The post:
Dear baby,
Please don’t come back.
That’s a pain I not sure I’m strong enough to bear.
I took down the “Uterus NOT Open for Conception” sign,
and replaced it with “Uterus DEFINITELY NOT Open for Conception.”
This time I sewed it in place, less chance for confusion.
I want to meet you, but let’s find another way.
xoxo,
Mom
I’m sure more than a few of you are wondering what came next after the immaculate IUD removal. How exactly does one go back to having good sex after one of the most feared women’s health realities, the dreaded unplanned pregnancy?
I’m not gonna lie, sex after an abortion sucked for a good long while. It sucked more than any other sex I’ve had. There was a vague similarity to sex after childbirth, but laced with heavier doses of fear. Regardless of my gratitude for abortion as an option, and my stronger than ever pro-choice ethics, the last thing I wanted was to have a second abortion. The thought of having to go back to my OBGYN office and confess another unplanned pregnancy was nearly enough for me to start sleeping in a straight jacket. Only problem was that what I needed most in this tender time was deep connection with my husband. I needed to know that we were going to be ok, that we weren’t broken, and that life would in fact go on after abortion. Intimacy was my next step to freedom.
The first time was a dance of careful connection. He didn’t want to break me and I didn’t want to be broken. Suddenly sperm and egg felt like ammonia and bleach, mixing the two had toxic and life threatening potential. After full term childbirth, sex was as much a physical readjustment as an emotional one. Having just pushed tiny human bodies out my vagina I was nervous about what it would feel like again. Would something tear? Were all the parts back in place? Had I stretched so much there would be no “feeling” at penetration?
This time, after an abortion that was no more physically monumental than a heavy period, my fear was a jumbled mess of emotions. I didn’t push a baby’s head through my vagina, but I felt like I pushed the weight of thousands of years of women’s oppression and fear through my heart. I was terrified by the consequences of what having sex really meant. Twenty years of safe sex were washed away by the flood of the abortion experience.
I kept a journal in the month following the termination. I wrote after the first time we had sex:
“Sex is scary”
“I don’t trust my body”
“What if _____”
The first intercourse after the abortion ended in me sobbing, and just like he has since I’ve met him, he held me in his safe arms and allowed it to be what it was. He didn’t ask me lots of questions or run away. He just held me while I cried. What I needed was to be loved for exactly who I was in that moment. He loved me in all my strength and weakness, and I loved him so deeply for walking the path with me. Sometimes the most healing things in life don’t look that way from the outside. A couple of naked parents in a disheveled bed is far from a picture perfect canvas, but having sex after an abortion, regardless of the fear, was in fact beautiful. There was so much healing in that exchange.
Now, three years later, we are closer than we’ve ever been and sex is better than it’s ever been. Our abortion really did make us stronger.
