What having an Abortion actually meant for me and why we need to talk about it

It’s been a year of compartmentalising, processing, accepting and healing. It’s been pretty exhausting at times, but now I’m a year on I’ve had the opportunity to reflect and learn from my experiences and I think there may be quite a few people out there who’ve gone through a pretty similar thing.

I’ve spent a long time deciding whether or not I wanted to share this, but I feel it has brought a lot of things into light and I’m hoping other people might be able to benefit from my experience. If doing that helps at least one person then it’s worth it, and if my thoughts can spark at least one discussion then it’s worth it. I hope you might connect with this in the way I now have.

I think the best way to go about all this is to just start right a the top and work my way through — get comfy!

At the beginning of last summer, I met a guy. He was older, mature, fascinating and all of those clichés, I was attracted to him from the first day I met him and will never forget how shocked I was when I found out he was actually interested in me. Anyway, we start talking, hanging out, getting to know each other and all of that, we generally got on very well and I always thought him to be well mannered and respectful. I now think of him very differently due to how much I’ve been manipulated and taken advantage of, but that side is not relevant to this story.

One evening in July I turn up at his house after going for some drinks with a few of my colleagues and I was really very drunk. I stumble in, joke around for a bit and then as usual things progressed to the bedroom. Before I go any further I just want to clarify that the sex was consensual, we had made plans before I’d had anything to drink, we’d already slept together a fair amount and that’s pretty much the reason I went over.

So, to cut this part short; I was drunk, he was completely sober, I was not on any kind of birth control — which he was very aware of — and no protection was used. I don’t really remember a lot after walking through the door, I nearly fell over from being so intoxicated so I have no recollection of what exactly happened but I was clearly not in any good state to be making responsible decisions, but he was, and his choice has impacted me forever.

I have my own battles with mental health and I know I spiral the worst when my hormones are being fucked around which is exactly why I will never use hormonal birth control ever again. Previously in my mind, getting pregnant could never be as bad as being completely suicidal. Obviously, a fairly naive thing to think but that’s why I wasn’t using anything at the time, and I still won’t touch hormonal birth control so I now have a copper coil (IUD) instead.

So yeah, if you hadn’t put the pieces together yet, I got pregnant that day.

2 weeks passed and I didn’t really think anything of it so life carried on as normal. I remember feeling so emotional and not in control on certain days, at the time I just thought it was down to my period being due. I started becoming quite erratic and doing spontaneous shit like dying my already snapping hair bright blue, until one night I just snapped.

*Trigger warning*

I was out with some friends and could feel myself falling apart, I couldn’t keep a grip on my emotions and I was on the verge of an anxiety attack, so I left and started walking to the bus stop, crying, spiralling and formulating a plan in my head of what I was going to go home and do. My last inch of rational thought told me to reach out to people, so I did, and they didn’t answer, so I carried on with my plan. From there I don’t remember too much as I kind of just went into this out-of-mind frenzy and suddenly I wasn’t acting as myself anymore, something else had taken over my body. I overdosed, my body rejected it and I proceeded to throw up violently for 10 hours.

I know now that I got into that state because my hormones were so all over the place. I had to confess to my two best friends/housemates what I’d done the next morning and they spent the weekend looking after me whilst my body recovered. I went back to work on Monday like nothing had happened and continued to get ready for my trip to Spain. My period was due whilst I was away but it never came. I still wasn’t actually worried at this point because I was getting cramps so I ‘knew’ my period was coming. Another week went by and my period still hadn’t come so I promised my friends I’d take a test by the end of the week if it still hadn’t.

Obviously, it didn’t. I’ll remember the feeling that came over me when I pulled out that second positive test forever. Immediately I’m thinking “Shit. Now I have to deal with this. I have to sort this out as soon as possible. What the actual fuck.” My friends helped me formulate my plan of action and I called Marie Stopes the next day. I booked in for a medical abortion (the one where you only have to take the pills) for two weeks in the future and just tried to comprehend the situation in the meanwhile.

The following 2 weeks were hell. My emotions were all over the place, I was crying all the time, I had awful cramps, my boobs hurt SO much, I couldn’t stop peeing, I couldn’t stop eating and I was throwing up pretty much every day from the morning sickness. This is the part that people like to skip over with abortions, there is a period of time where you actually are pregnant and you have to hide it from everyone and go about your day to day life as if nothing is happening.

The Friday comes around, I was absolutely terrified and had no idea what to expect, I headed to the clinic on my own and sat around for hours waiting to be seen. (If you’re wondering where he was, he was not in the country, he had a trip planned and wasn’t going to be back till after the termination). I finally get called in by the Nurse after filling out all the forms, having all the screenings, blood tests etc. I was 8 weeks at this point, so just within the timeframe to be able to take the pills. She gave me an anti-nausea pill followed by the first pill you have to take, this one stops your body producing the hCG hormone so the pregnancy starts to detach from the body. They had no appointments for me to come back for the second pills the following day, so I had to book in for Sunday.

