I Hope That My Story Can Help Someone

During the separation from my husband and before we were fully divorced, I was in a relationship with a much younger man. While I was being intimate with him, he asked if I wanted a child and I said yes. I got pregnant from that one encounter. For four days, I both knew I was pregnant, and also wanted my baby. I phoned my little sister and told her that I was pregnant. She told me that she would give up her career and come live with me and help me raise the child. Even the father of the baby said that he wanted the child.

But then, everything went off the rails and I am still struggling to understand almost a decade later why and how it all happened. At that time, I started feeling extremely ill, to the point that I could not stand up or eat. I started to feel that I was not physically strong enough to have my child and had panic attacks that I was going to die if the pregnancy continued. When I spoke to a nurse about it, she said that there were vitamins that I could take but that they were expensive and since I wasn’t going to keep the child I shouldn’t bother. There was not enough discussion at that appointment about trying to keep my baby.

With the anytime-I -was-awake sickness, I lost my ability to work the job I had been working. I had no money for rent. My thinking was not very clear because I was so hungry and nauseous. I was also sad that my marriage had fallen apart.

Since my separated husband was staying distant, and it did not feel safe to go and be at my parent’s place, or have my sister come and live with me, it started to really come down to whether or not the father’s family would take me in. He himself did not have any money.

We had plans to go and visit his parents one weekend. I think his mother knew I was pregnant at the time of the plans, but I can’t be sure. In either case, the day before we were going to go and visit them for the weekend, she cancelled the trip. She had an excuse around feeling too overwhelmed and busy and could not accommodate visitors that weekend.

I was devastated. I had spent that whole week laying down alone, very hungry and very nauseous and in deep emotional pain. I did not have healthy girlfriend relationships at that time, and I did not see or speak to hardly anyone as I recall. I was not a member of a church either. That visit had been my focus and it was suddenly cancelled. The father clearly felt really bad that we had been rejected for the visit but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it to change it or to comfort me. He did not make it clear to his mother how important it was to me that I feel invited in by his family. 

I think that it was after she cancelled the trip for me to visit that I made the decision to end my baby’s life. I remember thinking that the support she would give me would be reluctant and grudging support and that I was going to be stuck living alone with these people who didn’t love me, in a remote rural place, and that I would become suicidal there and kill myself. These were the thoughts that ran through my head.

It all seems so actually insane to me now. That I couldn’t put the gift of life first. But that is what I chose.

I don’t have the strength to write out the rest of what happened. But suffice to say that I mourn my little baby whom I lost every day of my life.

I hope that my story can help someone to see that the most important thing is the gift inside you from God. Please keep and love your child as God will provide for you both.

Editor's Note:

Heather, thank you for sharing your story.  Your vulnerability shows others that they are not alone in their abortion experience.  In your story you mention that it has been almost a decade since your abortion experience, and you are still struggling to understand the why and how.  Heather, I invite you to connect with us in OnlineCare to give yourself the opportunity to explore your abortion experience in a safe and non-judgmental space where you can put all the whys and how to rest. You no longer need to think that you were insane for making that choice and instead come to a place where you can look at that 10 year younger you with compassion and understanding.  I hope you'll contact OnlineCare, we're here to listen and to help.