Writing by Anonymous // illustrations by Ciel Chen
The start to the week was a roller coaster: three positive tests in as many days. Life felt all uphill. There was so much trying: trying to stomach the news while patients rolled in and out of my room; doing my best to listen to them, to acknowledge and validate their pain; being careful not to verbalise the silent screams that were smothering my thoughts.
On one hand, I thought I was handling things well. No one else seemed to notice that anything was wrong. And I felt somewhat fine, because I knew what I wanted to do, and I was comfortable with my decision. So I shouldn’t have felt weird about it, right?
It was the first warm day since the start of winter: 19 degrees. It made me miss the European summer I had not long returned from, but also made me hopeful for the Melburnian spring to come. My appointment was booked for the afternoon. To work that day, I wore the new sundress I had bought from the night market in Rome. It hid my bloat well and I felt pretty in it, but I also felt like my boobs were spilling out. My nipples had never been so sensitive and were painful, pressed up against my bra. I wondered if it was obvious to anyone else. The changes in my body felt huge, but how perceptible were they to others? What about the pain and stress on my face? Was that as glaringly obvious as my pregnancy would soon be?
The workday passed rather quickly but I still couldn’t wait to leave. I cut my lunch break short so that I would have enough time to get to the doctor. I didn’t know what the traffic would be like; Sydney Road isn’t great at the best of times, and I could not be late for this appointment. I got there with ten minutes to spare. Parked. Still no sign of him. A tiny niggle in my mind told me he wasn’t going to show. But most of me just believed he was probably running late. He said he was coming and I believed him. He had been nothing but wonderful until then, despite his shock at the news I had told him the night before. I had no reason to doubt him. I mentally scolded myself. Anxiety was turning my thoughts toxic.
I texted him to say I was heading into the waiting area. I checked in and sat down. No reply. Just on 4:15pm (my appointment time), he walked in, looking very hot and stressed. I just caught a glimpse of his flushed face before he put a mask on, as per the clinic’s policy. He sat down and held my hand. His car had decided not to start when he was about to head off, so he had hightailed it there on his bike. I appreciated the commitment, but part of me felt bad. He had stressed and rushed, just to be at this GP appointment with me. Up to that point, I wasn’t even sure if I needed him there with me. We’d only been dating for a couple of months, and I still didn’t know how involved he wanted to be, or should be. What was the ‘done thing’ in this situation? Wasn’t the doctor just going to confirm whether I was pregnant or not? Surely I would have been fine without him.
In any case, I was still glad he came. My usual doctor was unavailable so I was seeing Dr Spark, who the clinic’s website stated specialised in “women’s health, fertility, family planning and reproductive health”; all things I needed. About half an hour after my scheduled appointment time, we went in, and I explained the situation. He sat next to me, rubbing my back as I stuttered over my words. She said she didn’t need to confirm it, which surprised me; I had drunk heaps of water that day in preparation for a blood test. In the end, she said she’d do a quick urine test anyway. I went to the bathroom to collect my pee in the tiny yellow-lidded jar, swearing when I overshot the container and dripped onto the seat. Back in the room, Dr Spark pipetted my urine into what looked like a covid test kit. She noted that it was very dilute. No result came up. I started to doubt the tests I had done. Was this all just bad luck? The spiralling brain does funny things, and I’d almost started to convince myself that I had managed to buy three faulty tests (of differing brands, no less!). I found out later that while I was in the bathroom, Dr Spark told my partner she had never seen a false positive on a pregnancy test.
She sat down, talked with us some more, and then went to check again. I couldn’t help but hold my breath. I thought I was going to explode, my potential foetus and I plastering the walls of the room. A morbidly welcome release of tension. The positive result finally appeared. I exhaled. There it was: confirmation. For some reason, hearing it from a doctor made it more real. More scary. I sat there, taking all the information in. I had not known for seven weeks. He held my hand and ran his thumb back and forth, over the back of my hand, grounding me. Dr Spark referred me to the fertility clinic, and sent me on my way. She didn’t say much, and though I wanted to talk, I didn’t have words to offer up. I paid for the appointment and we left.
I had to move my car from its 1P spot so we started to debrief in the car. I cried into his shoulder and he rubbed my back. I didn’t have control over my words anymore, and they kept spilling out of me. “I don’t feel like me. I don’t feel like I have control over my body anymore. I don’t want to be pregnant”. Somewhat ironically, I felt like a child. I was helpless and I wanted to be scooped up and be told that it was all OK, that it was being sorted out by someone, namely other than myself. He soothed me and was patient even though I knew he was starving; he hadn’t eaten lunch. We eventually headed to a cafe. I ordered a coffee. He had a pulled pork baguette. We sat there until it got dark and the air began to press in around us. We conversed about normal stuff, and conversed about the situation. Both one hundred percent confident and rational in our decision, but in the background of it all, still processing. A little stunned. A little sad. Quite nervous.
