I cannot remember

literally when I found out I was pregnant.

---

or exactly when I had my abortion. It has been about a year, and I think very rarely about my abortion.

While I was in college, there was an effort from the "other side" to document a "syndrome" akin to post traumatic stress syndrome that they argued resulted all the time after abortion.

I was fairly certain it was bullshit then. I am quite sure now.

While some women may have regrets, the notion that negative feelings inevitably result is crap.

Anti Abortion? Adopt an embryo!

I feel sorry for the “other side.” This recent media sensation of the octuplet birth to the woman with six existing kids must be quite a strain. According to her mother, the woman suffers from “plugged tubes” and thus underwent IVF. Because she had remaining embryos that she did not want destroyed, she had them implanted. She apparently rejected selective abortion, and now has fourteen children to support on her own. She is unmarried and according to her mother, her ex-husband was not the biological father of her first six children, who were conceived with a sperm donor.

The scholar in me recognizes that a family of fourteen was really not remarkable until women had the ability and the right to control their fertility (thank you Margaret Sanger). In fact, it was the very common nature of pregnancies every two years or so that turned Sanger from an obscene outlaw to a heroine of the middle class in a relative short period of time.

Ironically the ethical dilemmas posed by this extreme case are manifold for people who oppose other women’s right to make choices at the other end of the spectrum. She is unmarried and will seem to require state aid, a big no no for conservatives. She used IVF, a reproductive technology that some people on the “other side” reject as “playing God.” Still she clearly believes in the value of “life” even that eighth one no one knew was there. Quality of life might be debatable, but even liberals have rejected outright the notion that she should have been forced to abort some embryos. Indeed the suggestion that her physicians should have done the psycho-social screening that would have been required should she have wanted to serve as an adoptive or foster parent, perhaps healthier alternatives for someone “obsessed with children,” seems unversally rejected as outside their purview (interesting to consider in light of mandatory counseling laws prior to aboriton in some states).

Perhaps the greatest ethical dilemma posed by her case is the issue of unimplanted embryos. Because the process of IVF is somewhat unreliable, multiple eggs are often fertilized so that the best embryos can be used for implantation. Most reputable physicians will implant a maximum of two, so in instances when IVF is highly successful, “good” embryos are frozen for later use.

As I have said before, going through this abortion at forty means I know someone who has been in pretty much every reproductive ethical position there is. I had a colleague turned friend, who shared with me that he and his wife conceived via IVF with a donor egg. They had two lovely sons; however, they had remaining embryos and were torn as to what to do with them. Their difficult decision was ironically similar to one that I faced. The embryos were conceived with donations from the same “parents” and seemed like siblings to their two chidlren. To destroy the embryos is in effect the equivalent of an abortion to him, which contravenes his religious beliefs. Yet offering the embryos for transfer to another couple often mistermed “embryo adoption” is difficult for him to fathom, for the same reasons I could not see carrying my fetus to term and then placing it up for adoption. Again, I say, while my decision was hard, there are far more difficult dilemmas out there.

the more things change, the more they stay the same

As a result of blogging about my abortion and posting on some pro-choice and abortion support online bulletin boards, I have been corresponding with a few women. It has been an interesting contrast to this blog, which has a sort of “message in a bottle” feeling to it. The interaction particularly with other women who have had abortions has been incredibly valuable for me. The pro-choice discussion board is fascinating. We debate, often based on our own experiences, the contours of our pro-choice beliefs.

Having an abortion has changed everything and changed nothing for me. While I have always been pro choice and never supported restrictions such as parental/spousal notification, mandatory counseling, enforced waiting periods etc, having an abortion has made me reconsider each of these issues anew.

As a mother, seeing so many young women getting abortions alone was difficult. In fact the only time I cried in the clinic was when speaking to the counselor about how hard it was to process what I saw. Still, I myself at the age of forty, have not chosen to share my abortion with my parents. Who I am to presume that a younger woman has a better relationship with her parents? Sadly not all parents are good parents. I was heartened to see some young women with their mothers. I do hope that if my daughter ever needs an abortion she will decide to tell me, but I do not assume that every young woman has a kind supportive family at home. I have been working with college aged women for too long to harbor any such delusion. Given the realities of domestic violence, spousal notification is a total non-starter for me and never was an issue to which I gave any credence. The days of couveture are over!

