I made the choice... twice

Trigger warning: intimate partner abuse

I was sixteen. Sixteen when I found out I was pregnant. I still had my provisional drivers license. I couldn’t rent a car. I couldn’t vote. I couldn’t smoke a cigarette. I couldn’t drink a beer. But now I was going to be a parent. 

All that aside I was stuck. Stuck in an abusive relationship with a man who would call me fat just to see me cry, and turn around and call me a boney toothpick when he saw a curvy woman. Verbal abuse. I didn’t even know what those words meant when I was 16. All I knew was I was pregnant and he made me cry every night. 

I remember going for the consultation for my abortion. They asked me many questions and that’s when it hit me. I never missed a pill. Not one single pill. Yet, I was pregnant. I went home to my boyfriend after my initial consult for the abortion. He laughed at me when I brought up my birth control. He said “you idiot I took your pills all the time.” Meaning he threw one out here and there. I was shocked, devastated, I felt betrayed. 

Ultimately, I terminated my pregnancy with a medical abortion at 9 weeks. I saw that baby on the screen the day before. Planned parenthood was amazing. They never turned the screen towards me. But when they left the room, I looked. I saw the shape, the small arm buds, everything. But still the following day I had the abortion. 

I wish the story ended there. I left the man that abused me verbally and occasionally physically. But my self esteem was so low. I was a scared, confused girl and I took him back after he promised things would be different. 

This time I wasn’t careful. He didn’t have to compromise my birth control because I did it to myself. I never regretted my first abortion. I regretted going back to that man and I coped by neglecting myself. Something I only realize now, 6 years later. 

Three months passed and after a particularly bad fight I went to stay at my mom’s. I told her I was feeling sick and I went and got a test. The lines showed up immediately. I wish I could explain the emotions I felt that day, seeing those lines. But I can’t. 

I told my boyfriend. He was overjoyed, as he had been before. He won. He had me. For life. I pretended things were good. I felt I didn’t have a choice; I couldn’t possibly have another abortion. One night, I discovered he had been cheating on me with 3 women the entire year and a half of our relationship. 

Yelling turned to name calling. And when that wasn’t enough of an impact on me, he pushed me down 3 flights of stairs. 

Enough was enough. I moved home. He called me multiple times a day. He said “think of Carter.” The name we had picked when I was pretending things were good and I was happy with the pregnancy. 

I had my second abortion, this time the pill at 8 weeks. I felt free. I look back on it now and there is not one single regret. I do not miss what could have been. Because I know what could have been would have been hell. 

I became a mother 2 years ago. With the man I love by my side. We welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world. I know now she would never have been here if I hadn’t made the decisions I made. 

I will never regret my decision to be able to have 2 safe legal abortions. And that is a feeling no one can take away from me, ever. 

No Regrets

I have had two abortions, one at 24 and the other at 26. Both times I was using contraception, the first time condoms, the second the contraceptive patch. Both times I fell pregnant with the same man who was my long term boyfriend and who also could've probably provided for me and a baby financially. So, why did I have an abortion not just once, but twice? Well I just didn't feel ready. Mentally or emotionally I wasn't prepared to give a child what I thought it needed, and I suspected my partner wasn't either. I felt certain of my decision the first time. The second time, not knowing if perhaps this would be my last chance to have a child, some doubt did creep in, but after about two days of serious consideration I knew that those factors did not override my feelings of not being mentally ready to take on such a massive commitment. 

The first time I opted for what is called a 'medical' abortion, believing it was a less invasive procedure. Living in the UK, abortions are actually free but there is a waiting list and it can take up to a few weeks. If you want the termination done as soon as possible then you have to pay for it, so that's what I did the first time. On arriving at the clinic I wasn't particularly nervous as I thought the whole process would be easy, just popping a pill and feeling some discomfort and perhaps experience some bleeding. How wrong I was! There were some protesters outside with quite graphic posters chanting nasty messages at us as we went in. It really pissed me off to think that people could be so judgmental and self-righteous.

I took the pill, was advised to take some paracetamol, go home and let things take their course. After a few hours, a sudden crashing wave of cramps rushed through me and I felt what I can honestly only describe as the worst pain I've ever experienced. Then followed hours on the loo feeling like I'd pass out from how cold I felt and intense vomiting and diarrhea, screaming at my partner that I thought I might be dying. After a call to the clinic and being assured that I was just having a strong reaction to the pill but that I would be ok, I had no choice but to just ride out the excruciating pain until I was so exhausted I fell asleep. The experience traumatized me due to the physical pain I went through, but other than that I have no regrets.

