I am the baby of the family and the only girl. I had my first boyfriend at 12, nothing serious, but I did learn how to kiss. My brothers were very protective of me so my family thought I was safe. I’ve always been a pretty good girl, not getting into much trouble.
I met my ‘first love’ when I was 13. He lived in the next town, school started and we went our separate ways. I turned 14 and went to high school, met another boy, and had a ‘serious’ relationship. I was still a good girl. I think that’s why he broke up with me. When I was 15, I met a 19-year-old boy. He was cool and he liked ME, of all people, ME… I started ditching class and leaving school with him. I let him go a little farther than I did the other boyfriends. One day, he drove me home, sweet-talked me into my room, and things got out of hand. I tried to push him off, tried biting him -but he only told me ‘Yeah, that’s it, bite me if that helps you’- I kept yelling no, stop. He didn’t- he raped me.
That was basically the last I saw of him. After that, I thought I had to find someone who loved me. I got back with the boy I met when I was 13 on and off again for a few years. When I was 16, I got pregnant. I turned 17 and had a little boy. We broke up 2 months after. He went to jail. I moved to another town, met another boy- still looking for someone to love me, to fill that void- met another boy, fell in love, got pregnant, had a miscarriage. He left me because he blamed me for the death of our baby- then claimed that he wasn’t sure it was even his! There were others in between that I didn’t mention, too many to go into, we’d be here all day.. Baby’s daddy got out of jail and came to stay with me. I got pregnant that day, 3/12. I gave birth to a little boy 6 weeks early, in November. He had found out about the guy I was seeing while he was in jail and claimed that the baby wasn’t his. That relationship ended.
I continued to look for love, met another guy or two or three. I moved back to my parents’ house. One day, some friends of mine came to pick me up and took me to lunch. When we got home, there was a note from the guy who cooked our food with his number to call him. Still seeking love, I called him. 3 months later, I was pregnant. He said clear as can be “I don’t want to be a dad, I’m too young. I’m not going to stay with you. Have an abortion. If you don’t, I’m not staying with you either. You’re just another girl to me.” My mom found out and talked me into having an abortion, the conversation I don’t remember, it’s something I have blocked out.
Well, I went through with it. It was horrible, We were herded into a room with about 8 dressing rooms, cold, white. It was like waiting your turn at the meat counter. They wheeled me in. I saw all the machines and a big blue door on the other side of the room. Next thing I remember is the doctor telling me to take a deep breath, then I’m waking up in a cold room full of girls- some crying, some sobbing, some screaming, more than one asking ‘what did I do?’- the girl next to me was throwing up violently. I woke up and started sobbing, telling the nurse I wanted out of there and I needed someone to hold me. For a brief moment, she was human, and did hold me, but it seemed she had to shake it off before she let it get to her.
My mom pulled up to the back, and drove me home, where my neighbor was watching my son. My mom put me on the couch, gave me some Tylenol, and let me sleep. When I woke up crying from the pain, she’d say “oh well, get over it- your problem could be worse” I was in awful pain the next two days and bleeding chunks. We called the doctor. He told us to meet him at the clinic at 10 pm through the back door. They did an ultrasound and found out that they had left ’tissue’ behind, and if I didn’t pass anything, had a fever, or the pain got worse, to go to the hospital- then with a sneer on his face said, ‘You’re a big girl now, go home and ride it out’
Time passed, I healed. I found another boyfriend, and another, and in between, messed around with ‘friend’s’ boyfriend because someone was going to love me for me.
August, I was at the County Fair with my friend looking for a group of boys we were supposed to be meeting up with. As I was walking, I literally ran into this guy I had met a few years earlier. He was the friend of the boy that I got pregnant by and had a miscarriage- He used to come by the house and pick him up to go fishing, leaving me there by myself for hours. He was also the brother of my friend’s boyfriend. He was with his friends. I knew they were just out getting numbers, but I gave him mine. 2 weeks later, I’m in my apartment, packing to move back with my parents and the phone rings, it was him. We got together, fell in love, and moved in together. I had found love so I stopped looking for it, but I was now looking for something to cover the shame of my promiscuous life- I turned to drugs. I also was trying to block out the shame of my abortion. He knew everything about my life, I skipped details about my sexcapades because he asked me to.
