I am one in 5,000. Crazy right? One in five thousand really isn’t that rare. If you think about it, there are 7.442 BILLION people on this planet. If you were to say approximately half of those 7.442 billion people are women, that’s around 744,200 women out there who are like me. Who feel different. Who were told we would never experience a woman’s greatest joy- having a child.
After finding out my diagnosis, that’s when things really started to change. I was already going through the joys of being a teenage girl. Can you say attitude. I also had previous bouts of depression growing up. My parents sent me to counseling in the past, although I really don’t think it helped much. Then throw in the fact that I was now different than everyone else around me, like really different, and feeling I had to keep this huge moment in my life a secret. I mean, who would understand? It’s kind of hard to be upfront and honest with people and say “Hey, guess what? I don’t have a uterus, I’ll never have my first period, and I can’t have babies!”. Or how to handle normal every day situations. Like when a woman asks you “Hey do you have a tampon?” or when you’re talking to friends and they say “Do you crave chocolate as much as I do when you’re PMSing?” I had to lie. Lie as best I could. And I’ve been lying for the last 10 years. On the inside, I was dying. Will I say something wrong? Will they find out I don’t get my period? I never carry tampons with me. Maybe I should take some of my sisters and keep them in my back pack. It was those moments that really started to affect me. I really started to spiral.
I put my parents through the ringer. I think it was a mix of being upset about my diagnosis but also being upset that no one in my family really knew how to handle all of this. I felt like I was walking in the dark with no flashlight. No guidance. No hand to hold. I felt like I was going through this alone. I was stealing money from my parents and my sisters, sneaking out, not coming home. I was dealing with it the only way I thought I could. I was desperate for acceptance and attention.
One of the biggest worries I had was finding a partner who would understand. Let me back up and explain something. This is getting a little personal but I think it’s important. MRKH affects the growth of your reproductive organs. I have my ovaries but no uterus. Since I have no uterus, I have no cervix. And no cervix meant under developed on the inside, if you know what I mean. I could have sex, but it would have been painful. My doctor said I could have a surgery to help with that. So I did. Which was traumatizing on its own. I was in the hospital for ten days. On top of recovery time after that. Try explaining all of that to your friends. And then the thought of finding a man you love and care about and having to tell him all of this? Not having a uterus. Not having a period. Not ever being able to get pregnant; the only way I could have a child is to have a surrogate or to adopt. Frightening. Terrifying. I convinced myself no man would ever understand. That it was weird. That they wouldn’t want a woman who couldn’t have children. I really felt I would never be good enough to any man. That is, until I met Graham.
I’ve always told Graham he was the one who saved me. Saved me from going down a really bad road. He was my breath of fresh air. He is funny, hilarious really. Ambitious. A little hard headed. Pretty handsome too 😉 But mostly, he makes me feel safe. I remember the very moment I told him about MRKH and what that meant. We went for a drive. Going for drives was our thing. We parked in some parking lot and were just talking. It took everything I had in me to tell him. I was so afraid. Afraid of rejection, confusion, the unknown of what he would think. I told him. He didn’t even blink an eye. He of course had questions, understandably, but I never for a moment felt that he didn’t want to be with me because of it. We obviously were in no rush to have kids at the age of nineteen. But I wanted him to know. He deserved to know. I did think about how it would look when we were older. Like we are now. Married, a fur child, buying our first house, people all around us starting families. All of the pregnancy announcements, the baby bump pictures, the baby showers. I figured it would be hard, but that I could handle it. That we could handle it. Looking back and then looking at where we are now, 8 years later, I had no idea how hard it would really be. To yearn for that next step. To grow a baby in my belly, hear it’s little heartbeat, feel all the little kicks, raise our own family.
But I can’t.
xx Sam
The Introverted Italian 