I never in my life had unprotected sex. I always had a condom and my IUD. I trusted my IUD implicitly and waited until I knew I was in a loving and committed relationship before we only relied on just the IUD. I didn’t know that the IUD had dislodged until I took a positive pregnancy test a few months later.
I had been feeling icky… stomach problems, sore boobs, late period. My roommate helped me to make sure that I peed on the stick the right way. The whole time I just kept thinking that the odds were so low, less than 1% over a 10 year period of time. But it turned out that the pregnancy test came back positive. I had always heard that you could protect against pregnancy. I knew that birth control wasn’t 100% effective but never thought too hard about it. I also knew right away that I wanted an abortion. It wasn’t a hard choice. I told my partner that night that I had good news and bad news — the bad news being that I was pregnant and the good news being that I would take care of it as soon as possible. He already had a child and was an amazing dad. He would have happily cared for any child I wanted but he also fully supported me. He doesn’t believe that he should have an opinion on what I do with my body and will always support my decisions without question.
I called Planned Parenthood and scheduled the abortion as quickly as I could. I then spent the rest of the 5 days I had to wait bleeding out large chunks of blood and feeling like there was an alien inside of me. I’m sure the pregnancy wasn’t super safe with my IUD. I wanted it out as quickly as possible. I had originally planned to get a medical abortion but the staff at Planned Parenthood couldn’t get my IUD out and the removal was really painful. Finally they offered to do the surgical abortion which would tackle both of our problems at once. I was already in a ton of pain so they gave me a few pills for that and I begged to have my partner in the room with me to hold my hand. It honestly wasn’t that difficult and was over quickly.
For a long time I felt terrible, not because I had an abortion, but because it felt like pregnancy was totally out of my control. I had done everything right in my mind so why didn’t feel assured that it wouldn’t happen again? I told my mom and she said that she just used an IUD and never thought anything bad would happen either. I felt terrible that I didn’t want biological children. At the same time I became more active in the life of my partner’s child whom I love very much. Not too long ago I was able to find a doctor who would perform a tubal ligation. It took me 2 1/2 years, but I finally feel better and like my body is more in my own control again. I know I don’t want to have my own children but that doesn’t mean that I don’t absolutely love being a parental figure in a child’s life. I feel more free to be able to do that knowing that I don’t have to worry anymore. I also found out during the tubal ligation that I have endometriosis which could potentially explain why my IUD dislodged and why I’ve always had a tumultuous relationship with my uterus. I’m happy that I was able to have an abortion. I owe my life to that and am incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported me.
