Post-Abortion Depression & Emotional Distress: Seeking Support

Question
almost 2 months ago I had an abortion at 9 weeks.  since then I have been severely depressed.  I have nightmares and intense feelings of guilt and thoughts of even suicide.  I felt that the only thing to fix this would be to get pregnant again since my partner wanted to keep the first baby anyway and was all for getting pregnant again.  we had sex a few times about 2 weeks after the abortion unprotected, and a couple weeks later the symptoms that I had had with my first pregnancy (frequent urination, headaches, cravings, fatigue) all came back.  at first i thought nothing of it and at my 3 week post abortion checkup i had been put on the birth control pill.  now, i have taken 2 home tests, and a blood test all saying I'm pregnant. i don't want to get too excited because i know the pregnancy hormone can last in your body for a while following abortion, however, the symptoms did leave and have now returned.  what are the chances that i am actually pregnant? can the birth control pills I'm on have harmed the baby in any way (if there is one) as I've been told to continue taking them until I'm 100% sure that i am pregnant but i don't want to cause harm.

Answer
Hi Jessica :)

The birth control pills won't do any harm. And you'll want to have a doctor do a blood test to see how much pregnancy hormone is in your body, to tell whether it's a new pregnancy or just the levels from the abortion wearing off.

The severe depression, and what follows it (guilt and suicide ideation) are not things you have to deal with. If you're up to it, check out: http://exhaleprovoice.org/

Hopefully with time you can come to terms with the termination and find peace with it. And please, please let your doctor know about the depression-it's a medical condition that responds very well to treatment. Also, you're going to want to discuss how to deal with post-pregnancy feelings and monitoring for post-partum depression, all of which your doctor should tell you about :)

You can stop using the pills, and until you see a doctor, use another, non-hormonal form of bc.