u/_toomuchtuna_

Mods, please remove this if it is not okay for the the thread!

I have been seriously considering abortion basically since I was about 6 weeks pregnant. I am 18 weeks now.

I am very pro choice and have a toddler. I had the pills in my drawer but every time I thought I’d take them I couldn’t go through with it. Then I found a planned parenthood I could fly to for a procedural abortion (I’m in a total ban state). But I kept kicking the can down the road. I’ve been attending all of my prenatals and am working with MFM, so I have been treating this pregnancy seriously but I couldn’t help but be so scared that I am biting off more than I can chew. My thinking about abortion came from wanting to give my child the best life possible but not being sure that I mentally and physically could handle having 2 children.

Just a week and a half ago I started to feel a little bit of a bond with my baby,
Since they started moving. I have thought long and hard about my choice and I think I want to keep my baby. My big fear is the guilt after she is born, knowing that I so seriously considered abortion. I know I will love her as much as I love my son when she gets here and that is what scares me. Has anyone on here really considered abortion and then decided to continue the pregnancy? Did you struggle with guilt or bonding? I’m so scared I will never forgive myself.

My husband and I went away for two nights, leaving our 2.5-year-old with his dad and his dad’s wife of two years. This was our first time EVER leaving him overnight which was a big deal for many reasons—-he is special needs, and is grieving the death of my dad which has caused a lot of separation anxiety. we planned this separation with the help of his therapist to make it as safe, predictable and smooth as possible.

My in laws knew this, and we gave them detailed care instructions while also allowing flexibility and encouraging them to have fun.
I even went over a few days before to help them prep the house and get his bed set up. We are not incredibly close with his dad and wife but we were willing to try this.

Yesterday morning on day 1 of
Our trip, we reached out to check in to see how it was going. they told us they planned to take our son fishing 90 minutes away with friends who were camping, but they would just go for the afternoon and evening. I felt anxious about it but tried to be cool with it and tell myself one skipped nap time isn’t the end of the world I asked about sunscreen and a life jacket because they planned to take him on a boat. They hadn’t even considered that he would need a life jacket…..let alone sunscreen 🙄 but I played it cool and I told them where to get everything and told them to have a great time.

Come 8 pm, they hadn’t responded to us. We
Kept asking how things went and how Luca was
Doing. When they texted back they were evasive. We repeated questions about his nap, bedtime, and how bedtime was going at home, and they kept evading our questions. Through enough back and forth we discovered they had brought their camper and planned to stay overnight with him near a reservoir in a remote part of Idaho (with strangers).

They never asked our permission and we not planning on even telling us.
We didn’t even know his exact location or the people they were with. We had to piece together where our two-year-old would be sleeping. When we objected, they were rude and treated us as though we were overbearing.
We told them how upset we were and asked them to bring him home the next morning so my mom could take over and get him back to his routine.

After all of that, They still didn’t return in time for his nap! Apparently My husband’s dad was enjoying fishing and assumed our son would sleep in the car, even though he doesn’t do car naps and it totally disrupts his bedtime. This was after our explicit request to bring him home.

We want him to have fun with family, but taking him away overnight required our agreement. Not asking, not notifying us, and then disregarding our request to bring him home have seriously damaged our trust.
For context, my husband’s dad was not a model dad either….
It took a lot for me to trust him with our son, although we felt comfortable with his wife.

They want to ‘talk it out with us’ and I’m so angry I’m seeing red. Would you find this as upsetting as we did? How would you address it if they keep dismissing your concerns?

I honestly just need some advice. Thank
You!!

Hi all. I am a 33(f) and was just diagnosed a couple months back. I have suffered severe depression my whole life, and severe insomnia which leads to days of not sleeping. Anyways, my depression has gotten so bad I cannot function. I have a toddler and I am literally barely functioning. I’m currently on lamictal (a low-ish dose) and seroquel (50mg). I meet with my psychiatrist tomorrow and I just wanted to see if anyone had success with anything to treat the severe, severe depression. I miss the bursts of energy I used to feel, and honestly even miss being manic, because at this point I am completely not functional. I can hardly brush my teeth. I can’t go on much longer like this. Anything helps. Thank you 🤍

Hello! I am 11 weeks with my second HG pregnancy. I see a lot of people on here taking zofran, which helped me my first pregnancy. My doctor truly does not seem to care about my HG. She said I cannot take zofran and only offers me promethazine, but I have a 2.5 year old that I need to keep up with 😅 so if I’m not vomiting, I’m drowsy. I’m absolutely miserable and can hardly get out of bed. I’ve needed IV fluids about twice a week in clinic. I feel like zofran must be safer than not eating at all?

