'I drove around as my baby died inside me'

DRIVING around while her baby was dying inside of her is the most vivid memory Emma has of the past 18 months. Birthdays, Christmas and family celebrations have come and gone but none of those supposedly happy days can make up for the day she feels she "murdered" the baby growing inside of her.

After discovering she was expecting, the 27-year-old, detached herself from her pregnancy after deciding to have an abortion, unaware of the pain she would feel.

Sitting on her sofa sobbing, she recalls the whole traumatic experience.

Initially she believed she was doing the right thing. She had just started a new career and had only recently settled into a new house with her boyfriend of six years, Stephen. The time just was not right for a baby.

Emma says: "It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do and once I took the tablet I knew I had made a mistake.

"It was then I wished I could turn the clock back. My maternal instincts began to kick in then and I wanted to keep my baby.

"After taking that first tablet I was all over the place. Stephen had accompanied me to the hospital and it felt like we were on a rollercoaster.

"To calm down we went for a drive, but all I kept thinking about was my baby dying inside of me. Over everything else that has happened to me in the past few months I always remember that."

At her second hospital appointment, 48 hours later, Emma was told she would pass the foetus when it had detached itself from the womb.

Scared to go to the toilet, she clamped her legs shut and bore the tremendous pain she was in because she didn't want to let her baby go.

Her ordeal lasted for around eight hours until she could hold on no longer.

As she fights back tears, she says: "Eventually I knew I had to go the toilet, but I was scared.

"We had been told to put a paper towel over the pan so that we wouldn't see the foetus.

"I decided I would be strong enough to have a look and didn't cover the pan with a paper towel. Instead I just sat on the edge of the seat with it in my hands and began to cry.

"This was my baby and I couldn't believe what I had done. It was such a bloody mess and it didn't deserve this."

Eventually the nurse came into the bathroom and removed the pan from Emma's hands, while Stephen, who had been there all day to support her, took her home.

"And that was that my ordeal over or so I thought," says Emma.

However, the days after the abortion were very dark and Emma found it difficult to do the everyday things like getting out of bed or just having a wash.

Luckily she had Stephen for support to spur her on and encourage her to do things. She recalls how she lost a lot of her self-esteem and would often ask Stephen how he could love her when she was a murderer.

"Those days were hard. I thought I could emotionally cope with having an abortion, but I couldn't.

"I was a nightmare to live with and just lucky Stephen stuck around.

"If someone had told me I would feel a tenth of this pain I would not have gone ahead with it."

Emma says the hardest thing to come to terms with is the feeling of loss and not having the chance to say goodbye and one of her biggest regrets is also not knowing if she was carrying a boy or a girl.

Once again biting her lip to stop the tears from flowing, Emma says: "When a loved one dies you have memories of them you can hold onto. I have nothing except a bloody mess to remember.

"I never got a chance to say goodbye to my baby or to give it a cuddle and I have to live with that.

"I think about the baby every day and a particularly hard time was when it would have been due to be born."

It was then she started to have horrific nightmares. She would dream she was hacking into her stomach with a knife in a bid to get rid of her baby.

Although now over the worst, Emma still has vivid dreams about the abortion and often lies awake thinking about it.

She also finds herself staring at mums pushing their babies down the street and when someone is giving birth on TV she breaks down and cries.

Although she feels a lot of people probably think she brought the pain on herself by agreeing to have the abortion she says if someone had told her how messed up she would be she wouldn't have gone through with it.

"Finding out I was pregnant was a complete shock to the system and after telling Stephen it was a very emotional time. It felt like we were on a rollercoaster with our emotions all over the place.

"We did discuss having the baby, but after several days we reached the conclusion that the time just wasn't right for us yet.

"But I do believe that once you agree to have an abortion there just is not time to stop and consider all other possible options," says Emma.

"At the time I felt I was making the right decision. It was a hard one to make and I will admit I got it wrong.

"I just hope that if by reading my story one woman stops and reconsiders her options and then decides she doesn't want an abortion then it will be worth it."

Both Emma and Stephen have been trying to put their life back on track for the past 18 months and, while it has been difficult, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

"We have both agreed we made a terrible mistake and if it happened again we would definitely keep our baby.

"We would like to start a family in the next couple of years, but we are not ruling out the possibility of one sooner."