I have been in the same relationship for 17 years. At first I don’t think we really knew if we ever wanted to have kids. After nine years of being together and seven years of being engaged we got married. We then began the long journey of trying to have children. Turns out that wasn’t so easy for us. After 5 IUI’s uncountable shots and medications we eventually turned to IVF and did 2 separate transfers. We were amazingly lucky to get pregnant twice and have two healthy boys. During my second delivery via C-section my placenta refused to leave my uterus which ended up in excessive bleeding multiple blood transfusions and a near miss with a hysterectomy. When my second child was not even seven months old we discovered we were somehow pregnant after over 15 years of infertility. Now almost 43 years old and still not feeling myself from a very rough delivery, the idea of this was absolutely frightening confusing and heartbreakingly sad all at the same time.
We had often thought of having a baby girl and this miracle that just seemingly happened after all these years all the money all the medication all the poking and prodding and all of a sudden we were pregnant it was hard not to think that maybe it was a little girl. It was so sad for us, so sad for me I still haven’t gotten over it. The last delivery I had was so traumatic, blood transfusions, the C-section, everything was so hard on my body. I just didn’t know if I could do it again, if I would survive it. And now I have two boys that I have to be a mom to and come home to and be there for so I made the decision for them and for my own health to have an abortion.
I was told at the clinic that one in four women by the age of 45 have had an abortion. This has absolutely blown my mind because nobody talks about it, no one! It makes me so sad all I wanna do is talk about it all I wanna do is tell people why I felt like I needed to do it there’s all this shame and all this guilt. But I have no one that I feel like it safe to speak to about it which is crazy because apparently so many of us have gone through this. There’s so much policing of our bodies as women that takes place there’s so much shame that is written into our stories it’s complete BS! Now that I have gone through this personally it is even clearer that you never know a person’s story. You can never judge why a woman walks through those doors.