I went home, crying and feeling a little sick, so pretty much just went to bed. I woke up the next morning feeling very empty and weak. The first pill makes you feel really sick on an empty stomach so I was too sick and weak to go out and get food or make anything, my best friends were gone all day so there wasn’t anyone around to help me. I spent the whole day crying and feeling sorry for myself as I came to terms with the fact that my child, whether I was going to keep it or not, was dying inside of me and I was completely beside myself, the emotional toll it takes is really quite intense.

Sunday finally came around and I headed back to the clinic. They gave me another anti-nausea pill, along with an antibiotic and the second round of the termination pills. These are 4 small little tablets that you have to put in-between your teeth and your gums and hold them there for about half an hour so it can be absorbed into your bloodstream, only once they’re mostly dissolved can you swallow the rest down with water as they often make you vomit once they hit your stomach. I left the clinic and my Mum was kindly waiting outside in the car to take me back home, and thank fuck she was. I was living in Hackney at the time and the clinic was in Brixton, so at least an hour between. These second pills force your uterus to contract so that your body can push everything out, essentially a forced miscarriage.

*Pre-warning; this next bit gets a little vivid and gruesome so if that’s not something you want to visualise please skip a paragraph.*

I was warned I would feel a lot of pain (I had been advised to take painkillers and I did but there is no way Paracetamol and Ibuprofen could ever do anything to help with this), I really did not expect it to all happen so fast. About 10 minutes after the pills had been in my mouth I started cramping, the half an hour or so was up and so I washed the rest of them down with water. 5 minutes later I had to force my Mum to pull over so I could be violently sick, this continued the whole way back, my poor Mum stopping every 10 minutes so that I could throw up. It took about half an hour for the cramps to really start and I can honestly say I’ve never, ever been in that much pain in my life. I felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly and every time the person was just digging the knife in and twisting it. The cramps were constant for about 4 hours with the occasional 20-second interval where I could get a break, so when I finally got home I crawled to the sofa and just lay there reeling in excruciating pain, clutching my hot water bottle. I was getting up to head to the toilet every hour or so to change my pad because the blood was just pouring out along with blood clots the size of golf balls. All in all, beyond unpleasant.

I took the Monday off work as I knew I will still be bleeding a lot and in a fair bit of pain but I went back in on Tuesday and tried to carry on with my life as normal. I was expecting to bleed for about a month or so after, not quite so heavily but a little bit until my uterus basically went back to normal. After the month was up I was still bleeding but went to go and get the coil fitted anyway because I was so petrified of getting pregnant again. They had a fair amount of trouble trying to insert it so I ended up having to go through the ordeal twice in the appointment before it would stay. Obviously, I then bled more because of the coil being fitted, but I waited the two weeks I was advised to before having sex again.

A couple of days later I got this really weird pain, started bleeding more heavily and was noticing some weird stuff coming out of me. I did what any paranoid person would do and looked up my symptoms online — PID (Pelvic Inflammatory Disease) — very common for females who have had a recent abortion or have an IUD fitted. Seeing as I ticked both those boxes, I went down to the clinic immediately to see a Doctor as PID can be fatal. Turns out I also had a urinary infection so I was put on a cocktail of antibiotics to clear the everything up.

A few more weeks passed and I went away to go see my Dad, finished my antibiotics and finally got my first period after everything. I was grateful to spend some time in the sun and on the beach to give my body a chance to rest and start recovering. On the plane back I suddenly got hit with the worst period cramp I’d ever had, not quite as bad but very similar to the termination cramps, I pretty much keeled over and just lay in a ball on my seat waiting for it to pass. When it did I could feel myself leaking out of my moon cup so I ran to the bathroom to sort myself out. This carried on for the rest of the plane journey and into the next 4 days; awful cramping and changing my cup every 2 hours because I was spilling out of it (that’s quite a lot of blood).

Eventually, I couldn’t take anymore so I called the NHS direct line and was told to go to A&E. After more blood tests, screenings and discussions the Doctor found that my coil was rejecting and my body was trying to flush it out, so they removed it. During my tests they found that my hCG levels were still quite high, the termination was 2 months prior at the point so they should have returned to zero. They asked me if I had been sexually active (everyone’s favourite question) in the past few weeks, I responded yes, and the Doctor proceeded to tell me that I need to come back to the early pregnancy unit (or something like that) the following week because if my coil was rejecting at the point I’d had sex, it wasn’t effective.

