Thursday, September 18, 2008

What To Expect When You're Aborting

I mentioned earlier that I've been reading what might be the internet's first abortion blog.

I went in hoping to learn more about the procedure itself, and I learned some very useful things about the timing of the procedure. Turns out you can only get a medical abortion (i.e. using pills) until 7 weeks and you can't get a surgical abortion until later, which ultimately means you need to find out that you're pregnant as soon as possible. I used to think that since I'm on the pill I'd wait until I missed the second period, just so as to not to cry wolf. Then I learned there are sometimes waiting times, so I decided I'd act as soon as I missed my first period. But now, knowing how important the timing is, if I don't get my period on Tuesday afternoon like I have every month since I started taking the pill, I'm buying a pee-on-a-stick test on Wednesday!

But there was one thing brought up in this blog that never even remotely occurred to me before and completely blew my puny little mind:

Between conception and abortion, you experience pregnancy symptoms!

This makes perfect sense, of course. Your body doesn't know you're getting an abortion, so it's merrily gestating away. But I never thought of this before. Yes, I've been planning my abortion for the last 12 years, but I've always been thinking of it as a mcguffin to acquire, a mission to fulfill. Where can I get one? What will it cost me? What hinderances might I face and how can I overcome them? For 12 years I've always had in the back of my mind how I might scrape together hundreds of dollars in a real hurry (even though they're covered by OHIP) and face down protesters (even though many, if not all, clinics have an injunction) and get to, through, and home from the appointment without a support person (even though I can think of half a dozen support people offhand) and get out of whatever obligations I might have at any given time without telling anyone who might try to stop me or whose reaction I don't want to deal with managing what I'm really going off and doing. I have a massive mental decision tree that I'm constantly updating. But I never once gave a moment's thought to what my body might be doing at the same time. I'd always thought of pregnancy symptoms as something that happened to other people, to people who were going to have a baby. In trashy women's magazines it's in the Pregnancy & Baby section, which I always just skip over when I'm looking for hair styles or crappy advice columns or stupid quizzes. I'd always thought of it as Someone Else's Problem, I'd never thought of it as something I might have to deal with myself.

And, frankly, the prospect of going through pregnancy symptoms is scary! I haven't even thrown up since I was like 13, I wouldn't know what to do! Having your body do anything new for the first time is always exceptionally scary and difficult. (My first menstrual cramps I spent the afternoon curled up in a ball on the family room floor, desperately trying to teach myself how to swallow pills so I could take adult-calibre painkillers, sobbing at the prospect of going through this once a month for the rest of my life. Two hundred cycles later, worst case I take my heating pad to work with me.) And because abortion is a sensitive topic, I might have to go through all these pregnancy symptoms without telling anyone. If I threw up from the flu or food poisoning, or even from a wanted pregnancy, I could call my mother and say "Mommy help I threw up!" and she'd comfort me and tell me what to do and probably even come take care of me if I asked her to. If I were at work experiencing pregnancy symptoms from a pregnancy that I intended to carry to term, I'd only have to drop a hint into the rumour mill and half a dozen women would flock around me bearing soda crackers and pickles and advice and old baby clothes. But I don't know how any of these people would react if I told them I was having an abortion, and I wouldn't necessarily want to manage their reaction when also dealing with pregnancy-induced bloating and nausea and mood swings for the first time in my life. Oh, and guess what, it turns out there's also another round of hormonal shit after the abortion, because your hormone levels change again!

The blogger behind What To Expect When You're Aborting (you know, the thing I'm REALLY talking about in this post even though I just went off on a me me me tangent about something that's completely hypothetical) recently mentioned that she's disappointed in herself for experiencing this emotional drama and was hesitant to blog about it. But I'm very glad and grateful that she did blog about it, because if she hadn't it would never have occurred to me. As scary as pregnancy symptoms are, it's not like they change anything in my decision-making. But now that I know about them, at least I can have an idea of what to expect and maybe eventually come up with some coping strategies. In my limited null gravida experience with hormonal mood swings, I find they're easier to deal with when I realize that my mood is hormonal. Now that I have some idea what to expect, maybe that will help.

1 comment:

laura k said...

"I haven't even thrown up since I was like 13, I wouldn't know what to do!"

Wow! Sure wish I could say that. Or could have at your age.

Great post.