I had a termination a month ago. When I say 'positive experience' obviously it's not something I would ever have wanted to do. But it happened.
I had a medical abortion at 9 weeks and was expecting hell after reading horrendous stories on the internet, so I'm putting this out there for balance.
Deliberated for a few days after discovering I was pregnant and decided I couldn't continue with the pregnancy for many reasons. Rang BPAS and they booked me in for an appointment in 4 weeks time. I took the appointment, though a few days later realised that would put me past the threshold for being able to have a medical abortion at home, so cancelled it.
Called Marie Stopes who got me a quicker appointment at a local NHS hospital. I went a few weeks later and discovered I was 7 weeks and 5 days pregnant. There was a friendly older midwife as well as a trainee present. They did an internal scan which I was scared of, but I barely felt it and it was done very discretely. She didn't even look as she did it, and she didn't show me the screen. They talked me through my options. I decided on the medical abortion and wanted to go home to pass the pregnancy rather than do a day in hospital.
I came back the following week, on Tuesday. I took a pill orally and was told this would help to end the pregnancy, some nausea and spotting is normal. I didn't have any side effects and went about my day as normal.
The next day, Wednesday, I came back in. I was given four pills and told I could take them orally or have them inserted into my vagina. I decided to take them orally. They also gave me a suppository antibiotic. I was terrified of this but was told how to insert it myself and did it in the bathroom - it was fine and couldn't feel it after 5 minutes.
I was told to expect cramps, pain, and heavy bleeding. I was only in there 15 minutes.
My sister picked me up and took me home. I went straight to bed around 10am. I watched Netflix and read magazines pretty much all day, and drank lots of water and ate snacks. It was quite relaxing to be honest! Around 1pm I started feeling light cramping, nothing bad, but I took 2 ibuprofen and 2 paracetamol anyway as a sort of preventative.
Around 2pm I felt a gushing sensation, went to the toilet and a large amount of blood came out as well as some sort of sac or clot. I didn't really look but I could feel it coming. It didn't hurt at all. This happened every 30 minutes for the next few hours. I had no pain at all, just occasionally felt the like blood was going to come, went to the toilet, and it did. I never flooded my pad or anything like that. By about 5pm I was just bleeding like a normal period, changing my pad every 3 or so hours.
I slept really well that night. I did sleep on a towel just in case as I do leak even on normal periods when I use pads which is why I usually use a mooncup.
After 3 days the bleeding went down to being very light - I just wore a panty liner every day for the following 2 weeks in case of any blood. There was usually a small amount.
Took a pregnancy test 3 weeks after the date of the abortion and it came back negative.
I have no sense of regret or sadness about the situation - it wasn't the right time for another baby, I was just relieved that termination was an option for me. It was so much simpler and less painful than I thought. The staff in the hospital were kind respectful and non-judgemental, too.
If anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them.