When it was about 20% of my weight that I lost, I started to get help at the hospital.

I remember going for what turned out to be fluids, but there was this very strange vibe from doctors there that I got, which was pregnancy is not an illness, Pregnancy is happy.

Why are you not happy?

Our TFMR stories pregnancy loss support in the heartbreak of terminating a wanted pregnancy.

Hi, I'm Sabrina, I'm a TFMR lost mom to my daughter Clara.

I had to end my wanted pregnancy for high drops, cystic hygroma, potential chromosomal defects, and for my own health.

And now I help other TFMR parents in their darkest hour, parenting through the impossible.

If you're listening to this, you found me, and that means you're not alone anymore.

You can talk to someone about this, e-mail me, or book a call.

I've been through it too, and I want to hear from you.

This is our TFMR Stories support in the heartbreak of terminating a wanted pregnancy.

Welcome to another episode of our TFMR Stories.

I'm Sabrina Fletcher, the TFMR doula, and today we have a TFMR mom with us.

Her name is Emily Cross, She is a mom of three with one living child.

She had a T FM R loss for hyperemesis gravidarum and also a SIDS loss.

And she's here to share her baby's stories with us today.

So thank you so much, Emily.

Thanks for coming on to talk about this.

TFMR for maternal health reasons is sometimes not talked about as much and it has different layers to it.

So I'm glad that we're able to have this conversation today.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

I like to start the interviews by asking of a favorite memory from the pregnancy that you lost.

So I was thinking about this earlier.

At the time of my original pregnancy in 20/11/2012, I was living in France with my husband at the time and his parents.

We were out in Paris with another couple, a friend, couple of hours, and we were walking the Champs Elysees, taking a million pictures.

It wasn't my first time there, but it was, you know, it was very exciting night.

It was right around the turn of the year.

It was New Year's, and so everything was full of lights and decorated and I mean the Champs Elysees, beautiful.

Anyway, so just at evening time in early January, it was excellent.

We got back to our friend's apartment, which was right outside of Paris, and I had a pregnancy test with me.

So it must have been, you know, this so many weeks without a period and I've never been pregnant before.

So and I've always, always wanted to be mom forever.

So I took this pregnancy at our friend's house in Paris, outside of Paris.

It was positive.

My husband and I were really, really excited and the first thing I did was call my best friend back in the States, you know?

I told her immediately.

She has subsequently been the first to know about many about my other pregnancies.

But it was this magical night.

And so it really is the very earliest point of the pregnancy.

But it it turns pretty quickly.

So that that night was just kind of spectacular.

And for someone who hadn't been pregnant who was worried about it, I sort of thought, oh, it's, it's possible.

You know, I, I never knew this was possible.

Here I am.

Here we are, a little bilingual French speaking baby.

We thought whether we raised them in the US or in France, we'd have them in a school of the opposite language for consistency.

And so it was all a very big plan.

The trajectory was there, the everything was there and it was very exciting.

That sounds so romantic and so connected and such a family moment, family and friends and celebrating and it just shows, you know, the love that you have for this baby and the baby was wanted and you know, it's, it's not, it's a different kind of abortion, right?

It's just different.

And not there was No Fear at that point.

There was no speculation.

I knew that the boxes were checked.

I'd had, you know, married my husband, Kevin at the time.

We were stable and happy and this was just the perfect, the perfect next step.

Oh I'm so sorry that your pregnancy illness took your baby from you.

Yeah, it got really hard really soon.

I know that the pregnancy hormone, you know, effects a certain pair of jeans that suppress appetite and other things, but I was not very skinny when I started this pregnancy as a regular sized, you know, woman with some extra weight.

And so as the pounds began to come off me at the beginning of the pregnancy, it wasn't scary to people outside of me and my relationship.

It didn't ring the alarms that it probably should have.

So when I stopped being able to consume any food or water, things were really bad.

It wasn't just that I couldn't eat, it wasn't that I couldn't drink.

I mean, I would try to have a spoonful of water, even sugar water and would immediately come back up with any contents on any bile, you know, anything would come up.

So I started to, when it was about 20% of my weight that I lost, I started to get help at the hospital.

My mother-in-law at the time worked at the local hospital there.

And I remember going for what turned out to be fluids, you know, the 1st and several times after that.

But there was this very strange vibe from doctors there that I got, which was pregnancy is not an illness, pregnancy is happy, why are you not happy?

