please help. 5 wks pregnant-not planned. dp and i v v v confused...

[shatteredmumsrus]

to cut a long story shoer we have 2 boys aged 7 and 11. i have PCOS and have been on microgygon since second son was born. periods have been erratic lately and i started feeling symptons like with my 1st 2 pregnancies and so did a test which confirmed my fears. went to doctor that said it happens whilst on the pill! dp says it s unplanned we dont have to go thru with it which i agree with. there are many factors that suggest it is a bad idea for us. kids are settled and have their own room. when it is born our eldest will be starting secondary school, just moved house, moneys tight etc etc. but its soooo hard. it is our baby living inside me (only just granted -i know it is very early stages)Got an apt at BPAS today to go through abortion etc. both dp and i want to make the right decision for everybody. any advice. im 33 and he is 37. this is also a factor. he said by the time our youngest is 20 we are still young enough to enjoy it and do what we want to do. He said he would not have the same energy for this one...advice please

The only thing that worries me is that from what you have said, your DH is not being the most understanding or sensitive. He should, be remaining calm and telling you he will be there whatever...in equal measures. Not stamping his foot about how you and he could have had a fun life a bit faster if you weren't pregnant.

I think you should really consider the impact this will have on your sons. They're not too far apart in age, yet this baby will be at least 7 years younger than the youngest, 11 years younger than the eldest, you said one will be starting secondary school which will be a bit of an upheaval for him even without a new sibling. They're happy with their own little bedrooms. You're happy with your little family. Think about what a baby would mean for you and your partner - which seems to be 50/50 good/bad?, but also for your children. I really don't think another baby would be good for your children, but you do know them better than I do!

And don't just think about where you'll see yourself in 1, 5 years, but 15 years. In 15 years, do you want to be a couple with adult children and relatively more freedom, or a couple with a teenager at home? Only you can answer. It's not easy, I know. Whatever you decide, it's not the wrong decision. You might look back and regret it, but you would probably have some regrets whichever way this goes. You can only imagine and guess at the future, you can't know exactly where life will lead you.

I think he did say that he would support your choice to keep the baby earlier in the week for you if you wanted to. He must be feeling scared of changes just as you are. Maybe this is his way of working through them, and if he said that he thought you wouldn't have an abortion then maybe he's thinking he is safe to be frustrated. He should be more supportive but then he must know that otherwise he wouldn't try to come downstairs to get you to come up to bed.
Try to sleep, cuddle up to him and try to hold together if you feel you can. You both need to be good partners to each other so you can be strong parents. Please try to take the pressure off for at least a short time by spending some time cuddling.

I can't see an age difference as a reason for termination.

If it helps in my DH family there is 10 years between his oldest brother, 7 years between him and middle brother and they all get on so well. It helped them have and become good role models. They lived in a 3 bed and older brothers shared and got on well, supported each other and were a massive help to his mum when it came to my DH being born. My MIL said DH was a "surprise baby" but that completed the family in a way they could never have planned.

Me too architen I was the surprise. There's 7 years between me and my my older sister, 9 between me and my older brother and 11 between me and the oldes sister.

I shared a bedroom with my 2 sisters until they left home. I have the best memories of that.

I am not tyng to guilt you...just offer stories OP. Whatever yu decide is your choice in the end...it IS your choice in the end because that's what the law says...its your body. You will naturally consider DH....but at the moment you sound like you may need councelling.

I'm another one that the age difference thing hit a nerve with. My sister is the baby of the family and she's seven years younger than me, 8 and a half years younger than my older sister. I do think my parents found it hard to go back to the baby years but for me my sister was an absolute god-send. I adored having a little baby in the house and now that we're adults we're very close. I feel so lucky to have seen her grow up from a tiny baby. We had to shuffle bedrooms etc but it made very little difference to us, we just went with the flow.