There was a week between the confirmation of my pregnancy and the first appointment at the abortion clinic. I kept my news close to my chest. When you tell someone you’re pregnant, they instantly know something so deeply intimate about you. And I couldn’t bear the imaginary judgements I anticipated in my mind; I liked to think I knew the people around me, but who was to predict how anyone would react to this news? It was enough of a shock to me. Two people I did tell in that week were Margot and Guy. They were a couple, my closest confidants and my best friends. I trusted them with even my deepest and darkest secrets and ruminations; sometimes things I didn’t want to admit even to myself. We had a pre-planned cocktail and dinner date on the Friday night of that week. I didn’t want it to suck up the whole conversation, like it was starting to suck up my energy. I waited until the end of the night to break the news, after we had moseyed back to their place for a cup of tea and a chat. I broke down when I told them, as Guy squeezed my shoulders and Margot ran her fingers over the back of my hand. They gently spoke without judgement, told me they were there for whatever I needed. I was so glad that I had confided in them. Moments like these are testing in the most raw of ways. But I have been blessed with such supportive people in my life. They feel like home. They love me unconditionally. And I’m so very lucky to have them.
The following Thursday, I waited for the train to get to Jolimont and have my termination. I didn’t know why I kept calling it that. Not that it was wrong, but I guess to me, ‘abortion’ sounded heavier, more final. Bigger. And those were all descriptors I would have liked to avoid. He was meeting me there. I was so thankful for his support. My fear was that he would run for the hills, leaving me to handle this mess on my own. Sometimes I wondered whether, as the independent person I always had been, I would have preferred it. I had been really stoic before seeing the GP that day. I thought I should have been able to handle things on my own. Did I really need him to accompany me to this too? I knew I was pregnant, and I knew what needed to be done. So there should be no confusion and no doubt. Wrong. Though I felt like I was ‘handling’ things, I realise now that I was numbing myself to any sort of feeling and any sort of processing. Superficially, I was OK. Some part of me was also still in denial. If hoping made things real, this would have all been some sick mistake. Later, upon reflection, I came to understand that the whole thing had been so discombobulating and foreign that I found myself clinging to the crumbs he was throwing my way. We had both got ourselves into this situation; we had equal responsibility to deal with it. Accompanying me to my appointments was bare minimum stuff, really. But I guess he still could have walked away – an option unavailable to me. I had nothing to feel ‘grateful’ for, but when he said he would come with me, it felt like he was giving me all the support in the world.
The clinic was an old building in East Melbourne. I was grateful that the laws had changed a few years ago, meaning that the anti-abortion protesters couldn’t be close by. But I was still worried that they’d be on the edge of their ‘forbidden zone’, grating on me when I was feeling so tender, so vulnerable. At any other time I would have walked towards them and given them a piece of my mind, but I did not want to deal with them today. He was nowhere to be found. I was beginning to stress. Every meeting with him these days was becoming a reason to doubt his commitment to supporting me. I was upset, but relieved when he finally arrived.
Inside the abortion clinic, I filled out what felt like mountains of paperwork. All my details, emergency contacts, my full health history; at this point, I wondered whether they’d also have liked to know what I had bloody had for breakfast (a nervously inhaled muesli bar in my car that morning). I was beginning to get antsy and just wanted the thing over with, while simultaneously trying to slow my brain and take it in slowly. I knew that there would be times in the future when I would want to remember this day.
After the blood test came time for the ultrasound. In some ways, this was what I was anticipating the most. Years of consuming this very scene in movies and TV shows – almost always a nervous but joyous moment. Stumpy little fingers and toes attached to a wriggling kidney bean. A spine. Sometimes a nose. How different this was. Stark. White light. Clinical. Silence as the cold gel grazed the open zip of my corduroy pants. What would my baby look like?
The doctor was old. He looked like he was part of the furniture, and it was obvious he had been doing this for years. Thick, white hair and the driest bedside manner of any health professional I’d ever met. “Now, if the medical termination isn’t successful, you will have no choice but to go and have a surgical one. You can’t claim that you’ve changed your mind, and you can’t proclaim it to be the will of God and decide to keep the baby,” he said. Essentially, no-backsies. His comment caught me off guard but it cut the tension and helped to burst the bubble of angst that had been building in my chest.
He angled the screen away from me as he held the probe to my lower stomach and guided it around. I so badly wanted to see what it looked like but I was too scared to ask. Would he think I was deranged? Would he say no? I stayed quiet, and it was all over very quickly. I was seven and a half weeks along.