As for mandatory counseling, while the counselor at my clinic was very nice, quite honestly I had already seen a psychologist and intend to continue seeing a psychologist. For some women, clergy counseling might prove more useful than psychological services. There are excellent anonymous hotlines that allow women other options particularly for women from cultural backgrounds where anonymity may facilitate a more open expression of emotion. Still other women may not need counseling at all. I think sometimes people say counseling when they mean someone to ask “are you sure you don’t want to continue this pregnancy or consider adoption.” If so, just have a nurse ask that or give the patient a form.

The experience of finding out I was pregnant to getting an abortion took twelve days. It was a positively surreal experience with most of the intense stuff happening in six days. I sometimes have the thought “I was pregnant. I am not pregnant anymore,” the same thought that went through my head after my miscarriage. I know myself well enough to understand that I am incorporating the experience into my psyche. Still it all happened so fast that the process is sort of mind blowing. Thankfully, I was firmly pro choice and had thought through all of the ramifications not only in the abstract, but in previous pregnancies. I do not feel like I decided too quickly. From a pragmatic point of view, with the limited number of abortion providers and the need to be at a certain gestation for a surgical abortion, a woman would not find out about her pregnancy and have an abortion the same day. I do wonder about medical abortions, which can take place the same day. I have to believe however that the benefits of enforced waiting periods, giving a woman time to think and process, are not outweighed by the potential hardships, such as more time off of work or school, or the extended travel due to lack of pharmacists or physicians who provide medical or surgical abortions in their areas.

Recently one of the women on the pro choice board asked what was so hard about my abortion if I was a pro choice. I knew the answer immediately, ending a potential life. I still find the argument for a traumatic syndrome associated de facto with abortion absurd. However, I can see that women who have to “work” their way around to choosing abortion (in violation of their religious teaching, philosophical or biological beliefs) or are pressured in to it, might suffer huge amounts of guilt, remorse, regret. I feel so sorry for those women and wonder how they ever reconcile the conflict between their choice and their beliefs. I know that I will live for the rest of my life with the knowledge that I chose to end a potential life. I am comfortable with my decision, but it was not a comfortable decision to have to make.

There is no answer

In the last twenty four hours I have felt a decided shift in my emotions. I feel like I have returned to normal life, as though I have been away. I find myself reflecting on my abortion in those rare moments of quiet and solitude, but abortion is no longer the overriding thought on my mind.

In those moments today, I have ruminated about how I made my decision. I knew that in order to feel sure that I was making the right decision I needed to consider the very difficult ethical conundrums raised by abortion. I suppose that says it all. I do not see abortion in absolute terms but rather in terms of unanswerable dilemmas.

My body has created life twice. It is impossible for me to deny that with time, good luck, and no accidents of biology, the fetus grows into a baby, who is born, and then develops into a person. In the days before my abortion, I force myself to wonder if this fetus would become a person who looks like my other children, who bear a striking resemblance to one another. I contemplate whether it is a male or female. I think about my two children’s distinct personalities and about what kind of person this fetus might have become.

Those thoughts are difficult to have, but for me they were important. My answers reflect my fundamental views of personhood. I do not think of the fetus as the “unborn” but rather in terms of “potential life.” Miscarriage occurs in one out of four pregnancies. Sadly I know of too many cases, even well after the supposed mark of fetal viability (24 weeks) that ended in badly. I myself endured pre-term labor at 24 weeks with my first pregnancy which ended happily, while many other women on the maternal-fetal ward had far sadder outcomes. I mourn with friends who have terminated pregnancies for medical reasons, or endured a stillbirth due to medical complications during delivery. The process of creating life is sadly fraught with many moments that can go terribly wrong.

I believe that each unique combination of an egg and a sperm creates a different potential life and that personality is the result of a complex interaction of biology and environment that occurs over a lifetime. I do not believe that a specific fetus was destined to be a specific person and that if that fetus is aborted or miscarried that the world is missing the next “Beethoven, finder of the cure for cancer, or fill in the blank” any more than I think that the miscarried or aborted fetus might have become “Hitler, Charles Manson, or another potential blight upon the world.”

It turns out that the answers to my hard questions really were not the important part of my process. It was the asking that proved most valuable. Avoiding the hard thoughts, the conflicts with moral, ethical, religious, or philosophical beliefs seems to me the surest way to make the wrong individual choice about abortion. To me however that is the best answer anyone is going to get, their individual answer because really there is no answer.

