Blogging for Choice

It wasn't a hard choice for me, not really. A horrible time, a horrible place. I can't imagine what it would have been like, to have had that baby then. I was hardly in a position to parent the son I already had, let alone add a new responsibility.

I was living in my best friend's spare room while I waited for my divorce to go through, trying to mother an eighteen-month-old Boychild as best I could. My horrible disaster of a fling (drug-addled, ulcer-ridden alcoholic anyone? anyone? Bueller?) was ending badly. I guess it didn't actually end badly, it just sort of became apparent that the whole thing was a giant nightmare.

Poor choice on top of poor choice, lackadaisical birth control usage, and POOF, I peed on a stick and got a plus sign. Somehow I wasn't even surprised. Didn't this just add insult to injury? Broke, divorced, homeless, jobless, blah blah blah. There wasn't a question of keeping it.

The week before I left town, I visited the local Planned Parenthood. That was a surprise to me: show your face to the camera, push the buzzer, announce your name into the microphone, wait for them to verify your information, then they'll release the door to allow you in. No protesters outside this clinic, at least not when I went. Confirmed the home test, then the bad news. Be prepared for the side effects afterwards; pain, bleeding, no heavy lifting. So taking care of it before moving was right out then. How to explain to my family and friends why I couldn't help move any of the boxes or furniture into the moving truck?

Once I got where I was going and unpacked, I tried again. Called that Planned Parenthood, found out that no clinic or doctor anywhere close would even perform the procedure. Next town over, one doctor at a "Family Practice Clinic" would do that within certain strict parameters (very early term, three-day waiting period (what, was I buying a gun?) etc).

My sister said I talked all through the procedure; the "twilight sleep" they gave me kept me from remembering. I asked the doctor what he was doing every step of the way. I wanted to know everything. He told me that most patients don't want to/can't handle knowing what's going on "down there." I told him I wasn't most patients, and made him give me the play-by-play.

I remember sitting in the passenger seat of the car afterwards, riding back to the house, feeling parched and slightly hung-over. My sister bought me food at some fast-food place to fight the nausea the drugs might cause. I couldn't eat any of it, but sucked down that soda like an elixir. We got home and I held my son, thankful for the life I had.

Reading over this I sound cold. I'm not, I wasn't. I think about it sometimes, do the math, count birthdays. I also count my blessings that this option was available.