Letter of a Mum to the World

Roevwade

I remember my pregnancy. It was the scariest day of my life. I was convinced I was going to die. Why wouldn’t I be since my mother had died during her third childbirth? Ever since I found out I was pregnant for my husband, I had been out of my mind with happiness and dread. It was what we both wanted but with the news came a kind of sickness I had never experienced. I went from weighing a decent 70kg to 59 before I got to the 15th week of my pregnancy. I couldn’t keep anything down.

Some days I would puke until my eyes bulged and my ears stung. I remember a particular day I had a mad craving for DQ chicken burger. It was around 8pm at night and Sam was still away at work. I went to go buy the burger and ate it right there. This meal would mark the start of my sever stomach ache that finally landed me in the emergency room the following night. It was not food poisoning. I was just having contractions at 16 weeks. My fear that was barely tamed rose up with glee. I told the doctor that I couldn’t bare the pain and even considered aborting the baby but at 16 weeks, I had come so far and the doctor said that with bed rest, the pregnancy can proceed. So I held on and suffered on.

There was nothing rosy about the rest of my pregnancy. I had to libido to enjoy sex, everything my husband did annoyed the living daylight out of me and I could feel a chasm forming between us. I had hairs and discolouration in strange places on my body and I didn’t even care. I let go of myself and just held on, waiting for the nine months to pass me by. Even while pregnancy, I swore I wouldn’t willingly go through this again. Oh but I felt pain.

I was sure nothing worst could happen during my pregnancy but boy, was I wrong. It was in the 25th weeks of pregnancy that I felt my husband snap. I didn’t even notice he was strung up to anticipate the snap. We were in bed one morning and he announced out of no way that he was moving out. I can still hear the conversation.

“Nina, I can’t do this anymore,” he said from his side of the bed across from the long and huge pregnancy pillow I had myself wrapped around. I had the strongest urgent urge to pee.

“What can’t you do?” I asked.

“This… this whole thing. I can’t keep going on like this. Since you got pregnant, you have been ignoring me and yourself, you spite, you stink, you have more hair than me and frankly, you don’t care about me at all. I feel unseen, unloved and tired all the time. I can’t do this anymore.”

I paused the process everything he said.

“Where is this all coming from?”

“From weeks ago, from yesterday, I don’t know. I have had this bottled up inside me and I can’t anymore.”

I shifted to a sitting hunched position.

“So what does this mean for us?” I asked, feeling panic inching in.

“I’m moving out. I can’t do this anymore. I know you are sick and pregnant and frankly miserable but I can’t suffer this endless torture anymore. I can’t even breathe around you cos of fear I might wake you or the baby in your tummy. I don’t find you attractive anymore and I feel sorry for you. Do you know I cried myself to sleep two days ago when it dawned on me that we are done? I mourned the woman I married. You used to be fun and exciting. You used to enjoy giving me a blown job. You haven’t kissed me in weeks, weeks Nina.”

“I’m sorry. I’m over here growing a whole human being from scratch,” I yelled back. If you want to go, leave already and don’t come back.”

“That’s it? You are not going to try and talk me out of it?”

“You are not a child Sam. I am not going to try and talk you out of something you have already made up your mind to do. You want to leave me in the middle of this pregnancy to suffer alone and be miserable alone, then do it but just know this is the end for us. I will not let you back into my life and if you want to see this child of yours, you will have to see me in court.”

“I expected that but you should understand that I am not going to leave you destitute. I will keep paying our rent and your bills and I ….”

“I honestly don’t care. Just go already. I have to pee. Be gone by the time I am out.”

Then I had shuffled myself into the bathroom, turned on the fun and cried my soul out.

For the rest of the pregnancy, I was a walking corps leaving only because my sister and husband wouldn’t let me die. They were always checking on my, bringing me food, calling my doctor to find the right date of my appointment because I gave them the wrong one because I didn’t want to go. On the day of the delivery, I was very sure I would die because I hadn’t eaten in 15 hours and was weaker than a toilet paper. The baby came three weeks before the due date and was seriously underweight. I actually didn’t any extra weight during the pregnancy, I just inched my way back to my original weight and that was it.

In the OR, they pleaded with me to push but I didn’t have energy to muster up a push so they had to cut me. I honestly didn’t mind. It neither added nor removed from the experience of meeting my daughter for the first time. I had asked the doctor to please give me a hysterectomy but he had refused after speaking with my husband who assured him I was just being emotional. I wasn’t. I felt defeated ☹️

Right now, two years after having baby Nina, I don’t feel any different than I felt while I was pregnant. I love her a lot but I have cultivated a hatred for myself that I can’t seem to shake. I feel like my postpartum depression never really left me. Sam made his way back into my life again because he wanted to be close to his daughter and I didn’t have the spirit to fight him court when he already agreed to have 35% of his income sent to me and 5% set aside for put daughter.

We are trying to build back our relationship because we both knew we acted based on emotions brought on by the situation. It has been slow, I don’t trust him, I don’t love him but he is still willing to be with me even after the changes to my body. It would be ridiculous to start looking for another partner and I don’t think I can find out even if I tried.

You know why I am rambling on like this? Because I won’t do it. We live the US and after RoeVwade was overturned, abortion was made illegal in our state. So here I am, sitting in my old car right on the train track.

I won’t do it. I love my daughter very much and I would hate to do this to her but I can’t bear to do this to me. The doctor had confirmed I was 12 weeks pregnant and indeed, he will not perform an abortion even if medically required. I tried to plead my case and he won’t even hear it. Aren’t doctors supposed to act on your best interest and respect the oath to do no harm?

That notwithstanding, I won’t go through another pregnancy. There is only so little left of me to give and I know deep down in my womb that this pregnancy will take me for all I have and leave an empty, bitter woman in her wake. My daughter is only two years old and my relationship is rocky enough. I was lucky to have survived my first pregnancy, I could have died like my mother. I can’t even tell my husband we are expecting beacuse he will want me to keep it, the state wants me to keep it no matter how I dread it. It will be better to ….

I just won’t do it. If they won’t let me remove something from my body that I don’t want, I still have the freedom to put an end to it all, don’t I?

Even while the argument was still raging about the overturn, I dreaded the outcome. If I knew what pregnancy would do it, I wouldn’t have done it. Yes, I love my child but I wouldn’t have missed her because I never would have met her. Why must women be driven to such drastic measures?

I simply refuse to do again and I will go to any means and length needed to see that I don’t ever have to go through that.