March 01, 2004
Denial is the only thing I felt.
I was missing my period by a long shot, my eating habits were irregular, my body was changing, and I was vomiting for no reason.
In my mind, all of these signs were of something other than pregnancy. As these signs grew more and more severe, my denial began to fade away, and reality was setting in… fast.
I decided it would be best if I mentioned something to my boyfriend. He said nothing, he only cried.
As weeks went on, I put off the pregnancy test, saying to myself I'd wait because I knew my period was on it's way.
You can only deny the truth for so long, so on a Saturday while I was at work, my boyfriend went and got a pregnancy test.
I sat there, held the box, and refused to take it, knowing what the results would be. To me taking the test would mean all this was actually happening.
Eventually, I took it, and my life changed within 5 minutes. Two pink lines appeared, one drastically lighter than the other, which only provided another avenue for denial. But I knew it, I felt it, I was pregnant with my boyfriend of 4 month's child.
I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
My parents thought I was still a virgin. That meant I had to break their hearts twice. One, let them down that I had chosen to have premarital sex and, two, tell them that their only child, their baby girl, was going to have a baby of her own.
After some time of letting the news set in, I had support from my mother and my boyfriend. My father was a different story.
Now, the next stepping stone was to make a life-altering decision. To have a child, or to have an abortion.
When I weighed out my options, abortion seemed to be the most logical decision. When I thought of having a child, I felt lost, like there were way too many unanswered questions.
I have a job that doesn't pay well, I don't have a car, and most of all, I don't have the mentality of a mother.
Based on those trivial facts, I made my decision, despite that constant prying of the feeling of wrong. I was in the wrong, I knew it.
My boyfriend tried all he could to convince me otherwise. He wanted this child. He couldn't stand the thought of losing his first child.
I loved him, and still do, but I could only see what having a child would do to our futures and, more importantly, our families. Like I said, I was wrong.
So I took my decision, and ran with it. Within 4 days of knowing I was pregnant, I had set up an appointment for an abortion.
On Sunday, February 15th, I went to have my first child killed. I was numb to was I was doing. I couldn't think of the fact that I had a living baby in my stomach. I knew, even though I was only 8 weeks and 2 days along, that my unborn baby had a heartbeat.
I sat in a small doctor's office that slowly began to fill with people from all walks of life. There were women there who where very far along in the pregnancies and didn't appear to be phased by their decision.
I went through the motions of having my urine sampled, my blood pressure taken, and sitting and talking with a counselor. She asked me if I was sure this is what I wanted, and I said “yes”, before she could get the question out, to avoid any emotions.
When it was time for me to go into the procedure room, a lot of emotions began to set in all too quick. I felt alone, lost, dirty, evil, and so many other things. I pushed all that away, and climbed up on that cold table, spread my legs onto the stirrups, and allowed a man I didn't know to kill my first child.
I chose to have IV sedation, but my boyfriend was there in the room to watch.
I had a vacuum aspiration abortion, which means I allowed this doctor to chop up my child, suck into a container, and remove it from the room, before I could wake up from my sedation.
I had to do laps around the clinic to avoid blod clots and, as I walked, the feelings I had were surreal. I felt my stomach, it was now empty. I had rid my life of an unborn child in 10 minutes.
I had to sit and drink soda and eat cookies, and walk, until I was well enough to leave.
And here I sit, two weeks later, already beginning to feel the guilt. I have many more years to live, and this is going to stay with me through it all.
Some day, I will have children, but I will always know that they weren't my first.
This was the most selfish thing I could have done, and I will forever regret it. I want my child, now, and I want nothing more than to be a good mom.
Despite how hard it would've been to raise my child, I want to do it, now, and be able so say I made it, rather than that I took the easy way out.
* Not her real name
