I recently had a medical abortion and for days I spent my time trawling sites and articles trying to find stories with positive experiences and instead constantly read horror stories. So I told myself that regardless of my experience I wanted to share my voice to try and bring comfort to anyone making their choice on abortion. I’m fortunate that I live in a country that abortion is available, however, my state in AU only made abortion legal last year In 2019.
I realised within a few weeks that I was pregnant and didn’t want to share that with anyone, not for fear of judgement. I had time to process what I was feeling and knew that abortion was the best choice for me, I’m in my mid 30s and the time wasn’t right. I took the test and booked my appointment for a few days later. During my time in the clinic the staff were really friendly and calming, I took my first pill during my appointment and then went home to wait 24hrs to take the next four pills. The morning of taking my next set of pills, I woke up nervous for the day ahead, not nervous about my choice but nervous because of every bad story that I had read. I had planned my day to stay in bed and rest, it was the first day in my pregnancy that I was sick and I think again, that was down to being anxious. I took the pills and sat for a few hours waiting for the worst pain to kick in, which never happened. I started to cramp (like a normal period) I put my hot water bottle on my stomach and soothed the pain. Within 3hrs of taking the pills, I started to bleed not huge amounts, which made me nervous as I had read so many stories about the pain people had experienced and how much blood they had passed. Around 5hrs I stood up and felt something pass, but I still sat for hours waiting for all of the experiences I had read about to kick in and start for me. I eventually fell asleep and assumed that the pills hadn’t been effective, as I hadn’t had pools of blood and wasn’t in unbearable pain. 24hrs later I called the clinic explained my experience and they told me it sounded as if I had passed the pregnancy but would book me back in to reassure me. The follow up appointment confirmed I was no longer pregnant. I wanted to share this, as although people do experience bad pain, not everyone does and we need to share more positive experiences and hopefully bring comfort to anyone considering or about to have an abortion.