Hello all! I’ve noticed that the majority of the discourse here is not in favor of Lindsey. We are all absolutely entitled to our opinions, and those opinions are subject to change when confronted with new information.

I’m just curious, does anyone here still support Lindsey’s insanity defense? (And I don’t mean the people alleging Patrick did it.)

As of now, (and as a survivor of PPP and PPD) I personally still believe her defense. Is there anyone here that does too?

This is going to be a long post and sound insane, but these last few years have been such a series of catastrophes and all play into my choice of whether or not to continue this pregnancy. Thank you for your time and your guidance (should you have it 🙏🏼🤍) apologies in advance for the length.
I am 33 (f) and have a 2.5 year old son with my partner of 4 years. I am now 10 weeks pregnant but I’m really doubting myself. I need help discerning if it’s trauma or if it’s the right thing to do to terminate.
I adore our little family. We always wanted 2 kids, but we had some incredibly life altering experiences during and after we brought our son into the world. Before having our son, I was a successful artist and business owner. It was my life and I loved it. But, I always wanted to be a mom. When we got pregnant within the first year of dating, we both decided we wanted to keep the pregnancy, against most of our families wishes. That pregnancy was horrendous. I had HG (where you throw up 10+ times a day) right up until my son was born. I developed a heart condition, and I was not able to work. I had serious prenatal depression. Flash forward to when our son was born, I labored for 72 hours, and when he was born, he was blue and taken to the NICU while I had a severe postpartum hemorrhage and the doctors had to work to save both of our lives. I have very severe birth trauma and so does my husband. But still, Postpartum is when all shit hit the fan. My son had severe colic (I mean literally never stopped screaming) and 4 weeks postpartum I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my tailbone and fractured my pelvis. I could not walk for 6 months after that and had to learn to breastfeed laying on my side. At 3 months old, my son was diagnosed with congenital nystagmus, and we were told he would likely never be able to see and to prepare for our son to have lifelong disability. The day after that, we found out my dad (the dearest person in the world to me and my son’s namesake) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We live right across the street from them and see them in the mornings and evenings. My husband also lost his job during all of this, and we have been on/off unemployment that whole next year. The next year was a blur of hospital visits with my dad and my son. We had to go all over to children’s hospitals for treatment for my son, and chemo for my dad. I kept pushing to get my business back together because I was so overwhelmed and worried sick. I could not work because our son was doing so poorly, seizures, hospital stays, endless blurry days. I had severe postpartum depression and anxiety. I also will add that my son’s medical problems made it so he woke about every hour since he was born. (He still wakes up 4-5 times a night), but we have noticed they are getting fewer and farther between and he has slept through the night a couple times, which is HUGE.
We got pregnant unintentionally when our son was 8 months, and it was a fairly easy decision that we needed to terminate. We live in Idaho so it was hard to arrange but we both felt clear that this was not healthy for our family at the time. So we did an early medication abortion, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Shortly thereafter, I had surgery for an abscess that formed in my perineum as a result of being allergic to the dissolving sutures they used to fix my third degree tear I got during my son’s birth. It was an extremely painful surgery, and during that recovery time I got addicted to the medication I was on. It numbed the pain as well as some of the extreme emotional distress. This last fall I sought treatment once I realized it was a problem and have been completely sober ever since (I never misused alcohol or drugs before this), but it has taken a while for my brain chemistry to level out. During this time in treatment I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and just started medication, and after many trials I feel like I may finally be getting some help for my mental health. My bipolar symptoms began postpartum with visual hallucinations.
My husband finally got a job this winter and is doing really well. We are way in the negatives in medical and credit card debt from the time we were just trying to survive as a family. So it still does not feel totally stable but we are on the right path. My son is doing so much better now and is leaps and bounds ahead of what we ever imagined was possible. He can see, and though we don’t know what that will look like in the long term, we are so proud of him and overjoyed that our little one is healthy, thriving and well. this early spring my husband and I talked about considering having a second child, since we had always wanted two. We never said ‘yes’ it’s for sure but the thought had been brought up.
In May, I slipped on one of my son’s trains on the hardwood floor while carrying him. I protected him, but I ended up falling and severely injuring myself. I required a 7 hour long surgery, and needed to reshape my femur, replace my kneecap/ligaments and adjust my tibia. Lots of bone shaping and screws. I was in the hospital for weeks. It was a blur. Recovery was slow and expensive. As I started to heal, maybe 6 weeks post op, my husband and I decided to try to have intercourse. I was sort of the mentality that it was okay to not be careful because it wasn’t likely to happen, and if we got pregnant we would be okay. I don’t know if it was the post operative drugs I was on that made me think that or what….we did not use protection.
