Can't bear this anymore, is termination at 15 16 weeks just going to make it all worse?

[Sleeplessinnorthlondon]

I'm going to delete my profile soon as so ashamed of all of what's happened but desperate for any advice anyone can offer. In summary, conceived when thought couldn't, just about to start ivf, and didn't know. Had two different due dates from different scans but looks like could have drunk heavily 16, 17 and 18 dpo. Stopped as soon as found out but can't shake the guilt despite doctors all telling me it would probably be fine. Would never have terminated for downs or any condition the child was going to have anyway, but cannot bear idea of having spoilt life chances of child that would have been healthy through stupidity. Tried counselling, midwife, friends, all been so kind but can't shake terror and guilt and suspect will never shift and will be terrible mother when born as so anxious and guilty. Just can't bear any of this any more, none of the help I've tried to access is working and Marie stopes have said they can organise an abortion this week. Will mean hurting friends, family and above all darling darling husband but he has said will support me if it's the only way forward. So so desolate and terrified, everyone around me saying this is mental health issue not physical and probably right but in no state to bring child into the world like this anyway. Has anyone been in the same boat? Did the termination help or make it worse? Please help me.

^ what duplodon says. Excellent explanation.

Pregnancy hormones are exacerbating your feelings and symptoms.

The FMC are not permitted to rule out a risk because of all sorts of reasons, namely insurance etc. This doesn't mean there IS a risk. It is like working in a customer facing role and not being able to apologise to a customer as you may be legally admitting liability. There doesn't mean there is any liability, it just means it's something you are not allowed to say!

Looking for certainty is a symptom of OCD. These feelings are not real and they are not you. You can beat this. And in a very short space of time.

I have been where you are and have been manic and desperate with my OCD symptoms so crippling that I could barely face my husband I was so ashamed of myself and couldn't leave the house.

This can be treated quickly and effectively. Don't make a decision that could affect your future happiness and relationships while you are feeling this way. It's not real and it's not you. x

Sleepless - what amazingly resistant beliefs you have! Read what duplodon has said a few times. Please. This is a mental health problem and not a physical health problem with your baby. You may never 100% believe that, and you may have to go through your entire pregnancy never totally trusting that. These obsessional beliefs are partly to do with not being able to sit with and tolerate uncertainty. You're holding yourself responsible for something you actually have little to no control over - that's the part of what's happening that is detached from reality and the bit that people reading your posts are simultaneously frustrated and horrified about. It just doesn't make sense. But these are powerful thoughts, aren't they? So powerful they're even managing to convince others around you that they're more powerful and important than reality. But they are just thoughts. Not facts. Therapy would undoubtedly help you to differentiate between the two, which I think is the first step in the way out of this turmoil.

Nobody has a perfect pregnancy, you can't abort every time you perceive to have done/eaten something wrong.
Ds2 was a surprise baby and I had been out drinking several time before I found out I was pregnant with him. He is a perfectly fine child whereas ds1 who was planned and concierges while doing all the right things- healthy diet, no drinking, taking all the right vitamins etc has AS, poor muscle tone, hypermobility, etc. DD meanwhile is perfectly normal and average, popular and kind and creative despite me being very ill with anaemia throughout her pregnancy and me having to have iron infusions.
I had antenatal depression with ds2 as he East planned as we weren't financially in a place to have another child. I could barely look during the 12 week scan, didn't take folic acid etc, wasn't until about 18 weeks when I had severe stomach pains and I thought I was losing him that I started to feel anything for him.
I also had a 4th pregnancy which we terminated for many reasons. It's not a decision to take lightly and to be honest I don't think they would let you terminate without some heavy counselling.

Also have you followed the advice of many people on here and showed your husband this thread...?

Also sleepless I drank heavily until I was 5 weeks pregnant - well over the time you did - I didn't know I was pregnant.

My baby has kept me awake all night doing the riverdance on my innards and all scans, tests etc show that he is perfect.

