Kate's Story*

This isn't an actual abortion story...but it's one to make you think.

I have two children now, 1 1/2 and 2 1/2.  I had the youngest 2 days before my oldest turned one year old.  He was unplanned and I was very unprepared for him, as just having one and having to go through 9 more months of pregnancy after just going through it the first time.

My 'boyfriend' at the time I found out I was pregnant started yelling at me and throwing things at me...asking me how I could have been so stupid as to get pregnant again after having the first one.  It wasn't my fault...I was new to birth control pills and the physician didn't tell me that antibiotics would mess your birth control up.

I had been with another friend of mine one time a month before I got pregnant, so when my boyfriend found out (he and I weren't together at the time) he swore it wasn't his...and considering the fact that he and I still lived together, he did all he could to stress me out and tried to make me have a miscarriage.  He failed.

To be honest with you, I had considered having an abortion.  I called the local clinics but they were all too expensive and couldn't help me.  I couldn't find a job anywhere and I had no sitter for the baby that was already here.  I just crumbled to the floor and started crying uncontrollably when I finally realized, hey you're gonna have another baby....and all the father could do was scream at me to get rid of it.

That December, I went in for an ultrasound.  The fluid for the baby was practically gone...and they rushed me to deliver right then.  They induced my labor starting at 4 pm that day and at 10:20 pm that same night I gave birth to a baby boy.  The labor was hell, because they couldn't give me anything for the pain - they told me I was too far into labor to do anything for the pain.  After the birth, I had a beautiful baby boy and a lot of pain, so they took him to the nursery.

At 2:34 the next morning, I was fighting sleep and pain, and I told my nurse I didn't feel well, that it was if something wasn't right.  I was right.  But the nurse didn't listen and left the room.  At 4:30 that same morning, she came back in and she told my midwife she couldn't tell I had lips, I was bleeding out and they couldn't get it to stop.  They had left a piece of the placenta in my uterus and it wasn't allowing it to harden back up so yet again, with no pain medication, they reached inside me and had to physically pull that piece out.  No lubricant, just rubber gloves diving inside me, and it was hell...it took them 47 minutes to get that piece out...and it almost killed me.

My son was 1 month premature so I was very not ready for him to be there, but I did what I could....my parents and the fathers parents helped me out as much as they could....but now I'm regretting not getting that abortion.  Don't get me wrong I love my son with all my heart, but that baby has so many health problems he is miserable.

Cystic fibrosis, asthma, eczema from head to toe are just a few of his health problems.  The father and I are trying to work together to be parents, but he resents the baby he didn't want me to keep him at all.  He gives me no help with the boys at all.  That baby doesn't deserve the treatment he receives from his father.  I'm beginning to wonder if I should have had the abortion or not for the simple fact of his health problems are more than I can handle and the baby is miserable...yet because I kept him and didn't abort him he will have to live with them for the rest of his life.   I feel guilty every day because he suffers.  I'm not saying that its right to abort but I'm not saying it's wrong either.  Abortion is a personal choice for your body....if nothing else in life belongs to you, your body does and you should be allowed to make choices as to what's right for you, not what other people think.

I based my decision on what other people think.  And I was wrong.  If I knew when I was pregnant he would have so many problems, I would have terminated so he wouldn't have had to have suffered at all.  The guilt eats me up seeing him like this but it's a decision I made for him, right or wrong, and its something I will have to live with.

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