for three weeks in a row i had visited my doctor for nausea and vomiting, each week he asked ‘could you be pregnant?,’ each time my answer was ‘no way.’ he pressed for me to take a test to be sure, or to ‘prove him wrong’ as he put it. when i left, i was feeling confident that i wasn’t, however the next morning i had the test left in my drawer. i use to take one quarterly when i was with my ex, so i thought i could at least tell my doctor i had taken a test and was not pregnant. except i was. i went back and im世界杯2022亚洲预选赛b组 tely asked where i could get a refund on the morning after pill, the doctor laughed it off and told me congratulations.

congratulations. it was the first word anyone i told said to me. all i could feel was an overwhelming sense of anxiety and fear. i asked to terminate at that appointment. i called the specialist clinic in my area, they told me the next available date was in a month! a whole month! i im世界杯2022亚洲预选赛b组 tely called my local hospital: three weeks. it was better than a month. at this point i had decided that i wasn’t going to tell the father, he was a good friend that i had been having casual sex with but i also felt that i didn’t want his opinion forced on me. the three weeks were torture. i ended up telling him due to anxiety that the abortion wasn’t going to work. i’m glad i did; he was completely supportive of any option.

i had two scans during my pregnancy, both of which i saw the fetus but didn’t hear the heart beat. i went through with the abortion, but what the hospital lacked to tell me was that the recovery area was also shared with caesarians. as i came out of the anesthetic i could hear a baby crying, i shouted at the nurses ‘this isn’t right, i didn’t come here for this, my baby shouldn’t be crying’. i was overcome with immense relief when the nurse reassured me it wasn’t mine.

through my work as an interpreter, i once followed a client through her pregnancy, the week after my abortion i had a job at one the delivery suites. i heard women give birth naturally, i genuinely feared that they were going to die. further down the corridor i could also hear a heartbeat, a beautifully rhythmic, strong heartbeat. listening to it i could feel an ache in my heart and my ovaries and i knew in that moment, that if i had heard my baby’s heartbeat i would be 22 weeks pregnant now. i don’t regret my decision, at least i’m 98% sure i don’t.