The author was going to have an operation. The photo is courtesy of Sarah Nolan.
I discovered I was pregnant on Mother's Day. It was six days after the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft decision on abortion.
I thought I had a urinary tract infection when I was having abdominal pain. Something else came out of my sample. I was told by the doctor that I was pregnant. She told me what to do next.
The secretary brought me a balloon from her daughters. There was a rainbow background with the words "best mom ever" on it. She gave it to me. I said thank you for what I didn't want.
Andrew was as surprised as I was. As the doctor inquired about how long we had been together, we tried to be nice. Since high school, we've told her. It was time for us to have kids, she said.
Everyone was happy. I was a good story. On Mother's Day, a young woman discovered she was pregnant. Not one of them seemed to register that I was devastated when I had my IUD.
The doctor said my due date was December 28.
I have never felt so isolated.
I live in Los Angeles at 26 years old. The politics of gendered embodiment in science fiction are something I want to write about in my PhD thesis. I am too close to the intersection of my research and personal experience as the word "dystopia" is bandied about by anyone with a phone.
My IUD was supposed to have over 99% effectiveness within 3-6 years, but it wasn't in the short-term plan. Statistics don't matter when you're less than 1%.
I was excited to see if it would fit. What would it be like to have a baby in a year? We have a crib in our apartment. When we got pregnant, we decided to move closer to home, but neither of us were ready to leave LA. How would our cats react to a baby? I wanted to tell our family.
Andrew's mom and sister are better at being mothers than any other person. My family is very chaotic and welcoming a baby would be like welcoming my twin nieces a year ago.
A Christmas spent in our small apartment, both of our families in attendance, and me either too swollen to move, or holding a little winter baby, would command the reverence reserved for a Christ child.
I tried to be happy on the day.
It was MzE MzEd out by the night.
I woke up in the dark and knew that the life Andrew and I had built was over.
I couldn't have a child.
I told Andrew early in the day. He made it clear how he wanted this to turn out. The pregnancy would disappear with us.
I had an OB-GYN appointment the next day. The tests showed that I was pregnant, but there was no evidence of a uterus. The doctor said that there was probably something growing outside of my period.
I was sent to the ER. The fallopian tube isn't meant to hold anything larger than an unfertilized egg. There will be a burst. The blood will enter the abdomen. The patient is going to bleed to death.
I walked back to the car and went to the ER because I was afraid that the sucker would be open. The wrong step leads to the fall of the building.
I was in the hospital for the first time and it was weird. My family spent a lot of time at my dad's office when I was a child. We spent seven months visiting him after he was diagnosed with leukemia. I was 17 at the time. I waited in the ER and told him I was getting poked with needles.
The transvaginal scope was used on me that night. The tech moved the wand around inside me and didn't stop or talk to me. I thought it was over when I looked at the print of the tree branch that had been laid over the light.
My test results were discussed by the laborist on call. I had never seen a man with such large eyebrows. I ran through it all again after he asked what brought us in.
He stopped me from telling him that we had a positive pregnancy test. I said no because I didn't want to be pregnant and I had an IUD. The doctors thought it was ectopic.
He asked if he could look at your chart. He looked over the paper that he already held to his eye.
He said that it looked like he was going to send you home. When I return to work on Thursday, I will be able to see you and figure out the kind of baby you are carrying. We can give you some methotrexate if it is ectopic.
I don't want it if it's not ectopic. It will be the same treatment.
He looked up and said the treatment would be the same.
We thanked him, even though we didn't feel like we understood him. He moved his eyebrows somewhere else. We had a plan to avoid him on Wednesday.
The balloon is from a hospital. The photo is courtesy of Sarah Nolan.
I had no pain and the promise of answers in the evening gave me some confidence. I went to the store to shop. I was in an aisle at Target and felt bad. My stomach dropped as I saw my head begin to float. Andrew brought the biggest bowl to throw up in the car. I began to have a feeling of being unwell, even though it wasn't terrible. We went to the ER.
We were in a room that dealt with patients. The physician assistant came in two times. The nurse told me I was being moved to a room after poking her head in. We went deeper into the hospital.
The doctor came in to greet us and she was very dark-skinned. She told us that after looking at my test results, they found out that I was pregnant with a baby. She used the computer to grab an image from the transvaginal Ultrasound. She pointed to the screen. This is your stomach. She made sure we understood.
She circled a large black area with her finger, saying that it was fluid that shouldn't be here. There is blood in this picture. A lot of it is located in the wrong place.
I sat next to the doctor. My hand was taken by her. The ones you had two days ago are almost the same as the ones you had today. I don't know how someone would send you home after seeing this.
She told me that the tube was rupturing because of the amount of blood in my abdominal area. The pain I felt the day before Mother's Day wasn't caused by the strain on my bladder, it was due to the fact that I was pregnant. My fallopian tube had torn open.
I had been bleeding for five days.
I was sent home despite the fact that my life was in danger. Between my two ER visits, I was very likely to die. I thought he sent me home because he wanted to delay the procedure so I wouldn't have to go.
He didn't see me when he looked for a baby.
I did not get through the surgery with any problems. The time to heal and scar would be very short. The meds kept most of the pain away from my throat. I had to go home the next day.
Andrew took care of me for a few days. He put me in and out of the bed. He went to the store multiple times. He waited for me to stop and sit on the benches and walls at the apartment complex.
The doctor said she couldn't believe I had surgery less than a week ago. It was a huge relief to see my IUD in her hand. You have so long to fix it. She put a toy in my hand. She said she had never seen anyone get pregnant.
The world moved on without me. Andrew's family and I didn't go to the park. I didn't get to go to the beach and watch movies. My friends brought flowers and food. My mom sent a bunch of flowers. I pretended to eat crackers the family tried to give me through the phone so I could see my nieces.
Everyone was pregnant after my surgery. The woman in my department is due on the same day as me. A friend of mine is pregnant with a girl. My cousin had an ectopic baby.
I didn't want a child. I think I lost one.
I used to tell people that although I didn't think I'd ever get an abortion myself, I'd never remove that option for someone else. I didn't need it in a way that someone did.
A partner who loved me above anyone else, a steady income, health insurance, a network of siblings, parents and in-laws who were already enthusiastic aunts and uncles and grandparents were just some of the things I had. I didn't think I'd have a reason to hesitate.
The decision was made on my fourth wedding anniversary, and it was struck down because of faulty historical analysis and the claim that the Constitution doesn't confer a right to abortion.
I enjoy reading stories similar to mine. I don't like stories that are very bad. Abused relationships are discussed. There are people who don't have access to contraceptives. A child was raped and refused an abortion. The people were raped by men they knew. There were ectopic pregnancies that were left too long because abortion pills are hard to get, and there were miscarriages that turned fatal because they couldn't tell if they were pregnant or not. Without sex education, contraceptive access, and parents who are open about sex, it's difficult to prevent a pregnant woman. It's even more difficult to know how to respond to a pregnant woman.
You don't know what happened to me today. There are two pink dots on the right and left of my bellybutton. I have returned to researching, writing, running, and socializing. The problem is still with us.
I know that a womb can be a heavy burden. There will always be people who only see me for reproduction.
There were a lot of people check in after the surgery. Many people were kind to one another. I was asked if this would affect my ability to get pregnant again. I reassured them that it wouldn't be a problem. There is a small connection to my visions of a future with children.
I have never considered severing a small connection.
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The article was first published on HuffPost.
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