(Part 3) Top products from r/ttcafterloss

I'm putting it off as well. I read about half of Expecting Better back when I first started TTC. I had a friend that really liked "Happiest Baby on the Block."

If anyone is interested in communication for birth to 4 years (let me get on my soapbox), I highly suggest It Takes Two to Talk by the Hanen Centre. It's marketed toward parents of children with language delays, but it's helpful for everyone wanting to promote their child's language development. I teach the class to parents, and one of the things I consistently hear is "Why isn't this for everyone?," "I wish I knew this for my other kids," and my favorite: "I want to have another kid again and try this from the beginning!"

Eeee, so excited for you!

• I haven't read any yet! But I have bought Heading Home With Your Newborn: From Birth to Reality and The Happiest Baby on the Block. Both books I've seen recommended and are well reviewed, just need to buckle down and read them. It all just seems so far off still...
  
  
• I did happen to have a routine appointment scheduled a few days before my babymoon (I was 24 weeks) and they gave me the OK to travel. The only thing I did to prepare was look up where the nearest hospitals were and which one had a Labor & Delivery unit. It's scary to think about, but odds are so slim something bad will happen in the relatively brief time you are there! Now the important thing, you better share lots of pictures with us of your beautiful tropical vacay ;)

I’m so sorry. I also had very low amniotic fluid and went through a TFMR with my son at 21 weeks just three weeks ago. It’s a terrible nightmare, and I’m so sorry you’ve found yourself here.

This group here is a great resource for any questions you may have about what comes next. Someone recommended to me the book The Prenatal Bombshell. I skimmed some of it but we made our decision and I thought reading it would just make me feel sad.

This is really hard. Know that you don’t hand to go through it alone. Sending hugs and love to you and your family 💜

Oh I see... that could certainly take timing out of your hands.

> my decidedly un-mucus-y cervix and his drier than normal semen

My wife has had gotten good advice on these kind of 'nitpicky' aspects of the cycle from a book called Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition. Some of the supplementation advice in that book has really helped some women we know (we volunteer to teach fertility awareness, so we're somewhat familiar with a lot of couple's bodily functions, haha).

As for your husband... has he tried drinking tons of water? I know it sounds stupid, but I've personally noticed a ton of difference. There's some advice in that book for men too! We've found that some of these tips make us feel like we're 'doing something', so at least there's some psychological benefit?

Well anyway, just thought I'd recommend that. Totally understand if it sounds unappealing, though.

I don't think you will be. :) I highly recommend this book, as well as Tiny, Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. They've helped me hold on to a flicker of compassion.
https://www.amazon.com/Coping-Infertility-Miscarriage-Neonatal-Loss/dp/143381692X

In a leap of faith, I made a baby blanket: http://imgur.com/8ujCb4t

I used to crochet in high school, but had forgotten how, so I got a little beginner's kit and re-learned the stitches. Then I found this ridiculously cute book of patterns for small throws: https://www.amazon.com/Corner-Corner-Throws-Family-Crochet/dp/1590127870. That's where I got the pattern for the blanket in the picture. I'm satisfied with my amateur efforts and I want to make some more stuff!

When we went to the hospital to deliver Solomon, we went empty-handed. Whatever the outcome, I won't do that again-- we will have this blanket. At the hospital with Solomon, we received a donated knitted blanket and hat, which we were extremely grateful for. All of the pictures we have of him, he is wearing his hat and wrapped in his blanket. I'm thinking about paying it forward and making some little preemie blankets and hats to bring with us this time, taking a page out of /u/PNWmonkeybaby 's book.

http://www.amazon.ca/Scribbles-Really-Giant-Drawing-Coloring/dp/0811855090

I use this one! It's playful and kooky and as much work as you want it to be :)

This was my bible. I carried this thing around the house with me. I read it every single day. It gave me hope during the 100 Days of Darkness. My husband read it to our daughter when she wouldn't sleep (so boring that she would just zonk to it). And still using it 3 years later. I'm fully on board the "if everyone is sleeping, everyone is happy" train, so sleeping is my hill to die on.

And, not necessarily a book, but the Wonder Weeks is fascinating. It's an app, or a book, or a website.

Congratulations!

Regarding resources:
The International OCD Foundation has some info about OCD including perinatal OCD: Fact Sheets and Brochures, Long list of books, and some Expert Opinion articles..

This is a general book about OCD that I have recommended to patients with OCD.

This is a workbook for anxiety, depression and obsessions during pregnancy and postpartum.

The Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obsessive Bad Thoughts is a book specifically targeted at people who primarily have intrusive thoughts. Be warned that the descriptions of some of the thoughts depicted in the book are quite graphic though.

Dropping the Baby and Other Scary Thoughts: Breaking the Cycle of Unwanted Thoughts in Motherhood is a book about obsessive thoughts specifically related to postpartum.

Perinatal Support International is a great website for finding local help. They also have a 24/7 support line you can call.

And finally, the MGH Center for Women's Mental Health also has great resources for a variety of perinatal mental health conditions.

(I have mild OCD symptoms myself so it's been interesting and eye opening treating perinatal patients with OCD and wondering if mine will get worse or better with pregnancy and postpartum).

I don't think it is specifically quite what you're looking for but it may work. Love You Forever is written to/about the author's two stillborn babies. This book is a standby for many parents who don't even realize it's true backstory.

I really like this one, it’s helped me. It’s not long, but if I start to feel myself slipping away from reality again, this book typically brings me back and helps me realize I can do this.

You Are Not Alone: Love Letters... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0996555625?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Oh, my heart hurts for you. When I was faced with the decision of possibly TFMR - I read Our Heartbreaking Choices and found it really helpful. (My baby ended up dying before I had to make that choice, but I felt comforted reading others' stories. You are making a loving choice and I'm so sorry that you have this burden.)

>It was hard to bond with her because I was still grieving her sisters, but I’d hoped when she was here safe it’d be easier, but now she’s all but gone too.

I resonate so much with those words. I, too, had two mid-pregnancy losses in a row. It was the darkest time in my life. I couldn't believe I could be faced with that reality. It is unfathomable, isn't it? I was so anxious the entire second pregnancy only to have it end horribly, too. I'm so sorry you know this pain. I'm so, so sorry.

I relied on cognitive and behavioural therapy (CBT). Try and find a therapist that's trained in that. I also used this book (https://www.amazon.com/Anxiety-Phobia-Workbook-Edmund-Bourne/dp/1572248912). In times where nothing worked then I took benzos but never during the tww or when I was pregnant since it's a Class C drug.

Edit: Word

Oh, hun. I am so sad for you. I also had a later 2nd tri TFMR, and a week after my induction, I was just starting to emerge from the numbness.

Our son had a "dark grey" diagnosis. Not absolutely fatal, but not clearly survivable either. (Say nothing of what "surviving" looked like.) I don't think the decision to end the pregnancy will ever not weigh heavily on me. I still feel judged by some people. I still wish I could have met my son. I still have "what if" moments.

But I've gone over our decision many times in my head. I know what suffering we would have risked for him, if we'd made another decision. Giving him a good death, where he was warm and safe in his mama's belly, where he could pass without pain, and the last thing he heard was our voices and mama's heart beat was the last thing we could do for him. As many times as I've thought about it, I can never bring myself to feel that we should have put him through suffering instead. I won't say that there's not still some guilt or questioning, but that's how peace looks for me, and it's taken time to get here.

There are quite a few of us here who've had TFMR losses, and the grief is just as devastating as any other type of loss. Our sadness and grief is just as deep as anyone else's. And we have a right to be sad.

After my loss, reading other people's stories helped me a lot. Ending a Wanted Pregnancy had a lot of helpful material (and they have a private Facebook support group). Our hospital gave us A Time to Decide A Time to Heal, and our library had The Prenatal Bombshell. Both are helpful, non-judgmental guides for navigating this type of loss. The former is a short quick read that my husband and I did together. The latter is a more detailed book.
Our hospital also connected us with a bereavement counselor who we/I have seen monthly (free). And we've also gone regularly to a parent support group for general perinatal loss. (The closest one specifically for TFMR is 2 hrs away from us, but you might live closer to one.)

There's no loss like losing a child. I hope you and your husband just take care of yourselves, each other, and your son in the weeks ahead, and be gentle with yourselves. Hug.

I lost my son at 21 weeks gestation. It is so, so hard and so unfair.

It's been nearly a year, and in my experience, it does get better. The grief and longing and missing don't go away. What does get easier is just making it through. I remember thinking, "Okay, I didn't cry today, that's a start." Or laughing hard at something and thinking "Okay, I'm still able to laugh." Some of the things that used to make me crawl up in a ball and sob, like seeing a baby commercial on TV or seeing a friend announce a pregnancy, still make me feel sad, but now I'm able to have my sad moment and move on. The little pangs haven't gone away, but they no longer pull me into crippling grief.

