My face must have looked exactly how the over-achieving sperm inside me was making my stomach feel, because the nurse giving me my results didn’t even take a moment to assume that this was a life event I was thrilled about.
‘Oh. Um. Oh. I’m so sorry. It’s positive. You’re pregnant.’
When someone says ‘I’m sorry’ instead of ‘Congratulations’, you know that you are definitely too young to be pregnant.
I wanted to vomit. Not because I was terrified or shocked or anxious to find out that I was knocked up at twenty-one, but because whatever little swimmer had managed to successfully plow its way into me was now having some kind of epic spermgastro problem that could only be explained by it having eaten bad fish of some kind. Not only had my egg been infiltrated, it had been infiltrated by an obviously defective sperm with a stomach bug. And now all I wanted to do was vomit, all day, every day.
That’s how I knew, actually. I can remember the exact moment I knew I was pregnant. I could just feel something wrong in my body.
I was working in a cinema, and got a hot flush while sitting on the toilet. Then I was really suddenly hit with a wave of nausea like nothing I had ever felt before. It was the kind of nausea that takes away any sense of dignity that a person has – I literally took off my top and bra, lay down on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor with my pants around my ankles, just praying for the feeling to pass and being absolutely certain that no other person in the history of time had ever suffered like I was suffering in that exact moment.
I spent the next ten minutes throwing up pretty violently (this wasn’t ‘cough a little while a boy holds your hair back’ throwing up, this was heaving, ‘the blood vessels in your eyes burst’ kind of throwing up). It was graphic. Once I was done, I sat back on the toilet, a little worried to be honest, as I didn’t know if vaginal tinea was a thing but if you’re ever going to get it, it would definitely be after lying naked on the floor of a public cinema bathroom. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to compose myself. And as I sat there, entirely naked now except for my shoes, the words just flashed across my brain: YOU’RE PREGNANT.
Fuck.
I peed on a stick as soon as I finished work and the two blue lines immediately came into focus. Immediately. Like they were shoving the certainty in my face. They didn’t even give me the decency of some ambiguity.
Fuckity fuck shitburgers.
I threw up again, because the initial vomit had clearly only been some kind of vomit-welcoming ceremony, designed to introduce me to a new, vomit-focussed way of life. And from that moment on, the vomiting did not stop. It was all day, every day. That’s why I became convinced my egg had been fertilised by a defective sperm with a stomach bug. I was so nauseous I could barely stand upright. And then, a few days after peeing on that stick, I was still trying to hold in vom while sitting opposite the very concerned-looking nurse who had just taken my blood.
‘This isn’t something you wanted, is it?’ she said, appearing to be even more upset than me. I almost felt obligated to give her some kind of comforting hug.
‘Not really, no.’
We both sat there in silence for a second. I tried to decide if a 25-year-old nurse could answer my question about the possibility of a single sperm having gastro, but she seemed to be really emotionally affected by my test results, so I thought it best not to add to her stress.
‘Okay, so, um, thanks,’ I said, and left the tiny room.
Fucknugget.
I hobbled over to the doctor’s room. He reacted the same way as the nurse.
‘So, what are your plans?’ he asked.
‘Oh, abortion. Definitely,’ I quickly replied.
He nodded, and reached behind him for a pamphlet that was hidden behind a pile of other pamphlets – the pamphlets on show at the front clearly weren’t meant for slutty girls who had screwed up their lives.
He handed it to me, without speaking. It was for a place called the ‘Pre-Term Clinic’, also known as the ‘You Fucked Up So Bad The Doctor Hides This Pamphlet Behind The Other Pamphlets Clinic’.
‘So . . . Do I just . . . Can I just walk in or whatever? This afternoon?’ I asked.
I was clueless. As far as I was concerned, I was getting that thing taken out immediately. I didn’t like that my defence system had been compromised. Also I just really wanted to stop the vomit.
‘Well, you’re only at about four weeks, so you may have to wait a while yet. But make an appointment to discuss it with them.’
Wait a while yet? Say what now?
‘Why would I have to wait a while?’ I asked, panic rising along with more vom.
‘You really should speak to them about it,’ he snapped back. He really, really did not want to be talking about this with me.