The next week my dad was put in hospice. I (alongside with my mom) were his primary caretakers. I was on crutches and a full leg brace and trying to manage recovery, my toddler and my dad as he passed. A week before he died I got the positive pregnancy test. Initially I was shocked but not surprised, but dealing with SO MUCH that I literally could not handle thinking about it. My focus was my dad. He passed away in my arms a month ago today, and I am still in such deep grief I can hardly bring myself out of bed.
Flash forward to now and I am 9.5 weeks pregnant. During the first few days after my dad died I felt some odd comfort in the pregnancy, but I also wasn’t ready to really confront it. As the days went by I started getting the same HG symptoms that I did with my first baby, vomiting all the time, unable to do literally anything, all while keeping it a secret and planning my dad’s funeral. I feel like I’m moving through the motions because I want to be excited but I am in fight or flight. As my symptoms have worsened, the reality is hitting me that I don’t know if I can do this. My son is deeply grieving his papa, who he saw every day, and says things like “mommy sick like papa” and he thinks that I am going to die too because I can’t get out of bed.
My partner seems very excited about the pregnancy and it’s almost given him a new lease on life perspective, especially since doing the genetic testing at our OB and finding out the gender is a girl (I’ve always dreamed of having a daughter). He wants to be a girl dad so bad, and he would be absolutely amazing at it.
Here’s where I’m at right now. We have shared with some friends and some of his family, and all are excited like “this must be such a light during such a hard time”. And I on some level feel that way, but when I think about bringing another whole human being into the world, and the amount of self sacrifice it takes as a mother to physically do that, I think that I literally just won’t survive it. To be fair I keep thinking about what new motherhood was like with my son, and all of the trauma that followed, and I don’t know if I am just assigning that experience to this one because it’s all I know of parenthood.
But I look at my little 2 year old and I see a little boy who REALLY needs his mom right now. Because of the trauma of the last year, especially my recovery and subsequent surgery, I have had to be very absent. This pregnancy feels like I am prolonging this estrangement when all I want to do is be well and able to give him the world.
My partner comes from a very different economic background than I, and his belief is that we can just make it work. He said I just may need to give away my studio and art practice, (as well as the big reopening I had planned for September) and just get a part time job to make ends meet. (I have been working part time as an adjunct professor but had to take time off for obvious reasons). But teacher pay is not great. He said I could work at a restaurant or just do something that is more consistent. Hearing that made my heart drop, because I have an MFA and an incredibly successful career that was my life all up until the shitstorm that threw us into parenthood.
I do want a daughter. And a big part of me really does want this baby. But I feel so incredibly stuck and I fear that bringing her into this world with my mental health the way it is, and our finances the way they are is not fair. It also doesn’t feel fair to our living son. If I’m being honest, a big part of me also does not want to give up on the career that I have had to put in the back burner these last two years. I felt like maybe I was going to be able to go back to the work that gave my life meaning. My dad also was the biggest supporter of my practice, and I feel like I’d be letting him down too. Being sick and in bed 24/7 is not helping my mental state either.
I am 10 weeks and need to make a decision soon. I’ve brought up these fears to my partner and he seems to feel like we are a bit past the bandwagon for abortion, since he got to see the ultrasound and find out the gender. I do not want to let him down. But he is also taking up so much of the parenting the last year while I have battled for my mental health and then the surgery. I know he misses me and needs more help. I just feel like I am not only pouring from an empty cup but this pregnancy is like my cup doesn’t have a bottom, so no amount of water could possibly stay in.
Then I look on new parenting sites and I hear a lot of moms say they were hesitant at their second pregnancy. So I second guess myself. I just feel like I love my living son too much to take any of the attention and love I have for him and give it to a whole other human being.
I never thought I would be a person who has two abortions. (Though I am extremely pro choice). We live in Idaho, one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, and when I tried to talk to my OB about my fears, I feel I am not getting counsel that even considers the other option. I am in close contact with her because of how sick I am, (I need 2-3 hospital fluid IVs a week from the vomiting) and am on all sorts of different medications to help. I just feel stupid, stuck, and completely frozen.
If you are still here, thank you. Any advice, words, anything, is appreciated.

