Termination at 13 weeks due to fetal anomaly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a D&C at Sibley for a missed MC at 11 weeks and was put under. There is no way in he'll that I'd have it any other way. I had an an abortion without anesthesia - I was very young and in college - and it was pure hell.

Another DNC here for miscarriage and I was totally under. Can't imagine it any other way.

[Anonymous]

OP - I'm hoping you are doing ok and managing to recover, physically and mentally.

[Anonymous]

I'm guessing it's basically an abortion. It's painful, but nowhere near as bad as having a baby (I recently had a C section - it hurt real real bad), and it's very quick too. Nobody goes under for those.

Honestly, I'm so sorry OP, I know it's bad news and sucks, but think of this as a crappy, but necessary step towards your ultimate goal, and it won't be that painful or take too long, and in a few months you can try again and the chances of lightening striking in the same place twice are very low.

[Anonymous]

The mental piece is much harder than the physical. I have terminated at 8 wks and at 21 wks, also for fetal anomaly. I know how horrible you must feel, but this is a gift, being able to do this early and without having to induce labor and deliver a stillborn baby. I know you hate the doctor and the insurance at this time, but one day you will be in a place where you can feel perverse gratitude and sort of lucky.

[Anonymous]

I was fully sedated for my D&C's...I think it is absurd and cruel that you would only have local anesthesia for your procedure.

I am sorry, OP. I know this pain, and it takes a long time to heal. But, it does heal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP -- I am sorry for your loss. I do take issue with PP-ers that said that it may not feel fair to be in a room with women who are ending their pregnancies by choice, aborting "healthy" babies. Nobody has any way of knowing whether those babies are, in fact, healthy. You have no idea if those women are drug addicts, or perhpas alcoholics, or have AIDs. They may have been raped or abused. You have no way of determining whether your termination is, in fact, somehow better than or different from, theirs. That is the freedom of choice; you are benefitting from it. It is when we try to draw lines around what is and is not acceptable that we run into issues, as you can see from your insurance denial. You are being denied coverage because the powers that be have actually decided that your choice is no different than any other womans'. That is, I agree, unfair. But I also think it is totally unfair to dicatate when such choices are and are not appropriate.

I am the PP who said I didn't want to go to a clinic b/c I didn't think I could emotionally handle being in a room with women ending unwanted pregnancies when I wanted my baby, but it had a fatal diagnosis. It wasn't about my abortion being any "better" than theirs, but about my emotional state. I also didn't want to be in a room full of pregnant women carrying healthy wanted babies either. I am guessing you ever ended a pregnancy due to poor diagnosis because if so, I wouldn't have to explain that it was not a judgemental statement, but a self-protection statement to try to make it through one of the most painful times in my life so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP -- I am sorry for your loss. I do take issue with PP-ers that said that it may not feel fair to be in a room with women who are ending their pregnancies by choice, aborting "healthy" babies. Nobody has any way of knowing whether those babies are, in fact, healthy. You have no idea if those women are drug addicts, or perhpas alcoholics, or have AIDs. They may have been raped or abused. You have no way of determining whether your termination is, in fact, somehow better than or different from, theirs. That is the freedom of choice; you are benefitting from it. It is when we try to draw lines around what is and is not acceptable that we run into issues, as you can see from your insurance denial. You are being denied coverage because the powers that be have actually decided that your choice is no different than any other womans'. That is, I agree, unfair. But I also think it is totally unfair to dicatate when such choices are and are not appropriate.

I am the PP who said I didn't want to go to a clinic b/c I didn't think I could emotionally handle being in a room with women ending unwanted pregnancies when I wanted my baby, but it had a fatal diagnosis. It wasn't about my abortion being any "better" than theirs, but about my emotional state. I also didn't want to be in a room full of pregnant women carrying healthy wanted babies either. I am guessing you ever ended a pregnancy due to poor diagnosis because if so, I wouldn't have to explain that it was not a judgemental statement, but a self-protection statement to try to make it through one of the most painful times in my life so far.

I'm not the poster you're responding to, but I thought I would weigh in anyway.

I've had 2 miscarriages and one elective abortion. I was seen by medical professionals for all three. Sitting in the waiting room with the joyfully pregnant was hard all three times, for slightly different reasons. The first miscarriage had essentially already begun at my confirmation of pregnancy appointment, so the difference between how I felt in the waiting room going into the appointment and how I felt coming out after hearing the hesitation and the detailed description of miscarriage symptoms from the doctor was pretty noticeable. I started bleeding the next day, and my doctor was in no way surprised. That hurt. Like, why couldn't you have told me, warned me, something, anything. Sitting in the waiting room for follow up appointments, to make sure everything had passed and that my hormone levels were going back to normal was very bittersweet, but at the time, I was still able to just tell myself that it's normal, happens a lot, will try again, etc.

The second miscarriage was scary for a lot of reasons - the way it happened but also that it happened at all. I'd managed to talk myself the previous time into a "try, try again" mentality and I completely fell apart when I started bleeding again. There were other physical reasons why it was scary, which I won't get into. Suffice to say, sitting in that room with all those happy bellies, my mind was saying "Why me? What did I do wrong? Am I being punished or tested or something?" and that stuck around for weeks.

The elective termination was after the miscarriages. I am in no way ready to be pregnant or try again. Looking at me in that waiting room, you wouldn't have thought I was some irresponsible teenager who doesn't know how to use birth control. If you'd asked me, however, why I was there, and I'd told you that I got pregnant accidentally while taking every precaution I had available other than total abstinence, could not emotionally handle being pregnant right now, despite being in a loving marriage with a beautiful toddler, you probably would have hated me. Fortunately, these are not things you can see just by looking at a person.

My point is that every single woman in that waiting room has a story and a reason why she's there, even the irresponsible teenagers who don't know how to use birth control. Every one of them is probably looking at you and wondering how your story stacks up to their story. It's true that many of us wished that we could complete the process silently, on our own, without waiting rooms or examples of happy women with healthy, wanted babies or unhappy women with healthy unwanted babies. It's okay to feel that way. It's okay to feel that it's completely unfair that you're in this situation at all.