I have two amazing kids, ages 5.5 and 2.5, and we have always debated whether to have a third baby, but having experienced secondary infertility while trying to get pregnant with our second child, I wasn’t sure I would be able to have a third.
My husband is a nurse and so our 2020 was even more chaotic than most, and in March 2021 I was finally feeling like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. However, I found out I was pregnant just a few days before getting my second vaccine dose. The year I desperately needed to have – a year of recovery, room to breathe, and maybe even travel or find a new job – disappeared before my eyes as I watched the second pink line appear on the pregnancy test.
I had always been very pro-choice but didn’t think that abortion was an option for someone like me – married, in a stable job, with two kids already. But I knew in my gut that I did not want to be pregnant and did not want to dive straight into a pregnancy and having a new baby after the year our family had just been through. I agonized about my decision for a month. Shouldn’t this be what I wanted? Shouldn’t I be grateful? What’s one more baby? Shouldn’t I be happy to know that I can get pregnant again? Are moms with basements full of baby clothes even allowed to get abortions? Finally I knew I had to listen to my heart, and honor what I knew I wanted instead of what I “should” want. I made my abortion appointment and it was the greatest act of self love I could have given myself, and challenged me to trust my intuition in a way I had never had to do before. I’m so glad I had the option to say, “Now is not the time.”
