So, you’re pregnant and you don’t want to be. If you’ve decided that having an abortion is the best option for you, there will be many more questions and considerations ahead of you.

Although it may feel like it right now, you’re not alone—around 650,000 women in the United States get an abortion every year, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Though this procedure is common, it can also feel shrouded in secrecy, especially when you’re looking for advice on what to expect. According to experts, there are a lot of ways to prepare physically and emotionally for your abortion. Here’s what you can do.

1. Educate yourself about your abortion options and what each one entails.

Nearly one in four people getting abortions choose what’s colloquially known as “the abortion pill,” according to the CDC. This option (also called a medical, chemical, or pill abortion), is only available to people who are at most 10 weeks pregnant. If you’re further along than that, or if you have certain contraindications (like taking blood thinners), you’ll need a surgical abortion, which we’ll detail in a moment.

People often choose to have a medical abortion because it’s less invasive than its surgical counterpart. “It seems less clinical because you're taking medications that mimic a natural miscarriage,” ob/gyn Sara Imershein, M.D., M.P.H., vice chair of the D.C. section for the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG), professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine, and board member of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, tells SELF.

Though there are different ways to have a medical abortion, the most common involves taking two pills, according to the Mayo Clinic. The first is mifepristone, which you’ll either take at the health center providing your abortion or at home. (Whether or not you can take this first pill at home depends on the laws in your state.) Mifepristone prevents an embryo from growing by blocking progesterone, a hormone that typically thickens your uterine lining to support a pregnancy. The second pill is misoprostol (you take this one at home 24 to 48 hours after the first pill), and it induces contractions to empty your uterus. You’ll experience cramping and bleeding as you pass the pregnancy and the uterine lining that would have supported it, typically for a few hours. You may also deal with symptoms like nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, diarrhea, and a headache, according to the Mayo Clinic. Your specific symptoms can vary based on how far along you are and just on how your body works.

A week to two weeks after the abortion, you’ll need to go into the doctor’s office for a follow-up to ensure all the tissue is out of your uterus. Some estimates show that medical abortions have a success rate (meaning the pregnancy is over and all the necessary tissue was expelled from the uterus) of around 93 to 98 percent, depending on how early you get the abortion, according to the Food and Drug Administration. (The completion rate went down as gestational age increased.) If during your visit your doctor discovers your abortion was incomplete, they may decide to prescribe another dose of misoprostol, or they might discuss with you the possibility of surgical intervention to complete the abortion.

There’s also the option to get a surgical abortion. This procedure takes around five to 20 minutes, and what research has been done shows it can be more effective than medical abortion, with 96 to 100 percent completion rates (although the disparity between medical and surgical abortions seems to be wider when you’re talking about less common forms of medical abortion than the mifepristone and misoprostol combination). This involves removing the fetus and placenta from your uterus through your vagina with a suction device or other medical tools. Depending on factors like the fetus’s gestational age, a surgical abortion is performed under local or general anesthesia.