I was to take the first tablet there at the clinic. It would soften my uterine walls and prepare it for the purge. The next four, to be taken two days later on the Saturday, would cause the miscarriage. I had timed it so I would need a half-day off work and no more. I wanted the distraction, routine, and the purpose that work provided me. I swallowed the first tablet in front of a staff member, as was required. I willed it to work more than anything. I wanted this thing out of me. I convinced myself I could feel my uterus slackening already.
I didn’t want to be alone for the day of the miscarriage. I didn’t want to be with my parents, or anyone but Margot and Guy. My parents didn’t even know I was dating anyone, let alone that I had fallen pregnant. I didn’t need to deal with dropping more than one bombshell this week. The plan was for both me and my partner to meet at Margot and Guy’s place to have the abortion, and spend the weekend there. Their flat was like a second home to me, and I knew I would be comfortable there. We had agreed to meet at 9:00 am. I arrived at their place extra early – I wanted to get set up to take the tablets, and start the process without hesitation. My partner hadn’t arrived as the clock hands swung past 10:30 am, but I didn’t want to wait. Margot was out at a medical appointment but Guy was home. He made sure I ate breakfast and was looked after. I took the four pills with him by my side. They were to be wedged between lip and gum at the four corners of my mouth, and left to dissolve there over 30 minutes; seemingly innocuous, slightly bitter assassins. Margot arrived soon after. My partner came much later.
The weekend itself was nice. I was cocooned in so much support. I felt safe. In a womb of my own. The pain was strong, despite some heavy-duty painkillers. Not so debilitating that I couldn’t move, I just didn’t want to. Margot and Guy were incredible. I was supplied with a constant rotation of heat packs, blankets, cuddles and shoulders to fall asleep on. They checked in with me to see that I had taken my pain relief regularly. I didn’t feel like eating but they encouraged me to stomach what I could. They talked about it with me when I wanted to, but also provided a welcome distraction.
I didn’t know how much I would be bleeding so I had bought the biggest, most absorbent pads I could find. Comically large, they extended from the top of my underwear at the front, all the way to the top of them at the back. I felt like I was wearing a nappy. But I was happy to chin the bulge because I was extra nervous about leaking; I wasn’t sleeping in my own bed, after all. I wore the pad with normal undies, then a pair of period undies on top. The lengths we go to in order to conceal our literal bleeding, never cease to amaze me.
The most confronting part happened on Sunday morning, after we got back from our morning coffees. I went to the bathroom, not expecting to have to change my pad. I looked down and there was a bloody, broad bean-sized lump sitting in the centre of the pad. I quickly assumed it just must have been a clot or something. But for an unknown reason, I wanted to know its texture. I got a bit of toilet paper and pushed it around the pad a little. Very firm. As I moved it around and turned it over, a piece of sinew showed itself, connecting the two ends of the lump. I squished it a little under my finger. The only way to describe it was meaty, and I could only assume that that’s what it was. Was that sinew the umbilical cord? Could that lump of meat have been my foetus, my baby? I yelled out to Margot and she graciously brought me another pad. Later, she snuggled me tightly on top of her bed and kissed the top of my head. ”Being a woman sucks,” she said.
At the compulsory follow-up appointment two weeks later, I had another ultrasound with the same doctor as the first. This time, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked to see the image from the first day. He flicked through the thick wad of papers that compiled my file. There it was: an A5 photo showing a small, white oval centred in my black womb. It looked tiny. How could something so small have messed with my body so much? Making itself known. Conspicuous. Loud, even though I had been sworn to silence. I wished I had taken a picture of it. But I made the effort to commit the image to memory. I still think about that kidney bean today.
The abortion itself wasn’t hugely emotional. But I felt it more later on. In the week following, I was so tired. I had no motivation to work. I was relieved it was over but I also knew that it was going to take some time to process and that I needed to be kind to myself and let myself grieve, feel relief and fatigue, guilt, feel everything. I pushed through it all when it was happening, but later came the reckoning and the feeling. I didn’t expect so much grief around a decision I had made: a decision I was 100% certain of, and had no regrets about. The complexity and inner turmoil is something that was hard to explain to the people around me, so I largely battled it in my own head. It’s hard going through something like this when you just want everyone around you to know so that they can help you, provide some comfort. Even just a knowing hug. But telling people comes with its own complexity. Would it prompt judgement, scorn, or pity? All unfounded, of course. But in the haze of a scary and traumatic situation, your sense of anxiety becomes heightened, and you can become a harsher critic of yourself, and those around you. Self protection comes in many disguises and often, you do what you need to do in order to survive the moment. I am well on my way to healing now. It is taking time. Sometimes I still battle with sadness, loss, guilt, blame and shame. But I am also proud of myself, and the body that got me through the last six months. I have come out the other side, a little bruised and a little more hardened. But I’ve also learned more about myself than I ever thought I would in my twenties. I have gained new compassion for this body of mine that has been tested and stretched, but continues to carry me through with a strength I never knew it had. And for that, I am truly grateful.
