I was 15 years old when a doctor told my mum I should start trying for a baby. Not me. My mum.
I was sitting in a sterile white hospital bed, still a child myself, when the doctor walked in and said, “If she ever wants to be a mum, she better start trying now. There’s already a lot of damage done.”
I don’t think anyone can prepare you to hear something like that before you have even grown into your own body. Before you have had the chance to understand what fertility means. Before you have had the chance to decide whether motherhood is something you want, or when you might want it, or what kind of life you might build before it.
At 15, I was told the likelihood of me ever having a successful pregnancy was extremely low because of severe endometriosis.
I know now that endometriosis doesn’t automatically mean you will never have a successful pregnancy or that you’re even infertile. But back then, all I heard was that my body had already failed me.
The dream of becoming a biological mum began slipping away from me before I could fully understand what I was losing.
I wish I could go back and hold that scared teenage girl. I wish I could tell her, “Even though this hurts, even though endometriosis will take so much from you, you will survive this.” I wish I could give her the love and support she did not receive from the people around her.
The reality is: Endometriosis took so much from me. In fact, some days, it still feels like it took everything.
Before I had my hysterectomy, I had multiple surgeries to remove lesions and adhesions and to put my organs back where they belonged. I tried medication after medication, many of them hormonal. At 15, when I was first diagnosed, I was put into medical menopause for the first time.
One of the treatments I tried was the Mirena. For me, it caused constant inflammation and multiple infections. I knew something was wrong, but doctors refused to remove it despite what it was doing to me.
During that time, I experienced my first miscarriage.
I was extremely unwell with vomiting, pain and other symptoms. Even though I had the Mirena, I unexpectedly became pregnant. By the time we realized what was happening, the Mirena was not in the right place, and it was likely the baby was growing in the wrong place, too.
I was hospitalized for infection, given IV antibiotics and monitored for pain. That was where the ache of loss began.
While I was in the hospital, I was placed on a maternity ward. I shared a room with a mum who had mastitis and had her baby there with her.
I was losing a baby while sharing a room with a baby. It felt like a cruel joke. The cruelest joke.
I had always known that pregnancy loss was something I might experience. In some ways, I had tried to protect myself from it. I never wanted to try for a biological child because I never wanted to feel that kind of loss.
But it happened anyway. And even though the pregnancy was unexpected, the love was not.
I loved that little soul the moment I knew. Even when it was already too late.
After that first loss, the words the doctor said when I was 15 rang in my head constantly. Deep down, I wanted to be a biological mum, but with every infection, every medication, every complication, what the doctors had told me felt more and more true.
About a year and a half later, after a long battle to have the Mirena removed, I started to feel unwell again.
But with endometriosis, it is hard to know what your body is trying to tell you. Endometriosis causes pain, irregular bleeding and nausea, so taking a pregnancy test was not always the first thing on my mind. Then a good friend’s toddler kept looking at my belly and saying, “Baby.”
I felt more bloated than usual, so I finally took a test. To my surprise, it showed a faint positive.
Because of what had happened with my first loss, I went straight to my doctor. I showed them the test. I had blood work done throughout the week, but the results showed that my HCG levels were not rising.
I had been pregnant. But I was no longer pregnant. Once again, it was too late. My heart shattered into smaller pieces that day.
Again, I developed another infection. Again, I ended up in the hospital for IV antibiotics. It felt like déjà vu. It felt like my body was an inflamed coffin.
From that point on, I believed the doctors were probably right. I would likely never be a biological mum. I had to figure out how to be okay with that, even though it is something I am still trying to figure out.
Endometriosis, my body, took two little souls who tried to come into this world through me. My motherhood journey on Earth felt like it had ended before it truly began.
It hurt. It still hurts. A few years later, in the months leading up to my hysterectomy, I was taking a medication called Zoladex to treat my endometriosis. Unfortunately, it did not work the way we had hoped. I continued to have uncontrolled bleeding and pain, which sometimes led to more hospital visits.
Because I still had my uterus, doctors routinely did pregnancy tests along with other testing. One of those tests showed that I was miscarrying again. For the third time, I had been so close to becoming a biological mum. For the third time, it was taken from me before I could even hold on to it.
By then, I had accepted as much as I could that I would not become a biological mum. I knew the parts of my body that could carry a baby were also making me sick. I knew I had no quality of life because of them. I knew the hysterectomy was necessary. But knowing something is necessary does not mean it does not break your heart.
At 28, just weeks before my 29th birthday, I had a hysterectomy. They left my ovaries, but my uterus was gone. So was the possibility of carrying a pregnancy.
Being a biological mother was no longer just unlikely. It was no longer just a warning from a doctor in a hospital room. It was no longer something I could wonder about or fear or hope might somehow turn out differently. It was over.
None of my pregnancies were planned. I was on medication that should have stopped them from happening. But they happened—and my losses matter to me.
They may have only been here for a small moment, but that moment mattered. They changed me. They changed me for the better in some ways. But they also broke me, and I will never be the same again.
I was so close to the dream of being a biological mum, and then it was taken from me before I could fight harder to bring those little souls Earthside.
Now, I am 35 years old and childless not by choice. I am still living with complications caused by endometriosis, as well as other chronic illnesses. There is not a day I do not think about the three little souls I wish I had with me.
I would have a 13-year-old. An 11-year-old. A 7-year-old.
When I see children around those ages, I wonder about mine. Would they look like me? Would they love books the way I do? Would they love playing sport? What movies would they like? Would one of them be the class clown?
There are days when I do not want to get out of bed, when I wish this was not my life, when I want to be a biological mum so badly that my heart physically aches…
This grief means I have love with nowhere to go. My arms are empty, but I carry them with me every single day.
Pregnancy loss changed the way I see children. Endometriosis changed the way I see my body. Infertility changed the way I see the future. But it did not take away my capacity to mother.
I’m now working toward my dream of becoming a foster mum. I want to make a difference in a child’s life. Maybe in many children’s lives.
I may not be able to be a biological mum, and the weight of that is so, so heavy, but I still want to be someone’s safe space. I want to help children who may need someone to show up for them. I want to become the kind of person who can offer safety, love and care when maybe no one else will.
Most of all, I want to be the person my children would have been proud to call their mum. Because I was their mum—even if only for a moment, even if no one else saw them, even if my arms are empty. I carry them. Always.