I suggest checking out a book on grief, even if it's just to skim--I read 100 Practical Ideas After Your Child Dies and even though some of the sections didn't apply to me, it was helpful to read about just how unpredictable NORMAL the grief process is and helped me let go of some of the expectations that I "should" be feeling a certain way by now. I went through a really dark period a few months after losing my son, around the time when we'd started TTC again, even though before that I had been feeling a little more normal. No one can tell you when it's the right time to TTC again, but I will say from my own experience, even though I wanted to get pregnant again SO BADLY after losing Isaac, in hindsight I'm glad we didn't conceive until seven months later because it gave us some time to heal, learn how to be a happy couple again, make sure things were stable medically (I had some health issues diagnosed after my stillbirth) and be ready to treat the next pregnancy as a blank slate.

We're here for you. <3

Hey there. I used to be active here, so I'm not sure you'll "recognize" me - but, I am in a position to help with your questions with a history of recurrent loss (2MMCs, 1CP) and now being on my second day of stimming during my second IVF attempt. This might will long, too, since I want to respond to a number of points and questions that you raise.

First, how my situation may be different is that my losses were a whole lot more spread apart than yours, so we were already having trouble with conceiving as it was. Also, I don't know your age, but I just turned 36 - and we started to TTC when I was 32, so this has been a long and shitty ride for us. I will say, I do not think you should start IVF until you are really sure it is the right step, because it takes a profound physical, emotional, and financial toll on you and your partner. We were able to move to IVF when we felt it was right, and it has still been very hard. My first cycle yielded zero PGS normal embryos, and that took an emotional toll as large or larger than any of my losses.

Next - up to date references. A book from 1997 is absolutely outdated. I suggest reading Not Broken: An Approachable Guide to Miscarriage and Recurrent Pregnancy Loss by Dr. Lora Shahine. It is grounded in more current research and I happen to agree with her skepticism of quasi-scientific approaches to "treating" recurrent loss that she has. Those of use who have had multiple losses are a vulnerable population - we become increasingly desperate to try anything that may prevent loss, even when there is little or no strong scientific evidence to support these treatments. Just be a savvy consumer.

About your doctor pushing IVF - two things to keep in mind. One, it may well be too soon for you to go this route which is why you feel like it's a push and it makes you uncomfortable. Two, IVF with PGS is literally the only thing any RE can offer you that has any chance of reducing your odds of another loss - but importantly, does not eliminate the chance another loss will happen. Why is that? Because right now we don't actually know why your losses are happening. The odds are great that they are due to genetic abnormality of the embryos, but we don't know that, so we can't rule out that it's because of implantation or lining issues. The benefit of an IVF with PGS cycle is that if it does fail, you can start to figure out why that might be with things like biopsying the endometrial lining.

About the insurance - that's great, I have a plan that also covers 4 rounds of ART (which, for the record, is amazing coverage for being in the US). However, it is still expensive, and unless you are in one specific health plan in Boston, PGS is not covered, and it is expensive. Also, many, if not most plans require 6 rounds of "lesser before greater." You can call your plan to find out the details, but it means they require you to do 6 rounds of oral meds or IUI before they will authorize you for IVF. Our plan the oral meds counted, but some plans require 6 rounds of IUI before you can do IVF. Also, insurance will only cover one round at a time (assuming that's how your coverage works, and it's not a set lifetime dollar cap, which is a whole different story) - so you cannot take advantage of shared risk plans or do banking cycles (to have embryos in the freezer). If you think IVF might be in your future, find out more about what is required for your insurance. You might want to start trying to do some "lesser" interventions to speed your time to conception and move in that direction. Infertility treatment should be a very stepwise process, unless you were dealing with a reason to skip straight to IVF.

About the effects on your body - Is the egg retrieval painful? That's not quite the right question. You will be under general anesthesia for your retrieval. It's the before and after where there is discomfort and pain. It depends on your response, but the bloating can be really tough. By the end, anything with a waistband is out of the question, and at least in my case, it's tough to find an injection spot that is not bruised and sore - but you just learn to deal with it. What surprised me with the first retrieval was how much pain I had after, and I did not have OHSS. The pain was really tough after the retrieval, and I had a lot of nausea (only thing I remember from the ride home was puking in a bag in a parking lot). And I really could not function until about 5 days after. Also, the embryo "hunger games" are brutal. All you can do is wait for these update calls and wait for the news from the PGS lab. It's one of those things that is hard to explain until you are in it, but know that it is hard.

All that said, I get the feeling that now is not the right time for you to jump to IVF. But it is a good time to learn more about what it might mean to move in that direction, in case the time comes that you want to. Feel free to message me if you have other questions.