sorry to be so blunt but if you are going to have an abortion you need to try and get it done at 6 weeks or less so that it is medical rather than surgical and involves taking lots of tablets instead of being really invasive.
it is a horrible thing to go through, I am sorry you are having to make a decision like this and i wish you all the best xx

i went to the bpas at under 5 weeks and they wouldnt do anything til they can see it on the scan which they did the next week. i dont want to take the pills and go home and miscarry. it sounds very traumatic and i couldnt cope with it. Nurse said there is alot of blood even at this stage and clots etc. couldnt do it so i have to wait until 7 wks which is Monday and when i am planned to go in for a surgical 10 minute procedure.

going back to that age gap thing. there are 14 years between me and my eldest sister! went to work today and felt miserable all day. its like im keeping a dirty little secret. dp has struggled to he sent me a txt saying he was stting in the van and didnt want to get out as his head was all over the place

OP I'm so sorry you are going through this. I don't know if my story will help at all but here goes.

A few years ago I had a termination for mostly practical reasons even more practical than yours, if I may say so. We were only a few months into the relationship, not living together, both skint, would have been big immigration problems. I was torn about what to do but my boyfriend was really looking at all the practical issues and saying he thought termination was the right thing to do. So I let the practical issues win out, even though emotionally I was maybe 50/50 about it. I remember I finally agreed to do it because, like you, I just couldn't deal with the anguish of having to decide anymore so I just made a decision, just to have it over with.

I had to have a surgical procedure. I know for some people it's not so bad, but for me it was incredibly painful, I actually screamed. I'm sorry, I don't want to scare you, but I wish someone had warned me instead of saying 'Oh if you can handle a smear it's not much worse.' It actually felt like torture.

Afterward I felt okay for a bit. But then it really hit me what happened and I fell apart. I kept telling myself all the practical reasons again but it didn't matter, emotionally I was just broken hearted. I blamed my boyfriend, which I know wasn't fair, but I did, and it almost wrecked everything.

I was depressed about it for a long time. Tbh I don't think I really got over it until I fell pregnant with DS.

I am very pro choice and I don't think early termination is morally wrong. But reading your posts, I see a lot of emphasis on what your DH wants, and various practical issues, and not enough attention to what you want emotionally.

If you have any doubt at all, then I think it is very risky to go ahead with a termination. Maybe you will be fine with it, maybe it will haunt you. I know one of my practical reasons was also that we had a long trip planned, but when we actually went away all I could think sometimes was 'I can't believe I killed my baby for this.' I know I was being hard on myself, that's not why I did it, but like I said, I was really messed up for a while.

Sorry this is so long and maybe not helpful. On a positive side, I should say that now, years later, it's really fine, I can see that I probably did the right thing, although I still regret it. But as someone said earlier, it's not like having the termination puts everything back to normal, and I would really recommend counseling if you do decide to go through with it.

Oh god, that's really long Sorry!

sorry dream i might be a bit info out of touch here but why would you have been awake for your termination.as far as i know its a d and c right?
i had one after a miscarriage was given a general and was knocked right out. bleed for awhile after. what procedure are you talking about?

you have the option apparently.i would choose a general anaesthetic

How are you feeling today Shattered? Hope you're ok.

hi mumbling, i struggled to go into work today. sat in the carpark til later than i should.just couldnt face it.i did go in tho and was thoroughly miserable all day. dp really doesnt want this baby and i can understand why. doesnt stop me thinking what ifs etc. so bloody hard. the clock is ticking too as my appt is monday. it turns my stomach to think about it. i do agree with all the reasons why going ahead with the baby is a bad idea. i wil be 7 weeks monday-is it a baby or cells?

i suppose at this point its what ever you want it to be shattered. you can go look at pics of scans at 7 weeks on the web and they will show you a blob with a head with little buds for arms and legs, looks a bit like an alien i suppose. baby potential, its up to you what you do with it.

I can relate to what you are going through trying to decide. You go round in circles because you really don't want another child yet you don't want to have to live with actively terminating a potential life. It makes it worse because everyone says "it's your choice" and yet that's what you are up against.

When I went for the termination and then backed out at the last second everyone said (including my doctor who had referred me) "I knew you were going to keep it!". This really surprised me as I myself had totally lost sight of myself because of the debate going round in my head for weeks. I bloody wish someone had had the guts to say it while I was deciding though.

The best advice I got when I was in the same position last time was from my friends husband. He said" if you can't choose, do nothing and the choice is made for you". Which is of course true.

