warning: 4000+ words of oversharing and feminine rage lie ahead of you. proceed at your peril!
Almost exactly one year ago I wrote a post about turning 30 and being childfree whilst being surrounded by pregnant friends. At first, I only shared it to subscribers and insta close friends, but after getting such a positive reaction, I took the plunge and shared the first ever personal post about myself that wasn’t about movies or culture (I’m not counting my soliloquy about Mall Grab because ghetto tech is culture, ok). It turns out you all love that shit and when I bang on about myself it gets way more hits than film reviews. The only thing my readers love more than me hating kids is me having a personality disorder. And that’s why I love you all dearly.
A year has passed and not much has changed. I’ve just put my ideology into practice, as it were. I’m sat here in the Volkshotel workspace trying to ignore the button of my trousers rubbing against the plaster on my bellybutton. It’s covering up a laparoscopy scar from when I had my Fallopian tubes removed almost 3 weeks ago. I haven’t really figured out how to talk about this because it feels quite personal, but my reasons for doing so are bigger than me. Plus every time I mentioned it to anyone (friends, crochet club members, aunties, my tattoo artist), people were so interested and respectfully inquisitive that it’s given me the confidence to talk more about it. I guess it’s part of a wider unlearning of the feeling that I’m annoying and that I should just shut up. It turns out what I have to say is interesting and can have a positive effect on others. Even writing that down made me shudder. I clearly have a lot of work to do.
So, how did I get here? After a disastrous trip to visit my sister and baby niece last summer I headed straight to my GP to ask about permanent contraception. This doesn’t really have anything to do with my baby niece, who is beautiful, sweet, and healthy - though still a screaming shitting machine, like they all are. It was a combination of two things. Firstly, seeing my sister, with whom I have a very complicated relationship, display all of the signs of toxic motherhood and taking on her new role with no grace whatsoever. And secondly, seeing and feeling my own reactions to my niece. I would look into her big, beautiful blue eyes and feel… nothing. Actually, I felt alien, not understanding that me and her were the same species. I was not able to comprehend that I had once been a big squishy ball of flesh that was universally adored. It made me almost angry, as someone who can’t ask their dead mother why I was born just to turn into an adult who is permanently sad, in a world that’s on fire and full of hatred and suffering.
On a less existential level, I would just see how my reactions differed from my sister. For example, one day the baby grabbed onto some flowers in a vase and pulled them over, spraying the whole kitchen with water. I was really annoyed, as I’d just cleaned the place, and I said “why the fuck did you do that” to her (she is 4 months old). My sister, however, was so impressed that her grip strength had gotten to the point where she could grab and pull like that. It was a developmental mini-milestone to her, and a trivial annoyance to me.
Before I went to see them, I was somewhat terrified that the baby would trigger some sort of biological explosion in my ovaries and I would be forced to eat my words as I faced the worst fear of the opinionated gobshite - admitting I’d changed my mind about something. I was hugely relieved to discover that I did, in fact, know myself pretty well.
I found myself in the doctors office bringing all this up. Unlike most people in the Netherlands, I have an amazing GP - let’s called him Doc. I’ve been going to him for 7 years and I have full trust in him. Years and years ago I was doing my usual thing about being frustrated with the pill and not wanting to have periods (because honestly why should we), and he suggested getting an IUD. This made me very anxious because I’ve heard many horrors stories about insertion, and learned that any sort of pain relief - which everyone should be entitled to - would cost extra (on top of the cost itself, which is not covered by health insurance for over 21s).
I went off to think about it and received a call from Doc a few days later. He said he’d been chatting with a colleague who is a gynaecologist and brought up my situation - how I reacted to hormones, what I wanted from my contraceptives, my fear of the horrible pain and uncertain consequences of having an IUD, etc. He told me that his colleague had said that the IUD was probably not the best option for me, and Doc apologised for causing me unnecessary distress, and let’s just keep me on the pill and monitor how I feel. I was so pleasantly surprised that he had looked into my situation, sought expert advice, told me that he had made the wrong call, and apologised for not getting it right the first time. Since then I knew I could trust him completely with my health, and I am very lucky to have him.
