I had been with him for about a year and a half. One night I let him go "all the way" and that is when it happened. I pretty much knew right then that I was pregnant. When I started feeling different, which happened for me within a few days, I told him what I thought might be going on. He was really great through the entire thing, he left it up to me as to what I wanted to do. He said that he would stand by me in whatever I decided. And he did!

My symptoms were getting worse with each day that passed. The first symptom was nausea. The smell of a Cheese burger deluxe still to this day turns my stomach. So finally we went to the store and bought a home test, me, him, 2 of our friends. We came home, did the test and not to my surprise it was positive. So to make sure, I did another one. And to make triple sure I sent the men to the store to buy another one, hoping that I had done something wrong. I did everything right and I was Pregnant!

In order to have an abortion I had to have proof from an actual clinic, so I took some time off of work and we headed to the clinic that next morning. The nurse gave us some information on the clinics in our area. I immediately went home and called to make an appointment. It was May 22, 1996. My appointment was for 10 am. He and a close friend of mine, who is completely against abortion, were by my side all day. They get you there along with about 15-20 other women, some alone, some with friends, parents, whatever. They made us all sit there until about 1 pm. Then they started calling us back. It was like an assembly line. There were about 5 rooms with 4 girls in each room, we individually went and changed into our gowns and then had to wait for about 45 minutes more. It was very awkward for a lot of us so I made conversation with the girls in our room to ease the uptightness, until they called the first girl from our room.

It was now my turn, they took me to yet another room, a man came in and gave me an injection into my vein and that is about all I remember. During the procedure I do remember some pain with a nurse holding my hand and advising me to breathe slowly, apparently a lot of women/girls begin to hyper ventilate. The next thing that I remember is waking up in a room with girls coming and going from their procedures. Luckily everything went well with my procedure. I never really thought to much about the whole thing until it came time for my due date. A dreaded January 17. At that time we were having some troubles in our relationship and I went through a lot of the pain alone. Once the day had passed, I once again blocked it out of my mind. That was until the anniversary date of my procedure. I get a little emotional around those days and sometimes a little angry with myself. And in a few days our baby would be 2 years old. To think of it that way its hard. To know that terrible twos would be coming up brings a lot of different emotions to me. I have always been brought up thinking that everything that you do will come back to you, which makes me feel that since I went through this procedure that when I am ready to have a family I will not be able to.

I think of it this way, if it is God's will for me to have a family in the future he will provide one for me. Right now I just deal with things as they come along. As for the relationship with him, we have since moved in together and are talking about getting engaged. Because of our past, we take things a lot slower now and things are working out very well that way.

If you do decide to go through this procedure please know all your options before hand and make sure that this is really what you want. Because when it's over there is nothing you can do about it and it will always be in your thoughts and there is an emptiness in your heart that never goes away.