This is going to be a long post and sound insane, but these last few years have been such a series of catastrophes and all play into my choice of whether or not to continue this pregnancy. Thank you for your time and your guidance (should you have it 🙏🏼🤍) apologies in advance for the length.
I am 33 (f) and have a 2.5 year old son with my partner of 4 years. I am now 10 weeks pregnant but I’m really doubting myself. I need help discerning if it’s trauma or if it’s the right thing to do to terminate.
I adore our little family. We always wanted 2 kids, but we had some incredibly life altering experiences during and after we brought our son into the world. Before having our son, I was a successful artist and business owner. It was my life and I loved it. But, I always wanted to be a mom. When we got pregnant within the first year of dating, we both decided we wanted to keep the pregnancy, against most of our families wishes. That pregnancy was horrendous. I had HG (where you throw up 10+ times a day) right up until my son was born. I developed a heart condition, and I was not able to work. I had serious prenatal depression. Flash forward to when our son was born, I labored for 72 hours, and when he was born, he was blue and taken to the NICU while I had a severe postpartum hemorrhage and the doctors had to work to save both of our lives. I have very severe birth trauma and so does my husband. But still, Postpartum is when all shit hit the fan. My son had severe colic (I mean literally never stopped screaming) and 4 weeks postpartum I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my tailbone and fractured my pelvis. I could not walk for 6 months after that and had to learn to breastfeed laying on my side. At 3 months old, my son was diagnosed with congenital nystagmus, and we were told he would likely never be able to see and to prepare for our son to have lifelong disability. The day after that, we found out my dad (the dearest person in the world to me and my son’s namesake) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We live right across the street from them and see them in the mornings and evenings. My husband also lost his job during all of this, and we have been on/off unemployment that whole next year. The next year was a blur of hospital visits with my dad and my son. We had to go all over to children’s hospitals for treatment for my son, and chemo for my dad. I kept pushing to get my business back together because I was so overwhelmed and worried sick. I could not work because our son was doing so poorly, seizures, hospital stays, endless blurry days. I had severe postpartum depression and anxiety. I also will add that my son’s medical problems made it so he woke about every hour since he was born. (He still wakes up 4-5 times a night), but we have noticed they are getting fewer and farther between and he has slept through the night a couple times, which is HUGE.
We got pregnant unintentionally when our son was 8 months, and it was a fairly easy decision that we needed to terminate. We live in Idaho so it was hard to arrange but we both felt clear that this was not healthy for our family at the time. So we did an early medication abortion, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Shortly thereafter, I had surgery for an abscess that formed in my perineum as a result of being allergic to the dissolving sutures they used to fix my third degree tear I got during my son’s birth. It was an extremely painful surgery, and during that recovery time I got addicted to the medication I was on. It numbed the pain as well as some of the extreme emotional distress. This last fall I sought treatment once I realized it was a problem and have been completely sober ever since (I never misused alcohol or drugs before this), but it has taken a while for my brain chemistry to level out. During this time in treatment I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and just started medication, and after many trials I feel like I may finally be getting some help for my mental health. My bipolar symptoms began postpartum with visual hallucinations.
My husband finally got a job this winter and is doing really well. We are way in the negatives in medical and credit card debt from the time we were just trying to survive as a family. So it still does not feel totally stable but we are on the right path. My son is doing so much better now and is leaps and bounds ahead of what we ever imagined was possible. He can see, and though we don’t know what that will look like in the long term, we are so proud of him and overjoyed that our little one is healthy, thriving and well. this early spring my husband and I talked about considering having a second child, since we had always wanted two. We never said ‘yes’ it’s for sure but the thought had been brought up.
In May, I slipped on one of my son’s trains on the hardwood floor while carrying him. I protected him, but I ended up falling and severely injuring myself. I required a 7 hour long surgery, and needed to reshape my femur, replace my kneecap/ligaments and adjust my tibia. Lots of bone shaping and screws. I was in the hospital for weeks. It was a blur. Recovery was slow and expensive. As I started to heal, maybe 6 weeks post op, my husband and I decided to try to have intercourse. I was sort of the mentality that it was okay to not be careful because it wasn’t likely to happen, and if we got pregnant we would be okay. I don’t know if it was the post operative drugs I was on that made me think that or what….we did not use protection.
