Vent/Support (forced abortion)

TW: Abortion/forced abortion

I feel like I need to write it all out as I physically cannot talk about what happened to me, I hope somebody in here can help me navigate this. Maybe someone who has gone through something similar

Last year in late August I was forced to terminate my pregnancy by my boyfriend. I was 9 weeks.

I really loved and still terribly love my baby and I grieve for her every single day. I was conflicted on whether to abort or not but I was ultimately coerced/forced into having it.

I opted for the surgical abortion as I couldn‘t bear to have to see my child when aborting her medically at home. I went in for the preliminary examination where I had a doctor who was terribly cold and unempathetic. I tried to take a video of my childs heart beating when she did the ultrasound and she made me put the phone away and told me I‘m not allowed to take a video. I do not have the last heart beats of my child. I was sobbing uncontrollably the whole way through, she examined me anyway.

I came in the next day to have the surgery, I was put into a room with multiple other women waiting for surgeries. I put the gown on and laid in that hospital bed to wait to be wheeled in and I remember being so distraught, face down, crying and shaking. One of the nurses gave me the meds to soften my cervix and some drugs to calm me down as I was visibly shaken.

When I was then brought to pre-op, the nurse who prepped me was a girl I knew in high school. We acted like we didn’t know each other. I couldn’t give a fuck in that moment but looking back, it probably unsettled me even more. I was then brought to the operating room, there were so many people there and I was so cold and I was still crying. I just cried and cried and cried. They put the anesthesia into my IV and they told me to relax, they then put a mask on me and I remember shaking my head and saying loudly “please, I don’t want to”. Then I was out.

I woke up in post up and I was completely numb. I didn’t feel anything. I went to the toilet and I saw all of the blood and I didn’t feel anything. My boyfriend picked me up, he went grocery shopping while I had the abortion. He bought me my favorite snacks. He took me out to get some sushi and I was talking like normal. I did not talk about what just happened. We both didn’t speak about it.

After we went home, we both took a nap. When I woke up, I started screaming and crying, i realized what I had done, what happened to me. Those moments in the hospital keep replaying in my head. On and on and on, I know feel exactly what I felt in those moments when I have my flashbacks.

I have nobody to talk to about this but I tried to bring it up in therapy in my last session.

When I tried to talk about the situation, I started crying again, then I started hyperventilating, then my muscles completely locked up and I couldn’t breathe anymore for a good 10 seconds. My therapist snapped me out of it by doing grounding exercises and told me I need to stop. We will work on it in small increments. She confirmed that I may have PTSD.

I get this reaction every time I think too deeply of this, talk about it or get flashbacks. I had the same feelings while writing this post, I had to take breaks.

How do I deal with this until my next session?