Anyway, enough fangirling over my GP. I went to my appointment in July 2023 and explained that, after living with a young baby for a week, I never ever ever wanted to have kids. As this was a permanent decision that I was certain about, I also didn’t want to pump myself full of hormones as a preventative measure any more either. I had done some research and discovered that, apparently, you don’t need to get a hysterectomy to become voluntarily infertile. I’d read about a procedure called a salpingectomy, or having your Fallopian tubes removed. This stops the egg from getting to the uterus and therefore makes natural conception impossible. Most importantly, it doesn’t fuck your up hormonally like a hysterectomy does. As a result your periods stay as normal as they’d be if you weren’t taking contraception, and you’ll hit the menopause at around 50 like everyone else. He heard my speech and sat there, lost in thought. I could almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain. I asked him what he was thinking, and he said something to the effect of “I am trying to think of some sort of devil’s advocate argument to challenge what you want, but I really cannot think of a single thing”. He referred me to the gynaecology department there and then.
Now it turns out I wasn’t the only person who had never heard of a salpingectomy. It turns out basically no-one knows about this low-risk half hour procedure that greatly reduces the risk of ovarian cancer and frees women from the shackles of hormonal contraception and unwanted pregnancy. It’s slightly more complicated than a vasectomy, but certainly not a major surgical procedure. People were genuinely fascinated to learn about this option and I became somewhat suspicious about why this wasn’t more widespread. The answer is obviously because societies want women to have lots of babies and giving them the tools to choose not to would make us too powerful. Naturally I will spend the rest of my life yelling about this.
I’m not going to pretend the process between going to my GP and sitting here with laparoscopy scars was simple. My initial consultation in October 2023 with a gynaecologist turned out to be an appointment with a junior doctor who asked me a series of questions including “what does your partner think about this” - to which my answer was “it’s none of his business”. She also performed an examination on me without telling me to empty my bladder first, resulting in a very painful experience which left me in tears. Most egregiously, she asked me to provide a note from my psychologist to explain that I was of sound mind making this big decision (I had discussed this at length with my psychologist who was totally supportive). It turns out that my psychologist was not able to provide this sort of note to a patient, it could only be requested by another medical professional. I had specifically offered the contact details of my psychologist to the junior doctor, who insisted I did it myself.
The junior doctor rang me a few days later to tell me that because I’d not provided this note, a decision had not yet been made and I would have to undergo a psychological assessment. When I pointed out that what she was asking me was not permitted, she rudely told me I was free to go to another hospital. Thankfully, having been raised by Karens, I wrote a detailed complaint about this doctor who was reprimanded for her behaviour, and after my GP phoned the hospital and asked what the fuck was going on they fast tracked me to the head of gynaecology. I was immediately put me on the waiting list with no psychological assessment. This was in November 2023.
I then had the small task of psychologically preparing myself for a Big Decision™ that was permanent. There were many moments of doubt and questioning, which is a normal part of the decision making process. It’s the same as when you see a train hurtling towards the platform and your brain suddenly thinking MAYBE I SHOULD JUMP before the rest of your brain overrides it with NO LET’S NOT. The idea of never having my own family is a sad one. Knowing it’s fundamentally not what I want is something I had to accept.
No-one tried to stop me - my family are incredibly supportive, as are all my friends. I just know that I would absolutely hate every second of motherhood and resent whatever horrible creature I created for ruining my life and my body. I would be pissed off if anything went wrong. I would not handle having a sick child with any sort of grace and I would be furious if there were any long term consequences to my health. I would loathe the father of my child for putting me through this while he suffers zero consequences to his health, lifestyle, or career prospects. Thinking this does not make me a bad person - knowing this and choosing not to inflict myself on a poor innocent child who didn’t ask to be born makes me a slightly better person. I also know that no matter what sort of perfect loving home you create for your child, it will end up fucked up regardless. Just look at any of your depressed, anxious, miserable friends, many of whom have perfectly nice families who technically do anything wrong. And if that doesn’t happen, climate change will finish them off.
Fundamentally, being a mother is a 24/7 job for life with no pay - in fact, it’s an outrageously expensive hobby to have. It’s not a role I want. It’s that simple. I’m just not interested in spending my precious time on earth doing that sort of thing.
