One Year Later

Maybe everyone does this trick, but I do it regularly and always have: I think about where I was a year ago, two years ago, three, seven, twenty. Where was I? What was I doing? I think of my past selves in unison with me now--all of us on this day doing the thing that we have done or the thing that we will do.

March 14 and 15 will always stand out for me. It was on these days a year ago that I had my abortion.

Me now, I am sitting on my back porch. It's unusually warm in my northern city tonight, and I'm wearing a sundress and flip-flops. I had Mexican food and margaritas with a friend tonight. I came home to my boyfriend, who is hunched over his computer inside, hard at work. I pulled a beer from the fridge and came out here to clear my mind and think.

A year ago I was curled up with my boyfriend watching Cool Runnings as a cool early spring night blew against the windows. Earlier that day, I had had laminaria inserted in the first of a two-day procedure. To calm my nerves for the surgery day, I had requested this film from my childhood. The last time I had watched it, I realized, was when I had my tonsils out. Do I have go-to, pre- and post-surgery flicks? Apparently.

I think about this blog regularly. I mainly think about the women who land here, who send me emails and who comment. I hope that this blog has been helpful to anyone going through an abortion. I think about you and my heart is full of love and support for you. What you are going through is incredibly difficult, and you are so strong. You probably don't know how strong you are. If you ever need to ask me anything, as a woman who has been through this procedure, just as another lady out there in the world, or whatever else, please do not hesitate to email me.

As for me, I'm doing well. I'm here on my back porch tonight, taking a break from my life to return to this blog that I once needed to share my story. My abortion isn't my day-to-day world anymore. I think about it sometimes. I think about what my life might be like had it not happened--in that "What If?" kind of way. But the moment is always fleeting, and I never doubt my choice.

These days my focus is on my career, my future with my boyfriend, my friends and my family. Talking with friends and family about my experience has brought me closer to them. The abortion helped my boyfriend and I acknowledge our differences and, in many ways, work through them. I can't imagine the people we were then bringing a child into the world. These days, when we talk about our future, there are children, but our relationship is stable and the pregnancy would be planned.

I have been off hormonal birth control since June, when the dreaded Depo-Provera shot finally wore off. I have been waiting for my menstrual cycle to regulate to its own normal before I pull the trigger on a Paragard IUD. The boyfriend and I have been using condoms in the meantime. Both condoms and humans are faulty, and we've had a couple trips to the pharmacy for Plan B pills. I'm pretty certain these huge doses of hormones helped further throw off my system, but my period seems to have finally regulated. I'm planning a Paragard insertion closer to summertime. Some of my ambivalence about Paragard remains. The longer and heavier menstrual bleeding with the Paragard sounds pretty blech to me, but I'm willing to put up with it to avoid hormones for now. If and when I get it inserted, I will update here as I know a lot of women wonder about IUDs.

There is no doubt that deciding to have an abortion was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but it was the only choice that was right for me.

If you are facing this situation and scared, I understand. I know. If you are ambivalent, I know. If you are conflicted, I know. There are so many women out there--1 in 3 of us--who know. And it will be okay. I, someone who never thought she would have an abortion--let alone a second trimester one, someone who was unwillingly shown her ultrasound, someone who experienced a rare complication post-op, I promise you that it will be okay.

If you are making this choice for you, without pressure from a significant other, a doctor, a friend, a parent, or anyone else, if you are doing it safely, and if know this is what you need, you are making the right choice for you. There are so many of us who can assure you: It will be okay. You will be okay.

If you ever want to ask me anything, again, please email. I have posted links on the sidebar that are meant as resources for women going through this experience. I used many of them when I was in your shoes. If you have a blog you'd like me to link to, or a resource you've found that you'd like to share, please email or comment, and I will post it.

I am 27, pro-choice and was (for a short time last year) pregnant. I conceived during menstruation, took oral contraceptives for three straight months afterward and then learned of my pregnancy at 13 weeks. I had a second trimester abortion at 14 weeks. I had a post-operative complication 10 days later. The odds of conception during menstruation is nearly* 1 in 1,000. I was one in one thousand, I'm okay, and you will be too.