Remember - this is not real and this is not you. X

I found out I was pg with DD1 at 5wks pg. It was Christmas party season in a marketing environment and I was semi permanently drunk. I thought she was a sambuca hangover for a week.

She's now 5 and amazing. A year ahead at reading and maths. Fridge full of certificates. Socially happy. Honestly perfect and I've been a fairly lax mum so it's all her!

I drank with DD2 and 3 before finding out I was pg at quite late stages (9wks and 12wks!). Both amazing despite my crap!

PPs have known more to help you with MH services but I would say you can discount the "inflicting yourself on baby post birth" issue because even if you do need time to heal your baby has 2 parents and your DH sounds bloody brilliant xx

Sleepless you need to get a grip.

What you are saying makes no sense. If you are thinking about terminating because of guilt that you may have damaged your baby despite massive evidence to the contrary, how are you going to live with the knowledge that you had an abortion, should you go ahead?

I terminated a pregnancy in circumstances different to yours. It was the correct decision, but doing it changed me fundamentally as a person. It was a shift as profound as loss of faith. It changed the way I see the world and my place in it. The guilt still affects me over a decade later.

A termination is not a solution. It will not be the end of the problem. It is one course of action you could take, and to have one in your circumstances takes you into a future where you may well feel a whole lot worse than you do now.

To have a termination to get rid of feelings of guilt makes no sense at all. It will almost certainly make you feel more guilty, more than you can possibly imagine at this time.

The other course of action is to take steps to protect your baby from your anxieties. If you continue with the pregnancy and have the baby, i promise you there is a future where you can move on from these fears. The baby will arrive, all will be fine and you will have other more immediate concerns to think about, such as looking after and loving your amazing baby, and the feelings of guilt you have now will quickly fade into the past.

If you have a termination I am worried for you that those feeling of guilt will not fade into the past. Instead you could be effectively turning them into a millstone around your neck that you will carry with you into the future. Please don't do that to yourself.

It's great that you have started talking to people. Please keep talking to them, and to us.

Have you Googled OCD yet?

Sleepless... I'm sorry you are experiencing such a terrible dilemma. I agree with others and your doctors that it is very unlikely you have caused the damage you fear. I know you want certainity, but life is not like that, nobody can give you a reasurance that your child will be 100% fine, because nobody could give you that reassurance even if you had not a drop of alcohol through your pregnancy.

Babies come as they come, sometimes you will worry if you have caused some damage, not for drinking but the usual questions: have I mollycuddled him too much? , should I have stopped him from going on that climbing frame, should I not have fed him yesterday's leftovers?

And then also come the moments of acceptance when you realise that nothing that you did could have caused a certain problem. Children are their own persons and a such they come with their very own strenghts and difficulties, which are not connected to you.

It is natural to be anxious or scared of becoming a mum, it is a big change in your life after all, but it is not good that you are feeling such level of guilt and anxiety. So, it is great you looked to get help and I hope they can support you in whatever decision you take.

I really hope that before you take the decission to terminate or not, you can get a bit of silence from your thoughts and worries and ask yourself the question "Do I really want this baby?" Because it may be that the problem is not your drinking or the baby's health but that you are afraid of becoming a mother. And if that is the problem it just needs to be tackled in a different way.

I just think OP if you were to terminate and if you were to get pregnant again you may focus on something else. There could always be something, you ate something you shouldn't have, you took some medication, you went ice skating, etc etc, whatever. What I'm trying to say is there is always a risk. The only way you can prevent everything is to sit in a box and wrap yourself in cotton wool and that's just not practical. Plus for people like me I have a medical condition that is a risk. I had a mc before my healthy DS was born. There is always something, but we have to weigh up these risks else no one anywhere would ever have children.

I got very drunk at a wedding a couple of days before I found out I was pregnant. I was drinking vodka red bull! DS is fine, he really is. As a HCP myself I have met Mums who didn't even know they were pregnant or found out at 30+ weeks.

You need to read and re read what people have said to you here and please take the help offered to you and listen. I don't think termination is the answer, it will only create another problem and the cycle will start again.

