The uncharted waters between yes and no

Some women know they want children from an early age, some don’t want any. There are women who try to have them and can’t and then there are those who don’t plan on having kids and still give birth. And then there are many others. The women in between all of these options. And attached to them comes a grey zone and with it many aspects, questions, choices and definitions – of womanhood, of biology, of life choices, of the future, of conditioning, of romantic love, of companionship and intimacy. They are all intricately intertwined with the topic of wether or not a woman is a mother.

The question “why do you not want kids/why do you not have any?” is one of THE most complex questions, and please, even if you decide not to read on, remember you should never lightheartedly ask a woman that question. Why? It can be very personal and painful to answer. Here is my story.

In the fall of 2017, I paid a visit to my Berlin based gyneacologist after a fews years not having gone. I have had problems with my reproductive organs in my twenties (endometriosis) and was scared to get bad news again. I universally loathe going to the doctors for so many reasons I will not start naming them – the gyno practice being amongst my least favorite places. The organs that biologically make me a woman had given me a lot of pain, hormonal imbalances and many open questions from age 13. It was an uncomfortable subject and it was one likely to result in either pain, fear, or both. My general approach to deal with pain and/or fear in life is usually a rational approach and I am a master at evading their cause, outrun them, outsmart them. Solve it in my head and if not, suffocate it. This one I couldn’t solve in my head, not on that day.

Despite not getting checked up for a long time, I got bad news, of course. With the slimey, cold-wet ultrasound dildo stick still between my legs, I was diagnosed with rather large myomas in my uterus. In fact, the whole organ was full of smooth, non-cancerous tumors. The cause of myomas, also called fibroids, is not known, but their development seems to be associated with the hormone estrogen. Fibroids may appear when a person’s estrogen levels are high. I have always had high estrogen levels.

High hormonal levels and a uterus „like a bag of potatoes“, is what the doc said. „You have a very unlikely chance to have children.“

I remember hiding in a doorway outside of the docs practice on Kudamm after the first diagnosis, crying uncontrollably. It was raining and the feeling of loneliness was overwhelming. Nothing in my repertoire of experiences had prepared me for this.

It was a full-on bipolar incident, on quite a few levels. I had never really planned on having kids nor did I truly feel like I wanted them. But the feeling that went with the new knowledge of being “non-functional” on that most feminine of playing fields was pure and unadulterated grief. Grief for the loss of a role that was supposed to be my nature. Grief for being flawed to an extent that I could not fulfill that role. Grief for not being able to chose. Grief for having to go through this alone.

After I had regained some of my composure, I called my then boyfriend in Cape Town to tell him. His response was first, a moment of silence, followed by sentences like he „didn‘t know what to say“, that he „couldn‘t handle this information“, that he „couldn‘t help me“. I have not often felt this abandoned.

Yes, it was a lot for him to take, he was in his early thirties, we had only dated a few months and he was thousands of kilometers away. But he had expressed his love for me, he wanted to move to Berlin, we had sprouting plans for a life together. And just like that, he left that storyline.

It made us not only break up but also – retrospectively – made me stay away from romantic love for the years after that. The danger of being abandoned again was too much to bare.

Shortly after I went to Charité hospital in Berlin and got checked by another doctor. She said, they could operate, but stressed again that there was a fat chance that cutting out these non-malignent tennis-ball sized motherfuckers would irreparably damage my uterus, which would lead to having to remove it entirely. I was 37 and in my books I was an old teenager. The level of my unpreparedness to this news was insanely low.

I didn’t talk about it the way I should have, didn’t really ask for help, I simply didn’t have the language for my situation. In the following years, my mother told me a few times that she sensed a sadness in me. I never went into detail; bringing it up would have left me too vulnerable without a way out. Inside, I felt not-whole and a part of my soul hardened towards the subject of having a family and being in a love relationship. Now I know I acted that way in order to protect myself from wanting a family. I kept it my dirty little secret.

A bike accident in 2019 that led to internal bleeding, broken ribs and disfiguring my upper body with huge, black bruises for months didn‘t help in making me feel like what I considered to be a proper woman. I didn’t feel sexy or desirable. I was hurting inside and out. I stayed away from emotional intimacy to hide how broken I felt and did a lot of things to numb the pain.

What followed were alternative medicine therapies, another visit to the hospital to discuss an operation to remove my uterus that I ended up not showing up for. Taking my most female organ away from me seemed barbaric and it sounds strange but it felt like they wanted to operate on my identity.

The story I subsequently told myself and everyone else was „fuck it, there are too many children in this world anyways, I have a cool career, I can do whatever I want, sleep in, go to raves, be reckless. I love my life“ and to some extent, that is the truth for me, also today. That story just doesn‘t at all take into account the state of the wounded woman that I was.

Fast forward 4 years of silence. Last summer I went to see my mums gyneacologist in Munich, who had told her about a hormonal treatment. My mum had not stopped the entire time to keep pushing me out of the shadow that I had never really spoken up to her about. (women’s intuition – her’s is on fleek. Danke Mama) That new doc told me about a new drug called Esmya that had just been legalized, showing tremendous results on shrinking myomas. She also mentioned its pretty severe side effects like liver damage and others. I decided to go for it anyways. That was in November of 2021.

Today, on Feb. 8th, I went back to get checked after having taken the drug for 3 months. 

The news: I have only one small myoma left and it‘s operable! The doc could see the walls of my uterus again in the ultrasound and let me know that my ovaries are also intact (no doc had been able to see them the past years as the tumors were making it impossible to see.)

The sensation of a weight lifted is huge, and the mental relief is massive. Now , at age 42, I get to chose. I am whole and will do everything to internalize the fact that I am.

Writing this down was incredibly hard. Proof-reading the text made me feel naked and almost sick to my stomach, exposing such an uncomfortable long kept secret. I did it for the many other women who must feel similar and NEVER talk about it. If YOU read this and it speaks to you, please feel free to reach out, please do. You are not alone.