With my second abortion, I chose to have the surgical option. All I remember is lying down in the theatre room one second and the next waking up in a wheelchair being pushed to a recovery room. Apart from feeling a little groggy I felt absolutely fine. I was taken to sit in a room of about 8 other girls until the anesthetic wore off. Some were crying which was disconcerting but I personally knew I'd made the right decision. Fast forward 5 years and I'm pregnant for the third time with the same man, but this time it was planned and we are both happy. I can honestly say neither me nor my partner ever felt moments of regret since the terminations. In fact there have been quite a few moments that have proved to me we made the right decision both times.

Now that I'm nearly 9 months gone I believe that in my twenties, neither I nor my relationship with my now fiancé was strong enough to withstand the emotional toll that pregnancy brings with it, let alone the responsibility of what having a child involves. I also think having those abortions has made this experience all the more special this time round and something I know we are both now completely ready to undertake.

Synchronous Eggs

I found out I was pregnant a week before taking a trip to Hawaii. When I looked down at the pale blue line I was overcome by something best described as calm distress. I wasn't ready to bring a child into this world. I had been dating a guy for only a couple months at the time and even though he said all the right things I had this urgent desire to become un-pregnant. It was my body and it was my choice.

Luckily for me I have some amazing and supportive friends who helped me figure out what my options were. What I learned: there are two ways to abort. Surgical and medical. Surgical meant you can't swim, and I wasn't planning on cancelling my trip to Hawaii just because I got pregnant. I ultimately went with medical abortion which involved getting an injection in my arm to terminate the pregnancy. The usual method is to take some pills, insert them up your vagina, and miscarry the contents of your womb, but I was stating my trip in a camper van and I didn't want to deal with a lot of blood without easy access to a bathroom so I held off on taking the pills.

The first week of my trip was a breeze but on the first day of week two I started to feel intense cramps and I realized I was miscarrying!! By this point we were staying on a farm on the Big Island which had a bathroom which was helpful because I bled for a couple days.

On the last day of bleeding I found something hard in my underwear. I inspected it and it looked like a tiny kidney bean covered in blood. It was then that I realized I had passed the embryo. I was shocked and a little disturbed. Since I caught the pregnancy early I expected that I would just bleed out an accumulation of cells. No one warned me about the embryo. I didn't look at it for too long before wrapping it in toilet paper and flushing it down the toilet. I didn’t know what else to do.

 At the farm there were chickens and we had a fridge full of eggs to use as we pleased. That same morning that I found the embryo, I pulled out a frying pan and cracked an egg. To my absolute shock and horror, the egg was fertilized! I screamed as though I was dying and the farm owner and my friend ran into the kitchen. I shrieked "The egg was fertilized!!!"

The little red kidney bean came back into mind and stayed there for some time. I’m still not sure exactly what the Universe was trying to tell me but I don’t believe it was a coincidence that I had that experience with the egg the morning my abortion completed.

In early 2016, I found out I was pregnant. My partner and I agreed to terminate the pregnancy and within a week of our conversation, I had an appointment. Every step of the way I was surprised by how seamless the procedures were and how not freaked out I was. I'd thought I'd be rife with conflicting emotions. I'd mentally prepared for a hard day… turns out, unnecessarily.

All I felt (apart from the cramps and bleeding) was relief. I had to take a cut to my paycheck that week and had to pay for the procedure, but it was a heck of a lot easier and cheaper than having a baby! If I’d kept it, I’d be a mother now, trying to rush through my Master’s degree on a part-time student salary with a partner whose job takes them out of town every couple of weeks for weeks at a time. No, thank you. 

Instead, I spent the day on my couch, passively miscarrying and "up and at'em" the following day. 

Months later, I found out I was pregnant again. Time for abortion #2. 

My second abortion sent my body through a loop. My body did a full "NOPE" on the Misoprostol (the pills that make your uterus contract and miscarry the embryo) and at my follow-up ultrasound, I saw the little lumpy bugger still hanging out in my uterus. So, I had to do another round of Misoprostol (not fun). Through the two rounds, my emotional brain kept taunting me with thoughts about how I kept getting pregnant for a reason, and the guilt associated with such ruminations: I should have known better; I'm old enough; etc. I had to keep convincing myself it was the right decision.

After the second cycle of Misoprostol, I met the mini-liver-shaped lump on the toilet one day. It was weird to see it there, chilling in my undies. I washed it off and inspected it. There was no humanness to it. Despite its amorphous appearance, I felt weird disposing of it - I wanted to honour what my body had made. So, I buried it in the soil of my apple tree with the promise to be the best mother I can be when the time is right.

I am grateful for being able to defer motherhood. I recognize the privilege in my experience. If I lived elsewhere or didn’t have the money, I’d be a mother (based on pregnancy #1). I don’t know what I would have done...

Thankfully, I safely accessed a couple of abortions and they were not the scary big deal I had been mislead to believe all abortions were.