Poor thing. You really need to go for counselling as you sound very anxious and you are not thinking straight. Your baby will not be harmed. Doctors can never say 100% as just covering their backs but virtually 100% your baby is fine. As you have problems conceiving this could be your only chance of having a child.

Never look for anything medical online - you google spot on face and Dr Google tells you you have skin cancer. Please get help and do not terminate.

Please don't tell someone ill to get a grip.
I totally get that it can be frustrating to read, either if you have no experience of OCD or if you do, but it is not a choice.
No one tells any one with a physical illness to get a grip.
Remember that when we are engaging on a forum we are using language, which means we are only partially engaging with Sleepless and we are actively engaging with the symptoms of OCD.
So the best any one can do is be kind, compassionate and hope Sleepless can hear that she is worthy of kindness and compassion and more than these fears and that this isn't drowned out by OCD.
Many people need medication before they can engage with reasoned arguments about the nature of their thinking. It's not being stubborn or wilful. It's being ill.

Also it would be best to try to stop reading stories aimed at reassuring you. They just feed the obsession.
And any one who tries to convince you that your obsession isn't telling you the truth is bound to failure. That's because it's obsession and doesn't respond to rational disputation.

You are also doing something called ruminating, Sleepless. That's where you keep going over the same facts again and again in your mind, trying to make sense of them.

One way you can distract yourself until you get treatment and stabilise is by listening to music and singing the words, putting all your focus on listening to the sound and its quality. This sometimes can help give distance. Distraction doesn't work in the long run but when you're in crisis it can help.

Honey you don't need a grip you need a hug.

Are you trying to punish yourself because you feel like you have let this baby down?

That's how it's coming over from your last post.

i can't explain any of this, i'm in school now where things normally feel easier to control and on the verge of calling the students to say the revision session they so need is cancelled as just want to run away forever. phoned my mother to apologise for hurting her and she sounds so broken and at a loss, my husband is going the world's best impression of some form of blitz spirit, actually singing around the house all the time and trying to make jokes about everything, can tell have broken my friends' hearts and wish had never told any of them any of this as now not just me going nuts but dragging all the lovely people I love so much down with me. First appt at 5.30, going to give it everything i can, then FMC, then one on Friday. Am determined to come through this but if I can't going to at least try to find way of faking it to put family's mind at rest as don't think can bear their pain on top of all this. DH such a lovely, straightforward kind man who is just hideously out of his depth and clearly doesn't understand it at all despite doing very best. He deserves someone equally lovely and straightforward. Sorry to keep putting all this on here just can't keep offloading on to those around me as dragging them all down. First student just arrived, 20 mins early bless her. Sent her off to get breakfast, going to have to get face together and get on with the day. Probably no bad thing.

Hey I was where you were, in school with students revising when going through all this! Mine were GCSE students at the time with LD.

If you can stick it out and stay at work try to, it's a way of sticking two fingers to the thoughts that tell you that you can't cope.

Faking is fine for now. Fake it til you make it.

I am sending you soothing thoughts of comfort.

Are there any self comforting actions you can take to get through the day? Tea? Chocolate? I do something that sounds mad but we call it a warmie. I rub my two hands together to create friction and warmth and put them over my eyes or cup my neck. Acts of self compassion can dampen down stress reactions.

Op you're not reading the replies. You are repeating stuff over and over which medical professionals in this thread have told you are not true. The description of OCD by Duplodon is amazing. This is what you need to be googling. Not fetal alcohol syndrome. Please cancel the abortion and get help from MH experts.

And you haven't broken your friends or family's hearts. They just love you and see you in pain and their pain is empathy and love for yours. Find the love in it if you can.

duplodon you're so so kind. Think I will try that! Mine is History GCSE, lovely class, luckily girl polite enough or nervous enough about exams to not notice or pretend obviously not hayfever making me look like this!!! Right. Onwards.