I took my naughty girl pamphlet and left, dialling the ‘Pre-Term Clinic’ number before I was even out the door.
The clinic was less than a kilometre away, across the city, in an unassuming, nondescript building. It certainly wasn’t immediately obvious that it was an abortion clinic. There weren’t even any protesters, which, to be honest, I was mildly disappointed about. I really wanted to see someone holding up a graphic sign while singing Bible hymns through angry tears. I wanted to walk past them in defiance. But there were just a few office workers. A café. That’s about it, really. A perfectly normal city street.
The only sign that this was a ‘special’ kind of clinic was the prison-like locked security door. You couldn’t just walk into this place. You had to push a buzzer, after which someone would look at you through a camera and ask you to identify yourself over the intercom. If you had an appointment, they’d buzz you in to a locked glass area, where the staff at reception could get a look at you and decide if you were a legitimate woman in need or a crazy person holding up a graphic sign while singing Bible hymns through angry tears. If you passed the visual test, they unlocked the final door and let you through.
In my appointment, it was confirmed that I would indeed have to wait to get this thing out of me. The lovely yet nononsense female doctor told me I wasn’t ‘far enough along’ to get the termination done at that early stage. This was bizarre information to me. Not far enough along? I was supposed to let it get bigger? Allow the hostile take-over to continue?
Apparently, yes. I needed to be at least six weeks, but preferably eight, to guarantee that the ‘procedure’ would be successful.
I burst into tears. ‘That’s a month away!’ I cried. ‘I’m so sick and I’m throwing up more than I ever have in my life and I seriously think the sperm that broke through has gastro and I don’t know how it beat the others when it’s clearly defective and I can’t take this for another month seriously I can’t!’
‘We really don’t like to do it any earlier than that, I’m afraid,’ she replied, politely ignoring my near-hysterical babbling.
‘But what if it’s a bad sperm?’ I implored. ‘I seriously think a bad one got through. It is not normal to be this sick. It’s infecting me!’
She took a deep breath and smiled – the kind of polite smile that people give when it’s taking everything within the deepest depths of their soul to be patient with the idiot in front of them.
‘That’s just morning sickness,’ she said. ‘Nausea is totally normal during a pregnancy, especially at this early stage. It’s not really possible for a single sperm to . . . have gastro.’
She started rattling off something to do with ginger and lemonade and taking deep breaths, but I was done listening. As she continued to talk about what the termination would involve, all I could think was how stupid I had been to let this happen. My grandmother, my mother and my older sister had all been pregnant before twenty-one, and I was so cocky in my belief that I would avoid going down that road. And now, not only had I failed to break the family curse of becoming a host body before twenty-one, I was also essentially homeless. And directionless. And I couldn’t afford to dye my regrowth. What a fuck-up.
After years of being sent back and forth between my alcoholic mother and a variety of different concerned adults willing to step in, I was finally removed from her care permanently at fourteen. My uncle Ben took me in, sent me to a very fancy boarding school and tried to give me some stability and consistency in what was left of my childhood. At twenty, though, that childhood was over, and he asked me to move out.
I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so I just sort of floated around for a while, staying on different couches. I spent half my time on my best friend Tony’s fold-out in Kings Cross, and the other half going between my older sister Rhiannon’s house and my mum’s house, both in Liverpool in Sydney’s west. I’d stopped going to drama school because I couldn’t afford the fees my uncle had been helping me with, so now I could basically be described as: Rosie, homeless cinema worker, cleaning up popcorn and busting guys getting secret hand jobs off their girlfriends during Fast and Furious movies.
I was hoping to work enough so that I could afford to move into a share-house close to the city, at which point I would reassess and try to actually do something with my life. I wanted to go to university, be a writer, maybe even put that time at drama school to use. But at that stage, I was living across three different couches and pulling clothes as needed out of the boxes I had stashed in my mum’s garage.
What a perfect time to get pregnant.
It was a one-night stand. A guy I met on Purple Sneakers night at a bar called The Abercrombie, in Chippendale. (Pause while every guy who went to Purple Sneakers back around 2009 tries to remember if they hooked up with me. If you were a skinny hipster and an arsehole, probably.) We made out a bit. Then he mentioned that he lived close to my sister, so we got the same train home together. Then I accidentally got off at his stop instead of my sister’s and accidentally went to his house and accidentally had sex with him. I was on the pill, and we used a condom, so that defective little sperm must have been really fucking determined. I didn’t have this guy’s number; I didn’t even know his last name. It was just a random hook-up that I didn’t think would be memorable in any way.
