhelming emptiness I have in the past. I was very irritable and snappy. It was all very surreal. Then each time on the following day I felt full of energy like I haven't for months. I'm hoping it continues because I'm fed up with feeling so sluggish.

I thought of you Louzie, on Tuesday, that was my due date. I'm glad that your family and friends were able to be there for you, in some way their presence keeps you afloat.

A little follow-on from the conversation about burial vs cremation. I started looking at baby headstones online. My God, why are they so grotesquely twee? And expensive! Imagine it, a Winnie the Pooh laser-etched into a granite slab. For this you will pay around £300... Funnily enough I didn't actually see any of these marvels in the babies' section of the cemetery so I'm wondering if there's a secret monumental mason specialising in tasteful headstones that everyone else knows about but me.

Ghislaine, I'm glad you got through last week and hope you are still feeling the surge of energy since. The due date must be such a difficult milestone. Mine is not until March and I know already it will be very hard. I hope something has permanently shifted in terms of the emptiness you've felt and the future is positive.

Every day at some point I shed some tears. Often brief and usually followed by feeling relatively normal. I feel like I'm the only person who knows the truth, to everyone else the loss of Leila is now in the past and I am okay again. I dont mind others not knowing about my daily moments of grief as I suspect it could only ever be that way but it is a bit odd in some ways. I'm okay on the outside but sad on the inside. But to all those around me life carries on as normal.

Anyhow, Louzie, grandji, manitz and everyone else - hope you're all doing ok and Christmas looming ahead is not too difficult.

Cant, grandj, cherrybug- thanks for your kind words.

Ghislaine - thanks for thinking of me. How did you find your due date- was it a very difficult day for you? I hope it wasn't too hard. I was so focused on Fern's birth and her funeral that I hadn't thought about my due date until this week and I have to admit it's a time I'm dreading.

Cherrybug - my due date will be in March too. I understand what you mean about everyone else's life carrying on as normal. I'm also crying at some point most days, but otherwise having to project some sort of normality.

The thing I'm finding hardest now is not being pregnant. All the mummies who were pregnant at the same time as me are still carrying their growing healthy babies, while my pregnancy has come to an end and I don't have my precious baby any more. I didn't feel this before - even though we knew Fern was very poorly, I was still pregnant. And after she was born in the 12 days before her funeral I spent a lot of time with her and a lot of time planning the service. But now I'm completely empty. It's very hard.

Cherrybug and Louzie, the due date is not, I think, the hardest day you will have to go through. You have already been there. Of course it is still hard, but I didn't find it hit me as viscerally as some of the other things - the scan, the diagnosis, the actual termination - these were all worse. I did feel quite agitated, like I knew something was wrong. Which of course it is. We didn't make it to the cemetery on the actual due date and I did feel quite bad about that, like we had let our baby down in some way by not visiting him (we did both take the day off work though). I think others have said that it's the lead-up to the due date which is worse than the day itself and I certainly found that to be true.

I do recognise the emptiness you mention, especially as our TTC efforts have been unsuccessful so far. I feel a lot of anger at the moment, mostly directed at women who get pregnant easily and have easy pregnancies and never have the worries we will have. Even worse are the women who were pregnant at the same time, and who have shunned me, not even a "sorry" for what happened. It's a good thing I don't see them anymore or I might not be able to restrain myself.

And the appearance of normality - this is hard too. I feel like I have an invisible mark on me now that is permanent and I keep wanting to tell people that actually it's not ok and can I have some more sympathy please?

Thinking of you all and your babies. Flower and Grandj, hope you're ok, post if you need to. I know I got a lot of comfort from just reading these threads in the early months, knowing that my feelings were very normal.

Hi
Sorry this is a rant, seem to be stuck on angry and bitter at the moment, and want to scream at people there is no merry about anything, my baby died and im not pregnant.Just heard my 4th pregnancy announcement of the week and blow by blow account of someones birth yesterday, they thought I would be ok with it now???
Well im not, christmas seems to be bringing out the worst in me.
Hope all you lovely ladies are doing ok xx

Hello ladies,
Have been catching up on your posts. Ghislaine, Im sorry things are tough at the moment. I hope you are ok and getting lots of support from your DH. I think it's awful that some so called friends have just turned their backs on you. My only thought is that they dont know what to say so just avoid contact. Sadly people jsut react like this - friends and family!

Flower, please let off steam here, we have all been through the same emotions and still experiencing them at times. There is no reason for anyone to expect you to be feeling ok, although so many people just assume this is the case. It is so hard to hear happy news when you have been through such a sad loss. I hope you have support and friends who are more sensative to your experience.

Same to Louzie, I hope you are ok. It such a difficult time of year with all the fun and merriment.

It was my 30th 3 weeks after we lost Cara, and my ever insensative brother in law kept pestering me about what I was going to do to celebrate, as did a few of my friends. I was shocked that people would think I would want to celebrate after our loss. I really couldn't figure out if people just thought our baby was not important or if they had actually forgotten?!

Unfortunately peole just dont seem to understand that a loss is a loss, be it a miscarriage, still birth or termination. I think that because people knew we had terminated that this meant we were ok with it. Im not ok with it, Ive never been ok with it and never will be. It has been 3 months but some days I still find it impossible to function normally. I just miss my little girl, I still count down the weeks to the due date.

Christmas is a very difficult time, there will always be a thought in our minds as to where we should have been with regards to our babies, and I think we are all entitled to feel sorry for ourselves and have sad days. So to all of you, and to me, have a box of chocolates, glass of wine or whichever comfort food/drink works, get a pack of tissues and let it all out. I dont particularly feel better after a good cry, but grieving is normal, no matter how many people think I should be past this stage by now.

I am attending a carol service on the 23rd at the hospital chapel, with an additional service for lost babies. xx

Flower - I know how you feel, I feel I have regressed recently as I'm just finding everything really difficult. I started to think I may actually go and speak to the counsellor at the hospital now as I dont think I'm managing as well as I could be. I have no family where I live and my two best friends in the world live miles away. I feel very much alone in my grief.

I'm also feeling distant from DP too and have this sense/fear/paranoia that everything is slowly unravelling. I'm having lots of bad dreams at night which I never have if I'm happy and secure.

We like you are TTC and yet yesterday I couldnt help feel like another baby wasnt the answer as it wouldnt be Leila. We do want another baby and we will keep trying but I know that even if I do get pregnant it wont take away the grief.

I wish I could keep the dark thoughts away but lately they have been plaguing me. Perhaps the time of year is making it worse.

Anyway I hope you feel a little better today.
Love to everyone else. x