OP, I know people who continued to drink throughout their pregnancies - from a few bottles at the weekend at early stages and continuing with a couple of glasses of wine half the evenings a week until just before duedate. The babies are all fine.

You say you drank at alcoholic levels- this isn't true. You stopped drinking. It was three days. And less than a lot of people have said. Medical professionals are concerned when pregnant mothers drink heavilyrregularly throughout pregnancy.

You say in the OP that you have potentially different due dates, are you possibly going on the earliest dates to make it the longest DPO?

I say this because with DD I was certain when I ovulated. Certain. But the 12 wk scan put me 5 days later, fertilisation and implantation happened much later than I thought.

Please take care of yourself. Please take all offers of counselling and remember that you are NOT a bad parent. You are locked in fear right now but you know you can work through it - going to the appointments show you are even if your obsessive thoughts are telling you otherwise.

Unfortunately my cycles super ireggular and going on the scan. Had four (don't ask), first two at 9 and 10 weeks and last one at 12 weeks something all agreed but these were private and was the UCH one I had which said drinking at 16-18 dpo placing fertilisation at 4 days earlier than all the others. if all this was within first 2 weeks dpo know no cause to worry but sadly it looks like might well not be.

Offload on here Sleepless! It is better out than in and we are all here for you.

Your friends and family are broken hearted not because of you, but FOR you as you are feeling so awful. You shouldn't feel guilty about this - I am sure they all just want to help you in any way they can.

I could have written your last post about DH when I was feeling really bad! - I thought my baby would be better off not being born at all than living with me as a mother and I felt really selfish for marrying and staying married to DH as I thought he deserved so much better than me - a 'normal' and 'sane' person without all of my issues.

I received the right treatment and now I can look back on that time and see how absolutely not real those intrusive thoughts and feelings were - they were a symptom of my OCD which I tried to rationalise and control by looking for certainty that everything would be ok - it's a fruitless search as there isn't any certainty in this life.

I am now 35 weeks pregnant and MH wise, feel better than I have felt FOR YEARS. I have had MH problems on and off my whole life and genuinely feel I have got to the bottom of it with treatment for OCD.

I can't wait to meet my baby, I know for absolutely sure that I will be the best mummy to him that I possibly can - which is all any of us can ever do. I already love him so much and feel so protective of him - it's really strange to feel so strongly about a person I have never actually met face to face! My relationship with DH is still rock solid - he has always stuck by me regardless of my MH ups and downs and always does the best he can for me - he says his aim is always to 'love me better' and is the sweetest man in the world!

I'm telling you this as proof that things can be awful but get so much better... I know it doesn't seem like it now but in a few short weeks, with the right treatment and support you will feel so much better.

There is a bright light at the end of the tunnel Sleepless - I really, really want you to be able to see it. x

In terms of coping with thoughts, I've found in the past that repeating the alphabet slowly, carefully and mind fully helped. When i thought I couldn't get past another minute, I repeated the alphabet. It took me over a minute doing it slowly. It distracted me and stopped my brain from going back into the same panicking thoughts.

so pleased things turned a corner for you Hippy, really, really hope they do this end soon too!

The DPO thing is a red herring. Try to park those thoughts, put them in a file for discussion with a medical professional.

One thing that helped me was to ask myself: am I a qualified professional in fertility or fetal medicine? No. So it's my OCD, not me, asking, researching and answering these questions and though I can't stop my OCD from doing this, I'm going to make a conscious decision not to listen to that conversation or talk back.

Like Hippymama, I also got the right treatment and it has been so positive for my whole life. I've fulfilled all sorts of dreams. Your mind will probably tell you that's fine for us but will be different for you, but that's okay. Fake it til you make it.

Sleepless, it looks like you are focusing on one scan, the one that in your mind confirms the worst fear.

I don't want to feed your obsessions but scans do have margins of error amd days can = millimetres.

In think the best thing you can do is print your posts or the thread and take it with you to the appointments.

Step away from Google.

Try to focus on other things like singing songs on radio etc.

and know that the grip this obsession has on you will lessen. You are a strong person.