If you’re here to compare reasons to others, I urge you to consider that you don’t need a reason beyond not wanting a baby.
I am a mother to a wonderful 1.5-year-old girl. It is beautiful and grueling, motherhood.
I always believed I’d have more than 1 child, but my husband and I met later in life and we had our daughter when I was 37. Pressure of society, life, age, whatever you want to call it made me try again quickly when my daughter was just a year. Although it had taken us almost a year to conceive before, this time it happened quickly.
At first I was excited. At 38, I was lucky to conceive so quickly. But that excitement turned to dread. Then panic. Then a deep depression. I was drowning and spinning, doing a poor job at work, doing a poor job at motherhood, feeling like it just wasn’t right.
This all happened very quickly. Over the span of maybe 2-3 weeks. On the worst weekend of it my husband was away, and I went to my sister’s and cried. Told her I didn’t want to have the baby. She tried to reassure me but I couldn’t be reassured. I felt awful. When I said I was considering abortion she didn’t judge, just said “that’s your choice.”
Eventually I called the doctor and a nurse who answers these types of calls on the weekend said “No one else is going to raise this baby. It’s your and your husband’s decision.” And I kept crying to her, the saint nurse, and I remember saying “this wasn’t unplanned. We wanted another baby.” And she said, after a long pause, “You’re allowed to change your mind.”
It was the worst feeling, changing my mind. I felt like an awful mother, a bad person. But I knew what I wanted to do. I would rather live with the pain of doing this than live with the joy and pain and drowning and work of two babies at once. That might sound weak, but it is ok. The most comforting thing I have read on here said “it’s ok to simply not want a baby.” It’s ok to not have a million reasons. If you’re here to compare reasons to others, I urge you to consider that you don’t need a reason beyond not wanting a baby.
My abortion was safe, almost free, and dignified. It happened at 7 weeks to the day. When it was happening I had a feeling that my grandmother was taking the baby up to heaven. She didn’t judge me, it felt loving. I was not the right mother for him or her. But I loved them. And I always, always, always will.