Why I will continue to write

Many years ago, in an undergraduate women’s studies class I read Kristen Luker’s now classic Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Those were the hot days of the abortion wars, yet Luker’s careful nuanced analysis not of the rhetoric or of the leadership, but of the beliefs and attitudes of activists on both sides of the struggle made perfect sense to me. Luker showed that abortion is not about reproduction so much as it is about how individuals view the organization of society, the relationships between women and men, the function of religion in society, and the other beliefs that comprise what we often call a world view. Ruth Rosen, another fabulous scholar whose writings I have long admired, makes a similar point about contraception in her recent article about the exclusion of family planning funding from the economic stimulus package. It all comes down to how you define women’s primary function. Are women people just like men, or are they meant foremost to be mothers?

I have ruminated on how my blog must read to the “other side.” I do not think anything I say will change anyone’s mind, mostly because I still believe that beliefs about abortion are largely dictated by two fundamentally clashing views of the world. What I do hope is that by giving voice to one woman’s experience of abortion I can move beyond pithy slogans or religious injunctions to show the feelings and thoughts that accompany abortion. Because that is what abortion really is, a medical procedure that individual women understand in unique ways, filtered through life experiences, religious beliefs, philosophical underpinnings and all the other myriad factors that make up the way people make sense of the world. Banal generalizations and sweeping statements serve only to fan the flames of dissent.

So I have decided to continue to chronicle my abortion process. The professor in me cannot bear to let this teaching moment pass. I also think that the unfolding experience abortion is something few women have shared. There are many fine sites on which women can share their stories, but the longer process is invisible.

I already know that I am going to gradually break the silence and anonymity I have sought. As long as I hide, I will feel a sense of shame. I anticipate also that there may be moments, perhaps the monthly anniversaries, perhaps my first period, who knows, that revive the memories of my abortion.

The comment function is turned on. You cannot post anonymously. I reserve the right to eliminate any posts I find offensive. Start your own blog if you disagree :)

thought of this morning

if I was more pregnant than I thought, then I do not think I got pregnant the one time we did not use birth control. Should that matter to me? Since one of the things I have been beating myself up about is that I was not "responsible" it kind of does.

Apparently I am not alone in this situation.
Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users report correct use.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Want to know how reliable your birth control is in practice (scroll down to 7 for a chart on ideal v actual failure rates)

I am going to be fine

Tthat was my first thought this morning.

I have always been a person who dreams vividly. During difficult experiences my dreams often reflect my anxieties. I wondered if I would have dreams about my abortion, or being pregnant, or having a baby, but I have not.

I realized that it is simply going to take time for me to process this very intense experience that occurred in a relatively short amount of time.

I read a really interesting interview with Jennifer Baumgardner, feminist activist and creator of the "I had an abortion" campaign about how women continually reassess their experiences of abortion at different stages of their lives. That seems right to me based on my experience of miscarriage. At each subsequent pregnancy and then birth, the miscarriage carried different weight for me.

Other than some awful gas pains late last night, I feel fine. I have almost no bleeding at all and no pain. I will take an pill with me to school in case I start to cramp again, but as of right now I feel perfectly normal. The most difficult part is the weight lifting limitation since my two year old still likes to be picked up.

To share or not share

People I have told
My husband
My sister
My oldest friend
My best friend
My geographically closest friend
One colleague at work

People I have not told
My parents (although my husband told his parents!)
The members of my online mothers groups with whom I post daily
Friends who live close by

Why I told

My geographically closest friend was the first person I told. I found out while driving home from work. While stopped at a gas station, I picked up my voice mail. I had a message from my internist. Not my internist’s office, but my internist himself. He said “I got your test results back, are you sitting down? You are pregnant.” My legs literally began to shake. I don’t think I could have driven the rest of the commute home, and my friend lives about 5 minutes away. She is also helping with the childcare logistics on the day of my abortion. Sadly her husband has inoperable brain cancer and he has an MRI scheduled for that day. I know that wait for those MRIs is a huge emotional drain for her, so I am trying not to rely on her for emotional support.

My sister has had two elective abortions. I helped her through the first one when she was just out of college. She tells me that I will get through this and not be haunted by my decision. She calls to check in on me and offers to fly back for the abortion, but I know taking off time in the middle of the week mid-school year is almost impossible for her.