And so it seems like I was begging for the help that I didn't even know I needed.

I've never had any experience like this.

Maybe not lucky, but lucky for me.

Catherine the Princess was having her children at the time and was also suffering from HG.

So there was something out there in the world to compare myself to.

I thought, oh, the, you know, this Princess has it.

It's a real thing.

But again, I, you know, I was just swimming down to almost a regular sized person instead of into nothingness.

And so that really was a barrier to to getting help.

Gosh, there's so much to unpack and all of this.

It's like layers of societal crap that you are up against.

And just to clarify, hyperemesis gravidarum is not morning sickness.

This is an extreme form of vomiting everything.

Like you can keep nothing down and.

It's all the time, so it's a.

Starvation.

It starts in the morning.

It's every time, but it's a bigger toll on the body because of constant, you know, without being too, too gross.

It's just everything that that's in your stomach and doing its job in there that's supposed to be there would come up and it's it's hard on your teeth and your throat.

It's also heaving and in this sort of, you know, bracing, clutching.

It's this very physical thing that starts first thing in the morning where it's just, it is your body's, it wants to get rid of everything.

You know, there's something deep inside that it was meant to protect us.

Certainly there's food we should avoid while pregnant.

I know that it's sort of like a a biological just.

Whirlwind but swung just swung so far to the extreme that this you know, and and it's and it's also a spectrum disorder or illness.

So you can be on the extreme side of it where you could literally die.

Yeah, they would call it severe.

In my case.

Severe higher, yeah.

Yeah.

How many weeks were you able to tolerate?

It was about 6.

I, you know, I knew about four weeks in and that's just around when the sickness started.

So let's see it within two weeks.

It's probably more like 7.

Within a few weeks after understanding that I was pregnant, we began to talk about abortion.

It it was never, it wasn't something that we were thinking of at all.

I mean, as I said, we were very happy about this.

What I remember vividly is that when we started the conversation, it took a while to get to the point where we were both of the understanding that I wanted to survive and so we needed to to get me healthy and to to terminate.

Before we continue on, if you need to talk to someone right now, e-mail me or book a call.

You don't have to figure this out alone.

You can find the links to e-mail or to book a support call.

Book a decision support call here in the show notes.

I'm here for this exact situation.

I want to hear from you again.

See the show notes for the links.

When we got to that decision that his mother was and parents were fully supportive of and and my team, my support system back home was supportive of when I finally made the call.

France has a seven day wait period, so I.

Even even when it's an extreme, there's something wrong with your body.

Right.

Pregnancy's not an illness.

I should be very happy.

So I here's where my privilege comes in.

And I'll, you know, I'll talk about it so much.

We had the wherewithal and the money and the time to purchase plane tickets to fly to England instead, where they're amazing system was able to take me the next day.

So I jumped over to England, to London and had the procedure.

Oh, Emily.

I'm so sorry.

It was a crazy, crazy trip at that point.

I do remember fighting with my husband for, you know, emotional heightened emotions, everything.

But what I'll never forget, I'll never forget being in the clinic and being, you know, not a full cognizance.

But definitely there wasn't under the 2nd that I became unpregnant.

I didn't feel sick.

It was gone.

I went, I ate at an Italian restaurant and had a meal so big that that night I ended up in a London hospital again for essentially, you know, eating filling that stomach that had been so small for so long and not getting anything, just filling it.

And I had tiramisu for dessert and, and despite the hospital visit that night, the medication for the, I don't even know what it's called, but indigestion, despite all that, you know, it was a very clear, it was an off switch to my struggle, except that it was the on switch to dealing with the death of this possibility and going back to not knowing if I'd ever be pregnant again.

It was that fear.

My marriage, you know, lasted a few years after that, but but did come to an end.

And I I didn't become pregnant with him at all.

And I've since married back in 2021.

And so about 10 years after that happens is when we became pregnant with my second child.

So in the meantime, I had my son Raffi, who's alive and he's 7.

But the baby that we had in 2021, that was the next time I got HGI actually didn't have it at all during my pregnancy with, with my son Raffi.

He's my miracle.

He's a miracle baby.

I had no idea what to expect when he got pregnant, But I, I kept waiting for the, for that, you know, for the sickness to, to come over me and it didn't.

And it was just incredible.

And I'll say that I did have morning sickness.