It was at that point that my body hit it’s emotional capacity and just shut off. After all of that, to be faced with the fact that I might be pregnant again, I couldn’t do it. I was emotionally void for quite a few months following that day, it took a long time to go back and process all the emotion I’d repressed.

I went back the following week to have an ultrasound taken by one of the nurses. She found a piece of tissue left by the termination which literally explained everything; the fact I hadn’t stopped bleeding, the rejected coil, the suspected PID and the elevated hCG. You know how they always say these pills/procedures are 99.9% effective? I am literally that 0.1%. Unfortunately, this piece of tissue had started to go septic and was stuck pretty well, so I was booked in for a minor operation at the end of the month to have it removed.

I went in for the Hysteroscopy, where they basically use a long hollow rod to facilitate a camera and a tube of water to inside your uterus and have a look, the water is supposed to help flush everything out and give the Doctor a clear visual. Now, I don’t know if you’d ever had someone dig around in your uterus before, but if you haven’t it’s really quite painful and uncomfortable. The Doctor told me they found the tissue and they could try suctioning it out if I could bear the pain, if not I would have been booked in for another procedure and put under so they could do it. At this point I just wanted everything to be fucking over so I told them I would just go through it now, so they gave me two injections of general anaesthetic into my cervix to help numb me a little. The Doctor was able to remove the tissue and I was able to go straight home and celebrate the fact that this whole thing was finally over.

Or at least I thought. I started noticing some weird things so went back to the clinic and the Nurse gave me more antibiotics to rule out any infection I could have picked up following the Hysteroscopy. A few more days went by, I slept with someone new (someone I already knew very well) and I managed to pick up a UTI. My body was so weak and diminished from everything, especially the antibiotics, that it couldn’t fight any bacteria. I picked up some cranberry sachets and tried to flush it out myself. I felt better the next day, but the day after I turned very quickly. I was laying on the sofa feeling myself get weaker and sicker by the second so decided to go to bed thinking I’d picked up the flu or something. I woke up in the middle of the night delirious, sweating, pale, with an awful burning pain in my bladder and ache in my back. I tried going to the toilet and couldn’t which only made the pain worse; when something finally came out it was basically just blood. The infection had worked it’s way to my Kidneys so I had to rush to the Hospital, again, to see a Doctor and be put on more antibiotics.

It was Christmas at this point, I had the termination at the start of September and I was so ready to leave all this shit in 2017.

The New Year came and I was intent on getting myself back to health and actually looking after my body because I’d put it through actual hell. I started going the Gym, got another coil fitted (which I’ve had no problems with thus far), eating really well, eventually fazed out communications with that guy when I realised just how toxic he was and found another person to put my time into. I’d done it, I’d got through it all and it was finally behind me… and then I continued to keep picking up infections.

I was getting a UTI almost every week, I had constant irritation as my body was trying to reset it’s PH and so was given more antibiotics. This went on for a few months until finally around June/May this year my body finally seemed to have calmed down and repaired itself. I am, however, still left with these very excruciating cramps that literally take the air out of my lungs and shoot down the left-hand side of my body. They used to only happen with my period but as time went on they got worse and happen on an almost daily basis. It doesn’t always last long, but it’s incredibly painful, I’ve been told by one Doctor it could be permanent nerve damage, another said it could be scar tissue but I had an ultrasound done the other day to find out exactly and should know soon. I also want to take this opportunity to give a public shout out to the NHS and all the wonderful Nurses and Doctors that helped me — you are incredible, invaluable people and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

It’s now September 2018 and I’m still not able to put all of this to bed yet because I’m still having to go to see Doctors about a pain that started when I had the termination. Not only that, but the emotional and psychological toll it’s taken on me is enormous. This whole time I’ve also been going to work, seeing friends, moved into a flat on my own and tried to function on a daily basis. Some days have been really really hard, but I’m so proud of myself for going on this journey and being able to still stand here today and tell this story.

Sharing my experience is not for pity or sympathy, nor is it to try scare anyone about abortions or put them off having one if they’ve made the decision to do that, it’s about raising awareness of the reality of what it’s actually like to go through it and the stigma, miseducation and injustice around all of it.

Ok, no, not everyone will experience the complications I had, but some people do, and they’ve had it a lot worse than I did.

Abortion is this dirty word that so many people have an opinion about. Most of the time, when people discuss abortions they only discuss whether you could/should make that all-encompassing decision; ‘can you choose to end the life of your potential child or not?’

And that’s it. That’s all people associate it with, the one decision. I’m not trying to diminish how difficult making that decision can be, it’s an awful thing to be faced with and make a choice on, regardless of how you came to be pregnant when you didn’t want to be. Your body is preparing you to be a mother and your hormones will tell you one thing when your brain is saying another.

