Abortion Regret

[Tomorrowsabetterday]

Hello,

I don’t know who needs to read this today but if you’re thinking of having an abortion, please please please do not consider it lightly.

Last week I had an abortion. I am 41 years old and I was expecting my ex boyfriends baby.

We’d broken up 16 months previously, just before lockdown.
We own a home together and due to circumstances we ended up locking down together and continued to sleep with each other.

I was on the pill but that was the only protection we were using, we’d never relied on anything else apart from the pill throughout our relationship.

We would continue to sleep with each other on my weeks off as my withdrawal bleeding was never that heavy and we worked around it.

In mid March 2021 I didn’t feel right.
I was constipated around the time of my withdrawal bleed, usually it goes the other way at this time of the month.
I thought it was odd but thought perhaps my diet was off.

Then I went off my food. Nothing tasted right and I was getting full very quickly, not like me.
I even thought I might have COVID and suggested to my ex that we get tested.

The next day, I went to work and he went to work to, he has now gone back to work and works away from home.

I didn’t get chance to do COVID test that day. I was in Boots in the evening buying some toiletries when all of a sudden it crossed my mind that I could be pregnant.

I put a test in my basket and tested as soon as I got home - I was 3+ weeks pregnant according to the digital result.

I messaged my ex and he phoned me.
He was very calm and said he would support me. It was such a relief.

However, what I didn’t realise was that he meant he would support me through a termination of the pregnancy.

I had already contacted an abortion clinic as a knee jerk reaction or safety net just incase I need to end the pregnancy but my heart knew I didn’t want an abortion.

We had an appointment at the clinic in Luton on Good Friday.
As we got closer to the clinic, I came to my senses and by the time we had arrived I had decided I couldn’t go through with it.

I told my ex that I couldn’t go in and that we needed to talk about this as we hadn’t allowed ourselves to do that.

He agreed. I cancelled my agreement and booked again for Easter Monday incase we needed to attend once we had talked.

We came home and talked.
My ex was adamant that the baby would not be loved (by him) and that he would have nothing to do with it. He explained that since I had told him, he’d been thinking about ending it all. He was very upset and quite inconsolable.

I was so concerned by this that I agreed to have an abortion to take those thoughts away from him. I know how scary it is to have those thoughts and I didn’t want him to feel that way. I wanted to make things right, for him and I didn’t consider myself or the baby. 😞

We went to the appointment and I was scanned. I was dated at 5 weeks 2 days.
I was given medication to take at home.

The first pill would end the pregnancy, then 48 hours later I would insert 4 more pills into my vagina to miscarry and 4 hours after that, insert another 2 to continue bleeding.
We would need a long weekend to complete the process.
We decided to do it the following weekend.

However, the next day, morning sickness kicked in for me and by Friday I was feeling very nauseated all day long. I couldn’t swallow the pill for fear of bringing it back up.

I decided I would take the following Thursday and Friday off work to do this when I wouldn’t need to go into work after the first pill.

My ex was supportive of this and took annual leave as well.

He came home on the Wednesday evening and I knew that if we were going to do this, I would have to take the pill that evening whilst there was a gap from feeling sick.

I had put so much emphasis on taking the pill whilst I had the chance, that I had regretfully seen passed what I was actually doing and what would happen next.

Without thinking, I gulped back the pill at 7 pm and for 30 seconds I felt a relief, a relief that I had taken the pill. It wasn’t a relief that I’d started to end the pregnancy.

After about 20 minutes I’d started feeling sick again, and had to try very hard to keep the pill down. We went out for a drive to take my mind off of things but the waves of nausea were frequent.

I managed to sleep but woke up feeling sick the next day and by 4 pm I couldn’t hold back any longer. I was very sick.

On the Friday, 36 hours later, I was to insert the 4 pills that would make me miscarry.

I got up for a shower and was sick again. I was tired, shaky and in shock.

I looked down and I’d started to bleed already.

I had to insert the pills before the bleeding got heavier.

I inserted them and laid on the bed until I was ready to get up.

I still felt very sick.

Within 2 hours I started to bleed very heavily and had an extremely upset tummy.

This continued up until 1 pm Friday when I had to insert 2 more. I felt sick all over again and the bleeding got heavier.

At this point all I was thinking was I just wanted it to be over.

My ex stayed with me Saturday apart from when he popped out to get his haircut.

On Sunday he went out for the day and i was left alone to realise the enormity of what had happened. It hit me hard.
I was just stood there in the living room, coat on, bag in hand but I felt empty and didn’t know what to do.
The regret is more than I can bear.
I went back to work the next day and my ex went back to working away all week.

I had several accidents, one at work, because the pads couldn’t contain everything and it was very upsetting.

I know now that I didn’t want to end the pregnancy, I wanted to end the anguish my ex was in and i didn’t know how I would cope alone with a baby. I was scared and that isn’t a good enough reason to do what I did.
My hormones were all over the place, I was sick and I was tired and now that I have clarity, I know what a huge mistake I have made.

Please please please, if you are thinking about abortion and you don’t know what to do, really think about what you want.

Abortion is final, you cannot take it back.

Sending lots of love to you. ❤️

@borntocry. Yes, my mood certainly plummeted after the positive test. I was so fearful about being pregnant when I’d actively tried to be just that! It’s odd as hell. But it made me take action and that was for termination. I still can make much sense of it.

