Submitted by: Anonymous

It’s been a week and a day since I had my abortion. It was a hard choice for me to make, one that I didn’t really want to make at all.

You see, I wanted my baby. I tried for half a year to get pregnant. I was fearful that I wasn’t able to, but I finally got my positive pregnancy test. I was so happy that I finally had my dreams come true, and it was all I could think about, every moment of every day. I did everything you’re supposed to do in early pregnancy because I wanted so badly to be a good mother. I was terrified I would miscarry because I knew the statistics, so I prayed to God every night, begging him to let me keep my baby. That part of my pregnancy lasted a week and a day.

I had felt nauseous the whole time I knew I was pregnant, and even a week beforehand (which made me suspect as much), and I thought that would be the extent of my morning sickness. I actually enjoyed it a bit, as it let me know that my baby was okay and growing inside my womb, and it didn’t impair my life in anyway. But then it got worse, much worse. If anyone reading this has ever had hyperemesis gravidarum, I don’t have to describe it to you, the hell that your pregnancy becomes. It takes a magical experience and turns it into one long nightmare. For those of you who have never had it, the best way I can describe it is, the worse stomach bug you’ve ever had, but the duration lasts for many, many weeks, sometimes the whole pregnancy.

It affects you more than just physically, too. The mental part of it is a whole other ballgame. The worthlessness you feel because you can’t do anything but lay in your bed all day. The depression from being isolated to your prison of a bedroom, because it becomes your safe zone away from the smells of the world. The immense guilt you feel as you no longer want to be pregnant anymore because you’re so miserable. The anger towards people telling you to “eat saltines” or “try ginger” because it worked for them in their morning sickness, despite you telling them it’s more than just morning sickness.

As a pregnant woman, I lost 24 pounds within a week of my HG starting (with anti-nausea medicine, mind you). I wasn’t able to keep anything in me. Food, drink, vitamins, medicine, it all came back up. I worried about what that meant for my baby, and what it meant for my own health. Abortion crossed my mind at this point.

Half a week later, in real time, a month in HG time, I was getting sicker. Doctors that I called were really inconsiderate, women doctors were even worse. I could tell they thought I was just being dramatic because, “they were sick in their pregnancy too”, but I was really, really sick. Even when I wasn’t vomiting, the feeling of it being right in my throat stayed constantly, causing a lot of gagging and dry heaving fits, and just general malaise. In a state of misery, I called a nearby abortion clinic to make an appointment. It was scheduled a week from my call.

Mentally, I went back and forth constantly leading up to my appointment. I knew deep down that I could always change my mind up to the moment of the procedure, and that was comforting somewhat. My husband and I wanted this baby, and had tried for this baby. It wasn’t like it was an unwanted pregnancy, so I felt extremely guilty even making the call. But I was getting sicker, and my husband and I were worried about my own health too. We were worried that I would lose the baby anyway due to malnutrition, just later in the pregnancy when it would be harder on us. I was heartbroken, when my husband actually told me that he prepared himself every time he came home from work, afraid he would walk in and see my dead body collapsed on the floor. Dead by means of stroke (I was having insane blood pressure issues and heart pains from the dehydration) or from the very real chance of me passing out and hitting my head in the shower. That’s how sick I was. Ultimately, HG forced my hand. As hard of a decision it was, I terminated my pregnancy.

Now it’s a week and a day since my abortion. I’m upset and angry with myself. I’m angry because I feel like I should have fought harder. Angry that I went into pregnancy with high expectations of a beautiful experience, only to now be traumatized by it. I’m angry at the unfairness of it all.

I don’t mean to be all, “why me?” about it, but if HG is as rare as they say it is, I really just don’t understand why I had to get it? Both my mother and my mother-in-law didn’t even have regular morning sickness, and when I first got pregnant they told me how much they loved being pregnant, and I thought I would too. But no, I had to get sick. So sick, that my only form of relief had to come from a therapeutic termination, or waiting it out and hoping it went away in my second trimester, with no guarantee that it wouldn’t last my whole pregnancy. But we simply couldn’t afford to keep getting fluids from the ER. From a logical standpoint, it was the best choice we could make with our hand we were dealt, but emotionally, it’s a choice that I regret.

Now that I feel better physically and can think clearer than I did when I was sick, I wish I didn’t do it. And now I’m afraid to ever get pregnant again, in fears that the same would just happen again. I feel like I have no right to try after what I did to my first baby. The baby I wanted so badly, that I guess I didn’t want bad enough. I don’t know, I’m just sad, but feel I don’t have the right to be because I did it. I ended my pregnancy. I’m torn because I feel so much better physically and able to function as a human being again, but it cost me my baby.