Until they are.
Unplanned pregnancy carries a stigma - pregnancy in general carries a stigma. The phrase “unplanned pregnancy” tends to go hand-in-hand with you assumptions such as “irresponsible,” “careless,” and in the worst company, “slut.”
(The negative assumptions are always about the woman, of course.)
The woman in question would likely not categorize herself as any of those things.
I have been taking the same birth control pill for 15 years with flawless results. I mean, FLAWLESS. You could have set a watch by my period.
Part of that was the pill itself, but the other part was me. You are supposed to take the pill about the same time each day, so I did - religiously. Whenever I was on antibiotics for a sinus infection or the like, I was well aware my birth control would be compromised.
As a type A personality, I needed to be in total control. If I ever were to get pregnant, it would be in my time and on my terms.
And the first time, it was. With almost alarming speed. After years of speculation, I quit my birth control pills in May 2019 and was pregnant by July.
Now we have a spirited son named Phineas who is currently very much living up to the reputation of the terrible twos.
Motherhood did not come naturally to me, but I was under no impression that it would. Children had never been a goal of mine - I never even played house as a child. I preferred single and childless career woman Barbie.
So when, at the age of 31, I decided could give this parenthood thing a try, one of the adjacent questions becomes “how many kids?”
Two. An only child would be tough, and three was too many.
But Phineas‘s arrival and early days were enough to make me reconsider my previous opinion on only children.
Long story short, I had preeclampsia and wound up in the hospital at 34 weeks. I had to be induced at 35 weeks because the high-risk OB said I could die otherwise. (I promise I’m not being dramatic - he said this when I had friends and family in the room.) I was induced, had a failed epidural, but Phineas arrived safely. He was taken to the NICU because he was early - one more week and he wouldn’t have had to go, hence my resistance. I was put on magnesium, so I didn’t even meet him until more than a day later. Phineas spent four weeks in the NICU, during which time I was constantly shamed by the lactation nurses because Phineas and I couldn’t breastfeed. After he came home, Phineas barfed up nearly everything he ate for the first year of his life because of his acid reflux from an underdeveloped esophagus. Meanwhile, I had a nasty case of postpartum depression that has never gone away. And COVID lockdown started just days after he was born, so we couldn’t see anyone for months.
Yes, that’s the short version.
So you can see why I wasn’t too anxious to do any of that again.
In our years of Phineas, James and I have struggled greatly to maintain our identity as a couple. We have gone on three road trips without Phineas and one or two dates, but that’s it. We don’t talk at night because Phineas takes so freaking long to go to bed the other parent is usually asleep before the bedtime parent is freed. We don’t talk on the weekends because it’s all Phineas all the time. We’re get babysitters all the time, but it’s always because we’re both working late. We can’t communicate to save our lives. I recently told James I loved him, but I didn’t know anything about him anymore. That’s a shit feeling.
All that said, a second child seemed like a reach. We’ve skirted around the issue for some time, but as I approached 35, the issue had become more important to resolve. We half-heartedly decided I would quit birth control late summer 2022.
And then -
I got pregnant.
While on birth control.
During a week I should not have been ovulating.
Basically as close as you can get to immaculate conception.
I was devastated. I alternated between sobbing and having panic attacks. I wanted to curl up and die.
You may be wondering what the big deal is. If I was planning to get pregnant in September, who really cares if I got pregnant in March instead?
There’s the little stuff, like our big camping trip to the Utah National Parks would have to be postponed. My maternity clothes were the wrong season. I didn't have enough sick leave. The due date was December, so we would be stuck inside during the months my depression is at its worst. James would also need to go immediately back to school, contrary to him having a summer off with baby Phineas.
But this is why I was crushed: I didn’t make this choice. Even after doing everything right, the path was chosen for me.
My downfall ended up being a medication that had helped me greatly in the past year. After having COVID and suffering from an onslaught of migraines following, I visited a neurologist and was prescribed a preventative medication for those migraines.
What I didn’t know was this medication made birth control pills less effective.
Being so gutted by this pregnancy will automatically earn me the title of “bad mom” if I didn’t have it already. As women especially, our lives are filled with “shoulds” and “supposed tos,” none more so than in motherhood. I should be excited. I should be grateful.
