Spurplejade's Story

Today I visited your site for the first time and it was wonderful to see stories that shared hope and peace. So many places out there show only the most horrific experiences possible as if we are all murders and sinners.

That makes it hard sometimes, because I love children I want to have children someday and I am not somebody who sleeps carelessly with everybody as stereotypes in the world of abortion go. In fact my story is quite normal if there is such a word for the whole thing. In all of my twenty-three years I have been with six partners that I have shared loving and committed relationships with; this time it was no different. We did all the right things two people can do when sharing a sexual intimacy and being pregnant was the last thing on my mind. I was halfway through college and I had bills piled up at my door and was just making it on the money I brought in. Raised in a single parent household with a father who chose to bring me and my twin into this world on his religious beliefs that if you get a women in trouble you marry her. This of course led to a very rocky and unstable childhood and a horrible divorce that I am still healing from - although my mother is absolutely wonderful, it was still hard on her and for me to watch as I grew up.

From all this my plan was simple I would finish college become a teacher and finally fill my very desire in this world to have my own children. Things happen through life but I wanted to start their lives off with everything possible. I wanted them to have a father who chose them before they were made and to not have to worry about money but only the wonders of childhood.

Of course life is never picture perfect and four months into this brand new relationship I missed my period. I was bloated or so I thought and I was cramping for a week and a half so I thought I was just late. Of course when I woke up with sore swollen breasts which I've never had, I realized I had to stop denying the matter at hand. So there I was one Saturday night alone in my apartment, staring at two perfect pink lines on a plastic stick, lost between my mind and my heart I cried because I wanted this moment so badly - I just didn't want it like this. Not in a small box of an apartment, not with just enough to take care of me and no free time for myself let alone someone else and of course him. The man who I cared about dearly but who quite frankly told me he was not ready to be a father. How could I blame him, he loved children and we had been friends for two years, but these last four months of romance was something we were both unsure about - it was still too new, and because there was twenty-three years between us. We just hadn't had time to get to that point yet and so he said what he wanted, and the minute the word abortion was spoken, I said no.

I had never believed in abortion, never thought it was right, my plan more than anything was to have this child that seemed right, that felt right. I could feel the changes in my body, the tightness of my uterus, the hormones and eventually the crazy nausea. He was as supportive as he could be, a week later I had an appointment to confirm it. I was five weeks and a week after that when I was just about six weeks my first ultrasound and I looked at that tiny little gray dot with flicker of light racing through it which was a faint heartbeat - a thing no more bigger than a pea.

It couldn't feel yet, no nerves, had no thought because it had no brain waves, no eyes no ears no nothing but a growing pushing mass of cells trying to be something.
When I left that clinic it felt so different, my hormones through me into a protective phase into a deep glow of happiness. But as the days mounted and my decision became paramount, I thought about having a man in my life who didn't want to be a father, a child who would grow up in daycares, and I thought of adoption but wondered how I could I give birth to a child and wake up everyday not knowing if she or he was allright. I knew that for some it is a choice but it would wreck me.

I still thought of the mini-van, the white picket fence, the stay at home Mom, my mother had been and how wonderful that had been to have her around, how I wanted that. I also new this unborn life deserved that. I realized in that moment that sometimes love is not enough that sometimes you just have to do what is right.

I found someone to talk to other than him, which was thankfully my mother who was as supportive as she has always been. Quietly I took a few days to make some peace in my heart to close my eyes and look upon that tiny gray mass and say good-bye. At six and a half weeks I had an abortion - he was there through it all and the nurses and doctors I had never judged me. I just went in and did it and tried not to think about it too much, it was an easy physical twenty minutes. Emotionally the waves came in hormones and in my heart I had my good days and my bad and everyday makes it better. Mostly though I don't regret it because it was right, its not right for everybody, it will only be right if you do it for you and nobody else and if you give yourself the time to make peace with it before you do it. Most of all its nice to have a choice, not a way out, but a choice - a choice to choose the life you want for your child. I believe God gave me this child for a reason and I know I could be a mother but the time and place wasn't right so I gave it back to God till it was....

Most importantly too, talk about it after you go through it - what you're feeling is normal, you'll feel it no matter what and it will get better. I thought for a while I didn't deserve the right to feel bad because it was my choice and because it was something I did. However, I realized in the end it was the only way I could get through it and sharing my story and talking about it helped it and that was ok.

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