Thread: Pregnant and scared

Hi, I am new here.

I am 21 years old and am in a strong albeit short relationship where I feel safe and protected like I never had with my exboyfriends. I had a suspicion I was pregnant because of my late period, nausea, and extreme tiredness, so mere minutes ago I took a pregnancy test and it turned out positive. This is my first pregnancy and I am terrified, I don't know what to think.

On one hand I don't think I am well enough to raise a child... I suffer from depressive episodes but not bad enough for me to think I need to be on medication. I am also very young and I feel like if I go through with it it's the "end" of my life. Being pregnant there would be a lot of things I wouldn't be able to do - and I've been looking forward to the summer where I could see my friends and we could all have fun. I don't want to walk around with a big belly to music festivals. My boyfriend and I had plans to go on trips to the Maldives, China, Fiji, so on and so forth and I don't see how we will have the money or time to do all the things we want to do if I keep the baby.

On the other hand I feel like perhaps this new life might bring new meaning into mine and make me stronger because to take care of someone else I have to be strong myself. It might help me stop indulging in my sadness. I have also read about abortions and all of them sound terribly frightening. I don't really want to kill a life I have created with someone I love but at the same time I don't know if I'm ready. If I have an abortion and am unsure about it I might end up in a terrible state of regret. I have to be positively sure I don't want it to have an abortion, and I don't know how or when I will reach that stage of sureness.

My boyfriend would like to keep the baby, he is quite against abortions but he says my opinion matters too and I should think about it.

Next month my boyfriend and I will be returning to his home country. We are from different countries and we were planning to get married later this year to make everything easier, so as to no more travelling to and fro and to other countries, but to be somewhere where we could be together legally. We decided on this before I found out I was pregnant. Now that I am pregnant I feel like if I want to keep the baby I would like to get married as soon as we go to his country, because I don't want to have my belly show on my wedding day.

I am also from an Asian background and typically if someone gets pregnant either they abort it or they get married right away. I haven't told my mother yet as I live away from home.

All this is making me feel like I have to make a decision really really soon and I don't know how to reach that conclusion and I am terrified.

Also, I have always had this fear that after childbirth my vagina might be damaged and I might have to go through vaginal reconstruction surgery, is this rare?

Any advice is appreciated, thank you.