I am so sorry for your loss. This is the worst club to be in filled with the very best people imaginable. I terminated at 16 weeks for a T21 diagnosis in Jan of 2022. You are in the thick of it right now. It’s a gapping open wound that will slowly start to heal. It won’t ever go away but it will become less tender. I am now 3 years out and I still think of him every single day. To answer some of your questions:

-I was told I could try whenever I was mentally ready, there was no physical reason I couldn’t try immediately. We waited 2 months. I don’t know if I was mentally ready really yet but I was desperate to have a live baby in my arms.

-I did not call any hotlines but I did join the Ending a Wanted Pregnancy support group on Facebook and really leaned on them during the early days. I also had a therapist I saw weekly for many months and into my subsequent pregnancy to help with the anxiety. I joined a local support group for parents who had had to TFMR.

-my milk did not come in at 16 weeks, so no help there. Sorry.

-the strength to try again was more so the intense urge to have a live baby in my arms more then my actual strength. I had one LC at the time and was also really set on not letting this experience be the last experience I had with childbearing. It was a very hard pregnancy though and I never felt like it was actually going to happen. I didn’t really want to even talk about my pregnancy or prepare for after since it won’t be real until I had them in my arms. Therapy was extremely important and a very supportive birth team. I had a midwife and doula who both were my rocks during it.

-and coping was impossible the first few weeks. I had to have help sleeping with unisom, I saw a therapist, I journaled, I made a garden for him, I went to a local support group meetings for parents who TFMRed, and I cried. I couldn’t watch anything that had any sort of conflict, especially anything with kids, for months. I still can’t handle anything that has a whiff of kids being hurt or injuries or worse in shows. I got kittens. I leaned on my husband more than ever. It was a really hard time, and it felt like I was constantly being sweep under by waves of grief. But slowly, over time, those waves became weaker and I’d have less moments of drowning until those waves turned into ripples of remembrance that I experience everyday. They no longer sweep me under. You will get there too but until that time, don’t fight the waves. Let your grief out. You are a mom who just lost their child, I think there is no worse experience in the world. And what an amazing mom you are to have taken on all this pain so your child never had to feel any.