Two strips: Women on the first reaction to pregnancy
Pregnancy causes women completely polar emotions. Someone plans to have a child for years, others suddenly do not work contraceptives - and this puts them in front of a difficult choice, still others do not notice the symptoms until the moment when there is no turning back. We talked with different women about how they felt when they first saw two stripes, and how they were given the decision to become a mother or not.
When I decided to have a child, I studied at Moscow State University and lived in a dormitory. In general, I dreamed of adoption, but it was obvious that no one would give me a child. Therefore, I calculated that if I am in the third year, I will be able to live with the child in a dormitory for two years, and after that it will be possible to give to a kindergarten, and therefore work, and be able to rent a house. So everything was planned.
After a delay, the test immediately showed two strips - and I knew that I wanted to leave the child. Only it was scary because of the unreliability of the father and the lack of money - all this made itself felt after the birth. After some time, I had an unplanned pregnancy, and I had an abortion. Now I think I was very lucky, because I lived in a dormitory when the child was small. It was easy for a small amount of money to find a nanny among other students - one I definitely could not do.
I met my future husband in September 2013, at the end of my previous novel, which lasted five years. A week after the first meeting, we realized that we would be together, I broke up with my boyfriend, went with my girlfriend to rest and began to gather in St. Petersburg - to a man whom I hardly knew. But at the same time I understood that this was the man who would become the father of my children. I never had such confidence before.
In November I moved, in the end of December I became pregnant. Three months have passed since our acquaintance. Suspicions that I was pregnant appeared shortly before the New Year. I do not know how to describe it, but there was a feeling of something foreign in me. However, I tried to convince myself that this is just a stressful reaction to the move, acclimatization, adaptation — anything but pregnancy.
On December 30th, I did the first test - it was negative. I relaxed, decided to drink champagne, but I could not master my usual dose. By one o'clock in the morning I was already falling down, everything irritated me, but I wrote it off for fatigue. After that, we went on vacation for a little trip, where I continued to drink champagne and do tests. One of them showed a weak second strip, but for some reason it seemed to me that this also did not mean anything, nor did the chest, which increased in size by one and a half times and hurt like in puberty during a rapid growth.
As soon as we returned to Petersburg, I went to the doctor. Since I did not have my own doctor at a new place, I went to some kind of online clinic, where there were terribly many people with unhappy faces. All this, along with the local weather, made a depressing impression; all that was missing was alarming music. The doctor told me that I was pregnant and asked if this was good news. I replied that, in general, yes, but very much too unexpected.
I came home and told the guy - he was as happy as ever, however, as were his relatives. But I could not take my pregnancy, because I wanted to live at least a year together and our foster cat. However, the termination of pregnancy was not considered by us in principle: there was no need to refuse the ability to bear and give birth to a child.
In time, I liked being pregnant. The last months have fallen in the summer - it was warm, a lot of delicious food, we got married, more or less arranged our life, waited for the birth of our daughter. She was born two days before the first anniversary of our acquaintance. During this time, we and her father learned a lot of new and useful things about each other, and it became clear that it could not be any different. This girl is the embodiment of our love, an amazing creature that helped us know how cool it really is to be three of us.
The first time I learned that I was pregnant, in my last year at the institute, I promptly and irrevocably fell in love with my future husband. However, at that time we were acquainted for a very short time, I didn’t seriously think about any marriage or living together then and was in a state of extreme shock. It was exactly how Maxim, who later became the father of my daughter Zoe, behaved, and convinced me that with this man I was not afraid of anything.
I decided to furnish everything as dramatically as possible, three times I asked to change the meeting place, moving with him from “Simachev”, where it was “too crowded”, to NOOR, where it was “too noisy”, without explaining anything and making scary eyes in the manner of Vera Cold. When, having calmed down in some unknown quiet restaurant, I, as it seemed to me, confused him with this news, he, to my disappointment, did not start screaming about the restaurant, turning over plates with dishes, but confidently and even firmly retorted: mean what are we going to do ?! What do you mean? " I felt a little ashamed and very calm.
However, the first pregnancy, though she presented me with her first husband, did not end with the birth of the first child: I was confronted with what for some reason very rarely is spoken openly, with the so-called frozen pregnancy. My gynecologist on ultrasound could see the corpus luteum, but did not see, in her words, pregnancy. And after she drew attention to the constant level of hCG in the blood - although according to the norm it should increase progressively. Since this could mean an ectopic pregnancy, I was urgently sent for diagnostic laparoscopy, which revealed that the pregnancy really was, but for some reason did not develop. It turns out that it happens, moreover, it happens quite often, and sometimes we do not even notice it, considering the delay as an inexplicable failure of the body.