We had rough times, fights- huge nasty ones. He would leave for days at a time, but he was raising my boys as his own. 2 years into our relationship, we got pregnant and had a baby boy, then we had a miscarriage right after that. More rough years, more drugs- 3 years later, another baby, our little girl. She was born with spina bifida. My moms says ‘we are being punished for what we did,’ meaning the abortion. I lived with the guilt of that and the guilt of not knowing if my drug use caused her illness. She was 3 and we almost lost her to kidney failure. A year later, an old friend popped back into my life and started taking my kids to church. I was happy for that, that meant I could get as high as I wanted without having to hide it from them. A year later, she got sick again, the children’s pastor went to visit her at the hospital. I went to her church out of respect and thanks, and have not left since.
That was 7 years ago. I found healing. I was able to forgive myself and realized that my daughter’s illness was not a punishment. I found healing from the torment of the abortion and God has restored my life and that of my family. We now serve the Lord and work with teenagers, guiding them and lending support when we can. My oldest son is now 20 and living on his own, my 2nd son is 16 and a senior, my 3rd son just started high school… and my daughter is 11 and is a living miracle.. Oh.. and the love of my life and I got married.
There is more, but I will elaborate in other blogs… Sorry this was so long. If you read this, thank you for finding my story interesting enough to stick through it. I hope there is some bit of hope for you in it.
God’s blessings.
25 June 2008…
I remember every single second as if it happened 5 minutes ago… It was a Monday morning, the day I received my first ever full paycheck as I started working in May… My boyfriend walked me to the atm to draw out R2000… My appointment was at 09:30…I hadn’t slept since the previous Friday…because I indulged in drugs to make me forget about what I was about to do… I told my boyfriend to go… I was gonna do this on my own… But honestly, I was scared out of my mind…
Holding onto the teddy bear he bought me, I sat alone in a room, three tablets dissolving under my tongue…and I felt a connection so strong to the baby growing inside of me…I couldn’t go through with it…this was my baby…but the nurses wouldn’t let me leave… They told me it was normal to feel that way…and I believed them…I hate each and every nurse that was there that day…2 hours later, the anesthetists arrived… He asked me I’d done any sort of substance within the last six hours, because it would be dangerous if i did…and that was my last chance to save my baby’s life because I had taken a hit of meth just 3 hours earlier…but I sat there and shook my head…numb with fear and emotions… He injected my arm and lead me to the same room i had my scan done just three weeks earlier…
I remember the nurses asking me to remove my underwear from underneath the piece of cloth wrapped around me hips…and the last thing I remember was crying and saying I don’t wanna do it anymore… But still I laid myself down on the bed…allowing them to spread my legs…
The next moment, I woke up in another room…The anesthetists explaining about the medication I’d have to take…and when he walked away, I reached down, feeling for the lump on my stomach…but there was only a hot water bottle… I lied still for a few minutes, tears running down my cheeks… It was over…and I hated myself ever since that few moments…
I have a printout of the scan I did at that same hospital before the procedure… I stared at the black and white photo everyday, studying every detail… And a day or two after the abortion, I noticed the age of my baby… On the 25 June, my baby was exactly twelve weeks…which explained the urgency of the nurses, because after twelve weeks, the procedure could not be done there…
But what hit the hardest…the reason I can’t stand looking at myself in the mirror anymore…is that exactly 6 months after that day my baby was due to be born…on the 25 December…
CHRISTMAS DAY… I will never forgive myself… I’m so sorry…
Growing up, I was one of those hardcore feminist girls…believed that a woman had the right to do whatever she pleased… My life and the circumstances, I grew up in made me tough… What I called a strong, independent woman…
In high school, my girlfriends had started having sex and the conversation of pregnancy often came up… I remember we as a group, we would all agree on this line, “If I fall pregnant before I’m married, I’d have an abortion”.
Those were our exact words… spoken with so much confidence… We could handle anything…and abortion would be the least of our worries…
Sitting here now, I can’t believe how naive and ignorant I was…
The day I ‘felt’ I was pregnant was the happiest day of my life!
I knew I was pregnant way before I took a test or before I missed my period. I felt my body changing and I loved it, even the morning sickness! And it was bad, for the short time I was pregnant. I felt a growing closeness to my baby. And then I told my boyfriend I was pregnant…he started smiling, a big bright smile and I was so relieved because I thought, everything’s going to be ok, we both want this baby. And then reality kicked in. He wasn’t ready for the responsibility. Neither was I. I’m still not but I felt that I could learn to be. My baby needed me. He told me that he was not ready but if I wanted to keep the baby, I should. He would support me either way. I started having doubts, I had just started a job and he was unemployed. How were we going to give a baby the life it deserves? We both come from broken families and we had promised that one day we wouldn’t let our children be raised like that. My heart was breaking. He was going about life as though this wasn’t happening. I was the one feeling everything. I never thought things through I just made a booking to have an abortion and told him about it and he just said ok! OK??? I wanted more than that, I wanted him to stop me.
