Hallee's Story

I was 22 when I got pregnant and though it was a bit of a shock I like to think I didn't lose it.

I had been seeing a guy from my University for 5 months and we were getting along, but he had a way of keeping to himself quite a lot. I don't think we were talking as much as we should have.

We were usually very careful, I didn't want to take any chances because my mother had had an abortion, an illegal one, and her story scared me a lot. But this one time, right after my period we were careless and it happened. It doesn't take more than one mistake to get there.

I didn't need to worry about it for a month until I realised my period was late. It doesn't always come on time, sometimes it's earlier or later, especially when I'm stressed at school. So the first couple of days I didn't read too much into it. But this one day I was just walking on the street and I saw a couple of kids playing, and I just knew it. I felt a shiver through all of my body and it was as clear as daylight... I didn't even need a preganancy test.

I always liked kids and I want to have 2 or so in the future, but this was definetely the wrong time and place for that. I am too young, I don't have that kind of money and I didn't see myself raising any kind of children with my ex-boyfriend. The choice was easy to make, I didn't even spend much time thinking about it.

I am living abroad and abortions can be pretty expensive here, but I had planned a trip back home because we had the holidays coming. I didn't tell him anything before going back home, especially since I hadn't taken the test. After I got home I started getting really sick. It wasn't just the morning sickness, it was 24 hour sickness. If I smelled any food that seemed a little heavy I got sick. I was feeling dizzy and nauseous all the time.

I couldn't tell my parents because they would have been sad ,upset and disappointed, and luckly they didn't figure it out even with all the vomiting. I told my sister, though, and she found me a doctor, and came with me to a control. The doctor confirmed that I was pregnant, but he said that the fetus seemed somewhat bigger than it should be at 6 weeks. I scheduled an appoinment for the abortion later that week.

I had to go in by myself because my sister had to get to work. There were 4 other women in the waiting room with me , 2 having their first abortion, and 2 their 2nd and 3rd, and 3 of them had their moms there. I was really scared, alone, nad felt like running away and vomiting at the same time.

Finally my turn came. I'm not going to get into details but I can tell you it was painful like hell and it seemed to take forever. The thing was that, the fetus had been dead for 10 days prior to the abortion and that's why I was feeling a lot sicker than I should have. I hope I will never have to go through that again, and that it will not cause me problems later on when I finally decide to have children.

I told my boyfriend everything after I got back and we broke up without even a fight. The hardest thing through all this was that I had to do it all, more or less, alone and not knowing what really caused the fetus to die prematurely.

Hallee
February 13, 2007