Before I knew what I wanted to do for a living as an adult, I imagined my life as a mother, reading bedtime stories and playing dress up with my daughter. I come from a family where women don’t question if they will have children but how many. “A woman needs children so she learns to think of someone besides herself,” a family member once said.
I knew something was wrong when I felt a gush of fluid in my underwear during a team meeting at work. By the time I’d excused myself to go to the bathroom, a pool of blood had formed underneath me on the chair, soaking through a tampon and pad. I quickly wiped the seat and ran to the bathroom, where blood continued to flow from my body like a river.
“Maybe your workouts are causing your discomfort,” the gynecologist said when I explained I had severe pelvic pain, looking at me as if I were a child who had just described an encounter with an imaginary friend. She told me pain and heavy bleeding were common in women who had copper intrauterine devices. I was no doctor, but losing what felt like half my blood supply every month didn’t feel normal; it felt exhausting.
Six months before my 37th birthday, I was diagnosed with multiple fibroid tumors. While a part of me felt vindicated that my medical condition wasn’t all in my head, I was terrified because the only remedy I knew for fibroids was a hysterectomy, and I hadn’t yet had children.
When I returned to the OB/GYN’s office a month after my diagnosis, she told me not to be concerned because fibroids were common among women my age and to contact her if my symptoms worsened. By then, I’d learned to manage the heavy bleeding through homeopathic treatments I’d found on the internet. I assumed when the time was right, my body would do what nature intended: bear a baby.
Three years later, I’d moved to a new state and gotten engaged. My partner and I had discussed children before our first date. He said he looked forward to having a second chance at fatherhood, having two adult children from a previous marriage. Five months into our relationship, I scheduled an appointment with a new gynecologist to discuss my fertility.
I watched the doctor’s eyes roll across the pages of my ultrasound results, looking for a sign that my motherhood dreams were viable.
“Looks like your fibroids are outside your uterus,” she said.
“What are my options?”
Read the full essay on The Keeping Room.
Tasha Bovain 