The next week my dad was put in hospice. I (alongside with my mom) were his primary caretakers. I was on crutches and a full leg brace and trying to manage recovery, my toddler and my dad as he passed. A week before he died I got the positive pregnancy test. Initially I was shocked but not surprised, but dealing with SO MUCH that I literally could not handle thinking about it. My focus was my dad. He passed away in my arms a month ago today, and I am still in such deep grief I can hardly bring myself out of bed.
Flash forward to now and I am 9.5 weeks pregnant. During the first few days after my dad died I felt some odd comfort in the pregnancy, but I also wasn’t ready to really confront it. As the days went by I started getting the same HG symptoms that I did with my first baby, vomiting all the time, unable to do literally anything, all while keeping it a secret and planning my dad’s funeral. I feel like I’m moving through the motions because I want to be excited but I am in fight or flight. As my symptoms have worsened, the reality is hitting me that I don’t know if I can do this. My son is deeply grieving his papa, who he saw every day, and says things like “mommy sick like papa” and he thinks that I am going to die too because I can’t get out of bed.
My partner seems very excited about the pregnancy and it’s almost given him a new lease on life perspective, especially since doing the genetic testing at our OB and finding out the gender is a girl (I’ve always dreamed of having a daughter). He wants to be a girl dad so bad, and he would be absolutely amazing at it.
Here’s where I’m at right now. We have shared with some friends and some of his family, and all are excited like “this must be such a light during such a hard time”. And I on some level feel that way, but when I think about bringing another whole human being into the world, and the amount of self sacrifice it takes as a mother to physically do that, I think that I literally just won’t survive it. To be fair I keep thinking about what new motherhood was like with my son, and all of the trauma that followed, and I don’t know if I am just assigning that experience to this one because it’s all I know of parenthood.
But I look at my little 2 year old and I see a little boy who REALLY needs his mom right now. Because of the trauma of the last year, especially my recovery and subsequent surgery, I have had to be very absent. This pregnancy feels like I am prolonging this estrangement when all I want to do is be well and able to give him the world.
My partner comes from a very different economic background than I, and his belief is that we can just make it work. He said I just may need to give away my studio and art practice, (as well as the big reopening I had planned for September) and just get a part time job to make ends meet. (I have been working part time as an adjunct professor but had to take time off for obvious reasons). But teacher pay is not great. He said I could work at a restaurant or just do something that is more consistent. Hearing that made my heart drop, because I have an MFA and an incredibly successful career that was my life all up until the shitstorm that threw us into parenthood.
I do want a daughter. And a big part of me really does want this baby. But I feel so incredibly stuck and I fear that bringing her into this world with my mental health the way it is, and our finances the way they are is not fair. It also doesn’t feel fair to our living son. If I’m being honest, a big part of me also does not want to give up on the career that I have had to put in the back burner these last two years. I felt like maybe I was going to be able to go back to the work that gave my life meaning. My dad also was the biggest supporter of my practice, and I feel like I’d be letting him down too. Being sick and in bed 24/7 is not helping my mental state either.
I am 10 weeks and need to make a decision soon. I’ve brought up these fears to my partner and he seems to feel like we are a bit past the bandwagon for abortion, since he got to see the ultrasound and find out the gender. I do not want to let him down. But he is also taking up so much of the parenting the last year while I have battled for my mental health and then the surgery. I know he misses me and needs more help. I just feel like I am not only pouring from an empty cup but this pregnancy is like my cup doesn’t have a bottom, so no amount of water could possibly stay in.
Then I look on new parenting sites and I hear a lot of moms say they were hesitant at their second pregnancy. So I second guess myself. I just feel like I love my living son too much to take any of the attention and love I have for him and give it to a whole other human being.
I never thought I would be a person who has two abortions. (Though I am extremely pro choice). We live in Idaho, one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, and when I tried to talk to my OB about my fears, I feel I am not getting counsel that even considers the other option. I am in close contact with her because of how sick I am, (I need 2-3 hospital fluid IVs a week from the vomiting) and am on all sorts of different medications to help. I just feel stupid, stuck, and completely frozen.
If you are still here, thank you. Any advice, words, anything, is appreciated.