This feeling hit especially hard because of all the people I know who struggle with infertility. They would be over the moon for this, but here I was hating it. The guilt. I also felt enraged because it’s so unfair. Why do I have this bizarre fertility superpower while others are left without?
In spite of these feelings, I did not consider having an abortion. We had wanted a second child and could ultimately handle it, despite the less-than-ideal timing. I steeled myself for a sober summer, ordered a few new pairs of maternity pants, and told a select handful of people.
At nine weeks, I was scheduled to go in for my first ultrasound. As this was my second pregnancy, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. The ultrasound tech would take a bunch of images, print out a few pictures for us, and we'd talk to my OB and get an estimated due date and be on our merry way.
It didn't go like this, though.
The first few minutes of the ultrasound were normal. "There's baby!" said the tech, as I breathed a sigh of relief there was only one in there. (I was already feeling giant, so I had a slight fear it was twins.) When I had my initial ultrasound with Phineas, I remember the tech being chatty and narrating everything that was going on. This time, though, she was pretty quiet. She took a few pictures and ended the ultrasound what seemed like very prematurely. She then said she couldn't find a heartbeat.
We were instructed to stay in the ultrasound room, and a nurse would come and get us to take us to the exam room. James and I sat in the ultrasound room for what felt like forever until we were led through the back of the clinic (never entering the waiting room) straight back into an exam room. That was also very different from when we had Phineas, where we went from the ultrasound room back to the waiting room until they were ready for us in the exam room.
In the exam room, we met with a PA (as my OB was out of the office that day), who was so kind and told us there was fetal swelling and fluid in the lungs. She assured us there was nothing I could have done to change this outcome; that it was something genetic that went wrong.
To my surprise, I cried and cried. The moment I had seen that little body on the ultrasound, it was real to me. We were having a baby, and it was going to be ok. But then, within seconds, we weren't having a baby any more. And I wanted that baby more than anything.
We were given several options as to how to continue. I could wait for my body to miscarry naturally, I could take a pill to get the process started, or I could opt for surgical removal (a dilation and curettage, or D&C). I didn't think I could emotionally handle the waiting or the miscarrying at home (would it happen at work? or with Phineas around?), so I chose the D&C. My ultrasound was on Friday, and the clinic was able to schedule my procedure for Sunday.
My D&C was performed by my OB, which was incredibly comforting. She and her nurses were so kind, and I never felt anything but completely taken care of. I had never had surgery or general anesthesia before (besides having my wisdom teeth out 16 years ago, but that's hardly comparable), so I was nervous going in, but I really had nothing at all to worry about. We even bonded with our liberal nurse over my Ruth Bader Ginsburg earring and shared disdain for Kristi Noem. For such a sad reason to be there, the experience itself could not have been more positive.
This experience makes me even more enraged with the GOP and the Supreme Court. If this had happened in June after they make their decision, I would not have been able to get a D&C or even a pill to speed up the process (as my doctor is in South Dakota). I would have to wait, not knowing when my body would actually miscarry. That waiting would be excruciating, compounded by the fact that it could happen at any time - at work, while driving, alone with Phineas… how horrible. This also opens me up to a higher risk of infection and a higher chance of not being able to have any more children at all. It is absolutely sickening to think of the restrictions that could be just around the corner. Having a miscarriage is traumatic enough, but taking away all of the options for aftercare is truly inhumane.
After I became a mother, I became even more pro-choice than ever before. Now that I'm not only a mother but a survivor of miscarriage, my eyes are opened even further. It is absolutely sickening that anyone should be able to dictate to me or any other woman how to handle her own health. I wanted this baby - but after I learned I had miscarried, I did not want to have to wait who knows how long for my body to expel it. That is emotional torture. The definition of abortion is "the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus." My pregnancy was terminated after the death of a fetus, which fits squarely into the definition of abortion. I had an abortion because I miscarried. Would you fault me because of that? Many would.
I fully believe it's a woman's choice what to do with her own body. Personally, aborting a living fetus is a choice I would likely not make. But that doesn't mean I would begrudge anyone else for making that choice. I know nothing about the lives of other women, nor does any GOP male know what it's like to have a miscarriage and have to decide what to do next.
We're all humans here, all trying to do our best with the pain and the hands we've been dealt. Why can't we seem to understand that about each other?
