We were, yes, we were in hospital, so we were transferred up to the, say, one of the maternity wards, although we were given our own room so we didn’t have to be, see lots of other pregnant women. And the hospital staff were very sensitive. And I asked to speak to the chaplain, who came along, because the list I was on wasn’t until sort of the afternoon list. So I was trying to gather as much information as I could, and I think the more I spent gathering information in the morning, the more I felt, ‘Well, this is the only thing to do.

And they were debating whether I would have to go through labour or whether I would have to, whether I could have an ordinary termination, because of the timing. So I think it was kind of now or never.

And having spoken to the chaplain who’d seen this before, kind of helped me sort of come to terms with it. I was sort of worried about, ‘Would it hurt the baby? How much will the baby know? What happens to the baby afterwards?’ And those were the things we did manage to find out.

Can you tell me the answers to those questions?

Well, they said that, I mean I was really concerned that obviously I’m going under, but what happens to the baby? And they, the anaesthetist was explaining that probably that would just put the baby to sleep. If I’m going to sleep the baby’s gone to sleep. And if we wanted a funeral we could have one.

So they said, ‘Right well book you an appointment back at your local hospital to see like your consultant there and they said you need to make a decision,’ because I was coming up for 14 weeks then. And because I said I couldn’t go through with the birth – I just couldn’t do it. I’d had two live births and the thought of actually giving birth to a baby that I was never going to hold, I was never going to have just, I think I would have ended up in a mental asylum. I really do.

I had a choice. I could have gone, I went to sleep or I could have given birth as such – I had a choice. I still had at that time of when I was able to make an informed choice of doing it. And I thought the easiest way for me would be to go to sleep. All what goes on – I think it was just such an extreme like unfortunate lot of things that happened after – it doesn’t always happen like that. You can have your operation and then it all falls into place after. You’ve still got the psychological trauma of actually losing the baby but… I don’t know, it’s the same as any death. You have to grieve. You have to go through all those things and all the anger, all the tears, all the why’s, the what ifs, and then eventually you reach a point where you do get on and you do live again.

It was you know, it was, it was awful. When it came to the… actual termination, I was sort of wheeled into the theatre. I think my husband, I think he must have come in with me, and then sort of taken out. And I just remember lying on the bed and looking at the… you know, looking at the room, and the next thing is, I was asleep. And it only took half an hour.

And the next thing is I was awake again, and… I think, I don’t know about a surgical termination, I mean, there are, it’s swings and roundabouts, but when I woke up, what I saw, and the image that haunted me for a long time afterwards was, there was a sort of a little trolley that obviously had a container – you can’t see your baby when you’ve had a surgical termination because a, like a vacuum is used so, you know wouldn’t be recognisable as a baby I suppose so you can’t see the baby – and there was this container with a white cloth draped over, which… and I remember waking up and thinking, ‘Oh’ you know, and I felt fine, a bit groggy but fine. And I just looked at this you know, I mean, I just wanted to pull the… you know, [I] was just like so drawn to this, and that image did haunt me. I mean, it still does, it really did for some months afterwards, that’s what I would see you know like this burning, you know, vision.

I think it, to be quite honest, it was a bit surreal having a termination like that. What I felt afterwards – I felt different – I felt physically empty, and it was very bizarre to think, ‘Well, I was pregnant this morning, and now I’m not. It was horrible actually and it was horrible going to bed that night. I sort of wanted the day to end, because it didn’t feel right you know, so much had happened in the day. And I don’t know… it’s not so much I think it was the wrong decision, because I understand why I made the decision, and I think it would have been terribly hard to have said, ‘No, I’ll go ahead and have labour to terminate this pregnancy,’ but I don’t think it was the right you know, I do wonder if it was the right thing to do. And if I, I hope I never find myself in that situation again, but if I did, I don’t think I’d have a surgical termination, just because I think I’d like to have seen the baby and I didn’t.

And I think, you know I’ve read quite a lot, heard about other peoples experiences, who have had terminations in similar situations, and some people do choose not to see the babies – some people think they won’t see their baby and then decide to at the last minute – almost invariably where people do see their baby, while it’s very distressing at the time, afterwards they’re like, ‘Oh I’m really glad I saw my baby, and I’ll never forget that and I’ve got a picture.

And I do think, in the months that followed, it was very hard for me to make sense of what had happened. It would have been a very traumatic and very difficult to have given birth to the baby, and seen him, but I think it would have made it more real. I think for me personally – and it may be a lot to do with my own emotional make-up – but there was a bit of an issue of, the whole thing just felt, seemed like a complete and utter nightmare. It didn’t seem very real. It seemed so awful, it seemed unreal. And I wonder if seeing a real baby may have helped me to get back some sense of reality. But I would have had to have paid quite a price for that.

But anyway I was booked in for the following Wednesday and I went in for the termination. It was all very clinical I found, very cold, you know there was no midwives there. It was just, you know, you’re going in for an operation basically, you couldn’t eat the night before and it was all, I found that really hard.

No, I had the second, I had, for the second termination I was in, I went into a gynaecology ward, definitely yeah, it was not a labour ward at all. So I went in for the operation on, it was one day, and they actually, you go in, I think it happened at 1 o’clock, and when I came out I just was, I was put, put in a recovery area. Just given a few painkillers and a few hours later they came to check on me and they said, ‘Oh, you’re all right to go home now. So I went home.

And it was very strange, it just felt like, I don’t know, there was no, nobody talk, nobody to talk to you or anything like that. It was just like, and I remember just before going in for the, before they gave me the general anaesthetic, I just felt like I had to tell someone that this was not a choice – I’m not here because I want to have an abortion or anything – because I was worried people, I don’t know why I was worried, but I thought people might think, ‘Oh, shes having another. Because I knew there were lots of people before me, and they were going for the same thing. So I thought, ‘Well I don’t want to be just a person who’s just going in because they don’t want the baby. So I said, ‘This is a much wanted baby that I’m ending. But no one really said very much I think. And, yeah, I was very, very upset as well for that one as well.