How to Deal With a Pregnancy Scare

The Scenario: It's a rainy evening in Jakarta and you're cuddling with your boyfriend for some warmth. Eventually you both start to feel a little turned on. The kisses turn steamy and then… you know…

A few weeks later your breasts are feeling tender and your stomach is a mess. You're starting to worry, "Am I pregnant?" You think, "I'm way too young to have a child," but you also don't really have a lot of options in Indonesia if you actually are pregnant.

What do you do?

The Facts: There's a fair bit of confusion in Indonesia about when pregnancy actually happens, said Deddy Meizia, an OB-GYN from Bandung, West Java. You're most likely to get pregnant during the fertile stage of a woman's menstrual cycle—or about 14 days in, give or take a few days, Deddy explained.

The conception phase, where the winning sperm meets with the lucky ovum, happens the minute a man ejaculates into a woman's vagina. But it still takes some time before any of this shows up on a pregnancy test. First you need to be "late," and then you need to be late for like 10 days. At this point, a woman's body starts to produce human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)—a hormone that shows up in your urine. It's what makes that pregnancy pee stick show positive. But even then, you can't 100 percent rely on what you see on the stick.

"Even the urine pregnancy test that market themselves as the most-accurate one can often lead to false positives or even worse, false negatives" Deddy said.

So then just rely on physical changes, right? Wrong. If you think you're pregnant because your breasts are tender and your stomach looks bigger, there's a good chance you're mistaken, Deddy said. Physical symptoms are subjective and easily misunderstood. Maybe there's a baby growing inside of you. Or maybe you just ate something bad. Even missing your period isn't a sure sign you are pregnant.

"It's mainly caused by hormones, which can be also caused by fatigue, stress, often staying up late," Deddy said.

The best solution here is to go see a doctor, Deddy said. A doctor can perform an ultrasound after about 8-10 days to see if there is a gestational sac developing in your womb. Or, even easier, you can just take a blood test. Blood tests for hCG are way more accurate.

So, all the tests are positive. I am definitely pregnant. What's next? Look, abortion is illegal in Indonesia. That's not to say that there aren't people out there who will offer to perform an abortion. Some of these people work in real medical clinics and they are pretty safe. But others are people with no medical training at all and only limited access to rudimental, or even outright dangerous, medicines and tools.

One doctor told me that he's heard stories of women turning to local dukun, or shamans, for some kind of traditional concoction. He's even heard of people using bamboo in a potentially deadly attempt to kill the fetus. The lesson here? Never trust someone who isn't a real medical professional with your body.

So what will doctors say? Maybe you don't want the baby and you're considering asking your doctor about an abortion regardless. Well, in Indonesia at least, most doctors will just ignore this request and tell you to keep the baby. And because of the law, doctors cannot advise you to get an abortion, regardless of how they feel about the procedure. The only times they are allowed to suggest an abortion is in the case of rape or when carrying a child to full term will kill the mother.

"Doctors took an oath and we have certain ethics on human lives," Agus Hermawonto, a psychologist, told me. "I can assure you that no doctor would recommend eliminating the baby, and that they will strongly suggest for you to carry on.

"And that's where the parents play important role, not to forget the family. Most of the times, parents would just give in and try to accept the situation. But that's not always the case."