When I was 20, I moved into my own place for the first time, with my boyfriend. Things were great, until I discovered he was using drugs and cheating on me. To make matters worse, his new girlfriend got a job where I worked, and I was forced to quit. I got a new job within a few days and started dating someone I worked with… and within a month, I found out I was pregnant. I had been using condoms with both of them, and I had no idea which one was the father.
The hardest part of all was telling my parents… I knew I wanted an abortion, but I didn’t know how they’d react, especially since they were my only hope for help paying for it. But they were AMAZING. My mother even confessed that she’d been in a similar situation when she was about my age, and had had an abortion herself. They told me they’d support me and help me whatever my decision was.
So I surfed the web to find information about the abortion pill versus surgical abortion. I was incredibly scared! A friend of mine had gotten an abortion in high school, and had regaled me with horrific tales of incredible pain and mistreatment at the hands of a disapproving staff. Still, I knew that I couldn’t raise a child. I decided to get a medical abortion, and I scheduled an appointment at a Planned Parenthood facility.
The whole appointment took about 4 hours. I was given a blood test and an ultrasound, and then I went into a tiny room with two doctors, and took a big white pill in front of them. They gave me five more hexagon-shaped blue pills to take the next day, with a prescription for codeine and the advice to try Ibuprofen first (my Mom is allergic to codeine, and we didn’t know if I was.) On the way home, I felt a little “loopy”, for lack of a better way to describe it, but otherwise I was fine. I ended up falling asleep really early, but I’m not sure if that was because of the pill or because of the stress.
The next day, I inserted the other pills, and within a few hours started to feel contractions. I took some Ibuprofen, and I was fine. An hour or so later, I started bleeding, EXTREMELY heavy at first, but within a few hours it was no worse than the light days of my period. I was reallllly tired, and I fell asleep early once again.
The very next day, I felt a bit tired and weak, but otherwise, I was fine – and VERY relieved. The bleeding stopped within the first week… And I was childless on my 21st birthday later that summer. I’m not and I’ve never been sorry.
