Cheyenne Erickson
It was a five-week swirl. I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want to deal with this. Paige couldn’t stop thinking about the choice she had to make. One day she would embrace the hardship of being a single mom. The next she scheduled an abortion appointment. And the back and forth continued.
One thing was certain: She could never go back to a time when she had never been pregnant. No matter what Paige did, there would be something to work through.
In an interview, Paige Bautz shared her journey of making a pregnancy decision. The sentiment that kept surfacing was, “Either choice is hard, you have to choose your version of hard.”
Let’s unpack what it means to move beyond a pregnancy decision and leave the “What ifs” in the past.
There isn’t a choice that makes it go away
One of the myths about abortion is that it erases a pregnancy. While some may not experience any regret or trauma from an abortion, it is still a painful process that will always be a part of their story.
On the other hand, having a child does not redeem one from becoming pregnant in the first place. Some may view the mom and the baby differently than a child born in a traditional two-parent household.
Whatever decision you choose is hard.
Finding a job and work environment for a working mother is challenging, and society tells her that her identity must morph into some Instagram-perfect guilt-ridden mommy. Raising a child is hard. No one will debate that. But having a child from an unexpected pregnancy is particularly complicated.
Paige described her dilemma when considering her unplanned pregnancy options:
“Honestly, I have days when I really struggle and I wish I wasn't a parent. Or I get mad at the person who got me pregnant. But if I had gone through the termination, I would have probably had days when I would have thought, ‘I regret my abortion. She would be like this many years old now. And she would be like doing this.’ So I feel like either way, it's hard. Whatever decision you choose is hard.”
Life will be different than you imagined
Paige explained that women often think life is going smoothly until they get pregnant. She had just been hired for her dream teaching position and was ready to make a life for herself in the city when she discovered her pregnancy. She had to give up her job, move back in with her parents, and take on the role of caring for her disabled, neurodivergent child by herself.
She said, “You can think life is going to look one way and it doesn't. And your kid is not the reason for all of your problems. We want to look for somebody or something to blame. Your pregnancy can be a piece of it, but it's definitely not the whole picture.”
Your life is going to look different, regardless if you continue with your pregnancy or not.
For example, she discussed feeling down sometimes because she is a single mom. It could be tempting to think, “If I had just not gotten pregnant then maybe I could be in a long-term relationship.”
However, she has a broader view of life than that.
“The future, for some reason, will not look like how you imagined it,” she explained. “Your life is going to look different, regardless if you continue with your pregnancy or not. Maybe you'll be able to continue with some of the plans that you wanted if you were to terminate. You can continue on, but the way that you look at things in life is going to be different.”
Life After Your Decision
Paige now has a three-year-old daughter. She takes her daughter to multiple doctor appointments each month and works full-time to support her family.
You just have to respect that you did what you thought was best for you.
Paige made a choice – not knowing that her daughter would be born prematurely and then diagnosed with cerebral palsy and autism. Her decision involved so much more than she could have imagined.
Paige said, “I always go back and say, okay, this is the choice I made and I have to live with this choice. You don't have to love your choice every day, regardless if you continue or not. But you just have to respect that you did what you thought was best for you.”
Embracing this season of life
Life for Paige is nothing like what she’d hoped or dreamed, but it’s still a good life.
“I remind myself, it's going to get easier. Everything is temporary. There's a reason for this, right? Looking back, I can see there was a reason why I got that job in the city. I connected with this wonderful woman who helped me through that really, really hard first few weeks of finding out I was pregnant. There's a reason why I moved back home—so my daughter could be connected to my parents. It might not make sense now, but it will.”