This is going to be a long post and sound insane, but these last few years have been such a series of catastrophes and all play into my choice of whether or not to continue this pregnancy. Thank you for your time and your guidance (should you have it 🙏🏼🤍) apologies in advance for the length.

I am 33 (f) and have a 2.5 month old son with my partner of 4 years. I am now 10 weeks pregnant but I’m really doubting myself. I need help discerning if it’s trauma or if it’s the right thing to do to terminate.
I adore our little family. We always wanted 2 kids, but we had some incredibly life altering experiences during and after we brought our son into the world. Before having our son, I was a successful artist and business owner. It was my life and I loved it. But, I always wanted to be a mom. When we got pregnant within the first year of dating, we both decided we wanted to keep the pregnancy, against most of our families wishes. That pregnancy was horrendous. I had HG (where you throw up 10+ times a day) right up until my son was born. I developed a heart condition, and I was not able to work. I had serious prenatal depression. Flash forward to when our son was born, I labored for 72 hours, and when he was born, he was blue and taken to the NICU while I had a severe postpartum hemorrhage and the doctors had to work to save both of our lives. I have very severe birth trauma and so does my husband. But still, Postpartum is when all shit hit the fan. My son had severe colic (I mean literally never stopped screaming) and 4 weeks postpartum I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my tailbone and fractured my pelvis. I could not walk for 6 months after that and had to learn to breastfeed laying on my side.
At 3 months old, my son was diagnosed with congenital nystagmus, and we were told he would likely never be able to see and to prepare for our son to have lifelong disability. The day after that, we found out my dad (the dearest person in the world to me and my son’s namesake) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We live right across the street from them and see them in the mornings and evenings. My husband also lost his job during all of this, and we have been on/off unemployment that whole next year.

The next year was a blur of hospital visits with my dad and my son. We had to go all over to children’s hospitals for treatment for my son, and chemo for my dad. I kept pushing to get my business back together because I was so overwhelmed and worried sick. I could not work because our son was doing so poorly, seizures, hospital stays, endless blurry days. I had severe postpartum depression and anxiety. I also will add that my son’s medical problems made it so he woke about every hour since he was born. (He still wakes up 4-5 times a night), but we have noticed they are getting fewer and farther between and he has slept through the night a couple times, which is HUGE.

We got pregnant unintentionally when our son was 8 months, and it was a fairly easy decision that we needed to terminate. We live in Idaho so it was hard to arrange but we both felt clear that this was not healthy for our family at the time. So we did an early medication abortion, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Shortly thereafter, I had surgery for an abscess that formed in my perineum as a result of being allergic to the dissolving sutures they used to fix my third degree tear I got during my son’s birth. It was an extremely painful surgery, and during that recovery time I got addicted to the medication I was on. It numbed the pain as well as some of the extreme emotional distress. This last fall I sought treatment once I realized it was a problem and have been completely sober ever since (I never misused alcohol or drugs before this), but it has taken a while for my brain chemistry to level out. During this time in treatment I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and started medication, and after many trials I feel like I may finally be getting some help for my mental health. My bipolar symptoms began postpartum but the doctors didn’t recognize it.

My husband finally got a job this winter and is doing really well. We are way in the negatives in medical and credit card debt from the time we were just trying to survive as a family. So it still does not feel totally stable but we are on the right path. My son is doing so much better now and is leaps and bounds ahead of what we ever imagined was possible. He can see, and though we don’t know what that will look like in the long term, we are so proud of him and overjoyed that our little one is healthy, thriving and well. this early spring my husband and I talked about considering having a second child, since we had always thought we would have two. We never said ‘yes’ it’s for sure but the thought had been brought up.