And now I was the one sitting in an abortion clinic, being told I would have to leave this thing inside me for another month before I could do anything about it. I was also the one who had to worry about paying for it, since it was going to cost around $800.
‘I’m sorry, how much?’ I said, thudding back to reality upon hearing such an unexpected number.
‘That’s if you get a general anaesthetic,’ the doctor replied. ‘Which means you’ll be put completely to sleep during the procedure. But most women just get the twilight sedation, which means you’ll still be asleep, but it’s not as invasive as a general. It’s more like a light sleep.’
‘And how much is the twilight sedation?’ I asked, praying for a much lower number.
‘About $400, so half as much. I really recommend that option for you. There’s no reason you would need a general.’
So I had to pay $400 to be ‘put to sleep but only kind of’ and then, from what I could gather, have something shoved up into my uterus that acted like a vacuum. Apparently there wouldn’t be pain, but ‘discomfort’, which everybody knows is code for ‘there will definitely be pain’.
This was bullshit. If men had to get abortions, they would come in chocolate form, be less than $10 and available at every convenience store.
I booked in for a termination, performed under twilight sedation, for four weeks’ time. Then I caught the train to my mum’s house and spent the night puking.
Then I spent the next day puking. And the next night puking. And the next day after that. It just wouldn’t stop. After a few days I realised I wouldn’t be able to leave my mum’s house. I could barely walk to the bathroom without being sick, let alone catch the train into the city to clean up popcorn at the movies. I lied and told them I had pneumonia and wouldn’t be able to come in for a couple of weeks. Then I left the couch and went upstairs to one of mum’s spare bedrooms. It had a single bed that had apparently belonged to some flatmate Mum had been sharing with for a while. Other than a bedside table, the rest of the room was empty. It was very sad and very, very grimy. The kind of room you imagine the police raiding to find evidence after a creepy man with a thin moustache gets busted masturbating on a train. And the only evidence they find is a collection of ceramic clowns.
But I was desperate, and if I was going to be staying at my mum’s for a while, I needed to be in a room where I could close the door to escape her drinking. I couldn’t find any sheets, so I laid a towel down on the mattress to protect me from the germs of what I was now convinced was Masturbating Train Man’s bed. I covered myself with a doona riddled with cigarette burn-holes and tried to sleep.
A few days later, the nausea still hadn’t relented. I spent my days trying to sleep, waking up, puking, trying to eat, puking, trying to sleep again. My older sister Rhiannon, who’d had a daughter, told me that maybe I should go to the doctor, because she did not remember being that sick during her own pregnancy. But the doctor at the clinic had told me it was normal, so I just decided to stick it out. I developed complete tunnel vision to get through it: I just had to last four weeks until it would be over. And half of the first week was already done. Rhiannon brought over a crappy little TV from her house. It only picked up Channel Nine and Channel Ten, but I switched it on and bunkered down. TV could get me through anything.
I hoped at some point the nausea would stop, but it just kept going. I was still having trouble getting up. I would go downstairs to the kitchen to mix powdered chicken stock with water, but I had to pull a chair over to the stove because I couldn’t stand for the ten minutes it took the water to boil. It was like being permanently carsick, but the car could never pull over and also it was spinning. If there is a god besides Oprah, he was certainly punishing me for having sex with a guy just because he lived close to my sister’s house.
Mum was working during the days and was drunk most of the nights, so I was pretty much on my own. Every couple of days when Rhiannon had time, she would bring me Gatorade and soup, but other than that, it was just me and my little TV, picking up Channel Nine and Channel Ten.
The first week passed. Then the second. Then the third. I actually felt like I was being tortured. I was desperate to get out of the house, but every time I tried to stand, nausea took over. I was starving, but every time I tried to eat, nausea took over. I was exhausted, but every time I tried to sleep, nausea took over. Nothing made it better. I’d lost weight. I was pale. I hadn’t showered. I knew the Channel Nine and Ten daytime TV schedules by heart.