As early as January 2024 I was offered an appointment that month and I turned it down, knowing I couldn’t mentally prepare at short notice. As a chaotic freelancer, my life has to be planned out weeks and months in advance, and I had to ship my long-suffering boyfriend over to Amsterdam to be my nurse while I recovered. Eventually I snagged an appointment at the start of April, and began to talk about it more. It felt private, and I wasn’t obliged to say anything. But I wanted to be open about it, and knowing how I’d gotten through to my fellow childfree friends last April spurred me on.
The procedure went very smoothly, though it was almost cancelled last minute because of a leak in the hospital. While jacked up on opioids I managed to convince the surgeon that I’d hauled over my boyfriend from London and taken 3 weeks off work for this and that my aunt was coming to visit over the weekend to take care of me. I was awoken from my druggy snooze by the nurses saying I’d head down to the operating theatre in half an hour. So many people had texted me checking up on me I had to get my boyfriend to update my family whilst I frantically tried to respond to everyone else. I felt very loved in that moment. I had so many friends making sure I was alright and every auntie on WhatsApp wishing me luck. As a Latin American, that’s a lot of aunties.
I went into the operating theatre rather nervous and asked the nurse to hold me hand while they pumped all that delicious anaesthetic into me. When I woke up I remember feeling so overjoyed and elated because I’d only gone and bloody done it. I was free. On top of that, my Dutch was - somehow - absolutely superb. I’d been slacking since I got back from Buenos Aires a few weeks earlier and it turns out being knocked out medically reset my brain a bit. Timing wise, I’d been wheeled downstairs for general anaesthetic at 12:30 and lurked there for about half an hour. By 15:00 I was awake, back in my ward inhaling a cheese sandwich and my third ice lolly, sending Alex some interesting voice notes and taking this selfie. They said if I could go to the bathroom on my own then I was free to go. I was on my couch half an hour later. Not bad going.
Recovery was so fast that time slowed down and it felt like several days were passing at once. I had my surgery on a Thursday, and by that first Sunday I was walking to a cafe with my boyfriend and auntie to get coffee and a cinnamon bun. On the Monday I insisted we ride the tram to a posh bakery to purchase four slices of lemon meringue pie that I ate for breakfast the next day. On the Tuesday I went out for Chinese hot pot with my neighbours. On the Wednesday I went to crochet club. On the Thursday - one week later - I was sprinting from the tram to the cinema (in a pair of new Doc Martens, no less), because I was worried we were going to be late, as my boyfriend yelled at me to please for the love of god just walk. I’m still mostly taking public transport everywhere to not put pressure on my stomach and I’m taking it super easy, but I feel very much back to normal. All I’ve got is a plaster on my bellybutton because every single pair of trousers I own is high waist and it’s a bit uncomfortable. I will never ever wear low rise trousers.
I was sent home from the hospital with thorough instructions about what I would and wouldn’t feel and when I could start doing things again, as well as a huge bag of medicine in individually wrapped and labelled sachets indicating when I should be taking what. The hospital asked me to fill out a short questionnaire on my symptoms for a week after the surgery. My surgeon rang me about an hour after I arrived home to check I was doing ok. I was given a number to call if I felt sick or in unbearable pain. When recounting this to a close friend who had a baby last summer, she was impressed. After 114 hours of labour and an episiotomy, she was sent home with her new baby without so much as an ibuprofen and a leaflet about how to keep the damn thing alive.
In the two weeks I spent doing almost nothing I quietly came to terms with what I’d done and why I’d done it. I famously hate being left alone with my thoughts and knowing something is permanent is scary. We very rarely have to make those sorts of decisions. But I did, and I am happy with it. Right on cue, my instagram algorithm started showing me videos of people with too many kids showing “real parenting” as their little darlings screamed and beat each other up while the wife jokingly suggesting that it might be time for a vasectomy. Even the internet was on my side.
I’m quietly allowing myself to be proud of this decision, which is difficult as I don’t really like to toot my own horn (it’s called being British). At times I thought to myself that this is such a gigantic overreaction and come on, is the pill that bad? Are abortions that traumatic? Is this worth it? Maybe one day I’ll want a kid?
