Mourning our angel babies but still hoping for the future: let the swi commence!

[TooImmature2BMum]

This is a thread for those of us on the bereaved mother's thread who want a place to moan about the perils of ttc without upsetting anyone over there. We've gone through at least one pregnancy, and we know what it is to hold a baby whose eyes will never open, or to have lost a baby after a few days, weeks or years. We know the fear, but we're going to go ahead and do it anyway. And then do it again, especially in the middle of the month!

Newcomers will be welcomed with all the hand-holding and wisdom we can summon up - and that's a lot! Come in and join us: the door is always open.

Morning all, had a busy day yesterday with mil and sil here and with only 3 hours sleep the night before I was exhausted!

ciwi I'm hoping I've just missed ov, we've been SWI often enough anyway but it would be nice to see a peak. Pets definitely a part of the family. We still have our other cat that we got from a shelter at the same time as the one that went missing, they were both kittens when we got them. We also have a kitten now and a lovely dog :) I've been using the clearblue monitor this cycle but no peak was found, day 26 now and it didn't ask for a test, the m is flashing.

Determined visiting the old forum must be hard :( I stopped after I found out Scarlett had died, found it too hard, I was 37 weeks and people were giving birth around then too. I can't believe your sil How vile and disgusting to smile after learning your much loved babies were lost.

Angel it's been 6 months since losing Scarlett so I was hoping that would be long enough for my cycles to settle. I'm 33 at the end of the year but having PCOS and a history of recurrent miscarriage it does worry me. Your mil sounds awful, not what you needed at that time at all.

Jane that's awful, how could people behave that way when you're grieving? Had issues with in-laws too but not at the funeral, other than bil not attending it...

spilt I usually check mine in the bath! Find it easy and can make sure I'm in the same position. The things we do!

green I wonder if you've already ov? I'm wondering that with me too. Day 26 for me today.

I had a really good night for a change and actually feel like I've slept :) Hope everyone had a good night and a good day. xx

angel at your mil, i think i read your thread somewhere about her. I still read and post on the feb ante/postnatal thread, the girls over there are fab, so supportive and i see them all as friends. I love to here about their babies and their development.

cheese glad you had a goodnight sleep, it makes the world of diffrence.

Today it's 4 months since we heard those words, fly high Zoe bear x

Thanks for you messages, mean alot.

Yeah lets get a posse together, Im up for that. We could just piss them off at first like sending stuff through the mail to their house like tenner lady samples or stanner stair lift stuff, and then we can order pizza on their behalf! lol. probably make us feel good for a bout a second and then we would feel bad beacuse we are nice people!

Anyway feel a bit better today, Im going to do another test in a mo and see what that says. Maybe I have ov already but better to be safe than sorry.

Hello people!

Have had a busy couple of days with friends over - completely ignored diet and drank like a fish. Feeling quite rough today as a result, but period is gone, hurray, so now that DH and I have the house to ourselves again the swi can begin!

Shocked at the in-law stories - mine are okay and mean well. They can be a bit annoying at times but their hearts are in the right place. For example, they took us on holiday in May, which was lovely, but when we got back, FIL asked us if it had worked. We were like, what do you mean, worked? We had a nice time but we are still heartbroken and a holiday isn't going to change that, no matter how nice it was. Still, you can't be very annoyed with someone who has just paid for your week in Greece! Lol at sending Tena lady samples to inlaws!

I agree that pets are part of the family, but I have to admit that when Thea died, part of me wished that the dog had died instead - it felt like, because he had made a miraculous recovery, that he had used up all the good luck available to us...does that make sense? It doesn't mean I don't love him.

Oh yes I understand. Obviously if there had ever been any choice between Georgie and our animals but .... I just feel like we ve been hit in the face again with a massive sledgehammer only 8 months after we lost Georgie and it all seems to have happened
So fast , again, as it did with Georgie, it's also been incredibly hard talking about cremations and caskets etc... Again. I know it's for an animal but the hurt and despair all came flooding straight back, not to the same extent but we had thought / hoped
We would be freed of these decisions for some time.
Glad you had a nice weekend

Yep, if I could have chosen to keep Alexander and Felicia and lose Eric and Ellie then it would have been 'bye bye dogs, nice knowing you but my babies are more important'. Lying in the hospital for days just waiting for infection to set in so I would lose my babies was the worst experience ever. The day I gave birth to them was awful. Nobody can know what we've been through that hasn't been there themselves.

It was 5 weeks yesterday since the twins died. And although I'm intending to try the IVF again in August I still don't actually know how to start to get over their loss. It's not like an early miscarriage where you haven't felt the baby, seen a wriggle or a heartbeat or had a bump. They were my babies, and I loved them. Just because I never actually knew them doesn't make the loss any less.