The day before my appointment, I’d had enough. I called the clinic, in tears, and begged them to let me bring it forward a day. I’d barely heard the word ‘yes’ before I was on the phone to Rhiannon, pleading with her to come and pick me up and drive me into the city.
I had to lie down in the back seat of her car for the 45-minute drive. I was so weak she had to help me walk to the clinic. At that stage, their prison-like security door was not holding me back from getting in that building – I would have smashed my way through if necessary. I was tapped into some Hulk-style determination to have this over with.
When inside, I was first taken to a side room to see the doctor. I told her what I’d been going through the last four weeks – that I basically hadn’t left my bed since I’d been there last, and that it was probably a bed that a Masturbating Train Man with a ceramic clown collection had slept in, so clearly I was serious. I told her that I hadn’t been able to stand up in the shower, let alone work. All I’d eaten was dry toast and soup and sips of Gatorade, and even that had been impossible to keep down. Even sitting upright in front of her at that moment was taking it out of me. ‘Oh,’ she said, concerned. ‘That’s not normal. It sounds like you have Hyperemesis Gravidarum. It can be very serious. You really should have called or seen your GP.’
This time, I was the one to give the polite smile that people give when it’s taking everything within the deepest depths of their soul to be patient with the idiot in front of them. But I was too faint and too damn sick to get angry. Not to mention, last time I was there, I had rambled hysterically about an individual sperm having gastro, so I couldn’t really blame her for not having taken me more seriously at the time.
Most people have only heard of Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) because it’s the thing Kate Middleton had when she was pregnant with the first of her royal spawn. Buckingham Palace mentioned it in a brief, polite statement, which made it sound like Kate was having a bit of a hiccup but was otherwise well. I know different. If Kate was going through anything like what I went through, there is no doubt in my mind that she is probably the first person in history to have ever yelled obscenities at the Queen from the bathroom floor.
I can just see the Queen, in her sensible pastel two-piece suit, enquiring as to whether Kate would bother getting out of bed today, since ribbons that open flower shows don’t just cut themselves. Kate, in a room down the hall, would wipe vomit from her face and yell, ‘GO CUT A RIBBON WITH YOUR DICK, LIZ,’ before burying her face back in the decorative Wedgwood toilet. I think the Queen would like Kate’s spunk.
HG is officially described as ‘a complication of pregnancy that is characterised by severe nausea and vomiting such that weight loss and dehydration occur. Signs and symptoms may include vomiting several times a day and feeling faint. It is more severe than morning sickness. Simple things such as taking a shower, driving or shopping may feel impossible.’ (Thanks Wikipedia! Also, thanks for my Bachelor’s degree.)
Unofficially, I would describe HG as ‘so torturous I didn’t care that I was sleeping on a mattress that was probably once owned by a Masturbating Train Man with a ceramic clown collection’. That’s how badly I needed to be lying down, all day, every day.
I was sent into another room to get an ultrasound, which the technician told me was to make sure everything was in order for the ‘procedure’. I thought it was strange that she didn’t just say the word. Abortion. We’re all here to get abortions. We’re in the building; I think we know the word. She also turned the screen away from me so I wouldn’t ‘have to see’ what was on it. I told her I didn’t mind, and I honestly didn’t. I wasn’t in a mindset yet where I understood that this could be a painful decision for some women to make, because to me, it was nothing but a relief. Not because of the sickness I’d endured, but just because I didn’t want to be pregnant. It was my body, and I didn’t want this to be happening to it. I didn’t feel guilty, or conflicted, or tormented. I just felt relief.
I went back out to the waiting room and sat next to Rhiannon. One woman was crying at reception. Rhiannon told me the woman and her boyfriend had been in a huge fight out the front on the street, and now she was telling the staff that she didn’t think she could go through with it. She wanted to terminate, he didn’t. He had stormed off and she was worried he would break up with her if she had the ‘procedure’. She was worried a man would break up with her for exercising control over her own body. I was just thinking how relieved I was that I didn’t have to deal with something like that, when my name was called.
Go time.
I was led into a small changing room and given a bag with a paper gown, paper slippers and paper shower cap inside. I was told to change into those, put my clothes in the bag and hang the bag on the hook. Someone would come and get me in five minutes.
