Posted 11/27/2012 1:50 PM (GMT 0)
I'm lying in hospital right now, having an abortion @ 16 weeks because I've become profoundly depressed during the last month of my pregnancy, with some rapid cycling and anxiety thrown in.
I was diagnosed correctly two years ago, after having been misdiagnosed for years. I actually suspect that i was a bipolar child.
I was stable for 6 months prior to now- the longest I have ever been. I have just changed jobs, I'm an RN working in the high care unit of a very busy academic hospital.
I was just in the process of getting my finances sorted out as well, and really becoming fully independent, when I fell pregnant by accident. I was on Yasmin, but also on ever increasing doses of Lithium, and then lamectin. We suspect my liver enzymes became elevated because of the drugs over time, rendering the yasmin useless. But we'll never really know.
Initially I was so happy about the pregnancy, because I've started thinking that I would be able to fall pregnant in the near future. I'm finally with someone who loves me and understands my disease and we've been living together for 3 years now. My partner was alsohappy. He loves babies. And then disaster struck. My lithium levels went haywire. We decided to go ahead with a lithium pregnancy, bearing in mind that some of the more recent research showed that the chances of Epsteins anomaly are not as high as previously thought. Because the drug has worked so well for me. Unfortunately despite the lithium and the lamectal i was on, i kept getting worse. We both felt that a child born under these circumstances would have an uncertain future. Especially if i got hospitalised post-pregnancy. It got so bad that i fell asleep in the car last week, at 8 am in the morning! In the middle of rush hour traffic! Imagine if I did that with a child in the car?
Eventually we came to this decision after much deliberation- with the helpof my psychiatrist and gynaecologist. It's one of the hardest things that i have ever had to go through.
Because of the gestational age of the pregnancy, this has to be done like normal labour. The gynae induced labour yesterday around noon. Not much has happened it's now 4pm here, and it's just starting. It's heartbreaking to have to go through labour, knowing that there will be no baby in the end for you to hold. I think I'll spend the rest of my life wondering about this baby. And what could have been.
I was just wondering if anyone else has been through this?