Paternity question

[Kennaraine]

Obviously a test will be done.
I’m due August 1-August 6.
Last period was October 31, 2019

I got raped October 18th (day after ovulation)

I continued to have sex with my partner oct 23-28 and November 6-18.

I have regular 27-29 day cycles. I took pregnancy tests regularly beginning of Nov until Nov 20th. All negative. I took one Nov 29th and it was a pretty good positive.
I went for an ultrasound at 8 weeks on December 26th, and they said I was exactly 8 weeks +/- a day.

They changed my due date to August 1st at 16 weeks.

Please help.  

[AnnieBrooke]

Hi, I'm sorry to hear about your horrible experience. We live in a world in which men think it is their right to commit violent acts against women, and it's so wrong. But there is one thing you don't need to worry about. Since your last period came more recently than the rape, and your ultrasounds line up with conception in mid-November, there is no risk that the rape produced the pregnancy. You hardly even would need a test, except for peace of mind.

If this is still troubling you after the doctor has told you when you conceived by all the medical evidence, it could be that the emotional effects of the assault are still with you, popping up as worries about paternity. (Women often write in to this forum whose worries or anxieties about something else have morphed into obsession that the wrong guy is the dad, not only in the case of rape but in other situations that involve strong emotion. Oddly, it's a form of wanting control over a situation in which they feel out of control.) But even if the rape might have long-reaching emotional effects, the actual sperm was entirely dead and gone, and could not affect you in any way, by the time you got pregnant. Is your rapist being prosecuted? Do you have counseling help? Addressing the lack of control, pain and anxiety of a rape seems important for a lot of reasons, and one is to prevent that stress from devolving into worries that somehow there is a question about paternity. There really isn't. So, don't worry about that, and if it's your boyfriend who is pushing the worry don't let him worry about it either.

Please take care.

[Kennaraine]

Thank you so much for your reply. It’s definitely been a bumpy experience and hard to enjoy this pregnancy experience. My partner believes it’s his and has been very supportive. I’m just so stressed about continuing to prepare for baby if it wasn’t my partners. Then the doctor changing my due date had me so stressed out

[AnnieBrooke]

The only due date that matters for purpose of trying to estimate a conception date is the one from the first ultrasound. A sixteenth- week ultrasound is too late to use for this purpose, because some babies can grow faster and some slower, and those differences begin to appear by then. (By a woman's 40th week, if she were to try to use an ultrasound to determine when conception was, the margin for error would be +/- 3 weeks! But it will only be +/- one day in her seventh or eighth week of pregnancy, just as your ultrasound tech or doctor told you.) This all is just a way to say that the later the ultrasound, the less likely it is to be useful for determining conception. Also, even if you count back from a due date of August 1 and not August 6, it still points to conception in the second week of November. That is nowhere near October 18. Sperm only lasts 5 or at most 6 days in your body. Nothing the doctor has said would indicate the pregnancy came on that early, and everything he has said indicates it happened in the second week of November.

If the doctor changing a due date by 5 days stressed you out as much as you describe, in your shoes, I would seriously get in touch with a counselor (see if your ob/gyn can recommend one) and talk over the trauma of what happened. It might be that some of it is still bubbling up, and it will help a lot to just talk it over.

[Kennaraine]

Thank you a lot! It’s so scary to think about and has definitely traumatized me a bit. It’s not the first time I’ve been raped, but I was so young the first time I didn’t realize what it was until a year or so later. I think this time has been worse because I did get pregnant within a month and a half of the incident and it’s freaked me out and mentally scared me

[AnnieBrooke]

Please take your emotional health as seriously as you would physical health, and see a professional about it. You say "It's so scary to think about," but what you are thinking about is unreal. It's like a ghost story. Yes, they are scary, but not real. Don't be reading a ghost story in your closet at night with a flashlight and  get too scared to go out into your house. We read scary things for a thrill and to (ultimately) feel safe in our real world by comparison. You might be doing this to some extent -- scaring yourself with a totally wrong scenario to feel safer by comparison to your fears. Whether or not that's the case, there is nothing about your dates that suggests the rape had any impact on your pregnancy. If you can't quit scaring yourself about it, that suggests the rape is preying on your mind, and that it's time to find help for your stress caused by the rape. Mental health is a form of health, and when one's health is off one needs medical assistance.  Find a counselor if these wrong thoughts keep popping up, just the way you would find a doctor for a broken arm. You need all your health when pregnant.

[Kennaraine]

My mental health was already horrible before everything happened, and it’s definitely been draining. I’m going to look into some help to control my feelings. I’ve spoken to one therapist but it still hasn’t helped.
I’m definitely pro-choice in my situation, and almost considered aborting the baby because I didn’t want to risk it being from the rape(I couldn’t mentally raise a child knowing how it happened) but my partner was totally against it because he believed it was his. It’s not at all an ideal situation but we’re trying to make it through.

[AnnieBrooke]

When you say "I didn't want to risk it being from the rape" and "we're 'trying' to make it through," it sounds like you think there's a plausible reason to be worried. But it was weeks (and a period) between the rape and the sex that produced the baby; it's hard to believe you even thought there was a risk once you had your period. (I assume you know that having a period shows you aren't pregnant.) It's not like you really needed more proof than that, but you did get more proofs as well, from your doctor.

I suggest you talk to a counselor who has experience dealing with post-traumatic stress. It sounds like the stress of the rape is getting misplaced onto the pregnancy. I am very empathetic about you having to cope with a rape, but for everyone involved's sake (yours, the baby's, and your boyfriend's) you really have got to stop inventing obsessive fears. It must drive your boyfriend crazy that you can't relax, and it can't be any fun for you either. See a good therapist who has dealt with this issue, and stick with the effort to unload the unhappy event so you don't carry it around any more.

Good luck!

[Kennaraine]

Thank you! I just stress because I know people have implantation bleeding and I don’t remember how heavy my period was, but it was about 5-6 days of bleeding I believe.
I’ll be meeting with someone soon! Thanks!

[AnnieBrooke]

The dates from the ultrasounds show that the bleeding was a period. Please take the medical evidence seriously and your fears less seriously.

You say "I 'know' people have implantation bleeding." But consider this, you don't really know that. What you know is that women write endlessly about the topic on the Internet. (We get the question a lot in MedHelp in the "Am I pregnant?" community, especially from women who hope against hope that they are pregnant but a period has come. But of all the women, who have ever written in with this question, not one has ever written back saying that bleeding she had was later shown to have been from implantation.) An embryo is smaller than the dot on the i in this sentence, it is not going to cause days of bleeding when it implants. If it causes any bleeding at all it would be a tiny wisp of blood once.

Anyway, stick with what the doctor says, and let your fears go on by.  You brain can cook up a new fear every minute. Your job is to rationally sort the endless stream of fear-chatter, or you might as well join the tinfoil-hat crowd. I'm glad you'll be seeing a counselor, if you find one who really understands PTSD. you'll be amazed how much helps to just unburden yourself of the buried stresses from the event.

Take care.  

[Kennaraine]

Thanks a lot for your comments and advice!

[AnnieBrooke]

Please enjoy your pregnancy. You're going to be a mommy, that is the greatest thing in the world. :)