Lots of love to you,
One in One Thousand

Another Statistic

Two weeks ago this past Saturday, a man broke into my apartment and tried to rape me. I fought him off, he escaped, and I suffered only a bloody nose. I am still shaken, but I am okay, and I feel lucky.

I had just moved into a new apartment, where I was living alone, and this was my second night in the new place. I have since moved into a safer neighborhood, second floor 1-bedroom apartment. My investigation is ongoing, so I can't write much about it here. Sufficed to say, I believe the offender is in jail, caught only days ago, on his way to prison, but not for my incident, unfortunately.

Why am I writing about this here, in this blog about my abortion? There are a few reasons.

What if I hadn't had the abortion:
I couldn't help but think, within minutes after the assault, that I could have been almost 8 months pregnant when this happened. Would the offender, when he first opened my door to peer in and see who was in the bedroom, skipped on raping a very pregnant woman? Would I have even been home alone or would this have even happened, as my boyfriend and I most likely would have moved in together and be living elsewhere?

Threats to my reproductive system and my sexual identity:
Thus far, I don't feel scarred sexually or emotionally by the abortion or by the attack. I am aware that these things could impact me down the road, could seep in insidiously, and I keep a check on my sexual and emotional health and happiness.

What if I had been raped:
Because I am slightly psychic but do not learn to listen to my gut, I had this thought the day before the attack: 'It would suck to be raped if you had a yeast infection.' (I had a yeast infection at the time.) Followed by, 'It would suck to be raped if you weren't on birth control.'

The emotional toll of simply having a stranger violate my personal space and attempt to violate my body, it's hard to describe. I cannot imagine the unspoken pain of women who are raped, nor can I imagine the devastation if that rape results in a pregnancy.

That there are people out in this world who would suggest that rape does not "justify" an abortion absolutely sickens me. That they would want to further control the body and destiny of a woman whose control of those very things was violently ripped from her sickens me as well. I usually don't fill this blog with much vitriol toward those people, but fuck it. Those small-minded, self-righteous urchins should feel what that violation of space and body feels like, how it shakes you to your core, how it leaves you jumping at shadows and tree branches cracking, and sobbing at your own fear in the middle of the night, and then experience a lifetime of the product of that violation. Oh, how their hollow ivory towers would crumble.

Amazingly, one of those small-minded people is a friend of mine from high school. She once posted a link to this disgusting (and so-bad-it's-almost-funny) essay that mainly uses the movie Rob Roy as its evidential proof for this opinion. This friend called me the night following the attack after I posted a note on Facebook explaining what had happened. In tears and hysterical (Please don't call your friends who were just the victim of a violent crime if you are in tears and hysterical, by the way. It's not helpful. In fact, it's upsetting.), she said how happy she was I was okay, so glad she was that I fought, how much she wanted to hear my voice. And what might her message have said, I wonder, if I hadn't been able to fight him off, if I had been raped, if I was pregnant with the rapist's child and if I chose to terminate the pregnancy? What if I had shared that on Facebook instead?

Breaking the silence:
It's not my style to be silent. (Have you noticed?) I want to share my experiences and stories from my experiences because it is important to me that there is more understanding, more compassion, more connection between a statistic (like 1 in 1,000 women on birth control will get pregnant on their period; there is one sexual assault every two minutes) and the experience (me).

The day after the attack I wrote a letter to my friends and family. At first, I intended only to send it to a handful of friends and my family members. After I wrote and edited and started adding names to the list, I kept adding more names and more names and more... Soon, I sent the email to nearly 50 friends. Within hours, I decided to post most of the email as a note on Facebook.

Responses came pouring in. Support, advice, words of love. One woman, who I only have met on two occasions and is dating a friend of mine, sent me a private message. Four years ago, in her first week after she moved to this city, she was raped. She admired me for sharing my experience, she said. My heart slammed against my chest. This strong woman, this brave person, I could not imagine what she had been through, and she was reaching out to me. There were others out there, women I knew who had been through much worse, and I wasn't alone. None of us are.