In May, I slipped on one of my son’s trains on the hardwood floor while carrying him. I protected him, but I ended up falling and severely injuring myself. I required a 7 hour long surgery, and needed to reshape my femur, replace my kneecap/ligaments and adjust my tibia. Lots of bone shaping and screws. I was in the hospital for weeks. It was a blur. Recovery was slow and expensive. As I started to heal, maybe 6 weeks post op, my husband and I decided to try to have intercourse. I was sort of the mentality that it was okay to not be careful because it wasn’t likely to happen, but if we got pregnant we would be okay. I don’t know if it was the post operative drugs I was on that made me think that or what….we did not use protection.

The week after that, my dad was put in hospice. I (alongside with my mom) were his primary caretakers. I was on crutches and a full leg brace and trying to manage recovery, my toddler and my dad as he passed. A week before he died I got the positive pregnancy test. Initially I was shocked but not surprised, but dealing with SO MUCH that I literally could not handle thinking about it. My focus was my dad. He passed away in my arms a month ago today, and I am still in such deep grief I can hardly bring myself out of bed.

Flash forward to now and I am 10 weeks pregnant. During the first few days after my dad died I felt some odd comfort in the pregnancy, but I also wasn’t ready to really confront it. As the days went by I started getting the same HG symptoms that I did with my first baby, vomiting all the time, unable to do literally anything, all while keeping it a secret and planning my dad’s funeral. I feel like I’m moving through the motions because I want to be excited but I am in fight or flight. As my symptoms have worsened, the reality is hitting me that I don’t know if I can do this. My son is deeply grieving his papa, who he saw every day, and says things like “mommy sick like papa” and he thinks that I am going to die too because I can’t get out of bed.

My partner seems very excited about the pregnancy and it’s almost given him a new lease on life perspective, especially since doing the genetic testing at our OB and finding out the gender is a girl (I’ve always dreamed of having a daughter). He wants to be a girl dad so bad, and he would be absolutely amazing at it.
Here’s where I’m at right now. We have shared with some friends and some of his family, and all are excited like “this must be such a light during such a hard time”. And I on some level feel that way, but when I think about bringing another whole human being into the world, and the amount of self sacrifice it takes as a mother to physically do that, I think that I literally just won’t survive it. To be fair I keep thinking about what new motherhood was like with my son, and all of the trauma that followed, and I don’t know if I am just assigning that experience to this one because it’s all I know of parenthood.

But I look at my little 2 year old and I see a little boy who REALLY needs his mom right now. Because of the trauma of the last year, especially my recovery and subsequent surgery, I have had to be very absent. This pregnancy feels like I am prolonging this estrangement when all I want to do is be well and able to give him the world.
My partner comes from a very different economic background than I, and his belief is that we can just make it work. He said I just may need to give away my studio and art practice, (as well as the big reopening I had planned for September) and just get a part time job to make ends meet. (I have been working part time as an adjunct professor but had to take time off for obvious reasons). But teacher pay is not great. He said I could work at a restaurant or just do something that is more consistent. Hearing that made my heart drop, because I have an MFA and had an incredibly successful career that was my life all up until the shitstorm that threw us into parenthood. I had to funnel all of my business money into keeping our family afloat.

I do want a daughter. And a big part of me really does want this baby. But I feel so incredibly stuck and I fear that bringing her into this world with my mental health the way it is, and our finances the way they are is not fair. It also doesn’t feel fair to our living son. If I’m being honest, a big part of me also does not want to give up on the career that I have had to put in the back burner these last two years. I felt like maybe I was going to be able to go back to the work that gave my life meaning. My dad also was the biggest supporter of my practice, and I feel like I’d be letting him down too. Being sick and in bed 24/7 is not helping my mental state either.

I need to make a decision soon. I’ve brought up these fears to my partner and he seems to feel like we are a bit past the bandwagon for abortion, since he got to see the ultrasound and find out the gender. I do not want to let him down. But he is also taking up so much of the parenting the last year while I have battled for my mental health and then the surgery. I know he misses me and needs more help. I just feel like I am not only pouring from an empty cup but like my cup is actively on fire.