Well, on that last note, IVF is possible because I still have a uterus. Not that I’d want to put myself through the hell of egg harvesting and hormone cocktails but that’s what I can say to anyone who is nosy enough to question my own decisions. Abortions are not fun, no matter how early you do them. I was chatting with the nurse who did my IV and she confirmed that, yes, it’s very unpleasant and traumatising. I do not want to take the risk of ever needing one, even though I fully 1000% believe that anyone should be able to have one at any time no questions asked.
And yes, the pill fucking sucks.
I have been on hormonal contraception for half of my life - literally 15 out of my 30 years. It’s the standard routine for any teenage girl with spots/heavy periods/mood swings, regardless of if you’re sexually active. The irony that every other teenage girl in the land is put on hormones just because, whilst trans teens who would really benefit from hormone therapy is viewed as barbaric and unacceptable, is just another manifestation of misogyny and control. Take away agency and let everyone suffer pointlessly, why don’t you.
For a brief time in early 2022 I stopped taking the pill. I’d been in a bit of a dry spell, taking time off dating and enjoying the fact that my grades had skyrocketed as a direct consequence. I felt pretty good, but naturally it’s hard to pinpoint the main cause. The frustrating this was that the second I was fertile again, I became irresistible to the opposite sex and everyone suddenly wanted to shag me. As fun as the sudden attention was, the ginger fuckboy with the tiny dick I was seeing suggested that now I was back on the pill we didn’t need to use condoms any more. The audacity.
The pill is not permission for men to not take responsibility and for too long that’s how it’s been viewed. Nothing is 100% safe. Thankfully, that fuckboy’s entirely typical behaviour had me running straight into the arms of my current partner who is extremely lovely and kind and would never in a million years take my reproductive responsibility for granted. However, meeting him only made me even more terrified of contraceptive oopsie whoopsies. He is one of the 1% of IUD failures. He is a happy accident. I was officially mega fucking paranoid and taking no chances.
I have no idea what my actual personality is like without hormones, and I know it’ll take a few months to get everything out of my system. I have done some robust scientific research on the matter (instagram stories) and asked my friends who’d quit the pill if it had improved their quality of life. One person said that the hormones from the pill helped them regulate their moods and periods and they were better off on it. Another found that their IUD helped manage the symptoms of another gynaecological issue. A couple of people said they didn’t really notice a difference. And about fifty people said it was the best decision they’d made for their health, that they were happier and really felt more like themselves. They said they didn’t know what took them so long and they wish they’d done it sooner. That sounds pretty good to me. After all, in about 20 years I’ll hit the menopause and be put on HRT anyway. This way I’ll have two wonderful decades of being my actual self. Without it, I’d have lived the majority of this precious life hormonally altered - for what exactly? So that men can go around ejaculating without a care in the world?
I’m not trying to discount the years of medical research that created something that allows us to be protected from pregnancy from the inside out. It is an essential medicine and it should be available to anyone who wants and needs it. What bothers me is that it is used as a sticking plaster for other problems - mood disorders, gynaecological issues, skin problems - and allows medical professionals to use hormones as a symptom management tool. As a result, these other problems aren’t actually solved, and new problems are created. These include but are not limited to: weight loss, weight gain, increased sex drive, decreased sex drive, blood clots, higher risk of breast and cervical cancer, high blood pressure, headaches, and most commonly, that weird flat emptiness that consumes you when your natural hormonal balance is off. And this is just the pill I’m talking about. Go ask your friends what it was like having an IUD inserted without pain relief.
As medical research doesn’t give a single flying fuck about women’s health, it’s up to us to try out different methods of contraception and trial and error our way through the effects they have on us. This can be a process which takes years of our precious lives. That’s the irony: we all react differently to hormonal contraceptives and, unless you’re my GP, your doctor will tell you the common side effects and let you wing it without taking your personal needs into consideration. No-one knows how we’ll respond and naturally the common solution is to give everyone the same thing.