Once I had changed, I sat on the bench, waiting. The bench was high, and I felt like a little girl, with my feet swinging above the ground. I was also embarrassed, because I couldn’t reach back far enough to tie the gown together properly. There were two doors – the one I came in through, and one on the other side that I assumed led into the operating theatre. It was so strange, sitting there waiting, nervous and full of adrenalin, feeling small and naked and unable to stop my feet from swinging back and forth. It’s funny that it’s called an operating theatre, because waiting in that little room did remind me so much of waiting to go onstage; crammed into a dark space, full of nervous energy and suddenly so aware of your body, your breath, quietly waiting in the calm before the storm of the brightly lit stage.
The other door opened, and the bright lights of the theatre room hit me. There were about three or four people in there, all in gowns, all with masks over their faces. A nurse took me by the hand and led me to the bed in the middle of the room. I put my legs up in the stirrups. I was given the drugs and I fell asleep.
The next thing I remember is like remembering a dream. I was suddenly very aware of immense pain in my body. It felt like someone was inserting a blunt knitting needle in and out of my vagina. It was being inserted deep, and fast, and I wanted it to stop. I was confused, and I couldn’t open my eyes. I tried to sit up, but someone held me down. A nurse held my hand. I remember her saying over and over, ‘It’s alright, honey. It’s alright. It’s nearly done. It’s nearly done.’
The pain was excruciating. I hate saying that, because I don’t want to scare any woman who makes the choice to abort a pregnancy. But that was my experience. I woke up, I couldn’t move, and I felt like something long, thin and hard was repeatedly being shoved deep into my vagina. It was excruciating.
Then I was sitting in a recliner chair in a different room. I don’t remember how I got there, but my bag of clothes was on a table next to me. There were other women lying in beds and chairs like mine – maybe about five or six in total, all looking as dazed as I’m sure I did. A nurse brought me over some crackers and a glass of juice, and I sat for a while, trying to piece together what had just happened. I looked at the clock: about forty-five minutes had passed. I could remember being in the dark little changing room. I could remember getting on to the bed and putting my feet in the stirrups. I could remember . . . Pain. A lot of pain. I could remember moaning and wanting it to stop. I could remember a nurse holding my hand. And then, in the middle of my confused haze, I suddenly noticed it:
It was gone. The nausea was gone. THE NAUSEA WAS GONE!
My body finally felt like my own again. I stood up, and didn’t keel over with the need to vomit. I had my life back. I changed into my own clothes and went out into the waiting room to meet Rhiannon. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. And I wanted to eat. I wanted to eat a lot of food and I wanted to eat it immediately.
‘Well, where do you want to go?’ asked Rhiannon, clearly a little taken aback at the sudden change in me. I was one person going into that clinic, and a very different person coming out. This person could walk. And eat. This person really wanted to eat.
‘Take me to Cabramatta,’ I said. ‘I really want to make Peking duck pancakes.’
Now, I don’t remember any of what happened next, but the way Rhiannon tells it, I walked around Cabramatta shops like a mad woman, buying all the ingredients to make Peking duck. Then she took me back to Mum’s house, where I proceeded to prepare the duck, talking nonstop the whole time about feeling like I had been raped by a knitting needle while unable to move, before stuffing my face with duck pancakes for ten minutes and promptly falling asleep.
I woke up the next day happier than I had been in a long time. I went back to work cleaning popcorn at the cinema, soon moved into a share-house close to the city and started studying creative writing at university. None of which I could have done if not for my ‘procedure’.
Do I wish it hadn’t happened at all? Of course. Do I wish RU486 had been available at the time? Definitely. Do I wish I had picked the full general anaesthetic over the bullshit ‘you may feel some discomfort’ twilight sedation option? Absolutely.
But I do not regret my abortion at all. AT. ALL. I have never felt sadness, or grief, or even conflicted. I was never ambivalent. I only felt relief. My life today is what it is because I was allowed to make choices about what was best for my body.
I got pregnant. I didn’t want to be. I was in a position to change that. What a privileged position for a woman to be in.
And I never slept on that Masturbating Train Man’s mattress again.
(PS – get the general anaesthetic.)