Complications after a pregnancy termination are a rare occurrence, but not impossible. A healthcare provider can check your health and let you know if the medical abortion symptoms after the procedure are normal, or a sign of problems. During ending a pregnancy with pills, some common outcomes are nausea, vomiting, headache, tiredness, dizziness, abdominal cramps and pain, breast soreness, etc. However, if any of these outlive their expectancy and get severe, you may require medical attention. So, in the following post, we will discuss what are normal recovery symptoms like in a medication abortion and possible complications.
What Are Normal Recovery Symptoms After a Medical Abortion?
After using Mifepristone and Misoprostol to eliminate a pregnancy, you may recover soon. Some start with daily chores within a day or two, others may want more time. However, do not lift heavy objects, physically strain yourself, or insert anything in the vagina while the bleeding is ongoing. Once you begin to recover, the signs to notice are reduced tiredness and body ache, no abdominal cramps, less vaginal bleeding, more energy and physical strength. Bleeding can stop entirely in four to six weeks. You must continue with a healthy diet so that recovery happens sooner.
What Are the Complications Following a Medical Abortion?
While complications are not common after a pregnancy termination, in some cases they may surface and cause health issues. Some of these are mentioned below:
1. Intense Pain
It is normal to experience abdominal cramps because of uterine contractions during a medical abortion at home. If the pain is continuous, resting may help along with a hot pad compress or the use of a heating pad. The cramps are more painful than the menstrual ones, but temporary until the uterus empties. You may use a pain relief medication to control the pain. However, if the medical abortion cramps are severe and too painful, you may need medical attention. It is possible that after a pregnancy termination, the womb still contains some blood clots and placental or fetal tissues.
You may require aspiration abortion or additional abortion pills to clear out the womb if these clots and tissues do not exit by themselves. Pain after ending a pregnancy may also result from an ectopic pregnancy, where the implantation happens outside the uterus. In this case, the embryo may rupture the surrounding organ, leading to internal bleeding. This is life-threatening if not dealt with in time, causing continuous heavy bleeding and severe pain. A surgical process but not medication abortion, can remove an ectopic pregnancy and you need to be admitted to emergency care at the earliest.
2. Pregnancy Symptoms Persist After an Abortion
Pregnancy symptoms such as breast tenderness, bloating, and nausea usually disappear within a week or two after an abortion. However, you could be pregnant if these medication abortion symptoms persist. Visit a healthcare provider for an ultrasound scan of the abdomen to understand if the uterus has emptied properly. It is advisable not to use a home pregnancy test or get a blood or urine test to check for pregnancy, as you can still test positive for pregnancy up to four to six weeks following a successful abortion.
This is because the pregnancy hormones may still exist in the body. If you test positive even after 6 weeks following an abortion, perhaps you need to repeat the termination process to end the pregnancy completely. Pregnancy-like symptoms are also possible if you have already started with hormonal birth control, especially during the initial months of use.
3. Heavy Bleeding
While heavy vaginal bleeding is a common consequence of medical abortion, it may turn out to be a complicated one if the bleeding is too much. The right way to know if the bleeding is too much or not is by keeping track of the number of large pads you wear for the bleeding as well as the size of clots released. If you soak two large pads in an hour or two, continuously, and you feel short of breath, dizzy, with frequent palpitations, or passing several gold-sized clots, you may need immediate medical help.
The bleeding results from uterine cramping to squeeze out products of conception from the body. Even following an abortion, the uterine cramping may continue for a while. However, these are not as intense as before but a simple sign of blood vessels shutting off and healing to bring the uterus back to its original size. Remember, heavy bleeding complications may result if there is an incomplete abortion or the uterus relaxes too much and is unable to expel the pregnancy portions properly.
4. Fever
Infection after an abortion is rare but not impossible. The initial sign of it is a continuous fever of 100.4° Fahrenheit or more. Do not confuse the fever with that caused by Mifepristone and Misoprostol pills for pregnancy termination. As a side effect, this fever is temporary and short-term. However, infection-related fever gets worse and elevates as time passes. So, you may start with antibiotics or other prescribed medicines to treat the infection and fever.
To Conclude
Medical abortion is one of the procedures to terminate an early pregnancy, done within the initial 10 to 12 weeks of a pregnancy. It works for intrauterine pregnancy and is the safest alternative for an in-home procedure to empty the uterus. While some symptoms are common and normal during and after medication abortion, other unusual ones can indicate complications. You must keep track of every experience to understand if the abortion was completed or not, and what to do next.