What Can I Expect After Taking Abortion Pills?
With much of the world still in varying degrees of lockdown due to COVID-19, the UK and other countries are making at-home abortion more freely available to women. Rather than having to visit a clinic in person to be scanned and receive the pills, women in the first 9 weeks of pregnancy are being assessed by phone and may either collect the pills or have them sent to their homes.
This is an absolute win in my book. Making safe, at-home termination more freely available is an amazing response to the difficulties of providing medical care during lockdown.
Unless you’ve had the procedure, you may not know what to expect. I consider myself reasonably educated on sexual health, but there were still a lot of surprises. Your healthcare provider should give you a very exciting (/s) stack of leaflets to help familiarise you with the process, but I wanted to give a more personal account of the process. Whether your experience is easy, difficult, painful, or scary, you are not alone.
WARNING: The medical leaflets use somewhat euphemistic lingo (largely about ‘masses’ and ‘clots’) in describing the process. I go into a bit more graphic detail which I expect some folks may find gross or upsetting. Also I’m based in England so your experience with ease of access may differ.
Finding Out I Was Pregnant
I got pregnant in December 2019. My boyfriend and I had had unprotected sex and the morning after pill had failed (I didn’t know at the time that the risk of it failing is increased if you’re overweight – which I am). As soon as my period was late I was pretty sure what was up – especially since I got immediate and utterly horrible morning sickness. I knew that if I wasn’t pregnant then there was something else very much the matter with me. The fatigue, nausea, and general hormone overload were miserable, and were made worse by my first bout of what I’d describe as gender dysphoria (I consider myself a queer woman, but the immediacy and biological female-ness of pregnancy was a fresh and unexpected bit of body-horror). My sense of taste and smell were heightened to the degree that it felt like i could smell every fart on a bus, and every shampoo used by every person on my crowded commuter train. I never actually threw up, but felt like I was going to almost 24/7. The only physical effect that I still feel several months later is that during and post-pregnancy my nipples are much more sensitive.
From my own research I felt that a surgical abortion would be more comfortable for me. However, even though I was very early in my pregnancy and visited my GP as soon as possible, the UK NHS is a creaking institution slowly being chewed away by funding cuts. As such the earliest surgical appointment I could get was over a month away. There was no way I was going to wait that long with feeling so gross, so I made an appointment for a medical abortion two weeks later.
Even that ended up being too long to wait. After a few days I called the clinic (who were very sympathetic), and they found me a slot that had opened up due to a cancellation at 08:30 the next morning, two towns away. Luckily my boss was understanding, and my boyfriend had the time to drive me there and look after me.
What Happened at the Clinic
The clinic visit took about four hours overall. There were various steps to go through – the nurse checked my blood pressure, checked that I was safe and not being pressured into terminating, gave me an ultrasound (over the belly, and I didn’t have to look at the screen or be told the sex), and then talked me through how to take the pills and what would happen.
The first pill I swallowed there and then, and then had to wait 24 hours to take the next medication at home. The first pill (mefiprostone) is a progesterone blocker, which basically tells your body that you’re not pregnant any more. I felt better (less nauseous) within hours of taking it, which was a surprise!
The second batch of pills (misoprostol) is taken vaginally. You gotta push the small-ass pills right up close to your cervix so they don’t fall out and then sit quietly while they do their thing (they can also be taken orally if it’s necessary, but it’s very slightly less effective). This is the stage where pain management becomes necessary. On the nurse’s advice I took the maximum dose of over-the-counter ibuprofen, codeine, and paracetamol. I also put a hot water bottle against my back. Not according to her advice I also smoked weed and tried to disassociate by playing video games.
The Pain, Bleeding and Passing Tissue
It still hurt like hell, not gonna lie. Misoprostol causes the placenta to detach from the womb and be expelled by bringing on contractions. For me it was less painful than reports I’ve had of childbirth, but more painful than normal periods. Some of the pain was quite scary because it felt less like the rolling ache of a cramp, and more like a stabbing pain in my uterus.
After a couple of hours of bleeding the contractions reached their peak. I felt feverish and faint, and threw up. At this point I felt a strong urge to push, but also felt like the muscles in my belly and back were made of water. In hindsight I feel like this was the point when the placenta detached, because about an hour later I had one big contraction and felt a mass squeeze out of my vagina and into my underwear (I was wearing a giant night-time pad, luckily). I had been told to look out for this – it’s the placenta and foetus passing, and it’s very important that they do. The mass was about the size and shape of a deflated lemon and looked very recognisably like a placenta, only small. I’m not surprised it hurt so much squeezing through my cervix. There was probably a foetus in there but I didn’t look for it.
After the Abortion
Once it had passed I felt immediately better. Kind of like when you throw up and feel 900x better afterwards. After weeks of finding all tastes and smells revolting, I devoured half the pan of brownies my boyfriend had made for my recovery in one evening. I didn’t have sex for four weeks afterwards (the recommended minimum is two weeks, depending on how you’re feeling), and lightly bled for about 6-8 weeks afterwards.
Overall, not an experience I’d care to revisit! I don’t regret it at all, I only regret letting myself get pregnant and having to go through the ordeal. I’m sure there are other women going through the same thing, possibly alone in lockdown, and that’s going to be a shitty time. I hope you all are staying safe and know you’ll get through it <3