So I want to be really clear that that's very different.

I had morning sickness wherein I'd eat a bagel and then I'd be fine.

And I think that's, you know, more of how it's supposed to be.

Have some crackers when you get up and and you're good.

I did experience that.

But there was no weight loss.

No, in fact, I got big and happy again with that, with that pregnancy.

And so it was a surprise when pregnancy 3 came around and it was like the first one immediately.

It was the four week mark.

And it was I, I knew from the the throwing up then that it was going to be HGI found out I was pregnant on the day that Biden, Biden was called as the winner of that election.

And so that was, I remember that was just a really wonderful day, him and the pregnancy.

I should let you ask the questions, but.

Otherwise, great.

This is great.

Yeah, because.

Because it all intertwines.

It's your whole entire fertility story and each pregnancy is different and yet they're all informed by the other pregnancies and you're still carrying the loss of that first baby into your other pregnancies as well.

So yeah, feeling anxious that it would happen again, umm, you know, worrying and then actually having it happen again in another pregnancy.

And then I had all of these feelings like, OK, I've done this before.

I was in a place where I didn't have the best support system, but I do now.

You know, I'm, there's a, the hospital close to where I live.

There's now I can advocate for myself.

Now I have a voice to say, you know, this is HG, this is going to be HG.

I'm I'm aware and this is what I need.

I didn't know everything.

Of course I didn't.

I, I should have advocate.

I wished I knew to advocate for nourishment during pregnancy when I really only received hydration, but I received enough hydration.

You know, it was, it was scheduled.

It was three times a week.

It was, it was manageable.

So I knew the toll that it had taken on my body for those few weeks before and I had what I believed was this pack, this crisis pack.

Of all of the things that would help me through, top of the list is Zofran.

I know that that's big here and that people can get it here.

It was never offered to me in France.

Do they worry about potential harm to the baby or something or?

That.

Which is ridiculous because if you don't get that then you may need to terminate the pregnancy and.

Right.

I faced that on other fronts, too.

One of the other parts of my pack to get me through was marijuana.

Cannabis used, you know, lightly and responsibly and purchased legally.

It's not prescribed here in Massachusetts.

It wouldn't have been prescribed for a pregnant woman.

So I knew that I was taking a risk on and then one that I was fully honest with all of my providers about to my own detriment.

But again, it was.

It was, I bet.

There's a story there, too.

Yeah, well, if you need the thing to help keep the child, but the child would have died without it, Is it still neglect?

Yes.

So yeah, I decided that this time we would go all the way and.

And we did.

And it was.

It was, if I can say it was, I mean, it was a horrible pregnancy.

It was the memes that I collected were excellent.

A lot of them were pictures of like Bella Swan in one of the Twilights where she gives birth and she looks pretty much like I did, you know, wasting away and just, you know, sunken and sunken in and waif like there were memes about, you know, they, they told me I'd be glowing.

But I also had this hope, this grand sense of hope.

I was grateful that I, I felt I wasn't forced to choose to terminate.

I was grateful that I felt like I had this choice.

It did turn out that my son, who came five weeks early, lived for four weeks and died before his due date.

This is the pregnancy where you did have hyperemesis avodarum.

So this is the third pregnancy, the second with HD and the second that would not yield living child for for very long.

I know that he had deficiencies with thiamine, some other nutrients.

I had him studied at the Harvard and the Boston Children's Hospital, have a Roberts program on SIDS and they do second autopsies and other genetic testing and things to see if your child had markers for SIDS, which he did.

He did.

And there was no marijuana in his system at the time of his death.

You know, he had lived for four weeks as healthily as possible, breastfed and, and he died anyway.

So it's definitely, it really hammers in a lot of the, the lack of choice that I had.

The choices that I did make were scrutinized and I sort of had it, you know, from both sides.

It's like I couldn't do it once or I, you know, I wasn't able to do it once.

I did it once and did the things I needed to do to get through and that still was not OK.

If today's episode hits close to home, I'm here for you.

I want to hear from you.

If you're facing AT FM R decision or grieving after, you can e-mail me at sabrina@thetfmrdoula.com or book your support call.

All the links will be in the show notes below.

You don't have to go through this alone.

Thanks for listening in to Emily's story.

This is Part 1 of 2, so tune back in in a couple of days to hear more about her hyperemesis, loss and love story.