u/AggravatingForce7028

So yesterday was my birthday but I had TFMR a month ago. Needless to say, I counted down until my birthday was over. Me and my boyfriend went out of town to a nice hotel for one night where we had dinner and did touristy things. But I just felt so bad the entire trip, worse in many ways than in the days leading up to my birthday. I know its due to the fact that I had envisioned this birthday in an entirely different way and also cause now im a year older, 34, and im getting older and now I will be at least 35 when I become a mom. Just really starting to feel time pressure and regretting not starting TTC earlier (I have had 4 back to back early miscarriages in the span of a year before my TFMR which was an IVF pregnancy).

I just feel so incredibly empty and nothing seems to bring my spirits up. I had to fake a smile while I opened my birthday gifts from my boyfriend that he bought in order to make an effort to cheer me somewhat up. But nothing does. Everything is just a shortlived distraction from my reality.

This emptyness feeling is so deep and overpowering that I dont see myself getting better. Best way to decribe it is i literally feel transparent, like you can see right through me.

How long will I feel like this? Those of you that are 1-5 years from your loss, when did your emptyness feeling go away? Did it ever go fully away? What did you do?

Hello everyone,

I’m about 3.5 weeks post-TFMR of my sweet baby boy due to hydrops at 22 weeks. This has been, without a doubt, the hardest time of my life. I cry every day. I see him everywhere, and I can’t stop thinking about the future that was taken from us so abruptly. Life can feel incredibly unfair.

My baby had hydrops (fluid around the lungs, abdomen, and under the skin), but no other anomalies were found on ultrasound. In fact, everything else looked perfect—his heart, liver, kidneys, brain, growth, and movement were all normal. Because of this, I’ve been agonizing over my decision to terminate.

We were running out of time to access TFMR in my country. Otherwise, I would have needed to travel abroad for a D&E, which my doctors did not recommend. The only other option would have been to wait and see how things progressed—likely facing the possibility of his heart stopping in utero or delivering him knowing he might only survive a very short time before dying in my arms. It felt like an impossible situation.

We are still waiting for genetic results (WES) and autopsy results. The microarray came back clear, and this was also a pregnancy from a PGT-A tested embryo, so chromosomal issues were considered unlikely.

I guess with this post I would like to ask if anyone else here has had to terminate a pregnancy due to isolated hydrops, like in my case, and how you have come to terms with it.

I would also be grateful to hear from anyone who has gone through a TFMR in a situation where the diagnosis was uncertain or “grey”—where there was no clear cause, and where the condition might have resolved but was unlikely to.