My best friend, who is also a physician, had an abortion for a very different reason. Her second pregnancy pre-natal testing revealed trisomy 18 and she made the agonizing decision to terminate. I tried to offer support, but had recently moved across the country so was only there somewhat for her. She is mostly concerned with the medical aspects of an abortion at this stage of gestation and tries to talk me through it. She has two children of her own, so long emotional conversations coast to coast are not really possible.

I reach my oldest friend while she is on the ski slopes. She knows how conflicted I am as a mother and is 100% behind my decision. She is perhaps the person with whom I am most honest about the negative aspects of motherhood, mostly because she has no children of her own and plans none. Still she has not experienced abortion and other than telling me she supports me, there is little she can offer.

My colleague at work is perhaps the person I am closest to there, which is odd since she is a woman my mother’s age. I am fully aware that she is pro-choice and since I need her to take my Friday classes so I can go to the ob/gyn, I decide to tell her the truth. Everyone at work gets the slightly euphemistic “I had some abnormal test results that require follow up and possibly an outpatient procedure.” I work at a religiously affiliated institution and besides it is not really anyone’s business.

Although I have lived in my geographic location for four years, I do not have many close friends here. I have at least two women friends who I sense would rally to me, but I feel uncomfortable sharing with them since it seems like information that belongs to a deeper level of friendship. Maybe sharing this crisis would take us to that level, but I do not have the energy for drama, so I do not risk telling.

Why I did not tell

Although I have come to peace with my parents as people who did the best they could raising me, and I think they are largely pro-choice, this is not a level of information I would ever care to share with them. They know nothing about my miscarriage either. My mother has a tendency to get overly emotionally involved and I do not need her feelings to think about in addition to my own. That my husband told his parents still baffles me. I know his mother had an abortion, and he says that they are supportive of our decision, but I find it ironic that I speak with my parents almost daily and did not tell them, while he seldom calls his parents, yet as far as I know they are the only people he has told. He has a close friend who is a single adoptive mother who would love to be pregnant herself, so she is not a good person to lean on. He has his own therapist and I trust him to get the support he needs.

Perhaps the strangest thing for me is not telling my online mothers group. This online group formed during the pregnancy of my first son and we have been posting together for over four years. I am on our discussion board numerous times a day. However, I know that the issue of abortion is a divisive one. We have both pro-choice and pro-life members. I also know that there are members who would happily switch places with me now since they desire more children and that there are women battling various levels of infertility. I have simply stopped posting of late. When members email me privately to find out why I have not been on the board, I offer a vague non-answer. I am sure several of the members will figure out the situation from my response, and I know that at least two of the people who emailed me are pro-choice, but it just does not seem fair to burden them with the knowledge when other members of the group are unaware.

The emotional aspects

I scheduled an appointment with a therapist as soon as I found out about this unwanted pregnancy. I spent most of the week between finding out and my first ob/gyn appointment trying not to think about it. I felt like I was in suspension, just waiting.

Fortunately, or not depending on your perspective, the week unfolds as if the universe itself wants to make the point that I cannot handle another child.

First my daughter gets the stomach flu, vomits in the middle of the night and spends the rest of the night tossing and turning in my bed. She has not slept through the night since. It is like having a 2 year old newborn as she awakens at least once an hour all night. The next day, a holiday, we take both children to the pediatrician. They both have sinus infections. This is day four in a row of my son being at home since we kept him out of school on Friday since he seemed to be getting sick. We all have cabin fever but it is too cold outside to go anywhere.

My daughter does not react well to the antibiotics and is super clingy and needy and wants only to be velcroed to my body. Turns out she caught the flu from her daycare provider who is unable to take her for three days while the flu works its way through her family. We juggle teaching schedules to accommodate having her with us 24/7. I come down with the flu. I can barely lift my head from the pillow, but it is my husband's first day of classes so he must teach. Somehow I manage to keep her from killing herself while I doze on the sofa. My husband next gets the flu, so off she goes to school with me. I line up students to watch her, but she is not appreciative and starts crying half way through each class period. I teach four classes holding her for the second half of instruction. I'm completely drained by the end of each day, physically by the demands of holding her and emotionally from the trials of juggling multiples roles simultaneously.