I wish there was a magic wand I could wave to fix things. It was hard enough getting pregnant in the first place and it's so f*cking unfair that after 8 years trying and two rounds of IVF all I have to show for it is an early miscarriage and losing the twins.

I think the dogs would understand why I'd choose the babies over them.

(I'd choose the babies over the cats too, but I'm a dog person not a cat person so there'd be no emotional wrench to losing the cats)

Oh Dachs . I wish there was a magic wand too. I don't know how you start to get over such a loss either - I wish I did!

Hi ladies,
Completely relate to how you are all feeling I honestly don't feel like I will ever be happy again like I was before I lost my little boy
I have a bit of advice to ask, I got a positive on an opk today but this afternoon I have had a bit of brown spotting. Could this be related to ov or does it mean my hormones are all still messed up and I can't get pg? Am just so sick of stupid cycles lately!

dachs hugs to you, life is a bitch! We will never get over our losses, we just learn to live with the hurt, anger and sadness. I am a different person now, i was so bubbly and loved life before loosing Zoe, now i just try to het through the days as best as i can.

ciwi Im sorry i have no advice for you.

Oh , I seem to opened a debate on
Babies v animals ??!!!! There is no debate , was just explaining my current situation, like all on here loosing Georgie I , as all of us, had no choice or control in the situation I couldn t trade 1 off for the other but am just finding it hard to cope a little, again , ad we' d just got back on our feet after loosing Georgie. It's another loss, again, one we were t expecting or prepared for.
God it way too hot for work tomorrow!!!

Am glad to be on sick leave for another month :) Should get to enjoy some of the hot weather now it's arrived (Although it will probably only stick around until 10th July as that's when I get back from Venice :) )

And I wouldn't say you'd opened a debate, I just think we all feel the same as you and can identify with what you said

ciwi there is such a thing as ovulatory spotting which is a sign you are particularly fertile so go for it & good luck!

I think it was you asking about management of an underactive thyroid? If you've already got a diagnosis prior to pregnancy you're in a good position. Are you on thyroxine at the moment? If you have a look here you can read the NHS guidelines on managing hypothyroidism in pregnancy/ttc. Basically the gist is that your doctor should aim to keep your TSH under 2 and your T4 in the upper half of the reference range. As soon as you get a BFP you need to see your GP and they should increase your thyroxine dose and arrange for more frequent tests. The first and third trimesters are the ones where you are most likely to need more thyroxine to keep your TSH levels down.
Top tip is to always ask for the actual numbers when you've been tested as I have so often been told "yep TSH is normal" but when I got the numbers it wasn't - or it was normal for non pregnant people but too high for pregnancy.

As long as it's well controlled hypothyroidism shouldn't cause you any problems in pregnancy.

Am currently drinking strawberry margarita and being nuzzled by an affectionate dog. Haven't had margaritas for about two years as I was pg last summer and then doing IVF, so I'm finding it rather yummy. Difficult to be miserable while drinking scrummy strawberry drink and being loved by a small furry bundle of dog.

Still slightly worried about hormones and my cycles as AF usually has two days of medium flow, then two days of light brown gunge then stops but I'm now on day 4 of heavy red bleeding so am a little bothered but am hoping it's just because it's a strange cycle. There is still time for it to stop before we go away. I hope

Will probably be posting tomorrow but then will prob be quiet for a week or so while I'm away, so good luck to everyone and I hope there is some good news from some of you before I get back from holiday. :)

thanks spilt Hope its ovulatory spotting, if so I guess I am in the 2ww and can start obsesively symptom spotting patiently waiting for af or bfp. really hope its bfp
It was me asking about the thyroid and I am on thyroxine, I was on 25mcg and my last levels were normal but only just so I am now on 50. Feel like I have had to beg for treatment though as my GP wanted to recheck in 6 months and go from there even though my tsh was 11! Thanks for the link, I will definately be going in armed with that if I get my bfp. were you diagnosed pre pregnancy (this time) ?
Hi everyone else, determined so jel you are going to venice, I would love to go there.