The day of the abortion, March 8, I was a nervous wreck! I was shaking all the time. We got to the clinic and there were other girls as well. We all had to go through a process first. My boyfriend sat there and all he could do was complain about how long it was taking…As if he couldn’t wait for the baby to be gone. It was then that I realized that I was alone in this and he would never understand what I was feeling. I was told to get undressed. They gave me pill to put in my mouth that would dissolve. It was a pill to make me start bleeding and to soften/widen the opening of the vagina. I started getting cold shivers and felt extremely drowsy. After a hour, it was my turn. I started panicking and wanted to run away. They had closed all the doors and I felt trapped. I was told to get on the bed and to put my legs in the straps to spread them apart. I was terrified. I started crying. Someone held my legs and the other lady put something cold in me. It was some sort of a clamp, we were shown the device before we went it. She turned it and it opened up my vagina. That I never felt.
What happened next was the most painful and traumatic experience of my life and I will never forget it. My baby was sucked out of my womb! I felt my baby being sucked out of me and I screamed, I wanted them to stop, I didn’t want to do it anymore! They continued to suck until I was numb and couldn’t feel anything anymore. While my baby and I were being taken away from each other, the nurses were talking about what they were going to make for supper that night! I lied there in disbelief! My whole world was torn apart and they were talking about food??? I had to get off the bed and go into another room where all the other girls went afterwards. I just wanted to be alone. I was bleeding and the pain that came back was excruciating. I didn’t want to be there with all of them. Feeling their pain, hearing them cry.
Later that day, I was at my boyfriend’s house, lying bed. Instead of him being there for me, holding my hand, crying with me, he went to go drink with his cousin! I have never felt so alone in my entire life! I had blocked out everything about that day until recently, I began having sleeping problems. I get flashbacks and panic attacks. I see that room, I smell it, I hear everything and I want to run away because they want to take my baby from me. I have started thinking about killing myself. I have disappointed my child. I never had the guts to stand up for my unborn child, who needed me!
Everyday is hard, the nights even more so…I just want my baby back.
I just turned 19 when I found out I was going to be a mommy.
It was a month after my birthday. I found out on Jan 06, everything changed after I saw the test. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t have a mom to help me through my pregnancy. So I guess, so what, I am alone. I have only one person there for me and that is my boyfriend.
I did some things I wasn’t happy about after I found out. I dumped him. I don’t know why I did. He was the love of my life He is the dad of the baby but we are back together now and have been for a couple months now. I don’t have a GED or anything like that. I had no job, didn’t know how I was going to take care of my baby, but things are looking better now. I have a grandma to help me out but she already has a grandson from my brother and she doesn’t really like me.
Anyways, I guess really all I’m trying to say is for the girls who are going to be a mommy, you’re not the only one. I don’t have anyone there for me but one person and thank God for that. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have him there for me. Now I am 37 weeks and still don’t know what to do. All I know is that I am going to try my best to be the best mom ever, not like my mom.
I am having a boy and I already love him to death. If anything would ever happen to him, I don’t know wat i would……
I am 20 years old. I am still in college and live with my parents… My boyfriend and I have been together for 2 years now and I just found out that I was pregnant about a month ago. I am 8 weeks pregnant.
When I found out, I was happy and scared at the same time. The first person in my family to find out was my closest brother. Little did I know he was giving me a time limit to tell my parents or he was going to tell them myself. My siblings are all older than me and live on their own. The reason he was doing this is because he felt that it was best for me to get an abortion and that if I waited any longer, that I wouldn’t be able to get one. They didn’t consider this baby for even a second. They could care less how I felt about it and that really hurts me. My mother told me that if I wanted to keep this baby, than my boyfriend and I were out the door. From that point on, things have been really awkward between me and my family…. It’s like they look down on me and it makes me feel like crap.
My mom keeps saying that I’m ruining my life, my boyfriend’s life, and her life. My boyfriend’s family is happy for me and very supportive so that helps a little. All I have ever done my whole life is try to make my mom happy. I’m not going to have an abortion to make her happy. Now I’m just worried about money and finishing school. But most importantly, I can’t wait to see the baby that I decided to keep in my life. I have had an abortion before and it was so horrible I could never do it again. I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant again after that abortion. But now that I am, I consider it a blessing.
My life is sure going to change but I am ready for it and I cannot wait!!