Meanwhile, my husband has our long awaited appointment with my son's principal and school psychologist. Based on classroom evaluations, they believe he has a "classic" sensory disorder and have requested a full special education evaluation at the district level. While this finding merely confirms what we have suspected, it also means that we are in for a long road of therapy. The school is happy with the changes we implemented over the winter break and they encourage us to continue to work at home with him while they work with him the classroom. I am exhausted already at the thought of how we will manage this work in addition to everything else that we already do on a daily basis. I am also dreading the emotional energy it will take to deal with him without getting angry. Since he seeks rather than avoids sensory stimulation he often seems ill behaved. I am teaching him yoga and other ways to channel his need for stimulation, but it is very hard at times to deal with a child literally bouncing off the furniture and walls, say when you are in the midst of cooking dinner at a hot stove.

Meanwhile, I have pretty much stopped eating. My longstanding eating disorder has been triggered by this uncontrollable bodily experience. In the week after I learn I am pregnant I lose 3 pounds and weigh at or less than what I must have weighed when I got pregnant (I though I put on a few pounds from holiday treats). I find this unfathomable as by this point in my prior two pregnancies I was wearing maternity clothes. I am no longer hungry. It is as if my body does not want to nourish this fetus, although I know that in actuality it will be my body that suffers since fetal nutritional demands are met first.

I have odd fears. I mostly fear perceiving fetal movement. I notice that when I take a Tylenol PM to help me sleep, I feel nothing below my belly button. I have starting taking 25 mg Benadryl tablets around the clock to ensure I will feel nothing. I know in a sense I'm being silly and I'm not going to feel the discernible hand or foot that you feel late in pregnancy, but still it is my fear. Strangely enough, I find myself paying great attention to my appearance. It is as if I am saying “see I do not even look pregnant. See how I still fit in my cute outfits."

My poor husband is a kind supportive guy who keeps asking what he can do to help me. I feel awful that all I want is for him to leave me alone. I want to cocoon myself until Wednesday. I cannot allow myself to be emotional at all because I must hold it together for my children. I have cried exactly twice, once when talking to my sister, who has experienced abortion, and once in the waiting room for the ultrasound. I am a pragmatist. I deal, but do not expect me to feel. I know that makes it hard on my husband who copes with things differently, but I need to take care of me. I feel guilty about that, about putting my needs first. I feel like a hamster on a wheel, a snake eating its tail. I must take care of me so I can take care of my children, which means not taking care of my husband or really taking care of me right now. So be it.

The Ying and Yang

In 2003, before the birth of my first child, I experienced an early miscarriage. In some odd way, that first and what will now be my last pregnancy feel related to me.

In the first case, that pregnancy was also "unplanned." After much debate about having children, my partner and I were not "not trying" but also "not actively trying" if that makes sense. Labor Day weekend (how appropriate) 2002, I took a home pregnancy test. We were both delighted and happily anticipated that child. We were both completely devastated when I miscarried. I have to say that next to getting divorced, that miscarriage was probably the most difficult personal time of my life.

When I think about how I might feel after the abortion, I also find it useful to think about my miscarriage. What was so upsetting to me was the lack of control I felt. I wanted to be pregnant and I was not. I feel now like at least I have control over what will happen to my body.

While I felt sadness for a long time after my miscarriage, many of my feelings related to fear that I would never have a child. I am not one who commemorates the anniversary of that pregnancy (although I do still remember the EDD), as other women do. I do not think of that fetus as an "unborn" child watching over me from heaven. I do not find myself looking at my oldest child and thinking he could have an older sibling. In fact, other than times when miscarriages come up, when friends have experienced them for example, I really do not think about my first pregnancy any more.

I sort of think that will be how this pregnancy will be incorporated into my life. I have consciously chosen not to look at the EDD, do not know my exact gestation by ultrasoud and want to know no details. I do not think that I will spend time in the future wondering about the person this fetus might have become. I do not imagine that I will look at my youngest and think that she could have been the middle child. I hope that I will be able to draw on the experience to help other women in the future, since that is what I do in my life.

My husband chose to watch the ultrasound screen during the dating ulstrasound. I could not do that. I have my bodily sensations to make this real. Because I had a problematic first pregnancy I had ultrasounds every two weeks. I know exactly what this gestation entails. At this point in my prior pregnancies, I knew the sex of the fetus and had selected names. I responded to that fetus as a potential person. From the moment I learned of this pregnancy I have felt nothing but unhappiness, not one spark of "what if" or "if only" has crossed my mind. All I have hoped for is a miscarriage so that I would be spared this difficult experience.