I'm of the opinion that if the baby has a heartbeat then it is alive. If it were me and my DH has pressured me into having an abortion I'm certain my relationship would fall apart because I would never be able to look him again knowing that was what happened. I think if it were me the abortion of our baby would become an awful burden worse than having the joy (and sometimes hardwork) of having the child, even if I carried it and gave it up for adoption. If you have any doubt then from what I'm reading of other's experience as well as my own I would say do not do something so traumatic as an abortion, no joy would come of it.

Shattered, I,m sorry you are still in turmoil....as with my earlier post whilst there were emotional implications my decision to terminate was mostly practical.

Our ds was 7.5, we had a settled fun social life, we found the baby stuff really hard a s a couple dh was not really very much help when ds was a baby. We were just both very unsure of the implications on our family unit, the restrictions on holidays, weekends away, activities with ds and what it would draw away from him.

Dh was honest from the outset that he would support me if I wanted to keep it but the bottom line was he didn't want to be an older dad ( I do have an older dad and not even by today's standards and there are implications of this) he didn't think he could cope with the whole sleepless nights, illness upheaval, he was honest with me, regardless of what he SHOULD do in the event of a baby - this was what he actually felt.

I think if he had been over the moon and very positive I would have gone ahead, but he wasn't,t and my feelings also made us come to the decision to terminate.

If it's any help I did it through Marie stopes I was scanned on the day as I went privately to them ( not via gp and nhs- as the gp was awful and completely biased) I was 5.5 and had a surgical termination, I was heavily sedated it was allover in 10 minutes and I was in the car within 45 mins. Felt no real pain, a bit shell shocked from the sedation, but utterly relieved.

I have not regretted the decision. I had 2 sessions of counselling and concluded I was doing the best form me and my family with the information I had at the time.

Of douse a new baby might have been easier, might have slept through, ds might have loved it, life could have been amazing....but using all the information I had and all the background I made the right decision because all those things might not have happened.

Of do of course I still wonder what might have been, but it isn't and Life goes on as it was before. It's nearly a year since it happened. We haven't shared it with anyone outside ourselves as it was our decision and that hasn't changed.

Be kind to yourself, life shouldn't be a battle, no one gives you a badge at then end saying " you worked/struggled the most" don,t think about the what ifs go with what you know and if necessary gget another session of counselling, I am sure boas will be able to sort that out for you over the phone..

I have typed way too much now but you have been in my thoughts since you first posted and have kept up with your thoughts. Xx

o bless you thankyou. couldnt face work today. as soon as i open my eyes i know what kinds day it will be and todays a bad day. crying and sooo fed up x

Are you crying because you don't want a termination? It would seem so. If a termination was what you wanted then you would not be in such turmoil.

ONE shadow of a doubt is too much doubt in my opinon and you need to think about that.

And I don't know your DH but I am pissed off with him. You already have 2 DDC together...how can he put such pressure on you!??

It's not as if you're 16 and too young....or as if you had a one night stand!

You're married with children already and he doesn' want another for his own ends...it may not be convenient but it's there and it's a baby. You're neither very old...ccertainly not old enough to worry about it.

I AM pro choice but in this situation there seems to be no reason tat is valid, to have an abortion. You are healthy and you are together.

Apologies for not having read the whole thread but couldn't not post. I was in your situation 2 years ago (am much older than you but slightly smaller gap) and didn't go ahead with the termination. I was lucky that DH did not try to pressure me but it was clearly the "sensible" thing to do to terminate. I had similiar feelings to your own and realised that no matter how sensible I could not terminate. It has been very hard and financially I am still not sure we are going to manage but I have never regretted having DC3 - the opposite actually.

I agree with what Mumbling said that one shadow of a doubt is too much and need to be thought about very carefully. Be kind to yourself and good luck.

he has said he doesnt want this baby but whatever happens we will be together and i cant hold it against him if i have termination and he wont hold it aganst me if i go ahead with the baby.he said his family is more important and he isnt sure a baby would benefit us. he is working v hard and already feels the pressure and this would add to it. he said he wouldnt want me to have an abortion for his sake