Hope you have a lovely time in Venice Dachs

ciwi no I wasn't diagnosed pre-pg. I'm not sure I'm actually diagnosed now tbh. My problem seems to be just when pg. They did thyroid function tests as part of all the post baby loss testing and found that my TSH was high (6.7) at the end of that pregnancy. They retested about 4 weeks later and it was back down to 2.3 which is fine. I got pg and asked to have it checked when I was about 5/6 weeks. It was 3.6. They then retested at 16 weeks and it was 4.6.
I freaked out to see it climbing up again, and I was starting to feel symptomatic again (utterly knackered, sleeping all the time, cold). I went to see the GP who said "but you're within the normal range of 0.5-5.5" (they use 5.5 here as the upper limit, but nationally it is 4.5). I had lots of printouts and DH with me and basically wouldn't leave until he agreed to let me have a "trial" of thyroxine. As I said to the GP, "look after my thyroid obviously struggled in the last pregnancy and I then lost the baby at 20 weeks (probably due to the toxoplasmosis, but the thyroid can't have been helping), I am really scared to see it behaving in the same way this time just as I approach that same stage of pregnancy. I would never forgive myself if we lost another baby and I hadn't come and asked about this."
So I was started on 25mcg/day at 17/18 weeks. They've retested at 19 weeks and at 28 weeks and both times TSH has been 2.8, so much lower than it was, and stable, but not quite ideal. Will be tested again at 34 weeks.

So like you, a case of begging for treatment!

Given the fact that the GP didn't want to treat, I am really peed off to be told by the consultant "oh you are hypothyroid, that means you can't use the birth centre". Nobody wanted to label me hypothyroid when I was struggling with the symptoms and needed the thyroxine support. Surely being stable on the drug is much better & safer than having an unmonitored unhappy thyroid?? ... but that is another rant entirely so I will shut up

I know what you mean split, I was told my thyroid was borderline because my actual thyroid level was normal but the tsh was high. I think my levels are ok now, the last tsh was 6.4 but my dose has been increased so it should drop more than that. All the evidence says you should treat an underactive thyroid in pregnancy so I don't know why we have to fight so hard to get the treatment we need!
Well I am totally frustrated today, have bled a bit more but surely it can't be af if I had a pos opk yesterday? I just don't know whats going on with my body and don't even know if I have a chance for this month now, so frustrating and upsetting. Makes me miss my little boy all the more xxx

hi girls

just catching up with posts now. wow some of you have the in laws from hell - i too would join the posse to sort them out! luckily my in laws are lovely.

just been trying to figure out my due date and looks like early march next year which i am a bit worried about as i gave birth to Grace on the 17th March and dont know if i could cope if i had this baby on that day.

Shakey, won't you be induced early? The consultant told me I would be induced at 38 weeks in any future pregnancy. If your due date is early March, that would put the actual birth date back to mid-Feb. There's a due date calculator on here - look at the right hand side of the screen.

Dachs, my last period was unusually heavy too. I did some thread-searching and discovered quite a number of people saying that their first couple of periods after birth were heavy. I'm glad I looked it up - it prompted me to wear a pad as well as a tampon and if I hadn't I would have been very embarassed at work the first day (in light grey trousers)!

Things Your Boss Can Do To Make Returning To Work Stress-Free: Forget to notify Payroll that you have returned, so they only pay you SMP instead of normal pay for the last month! And naturally my boss had the day off, so I couldn't even make him sort it out. I had to do it myself and I'm not sure how quickly they are going to manage to pay me the difference. I think we'll have enough to cover all the direct debits etc that go out on the 1st without it, but it is just one more stress I didn't need right now!

On a more positive note, the SWI started last night - as DH said romantically, now we just need to keep me topped up!

Sorry ciwi, missed your post - hope you work out what your body is up to! I haven't any specific advice, but if it helps, I once got pregnant the day before my period was due (I was 21, it was one occasion of unprotected sex and I had a termination. I don't regret it exactly, but given recent events I can't help wondering what life would have been like if I hadn't...). So you can still fertilise an egg at completely random times that don't make logical sense, if you see what I mean. After all, there is always a chance of getting pregnant no matter when in your cycle you have sex - maybe focusing on ovulation dates is an unnecessary stress.

Thanks too it's more the mid cycle bleeding I am worrying about. I have done some internet research and it does all point to ovulation bleeding so I am still hoping its that. I had a similar thing last month and af showed up 14 days after pos opk despite the mid cycle bleeding. This month it's a bit more than spotting though - just wish it would go away. Still hoping for a bfp in 2 weeks time but not sure if it really is a possibility or not. Gonna head to see my GP in a couple of weeks (you have to wait that long to get an appointment with a decent one) and see what she says about it all x

Shakey I m also due the week after Georgie was born my actual date is 4/11 however, I m having a section on 17th October , all being well, Georgie was born on the 10th October and I always said I wouldn t have her sister on the same date,.

Hi all hope everyone's well??? It's been so hot at work, this weather is great if you re not at work!!! Love to all xxx

Evening, day 27 today and feeling quite achy so I'm not sure about this month. Still early though as I have longish cycles so I doubt I'll know anything for at least another 5 days or so.

Hoping next month I'll get a peak on the monitor. Hope everyone's well. It's soooo hot!

yay, im read to swi again but bloody df is working away for a few days, typical!

jane hopefully you'll still catch it, fingers crossed for you