In a strange way, I feel like I had no control over losing a pregnancy that I wanted and I now have control over a pregnancy I do not want. They are the ying and the yang of my reproductive experiences.

But I am already a mother...

Indeed, rather than tipping my decision towards continuing this unwanted pregnancy, the fact that I am already a mother is pushing me in the opposite direction. I know exactly what raising a child entails and I do not feel like I can raise a third child.

In part, my feelings stem from a longstanding conflict I have felt between my role as an individual and my role as a mother. Perhaps it is because I was relatively older when I came to motherhood (36 and 38) that I have had a hard time reconciling the two. I spent 18 years as an adult, responsible only for myself. During that time I pursued a career that I love that I feel makes a valuable contribution to society. There is not a week that goes by that I do not feel the conflict between my work and my children. I feel guilty that I do not want to spend more time with my children. The media bombards us with stories of women who wish they could stay at home full time. I can think of nothing worse. I have to say, I am very fortunate. My husband and I both have flexible schedules so we are able to use only part time care and did not start until the children were each almost two. I still spend two days a week "at home" although during that time both children are in part time care so that I can do some work. Still, the guilt remains.

In part, my feelings stem from the children I have to mother. My four year old son has recently been diagnosed with a sensory disorder. I just managed to wrap my mind around the fact that other than teaching, he was going to need all my time and energy to help him learn to cope with this disorder. He is incredibly smart and has figured out lots of techniques himself, but we are doing a great deal of work at home with him to also reinforce positive methods for deal with sensations that bother him. That leaves my darling little two year old to assert herself. In addition to the normal "terrible twos" she is determined not to be ignored! I have a great deal of guilt about the amount of attention she gets since her brother needs so much already. However, I must also confess that not a week goes by that I am not incredibly frustrated or angry with my children. They are demanding and needy and damn it, sometimes I do not feel like being their mother. I admit to yelling at them more than I want or handling them too roughly at times.

When I try to picture fitting a new baby in to this situation, it becomes clear that it is impossible. If I do not feel like a good enough mother for the children that I have, how can I be a mother to yet another? I feel that the people who would suffer most if I continued this pregnancy would be the children themselves.

What I've been thinking so far

While I have always been pro-choice, I cannot say that the decision to terminate this unwanted pregnancy came lightly. I have thought through just about every option.

Right now I want to write about why I have not chosen adoption. My thoughts are haphazard right now, mostly because my thinking usually occurs with one or two small children in the background.

1. During my college years there was a terrible adoption case that garnered a huge amount of attention. A highly respected lawyer faked an adoption and kept the baby for himself and his wife. He was abusive to both and eventually beat the child to death at which time the case became a matter of huge public debate. The notion that I could hand my child over to someone else to raise is impossible for me to accept.

2. But what about an open adoption so that I would be able to monitor the raising of said child? I have a friend who chose an open adoption when she became pregnant as a teenager. She still sees that child regularly and has a good relationship with her and her adoptive parents. However, I feel that it would be very difficult to have a relationship with a child, who would be a full sibling to my children, without explaining why I gave the child up. The core reason I am choosing to abort is that I do not want another child. I cannot fathom telling that to a child, yet I cannot imagine concocting some sort of lie to explain my decision.

3. But what about a closed adoption. They do still exist! Umm well sort of. Adoption law is increasingly shifting, as it should IMHO, to giving greater rights to adoptees. I see no guarantee that at some point in the future, I might get a phone call or a knock on a door from the child I gave up. that puts me back to choice #2.

4. From a medical point of view, I am at the beginning of my second trimester and have had no prenatal care. While sick in the fall I took just about every OTC medication you can think of. I am fearful about the potential fetal impact. From the standpoint of my health, I do not have easy pregnancies due to a congenital uterine abnormality. I spent 12 weeks on bedrest during my first pregnancy and both my children were born slightly premature via c-section. To continue this pregnancy would mean many more months in which I would be physically incapacitated and would require that I undergo a fourth uterine surgery. During my last c-section the obstetrician repeatedly remarked that she was happy this pregnancy would be my last since my uterus has a great deal of scar tissue and was paper thin by the end of my pregnancy.


Next up, considering things from the standpoint of me as a mother