All this time, Maxim was next to me, and when, quite unexpectedly for me, he made me an offer, I agreed, reasoning reasonably, that we passed the most important test of the strength of relations. Soon, I again saw two stripes on the test, and this time I experienced a feeling not just of joy, but of almost chosenness, of a special purpose. That was my little Clark Kent. For all, he was an ordinary journalist, but he knew that he was a real superman! I was also a journalist, then I worked in gloss and knew that another person was already growing and developing inside me. In a way, I was also a superman.
When I got pregnant, I was twenty-seven and it was not planned. I learned about it only in the seventh week, when it became impossible to ignore the delay and the suspicious continuous desire to sleep. It was summer, I worked from home, did a test and continued to read something on the Internet, while the results showed up. When I saw them, I became agitated and even panicked, because just an hour ago I was relatively calm working and no major changes in my life were foreseen.
There was a female consultation in our house. I called there and asked to take me out of turn - I was allowed to come in an hour. During this time, so many thoughts flashed through my head, it’s scary to remember. But the option to terminate the pregnancy did not occur at all. The future dad, by the way, was released that day early and found me at the door. Of course, he immediately realized that something was wrong with me. I planned to tell him after the test result was confirmed on the ultrasound, but, of course, I could not resist. So we went to the doctor together.
I almost do not remember any emotions, except confusion. And at that moment, we somehow frantically immediately decided to flee marry. Then for some reason they began to put it off and realized that marriage is not what we want right now. As a result, they invested money in managing pregnancy in an expensive clinic - which, I really, regret. Yes, in such places, pregnant women are not rude, but the doctor who observed me, even nine months later, could not remember my name.
I think the set of fears for all pregnant women is standard - especially you are afraid that there will be something wrong with the child. The first few months, the doctors scare them with the threat of miscarriage and force them to eat magnesium, then they look for congenital diseases, and then you successfully scare yourself. Childbirth is also a terrible thing. I did not read any wild stories on the Internet until about the ninth month, and then fell through. Women wrote about the terrible pain, hatred and humiliation on the part of doctors, as well as about the risks that during childbirth a child can be accidentally crippled or killed. It is good that these fears were not justified. The process of childbirth is not the most pleasant, but in the end I was waiting for a sickly bonus, and this all smoothes out.
Immediately after giving birth, two new fears roll in. The first is that it is terrible not to cope with motherhood and to nakosyachit somewhere irreversibly. The second is scary, that now you will worry all your life for a child. With a complex of a bad mother, somehow, one can cope, but the fear for the child does not pass - he is uncontrollable and irrational.
With the birth of a child, everything has changed in my life. I do not believe those who say that nothing changes - it is simply not logical. There were two of you, and now there are three, and this third needs a whole mountain of everything and close attention. This can be treated as overwhelming duties or something joyful. I did not always manage to rejoice, there were also difficult moments, but now I can’t imagine what our life would be without a daughter. If the two of us leave somewhere or are left without her for the weekend, after an hour we begin to talk about it and look at the photos and videos on the phone.
I got pregnant from my husband, but in a completely unfortunate time for me. To establish this accurately only in a month: before the tests did not show the second strip for some reason I did not understand, but there was a full set of symptoms, due to which I became suspicious of pregnancy at the beginning of the second week of the delay. When I found out about this for sure, I almost fell out of fear.
The decision to terminate a pregnancy was pretty easy. I knew exactly what to do otherwise would now mean the end of my studies and the quiet life of my mother and husband. We are both young students, and he still does not like children - for us in this situation, abortion was the only adequate choice, although sometimes it became sad for me.
All relatives who knew about the decision to have an abortion, reacted to this understanding. I was free to decide how to proceed, and the doctors did not impose anything either. The process was painful, but tolerable, and I quickly coped with this situation both morally and physically. To give birth to a child, I do not plan for another five years for sure, I want to get back on my feet.