The silence is not okay. It cloaks the experience in a shroud of shame, fear. By sharing our stories, even the most difficult, we support one another.


I am considering creating a separate anonymous blog about further issues affecting women, sexual health and my own experiences moving forward from the abortion. I started this blog with the intent to chronicle one experience, and I'd like it to exist somewhat statically, so that women going through an abortion might refer to the direct experience of the abortion and my healing. However, things keep happening to me (funny how life works!), and I would like to keep sharing. I think another blog may be the answer.

Stuff Mom Never Told You

If you're a lady or are interested in lady issues, you should check out the fabulous podcast from HowStuffWorks called Stuff Mom Never Told You.

The podcast is full of awesome information on everything from nuns to kegels, smoking to subliminal ovulation. One of their latest podcasts explores the phenomenon of unknowingly being pregnant.

The ladies address the horror they imagine at such a discovery (as most of us would, and some of us have), and they also get to the heart of the issue. They wrap up their podcast with these points:

Sometimes we’ll hear things like an irregular cycle is normal, or feeling awful around the time of your period is normal, or just feeling awful in general, it’s hormones. People are quick to write off women’s health problems. And women are less likely to take time out of their day to go to the doctor and find out what’s going on… I think the lesson here is to take some time for yourself… Going to the doctor regularly, checking in on your sexual health with yourself, what’s going on here?

Exactly!

As I've shared my own experience with other women, their reactions have revealed all sorts of misconceptions about their own reproductive health and ways in which we women don't always spend the time with our bodies we should.

I've heard so many anecdotes. One girl friend has been fighting monthly yeast infections for two years to no avail; Another friend is facing entometriosis and taking hormonal birth control for the first time to manage it but having terrible side effects from the birth control; Yet another friend had an abortion after going off birth control because she thought you didn't became fertile again until after your period, when in fact you will first ovulate and then have your period.

What we don't know, or assume, or accept from our doctors, is often short shift of what we deserve. There's no reason to accept a shitty health situation as normal, and I hope that podcasts like this one help women see that. It's exactly the kind of by women and for women media that helps inform and connect us.

Maybe Not the Mirena...

I canceled my appointment for the Mirena IUD. After weeks of talking with many ladies about birth control, chatting with a few other friends who have or have had IUDs, I began to question my decision to go with the hormonal IUD. Maybe it would have been fine for me, but the Depo shot and its insane hormones made me increasingly wary of using any hormonal birth control, regardless of how "locally" the Mirena's hormones work.

I talked with my very patient OB/GYNE about my concerns, and we discussed non-hormonal options. In the rubbers department, my doctor said she does not really recommend cervical caps or diaphragms. I wasn't really interested in those options anyway and am more interested in the copper, non-hormonal Paragard IUD.

I hesitated to go with the Paragard initially. Like many women, I heard the word "copper" and balked. The idea of heavier periods also isn't hot (though my periods have never been very heavy or crampy). My dad also shared a former coworker's horror story of infection on Paragard. That pretty much sealed the (initial) deal that Paragard was not for me.

However, after almost two months of weight gain, breakouts and mood swings, the Paragard appeals way more than any hormones at all. Riding yet another hormonal birth control rollercoaster sounds like an exhausting trip that I am not up for right now.

The post-operative Depo-Provera shot lasts until June 7th. I am no longer pressuring myself to come up with a quick birth control solution. If I am not certain, the boyfriend and I can use condoms until I feel sure of my choice.

Here I want to say a lot about how the pressure, (oftentimes) cost, and crazy side effects of birth control weigh on the woman in a relationship. How the woman becomes the sole vessel for these issues and stress. How insane it is that birth control options are not more thoroughly discussed--in school classrooms, in doctor's offices, among women. I, for one, have been talking VAGINA with my lady-friends NON-STOP recently. It feels great, too. With those women whom I've shared my experience, there is closeness and support, and simultaneously I can offer advice and knowledge. It's awesome.

I want to share and talk about this experience, about women's health, about sex, about birth control, as much as possible. Knowledge is power, and we must be our own advocates for our health, bodies and wellness. Here's to us ladies and getting the best we deserve.