Unwanted pregnancies: what to do if I got pregnant without planning it?
If you get pregnant but do not see yourself capable of facing motherhood, you should think about the options you have and make the decision yourself.
Life doesn’t always go the way we plan, unfortunately. Moreover, as John Lennon said, ” life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans .” You may want your future to be different, but plans are distorted and you end up finding yourself at a point where you never thought you would see yourself . Not only is it something that can happen: it is something that happens to absolutely everyone.
It may be that, despite taking all the precautions in the world, you have just discovered that you are pregnant. And that you are facing an unwanted pregnancy. Because you are young, or because you are older; because you don’t have a partner, or because you have one and neither of you wants to have a child; because you want to study, or because your work is expanding and you don’t want to stop for a child (because children change your life completely, without a doubt). Whatever it is, you don’t want that fetus to end up as a baby, you don’t want to bring a life into the world. What should you do?
Index
FIRST: CONSIDER ALL POSSIBLE OPTIONS
The first thing you should do when you are facing an unwanted pregnancy is to consider all the possible options , all those that arise before you. The first thing that will come to mind is abortion , and you should know that it is as viable as any other. Write it down on a card, and don’t discard the rest of the options so quickly, because who knows if any other could convince you more.
You can also put the baby up for adoption when it is born . In Spain it is not particularly complicated, as we will explain below. Or you can choose to keep it, accepting it as a life change. This last option is the most complicated , since it implies that you will have to say goodbye to all the future projects that you had planned; It is not so easy, in addition, to live an unwanted pregnancy, with all the hormonal changes that pregnancy implies.
So the first thing is to decide what to do. Once you have decided, we will see how to carry out each step.
I WANT TO ABORT
If you’ve decided that you want to have an abortion because you definitely don’t want to bring an unwanted baby into the world, you should know a few things about abortion . The first thing is that in each country there are different rules that allow abortion to be performed, or not. We are going to focus on Spain, but each country has different guidelines.
Abortion in Spain can be done either by Social Security or by going to a private clinic . The first thing you should do is go to your family doctor, if you prefer an abortion on public roads. He will be the one to refer you to a Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy Clinic. You can go to the clinic without the doctor intervening, but surely you prefer that he be the one who recommends it, knowing that you are going to a quality site. The wait can be up to ten days, and that is why many women prefer to go to private clinics, which will do exactly the same but will make you pay for the procedure.
At the IVE Clinic they will inform you of all your rights , they will explain the process you are going to go through, and they will give you a period of three days. During these three days, you will have time to decide what you want to do, and to begin to carry out all the pertinent procedures. And once the three days have passed, you will have an appointment for an abortion.
I WANT TO GIVE THE BABY UP FOR ADOPTION
Abortion may not convince you, and you prefer to end that unwanted pregnancy in another way: by giving the baby up for adoption . The first thing you should do in this case is to go to the Social Services center in your city, communicate what you want to do and give all the information they ask for. The bureaucracy will be slow, but effective. And once the delivery is over, Social Services will take the baby away, just after the mother has signed a waiver document. Still, as a mother, you have a month and a half to go back and get the baby back, if you wanted to.
There are two ways to put up for adoption : open adoption, which allows you to meet the parents, or created adoption, which will make you not know anything about the baby or his family. However, when the boy turns eighteen he will be able to know about his biological family, if he so wishes.
WHATEVER YOU DO, IT WILL BE WELL DONE
Making a decision of this caliber is very complicated, and you probably have doubts, or think that you have done something wrong . But no. Always remember that if at one point you did something, it was because you really believed it was what you had to do. You considered your options , and chose the one that best suited what you were looking for at that time, what you had and what you could offer. Repenting is worth absolutely nothing, beyond torturing yourself.
There is no good and bad decision on these issues, and it all depends a lot on the context in which you find yourself . Do not think that your neighbor chose something else, or that your mother would have done such a thing, because it is useless. They weren’t in your shoes, and it was you who should have decided. It is complicated, it is difficult, yes, but you must think above all about yourself, your future and your life. Do not be influenced by anyone from outside, because if in the end you end up having an unwanted child, it will be you who will have to take care of him. You will be the one who will not sleep at night, the one who will take him to school, the one who will take care of his expenses, the one who will suffer from his illnesses. And maybe that, in another moment, compensates, but we are not in that other moment, but in the now.If your situation is not going to allow you to enjoy a child now, do not force yourself to have one. Better moments will come.
If you feel that this whole situation is over you, go to a psychologist who can advise and help you. Nothing better than professional help when you have a problem, and if we go to the cardiologist when we have heart problems, why not go to a psychologist when it is our mind that has problems?
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.