You don’t need me to tell you that medical misogyny is everywhere and that women’s health is rarely taken seriously. The fact that I have a GP who is supportive and advocates for me makes me extremely lucky. In the few cases of friends of friends who have been interested in permanent contraception, many are told they’re too young, or that it’s too permanent, or to just wait until they’re really really really sure. Even those with debilitating endometriosis are not offered simple surgical procedures that would massively alleviate the huge amount of pain they go through. Those quips our friends make about being in so much pain on their period that they can barely walk across the room to grab a paracetamol aren’t just one of those things. Women have been worn down by years of not being listened to and think, well that’s it. Maybe life is pain? It’s not. Advocating for yourself is an uphill battle but it is possible. I want to spend the rest of my life helping women do what they want with their health. I’ll be your rent-a-Karen.
But this isn’t just a medical or health issue. This is helping me become who I want to be. Earlier this year I had what can only be described as the gender wobblies. Now, I don’t think biological sex, gender identity, and reproduction are or should be connected in general. For me, Celeste, personally, I have always associated my own womanhood with the fact that my body can reproduce. That is how I have grown up. I do not think this view applies to anyone else. I knew I could become pregnant and I hated it. I hated that my body was capable of that. It made me sick. My periods were a reminder that that’s what my body had evolved for. At the same time, I love being a woman. I love fighting to make being a woman better for everyone, regardless of what sort of woman they want to be. But these biological truths I felt about my body didn’t make me feel so good. It made me wonder, am I totally woman? Is it just that I’m mostly woman? Do I have to be a woman in both mind and body? I was having a bit of a hard time with it and consulted with gender identity guru and all round tip-top friend Beau who had many supportive words of wisdom. I didn’t really know what to think. I didn’t really feel non-binary, but I didn’t want to be all woman if being all woman meant my body could make a baby. It was a strange time.
It turns out the solution to all of this was surgically removing all possibility of motherhood from my body. I felt so overjoyed that I’d made my body into what I wanted it to be. The weight of accidental pregnancy was lifted and knowing that it will never ever ever happen and I never have to worry about it ever again was so liberating. I was the real me all along in spirit but now it’s in body too. It’s awesome.
The only thing I’m still figuring out is the semantics of it all. Technically, I am sterilised. This is a pretty standard way of describing what I have done. I just don’t like it. It’s clinical and loaded with the weight of knowing that that’s what governments do to women they consider undesirable. It is a genocidal tactic used by nations across the world to stamp out ethnic minorities, disabled people, mentally ill people, or anyone that they didn’t want to have around. I don’t really want to hitch my happy little wagon onto that term.
So how about infertile? Again, it’s a term that most people don’t see as positive. Infertility is a problem that modern medicine seeks to fix. It is a deficiency of something your body should be able to do. If I say “I’m infertile” to people they’ll probably say “oh I’m so sorry”. That’s not what I want. I want people to share my joy, not pity what is perceived to be missing.
I’m toying with a few ideas. I’ve found that “lady vasectomy” makes sense to a lot of people, certainly more than “bilateral salpingectomy” does. Or perhaps “medically childfree”? “Submissive and unbreedable” for the more meme-minded person? For now I’m sticking with “going tubeless”, a cycling joke that will land with about 5% of my friends - most people I know aren’t into developments in cycling technology, because they’re normal, well-adjusted people.
And look, this isn’t for everyone. The only other person I know who has had this is a friend’s partner. Some of my childfree friends are single and not sexually active so they just keep going with their natural cycles. Some of them are queer and don’t have to endure the shame of sleeping with men. Some are content with their hormonal contraception. Some don’t want to go under the knife. Some people are undecided about having children. Some might have partners with vasectomies. Some people I’ve spoken to have expressed interest in having the procedure done once they’ve had as many kids as they want to, to live the rest of their fertile years without having to worry or play guinea pigs with hormones while they have to parent.
All in all, this was the best decision for me and I feel absolutely happy with my decision. Any lingering strands of doubt about maybe having children has gone out of necessity, because I now can’t so there’s not point worrying about it. I’m still ridding my body of 15 years worth of hormones and figuring out what exactly my menstrual cycle is (I literally have no idea). I feel complete, in a way that I imagine many people do when they hold their baby for the first time. Both feelings are valid and good, because they’re representations of the choices we made for ourselves. Being pro-choice is about supporting and making possible all choices for women and our health, regardless of the direction we choose to go in.
This is really cool and I'm really happy for you and only slightly (very) jealous. I also learned a lot! Here's to you finally feeling unburdened from the unwanted weight of fertility!!! ♥️