The Stories We Are: Letter to my abortion partner

Laura (not her real name) lost her baby to a miscarriage in the thirteenth week of pregnancy and he chose to tell what he experienced by writing a letter. Addressing it to all women who, like her, find themselves going through this pain and perhaps cannot find the words to talk about it, because it hurts, because talking about abortion is still too difficult. Laura decided to write, “to help other women do the same thing, not to hide. His letter for the column We are the stories.

« Way C,

It’s been 24 hours since I can’t stop thinking about you and your shining eyes while there were three of us queuing to do the “Revision of the uterine cavity”. Nobody tells you that if you have an abortion in utero the practice you are facing is that. A revision. Like that of the car, which you do every two years. And we were the three revisions of Monday, September 13th.

I was A, there was a B, and I want to think you were C. Commonly this procedure is called curettage, which gives a good idea, but in the hospital it makes it less unpleasant. More aseptic. Even less painful. A much more common name. A revision. And you had bright red eyes before you walked into the operating room. While I reacted to the pain I was feeling in my own way. Wondering if by chance, while they were there, they could make sure I was walking out of there with a nice pair of new boobs. I wanted to avoid thinking about the fact that I had not planned that visit to the hospital, it was not what I imagined would happen.

I had to go into the hospital to give birth to my baby in February, not to remove a pile of organic remains from my body after a few months. Because inexplicably my body decided to stick to that pile of organic remains for three weeks. He didn’t want to let them go. He didn’t want to think it was all over. That the beautiful thoughts of when there was another heartbeat besides mine were already to be forgotten. Dreams. The hopes. The plans my head had made in those four months were all gone.

This is another thing that no one had told me. No gynecologist. No friends. That the body attaches itself to organic remains even when there is no more life inside us, and it can give you a few more weeks to imagine yourself with a stroller, to think about the bedroom, to leave cookies on early childhood sites that will continue to haunt you even when you no longer need them and find the maternity looks with which you will face the winter when that belly you are waiting for finally shows itself. Now I know our bodies can do it. I didn’t know that before.

Now I also know that the first three months are just as dangerous as the ones that follow. But until on that bed, in the sixteenth week, where I was hoping to see a baby grow, they didn’t tell me it was gone, no, I didn’t know. And when they told me that it had “died out” or “stopped” at the thirteenth, I still didn’t understand how I could have missed it.

Dear C, who knows if you knew. If it had happened to you before. Who knows if you’ve been trying for a while or for a long time to have a baby. Who knows if you’ve already given it a name. I couldn’t find it. So it will remain a stick.

I have to write to you because I want to remember what I felt this week because I know I might forget it later. Trying to drown these memories between curious and hilarious episodes that I still managed to find these days. Because that’s how I am. To protect myself I try to find funny things even when there is nothing to enjoy. In fact, maybe yesterday when you saw me wandering around the corridors with a diaper clearly visible under the hospital dressing gown (I was afraid that a lines could not contain the post-surgery losses) looking for extra free biscuits and sweet tea, maybe you thought that I was a little crazy, a little numb or that my anesthesia was better than yours.

I can tell you that my anesthesia was excellent, but also perhaps in a horse dose because when I transported myself to the operating table, with my legs in the air, I thought my heart was exploding and they gave me something more because I was very agitated. For once, anxiety did something. The truth dear C is that I was tired of crying because I had been crying for 6 days.

Maybe you found out later. Maybe you had less time. Or maybe you needed to cry again. Even after a week, and after the surgery, I still find myself thinking about it and crying. I kept those organic remains inside me for a week because the operating room was only available after 5 days. 5 days of living with the fear that your body will start excreting while you are at home, grocery shopping, or in the car. And you don’t want that to happen while you are conscious. You don’t want to see anything. You want them to remove those inanimate remains from you as quickly as possible. And then it hurts if it happens? How bad? Nobody tells you what level of evil you need to go to the ER. And so you are on alert and as soon as you feel some cramps you think it is the beginning, that your body is about to get rid of that weight, of that broken dream. And you don’t want that to happen in your home. And above all, you don’t want it to happen at night. So there you go to the ER. You run there.

And I hope dear C, that even if you went to the emergency room in the days waiting for the surgery, you also met a kind doctor with red eyes from the night shift who gently explained to you that what you feared would not be. happened because your organic remainder is too large, to rest assured. To go home. And to return there only if the pains are intolerable and if you have losses. If not, wait, patient, your turn for the review.

Who knows if you too dear C when they told you it felt like they were tearing something from you, if you felt your heart breaking. Mine made quite a noise when it broke. I hoped until the last that they were wrong, that my little pistol appeared in the ultrasound and did a somersault as if to say “I was kidding, I’m here”. I’m still here.

Dear C, how I wanted to hug you yesterday. How I wanted to tell you it wasn’t supposed to happen to you too. That an A was enough. A B and a C were not needed in the queue for revisions on Monday 13 September. How am I supposed to think you’re the C? At pre-admission for surgery they called numbers and letters. I was the A. The B was the girl in the room with me, also with a story like mine. And so I think I understand that the letters, at pre-admission, they leave them to us. Those to be revised. I wanted to believe that we had a special language because we are the ones to be treated with delicacy, as if we were precious vases. To be protected.

I don’t know if that’s the case, or if it’s all a construct of my imagination, but thinking like this made me live those hours a little better. It made me think our broken heart had a special ward, where nurses are kinder, where they caress your forehead, where you can burst into tears without being judged, because your letter protects you, because thanks to that everyone knows that they shouldn’t squeeze that jar too tight.

Dear C, I would very much like to know if you will talk about what happened to us or if you will keep it to yourself. If you want to tell that pregnancy can also be this or if you wait to hold your baby in your arms before talking about it, to be able to say – see it happened to me too but then he arrived.

Ior, you know, I think I want to talk about it. I don’t know what the future will be like. I don’t know if there will be another wink, or if the same thing will happen to me again and I’ll be the C next time. Whether at that point I will still be able to react joking about it or not. I can not know, but I wish that abortion did not remain something silent, not to talk about. I wish I could hug all the girls in the alphabet and tell them that pregnancy is also that. And that’s ok. And now I’m left with the fear and uncertainty of what’s to come, but the only thing I can do is think that whatever awaits us, what we can do is try to get out of it a little better than before. Not necessarily happier (maybe yes), but at least better.

And for C’s friends, I hope they have written to you a lot and often, to distract you, to make you laugh, to tell you that they love you, as mine have written to me. I really hope that they will have an eye for those who are living this experience, a bit like the hospital nurses, that they are sweet to them and that if by chance it happens to them, they know that they are not alone and that they deserve everything. the love of the world “.

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