I knew I was pregnant more or less from conception. Call it mothers intuition. I did my part diligently, took the morning after pill within twelve hours, and went about my life as normal. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the pill hadn’t done its job, but I put it down to basic paranoia. 

I noticed something was seriously wrong about a week after conception. I essentially woke up one morning, and just knew. My boyfriend at the time noticed something was wrong, but I couldn’t just announce my suspicions with nothing to back them up other than “I have a feeling”. I spent the next week spiralling into the worst depressive episode of my life, I couldn’t eat, sleep or get out of bed. I was obsessive, controlling and felt so sick with worry that I could barely move. 

Finally having that positive test was almost a relief. I had gone to the GP to be medicated for my anxiety, and thought it best to check before starting on it. Seeing those two lines was calming, ‘I’m not crazy, this isn’t me, I’ve been growing a human’. But it was terrifying, 18 years old at university, pregnant and so alone. 

The first thing I did was book an abortion consultation through BPAS. Didn’t even question it, it was like clockwork; positive test, then abortion. I cried, told three of my close friends, cried some more, and then resolved to get on with it. I told said boyfriend I was going to get an abortion, proceeded as normal. 

It was the furthest from normal I’ve ever been. It felt as though those maternal instincts people talk about kicked in as soon as I found out. My first priority became looking after the baby (that was barely a baby) in my uterus. I stopped drinking, going out and spent most of my time pondering my decision. 

There was about two weeks in between finding out and my abortion. I opted for a medical abortion, I was early enough along to be able to do it through pills in the comfort of my own room. Those two weeks were agonising. The certainty I had felt in my decision at the start faded as I grew more and more attached to the idea of becoming a mother. I took nearly ten tests, spent my spare time staring at my bloated stomach, and my nights bent over the toilet being sick. I cried every day, slowly realising that I wanted to keep this baby. I shut the idea down every time it popped into my head. I told no one, the official line was I wanted the abortion. Every time I cautiously brought up the topic with my friends or boyfriend, it was quickly shut down, and I just agreed. 

How would keeping the baby affect my boyfriend? His family? My family? Our friends? Not once did I consider how terminating the pregnancy would affect me. I was concerned for him, not for myself. The deep yearning I felt to become a mother was secondary to how it would impact everyone else. 

The night of my 19th birthday party (shared with my friend), I spent the first hour crying in my room at the fact I was to have an abortion the next day. I cried to my friend from my course, who I didn’t know that well at the time, and realised that he was more supportive than my boyfriend was being. I was heartbroken, and had no idea how I could continue with my life like this. 

The actual abortion remains the worst pain I have ever been in. Within an hour of taking the second set of pills I thought I was dying. I was writhing in pain, sweating, vomiting. The codeine didn’t help, neither did the knowledge that every blood clot I was passing could be my baby. I sat with my boyfriend, who had no idea what to say or do, regretting my decision slightly more with every stomach cramp. 

I spent the next week in a weird haze. The combination of the weight loss from not eating and constantly throwing up (around 13kg total), with the bleeding and the codeine meant I was passing out constantly. The day after I managed to go to a supervision, which passed by in a blur. I went home, cried all day every day, and slowly tried to come to terms with what I’d done. 

My relationship ended. I didn’t care. I just wanted to still be pregnant. I became too depressed to function. I just wanted my mum who, for someone who’d struggled with fertility, was more sympathetic than anyone else. All I wanted was my baby, I stared at the positive pregnancy tests that I’d kept every night before I went to bed. The abortion had been incomplete and complicated, meaning that the physical process dragged on longer than it was meant to. 

My mind couldn’t quite keep up with the fact that the baby was no longer there. I could still feel its presence, like a ghost child still in my womb. I named the baby, Anthea if it was a girl, William if it was a boy. I pictured myself with a bump, spent hours watching teen pregnancy stories on YouTube, trying to work out how I could navigate being a single, teen mother. I looked into Christenings, thought about schooling and concluded that I could do it. All thoughts I should’ve had before the termination. 

The return of my period was a cruel awakening to what I had actually done. I grew suicidal, attempting to overdose on medication and passing it off as an attempt to soothe a migraine. I reached what would have been the 12 week mark, ‘I would find out its gender today’. I couldn’t sleep without dreaming I was pregnant, kept seeing visions of myself lying in a pool of blood, or holding my dead baby. I reverted back to that first week of pregnancy, not eating, not sleeping and not getting out of bed for love nor money. My grandfather passed away, and I grew convinced that it was the universe punishing me, an eye for an eye, so to speak. I should’ve kept the baby for him, shouldn’t I? My life was in tatters, and all I could do was wish I had considered keeping the baby. 

Even now, I wish more than anything that I’d considered all aspects of the abortion. I have always been vehemently pro-choice, aggressively so. I thought it would be so easy, a few pills, some bleeding and then business as usual. The deep grief is not talked about. Its a grief that no one can understand, I made that choice to terminate, why should I be upset? None of my friends could understand, they tried their hardest, but that had no idea what it was like. All the love I’d had for my boyfriend had gone into this baby, something that I still loved more than anything in the world. 

I feel as though a part of me died alongside my baby (clump of cells). I still don’t feel like a normal person, nearly three months later. The way I describe it is like the ending of a situationship. Oftentimes, we are more devastated by the ending of a non-relationship than we are by an actual one. We fall in love with the possibility, the illusion and the ‘what if’. Its similar. I never got to meet my baby, experience motherhood, much like we don’t experience a relationship with that person. It’s not the same thing, but the closest thing I can compare it to. The worst part is, I chose this. I have to live with the choice daily, and it feels like being torn apart. 

Ultimately, I’m so glad that I had to the choice to have an abortion. Practically, it is not my time to be a mother. I’m glad that I was able to terminate the pregnancy, rather than bring a child into a broken home, with a mother who is barely an adult and cannot provide them their best chance. I’m glad that I was able to abort early, and not subject a child to a life in the system. But I wish someone told me the deep mental trauma that my abortion caused me. I wish I was warned how difficult this choice is, even when you know its the right one. I am still pro choice, I would still tell anyone in my situation to seriously consider an abortion, but I would also tell them to seriously consider the implications. I will have to carry this with me for the rest of my life, and whilst I expect the pain to subside, I know it will never go away. 

Abortion grief is real, and it is valid. Just because you chose to end the pregnancy, does not make you any less entitled to grieve what could have been. The life you could have had, who that baby could have been. Its a physical and mental loss, one that people who have not experienced an abortion will never be able to relate to. Don’t feel that you can’t be upset, or that you don’t deserve to grieve as you ‘chose’ that option. An abortion is not a straightforward decision, no matter how much it feels that way in the beginning. Abortion grief is deep, painful and something that should become as destigmatised as abortion is slowly becoming.