At eighteen, I decided to leave the family where psychological and physical violence reigned. I moved to my boyfriend, who was six years older than me. He said that since he has an apartment and a job, then everything will be cool. We got married, and two months later I got pregnant. I learned the symptoms right away: my stomach was hurting wildly, the menstrual periods started, but they ran out immediately, and the test immediately showed two stripes. I thought for a long time whether I would give birth, because my head was constantly spinning, my hemoglobin decreased, and besides my husband and I often cursed. It scared me that I had neither education, nor apartment, nor work. I depended on my husband, and he could do anything with me. In the end, I decided to leave the child. Mom also advised to give birth.
Closer to the third trimester, she radically changed her mind, looking at our relationship with her husband. By this time, I also regretted that I did not terminate the pregnancy, but it was already too late. All my fears were justified: my husband and I fairly quickly quarreled completely, and then he died in a fight.
I had to move back to my parents, who were frankly inadequate towards me and the child. But over time, life began to change for the better: I went to study and work, at last there was money. It was also depressing that parents reproached me, and that the child was often sick. Fortunately, over time, managed to move out of the family, find a new husband, apartment and work.
The first time I became pregnant when I was eighteen years old: a condom broke, it was night, there were no 24-hour pharmacies in the city, so it was almost impossible to buy emergency contraception. The young man and I decided that nothing terrible would happen once. And here during the session a pregnancy happened like a bolt from the blue. I found out for a period of five weeks: delay, hellish toxicosis, I was literally nauseous from everything. I was terrified, the session that had begun did not in any way get stuck with the pregnancy, a sticky fear and hatred for my body appeared.
When I told the guy, he replied that only I had to decide. And my mother herself guessed in my green mind and said she was ready to go with me to the hospital if I decided to have an abortion. The child did not enter into my plans: there was neither my own housing, nor work, and in general I did not see myself as a mother. Well, that loved ones were entirely on my side.
That time I was most afraid that I would not have time to get an abortion on time. In the antenatal clinic, they pulled out with analyzes: the first ones were lost, they had to be tested again. I could not eat and sleep normally due to toxicosis. I constantly dreamed that I did not have time for an abortion and I had to give birth, and the child had nothing to feed and nothing to wear. The doctor at the first reception tried to scare me by saying that after the procedure I could not get pregnant again. But the woman who carried out the procedure was very sweet and courteous and really supported me. I underwent a surgical abortion for eleven weeks without anesthesia due to delay in testing. Despite this, I recovered very quickly: already fifteen minutes after the operation, I had eaten normally for the first time and the next day I ran shopping with my girlfriends.
The second pregnancy happened when I took oral contraceptives, which the doctor picked me up after the first abortion. Saw for the second year, she felt great, took strictly at 21:00 on the alarm clock - in general, nothing foreshadowed pregnancy. Monthly always came in time, and suddenly on a routine examination by a gynecologist, I learned that I was pregnant for more than twelve weeks. There was a feeling that they put a bucket on my head and hit it with a stick. I even fainted for a couple of minutes, and the doctor, seeing my reaction, offered to look for medical and social indications for abortion.
I told my boyfriend, and he offered to marry him and have a baby. Getting pregnant the second time was not as scary as it was at eighteen, even though it was always two years. But the future husband was already working, and we had housing. Having considered all the pros and cons, I decided to leave the pregnancy. Later, without getting enough sleep at night with the child and constantly being in a deplorable financial condition, I firmly decided that I would not give birth again.
After the birth I was given a spiral, but, remembering my sad experience with oral contraceptives, I did tests every month just in case - there was real paranoia. And then there was a test with the second weak strip - it did not come as a big surprise. I was only angry with my own body: all people are like people, and I am some kind of anecdote. The term for ultrasound was set at three to four weeks, and there were no symptoms.
After consulting with my husband, I decided to have an abortion: we would not pull two children with money and I was absolutely agree with him. I just started to eat normally, and then again the threat of toxicosis. Mom supported me again, I left her child while she did all the tests. This time I was afraid that I would not have time to do a vacuum abortion and would have to go for a surgical one. I was very worried about how to take care of the child after the procedure - he wants to handle it, but I cannot lift a heavy one. In the women's consultation, the doctor began to put pressure on me, saying something in the spirit: "Where there is one, there are two. What do you feel sorry for?" In general, I had a vacuum abortion, after which I was immediately sent home, where I had to take a heavy child in my arms. Because of this, I was recovering a little longer.
I have never regretted having interrupted two pregnancies: there was no depression after abortions, but there was a postpartum. Now I combine several methods of contraception at the same time - an unwanted pregnancy is psychologically very difficult to tolerate.
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