My issue is that abortions are so much more than that one decision, look at what happened to me. No one wants to talk about the impact it can have on your body, no one wants to talk about the impact it has on your mental health, no one actually tells you how to go about seeking help or setting up an appointment or what to actually do if you find yourself in that situation. Society just wants to chalk it up to moral debate and constantly argue about whether it should be legal or not.

An abortion is a medical procedure that every female should have access to if she needs it.

I have no time for anyone that wants to prohibit access to that procedure. I’m not asking you to agree with abortion, I’m asking you not to take that option away from someone who needs it just because of what you think. If abortion is legal it doesn’t mean every single woman in your Country/State is going to go and have one just because ‘she can’. It means that women and girls who need this procedure can access it and don’t have to explore other unsafe means of doing so, because they will. It’s not just young adults being ‘irresponsible’ or ‘careless’ that are having abortions (and even if that’s the case, so what? Who are you to judge and impose your will upon them?), some people are having safe sex and contraception has failed them and they are faced with a situation they were trying to avoid. Don’t even start me on women and girls who have been raped and have to face all of this on top of having gone through that. The attitude needs to change.

We should not be condemning the woman that has made the decision to have a termination, we should be educating society better to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Males are never told to take sexual responsibility, it’s always on the female. Why? Because biologically males never actually have to experience pregnancy and pay the price of dealing with an unwanted one.

If you decide to condemn or criminalise a woman for having an abortion then you need to criminalise every single person who has ever had unsafe sex, just because one person ‘got away with it’ and the other didn’t it doesn’t mean you can demonise one and ignore the other.

For so long I blamed myself for not having my own long-term contraception, and that it was my fault for not protecting myself because I’m the one that actually has to have the abortion if it reaches that, not him. However, in my situation he knew I wasn’t on anything and he still chose (to put it bluntly) to cum inside me anyway because what does it matter to him, he doesn’t pay the price and he doesn’t even have to know, he didn’t go through everything I mentioned above, but I did.

A female cannot get pregnant without male sperm. Women are not choosing to fertilise their own eggs for fun and run off down to their nearest abortion clinic.

It’s a 50/50 split. Both parties are responsible, so instead of blaming women for wanting access to abortions and ostracising those that do have them, can we start teaching everyone to take sexual responsibility. It is not a woman’s job to have to take contraception seriously so men don’t have to. It’s in both of your best interests because let me tell you now, those hormones are very strong and you don’t know what someone may actually decide when their hCG is raging. If that’s the only way I can get some guys to listen then so be it, even though your view on this should not be dependant on how it may affect you (whether you end up having a child or not) but should be dependant on how you view your partner or other females in a sexual situation — you should both be respected equals and what affects you affects them, in every way.

We’re also failing women with the choice of contraception available to them. We’ve seen it many times, male drug trials are stopped due to unpleasant side-effects, all side-effects of current female birth control options yet we hand them out at any opportunity. I know for a lot of people these options work, I have a lot of friends who have used the pill, the implant, the Mirena coil etc. for years and are fine, but so many women and young girls put their health at risk on these drugs and we need to do better.

We need decent solutions for both males and females that won’t compromise their physical and mental health. I’m hoping if there were better options out there for males, more of them would want to be proactive in taking responsibility, as a friend of mine so brilliantly put;

“Why shoot bullets at a bulletproof vest? Why not just take the bullets out of the gun?”

These changes are not going to come overnight, we need to start opening up conversations. All of these things are still social taboos yet sex is one of the most basic human instincts and almost everyone is going to have sex at one point in their life, so let’s stop shying away from it.

I’ve lost so much energy this year on a situation that was the result of someone else’s decision. It took me a while to stop being angry because he didn’t have to go through any of this whereas I did, but I accept my responsibility in this, I’ve forgiven, I’ve learned, I’ve rectified my mistakes — sadly I don’t believe he’s done the same.

One thing I would like my fellow guys to please acknowledge is that as a male, you will never actually have to experience an abortion, so in light of that please support your female partners, friends, family if they are ever faced with that situation, recognise the part you have to play and take responsibility, I don’t think it’s asking too much.

Life will throw things at you every day, some small, some much larger. The small things are often easy to process and mild inconveniences to a day or week or month. The larger things you rarely see coming and can impact your life in ways you never thought possible, but even though these things may be really awful and shitty, it’s how you grow. In a split second my life shifted and I can’t go back now, I can only progress with my life and grow into the person I want to be. I’m sad that I had to go through what I went through, but I’m really proud of myself for coming out a stronger, brighter, more aware person. I’m also very grateful for the experience I’ve had and everything it taught me, I never wanted children before but I do now and I’m ok with that. I’m ready to let it go, embrace a bright future and get the conversation started.