But what I have learnt since is that fear, worry and anxiety is quite normal. It’ just bloody isn’t talked about. It’s not all cartwheels and joy (like a stupidly thought) when you find out you are pregnant and that is ok. Life will change when a baby comes along. And again that is ok. I flipped out and went to all the negatives.xx

*can’t make much sense

@Zebra13, before I met this guy I had not planned on having any more kids. But I knew he wanted kids, and also that, being older, it might not be possible for me. So we made the decision to stop using contraception and I fell pregnant almost immediately. However, my boyfriend, at that time, was still seeing other women (not behind my back, but he had kind of insisted on non-monogamy and almost kind of coerced me into it). Some of the women he was seeing were much younger than me (half my age), and tbh, in retrospect, this wasn't great for my self-esteem. ALL my friends hated him for this and other reasons (he was kind of controlling and manipulative at the time), and they all intensely pressured me to terminate the pregnancy. I think that's also partly why I felt so much regret afterwards - I felt I hadn't made the decision myself, but had just caved in to other people's opinions. Though I've always been pro-choice, I almost regretted living in a country where abortion is legal, because of how easily and quickly people advised me to "just get rid of it!! what are you waiting for?!"

I guess I kind of envy the way most people seem to be divided into two groups - those who would never terminate a pregnancy, and those for whom it's "just a bunch of cells" and no problem at all.

Believe me, I feel very guilty too and have already received a lot of judgement online, but ultimately, the person who has suffered most out of this situation is just me, really. Despite being the main instigator of the pregnancy, and pressuring me a lot to have the baby, my boyfriend didn't give it a second thought afterwards. Literally, the very next day he was fine and told me later that he never thought about it again.

Take heart, @Zebra13, I hope and pray you will still get to be a mother someday. But I also hope that when it happens, you will be in a better position than you are now. It's true that pregnancy is often a time of fear, confusion, and self-doubt, and it helps to have a partner you can count on, and a good support system, and also to be in a good place in your own life, and in your own head. HUGS

Unfortunately the baby isn’t going to come back.

To make yourself better for any future babies you need to take control again and look after your physical and mental health. You need to be able to look after yourself first and foremost.xx

Xx

Hi everyone, @Zebra13 I hope you are feeling a bit better today. I really felt the same as you do - that I did what I did out of fear, and that if I'd only had faith in myself, I could have made it work. But now that I've been given a second chance, so to speak, I realise that my fears were actually quite valid. They are even more valid now.

While reading about abortion regret on the internet, I came across something called the Turnaway Study. The study examines what happens to women who are denied an abortion. One thing I found interesting about the results of this study is that although of course most of these women ended up being happy with their babies, their fears and concerns about the pregnancy actually did overwhelmingly prove to be valid. For instance, some women said they could not afford a baby - these women did end up struggling financially. Some said it would affect their ability to care for their existing children - these women's children did suffer, their performance at school worsened and behavioural problems increased. Some women feared their marriages wouldn't last - those women did end up single. And I think this shows that women are actually very good at understanding and analysing the consequences of bringing a child into the world.

So maybe, you know, those fears and concerns we have at the beginning of pregnancy, maybe that's our maternal instinct kicking in, wanting to ensure the best possible environment for our children. You know, many mammals will actually spontaneously abort when put in a dangerous situation. It's like the mother's body will do whatever it can to avoid bringing its young into an environment in which they, and the mother, would be at risk. In this way, the mother and her future babies are protected.

Sorry if all this sounds crazy. I'm just trying to say, I understand your sense of loss - it's a huge loss. But don't feel guilty, please. You were following your instincts. You had to make a decision quickly, for your baby's sake. You did what your body and mind were telling you was right, at that time. Have faith in yourself, please!

But your baby is part of you - literally, for the first 9 months, but even after that, to a great extent. Thinking of yourself is thinking of the baby too.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. - William Makepeace Thackeray

HUGS @Zebra13

@borntocry
Some really wise words there.
I hope @Zebra13 and the other ladies on here can take some comfort from what you have said.

None of this is nice and it’s not easy.
We were all faced with the same dilemma and for many different reasons, but ultimately we were faced with fear and as @ED81 has mentioned previously, fear makes us act and do things that we might not actually want to do but what we feel, at the time, was the right thing to do.

Whether it was right or not for any of us in hindsight is sadly something we cannot change it ‘undo.’

The sadness will live with us, some days will be easier than others but what we mustn’t do is live in the past. We have to live in the present and start being conscious and mindful about decisions and choices we have to make now.

Everyday we are faced with decisions and choices to make, if we live in the past, we cannot make good decisions for today, for what is happening now.

Same goes for those living in the future. That doesn’t work either. Making a choice or a decision now, based on the future doesn’t work. The future is always changing based on the choices and decisions we make now.

I know this quite a riddle but bear with me.

For example, say you wanted to buy chicken for dinner, you really want chicken, but oh, remember last year, when you are that chicken and you got food poisoning? Yeh, you don’t want that again, best not buy the chicken.

This decision was based on what happened in the past and what might happen in the future.

I’m my humble opinion, I think it makes sense to make a decision based on ‘now.

Some might think it’s reckless but I’ve seen the other side of living in the past and living in the future and I’ve missed out on so much because of it.

Right, I’m going to have some lunch, think my sugar levels are low haha!

Apologies for the ramble xx

and apologies for the typos too!

Well said @Tomorrowsabetterday. I would agree.xx

@ED81 aw thank you.
Hope you’re well xx

Yes, it’s been a much better week to be honest. Felt was going to have a wobble earlier today so went out for a walk which helped. Headphones on and into the fresh air.

How’are you?x