Then I look on new parenting sites and I hear a lot of moms say they were hesitant at their second pregnancy. So I second guess myself. I just feel like I love my living son too much to take any of the attention and love I have for him and give it to a whole other human being.
I never thought I would be a person who has two abortions. (Though I am extremely pro choice). We live in Idaho, one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, and when I tried to talk to my OB about my fears, I feel I am not getting counsel that even considers the other option. I am in close contact with her because of how sick I am, (I need 2-3 hospital fluid IVs a week from the vomiting) and am on all sorts of different medications to help.
I just feel so stuck, and completely frozen. I don’t want to regret it either way, and I don’t know what to do.

If you are still here, thank you. Any advice, words, anything, is appreciated.

We are expecting a baby girl in February. Her older brother is named Luca (I’m Italian and my dad was from Lucca). We have been going back and forth on names and here is what we have:

Daphne (Daffy for short)
Rafaela (Raffy for short)
Joni (like Joni Mitchell)

I have so many others that I adore, but my husband is surprisingly picky about names. Thoughts on these names?

This is a very off topic post and talks about death, so if that is triggering to you, just keep that in mind 🙏🏼
So I have been playing my the ultimate decades challenge since my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. It’s something we did together as fellow history lovers and it helped distract him from the chemo and his disease. I’d bring it to the chemo treatments and he’s always ask for the village ‘updates’, and watch me play. We made it to 1358. The last night I played our game, I was was sitting watch at my dads bedside who was so sadly dying in hospice. I of course was attentive to him, but as some of you know, the dying process can take a while, so that night I told my mom to go to bed and get some rest and that I would do the night post. There was moment of calm so I grabbed my laptop and picked up our game. I played for maybe an hour.
Then I noticed things were progressing with my dad so I saved and closed the game and went to be by his side. My dad died in my arms 4 hours later.
I haven’t touched the game since the night my dad died because of how immense the grief was. I went to open it today, the first time I’ve touched my laptop since my dad died, and somehow, the entire village is gone, with the save file date the day he died. bizarre. I don’t really know what to do. The sim families are still there in the village, but all of their farms, the buildings my dad and I built, the graveyards and family inventories are completely gone. I was hoping to maybe find some comfort in going back into the village my dad I built together. I don’t know know what to do except to maybe lay the game to rest, like I have my dad. If anyone has any advice for me, it would be so appreciated. If not, keep playing and I will be looking for all of your village updates 🤍

My father died of pancreatic cancer last week. He had it for 2 years, but his death was rather sudden, and the grief we all feel is so immense. We live across the street from my parents and my son (2.5) has grown up going to ‘Nonna and papa’s’ every day. We would go in the mornings for a morning coffee and then do dinner with them most nights. He was SO close to my dad. I’m having a hard time explaining to him where Papa went. We ordered some books and are using language like “ papa got very sick and his body stopped working, so Papa died. We miss papa very much. Mommy is very sad and it’s okay for you to be sad too”

We try not to use words like “he went away” or “went to heaven”. I tried telling him that papa is “in his heart” but it ended up scaring him because he literally thought papa was IN his body. (He’s pretty literal). We made a photo book of pictures of my dad for my son to look at when he misses him. He’s stopped asking to see him (which he did incessantly in the beginning) and last night when we were looking at his photo book, he said “papa gone”. So I think he’s starting to understand but it’s all breaking my heart.

My dad was my heart and soul and our son is actually named after him. I am grieving so deeply and I want my son to know it’s okay to cry but I don’t know how much exposure is too much. I’m leaning on friends to take him for fun daytime activities but trying to keep his schedule predictable. I guess I am just asking Any advice to help us get through this time💔

Hey all!
I am doing the ultimate decades challenge and may family has only made it to 1304, but it feels like a lot of investment and time!!
The new game update reallllly messed with all of my families. I’m kind of freaking out 😅
Does anyone know if any of the historical mods need to be updated before game play? (I use all the main ones recommended by the rules and this thread)
Also, how do I get cc back? Help!
My little hamlet thanks you!!

Hey! I am just starting out building my world for the ultimate decades challenge. I’m wondering if the royalty and legacy expansion pack add to the gameplay? I’m wondering if I should buy it. Thanks!