On episode 38, we have La-Anna from Baltimore, Maryland. She was 40 during her pregnancy with her second daughter that is one year old now. La-Anna is the creator of Hope Still Stands which is based on her journey from self-hatred to hope. Dealing with infertility, low self-worth, mental health issues are just a few things she overcame in her journey. She shares her story to inspire and ignite hope in others. She’s in search of other women with two uteruses just like her to support and spread awareness.
Ever since La-Anna cycles started at ten years old, she’s always had excessive pain around that time, like curl-up-in-a ball-and-cry pain. Her doctor would tell her, “You’re just a girl with bad periods.” When her cycle came, she would have cramps on her left side for 3-4 days and then cramps on her right side for 3-4 days. They were so heavy, they would drain out like water. Accidents were a common occurrence starting in her teens. She would also have so much bloating, she would look like she was six months pregnant. She knew she was different because she didn’t see other girls her age talking about the same things she was going through. The doctor said it was normal and didn’t look into it further. At 15 years old, she had her first pap smear, and the doctor said her cervix was invisible without explanation, and she had a cyst on her ovary. Simply, “we just can’t see your cervix.” She prepared her future husband for the painfully horrible cycles. La-Anna and her husband married while they were in their 20’s. She wanted a family after the first year of marriage, but she had no idea how much her ‘bad periods’ would impact her fertility. She went to the hospital often, and they always told her the cyst was growing. She had multiple scans of her abdomen looking for causes of the pain. She had a Hysterosalpingography, which is where they inject dye into the uterus and look at it with an x-ray. It was a very painful procedure for her. She didn’t get the call later about the results, instead the radiologist went back to speak with her. He told her she had half a uterus. She was stunned and then cried. This was impossible, she had a cyst on her ovary. Who has half a uterus? She couldn’t accept this. She happened to be working at a women’s wellness clinic and wanted to take her films to be reviewed by the doctor there for a second opinion. She will never forget the doctor that reviewed her films, the maternal-fetal doctor was a kernel in the army. She wasn’t one of his patients, she worked for him, but asked him to look at the films anyway. With his glasses on the tip of his nose, he said, “La-Anna, you don’t have half a uterus. You have two.” The ‘cyst on her right ovary’ was her right uterus filling up with blood because her right cervix was closed. It would fill up to make her look six months and then gush out all at once to empty. That was causing the accidents. He recommended she see a reproductive endocrinologist.
She was examined vaginally and anally. Doing an exam anally allowed the doctor to see what she couldn’t otherwise see vaginally. At the first appointment, La-Anna screamed in pain during the exam. The doctor wanted to schedule surgery. She has a didelphys uterus which is where she has two wombs and 2 cervixes. She also had endometriosis, and 3 fibroids. The news was overwhelming, but it was also a relief knowing they found something after 15 years of pain. No one listened to her until now. This doctor had seen other patients with her condition and knew exactly what to look for. La-Anna was willing to go through the pain to be able to figure out what was wrong with her. The next step was to see what shape each of her uteruses was, clear out some of the endometriosis around the tubes, and open the right cervix. The doctor discovered that each ovary had its own uterus.
The three surgeries helped with the pain to a point. Having her right cervix open made a big difference. Cramping was bad, but not like it was. She was still bleeding twice a month because each ovary/uterus was its own cycle. After the surgeries she still wasn’t getting pregnant. She tried Clomid but she didn’t qualify for an IUI because she has two wombs. She went on birth control to help regulate her cycles but that didn’t work either. At 29 years old, her doctor recommended doing IVF. She already felt like a robot. She’d been going through this for six years. She was smiling on the outside but on the inside the dark clouds were creeping in. She started to get depressed. She felt like she wasn’t women enough to be able to get give her husband a child they wanted. She was telling herself that she wasn’t enough. She kept on smiling and went ahead with IVF. She was confident it was going to work. She was so excited for transfer day. They scheduled it for her left uterus because her right uterus was incompetent. It took the doctor a long time to get it to the correct uterus, but she was hopeful. After the two week wait, they rushed home that day to put the doctor on speaker phone to hear the results: Mr. and Mrs. Douglas, I just wanted to let you know the results were negative. She screamed deep down from a place she didn’t know she had.
She didn’t understand why it didn’t work. She told her husband to find someone else. The time they spent trying for one, he could have already had two or three kids by now if he was with someone else. She started to question why she was alive. She walked into the kitchen and looked at the block with all of the knives and was deciding which one she would use. She was ready to take her life when she heard the words of god: La-Anna, your life has a purpose. Hope still stands. She argued back. Her middle name is Hope but she never understood what it meant. She put the knife back and her husband told her that night he loved her with or without children. They decided together to focus on their relationship and move on with their lives.
Eight years had past now when she woke up early one morning in 2012. Her husband was downstairs reading a verse in the bible about Hannah petitioning the lord to give her a son, but she didn’t know this at the time. She had to get out of bed so bad because she needed to use the bathroom. She also had an urge to take a pregnancy test. She happened to have one handy. She took the test but didn’t want to even look at it. She looked at it pretty quickly after taking it, and the two lines were already visible. She started screaming. She’s never seen two lines before. Her husband rushed in concerned if she was ok. He was confused when she said she took a pregnancy test. Why even take one? He looked at the box and told her two lines means your pregnant. She accused him of lying. She immediately called her Mom and they all rushed to the hospital for an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy. The next day she saw the heartbeat after eight years of infertility. She gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She wanted to wait a year and then try for their second child. Her body knows what to do now. No problem. That one year turned into seven.
Is this 40? what is going on?
La-Anna was now 39 in 2020. She was working from home and she remembers having pain on her left side. She normally never has pain on her left side. Something wasn’t right, so she went in to see her primary care doctor. The doctor pushed on her side and it made her jump. The doctor ordered an ultrasound be done. At the ultrasounds, the tech told her she had a cyst on her left ovary. Her 20-something-self would have accepted this diagnosis. Her almost 40-self needed a second opinion. She had a procedure done where they put a balloon in each womb and looked at them through an ultrasound. They found multiple polyps and the three fibroids had grown. She completely forgot about the fibroids! She saw another doctor that asked her if she wanted to have a hysterectomy. She had been dealing with pain since she was ten, she had her miracle child, she was ready to have them removed. She consulted her husband and her mom before making the final decision. Her husband wanted to try again for a second child. Her mom didn’t want her to do it either but told her it was her body. She thought and prayed about it. She decided to do the robotic laparoscopic myomectomy to remove the fibroids instead. In February 2021, she went in for the procedure and sat in room 17 before stepping into the OR. Funny thing was they had been married for seventeen years. In August she celebrated her 40th birthday. She looked back on how she almost ended her life, and now she was happy and feeling fabulous on her birthday. She was proud of herself. It took her 40 years to realize she was beautiful and worthy of love. Her husband was 45 and together they realized their family was complete. In September her husband mentioned to her he thought she seemed different. She was burping for now reason, her stomach was upset, she was sweating for no reason… He suggested she take a pregnancy test. She refused to take one because she didn’t want to be disappointed. She took the test, set a timer and laid back on the bed to wait with her husband. The timer went off and there were two lines. After eight years, she was five weeks pregnant with their second child.
Her pregnancy was good but of course she was high risk because of her didelphys uterus. Just like the last pregnancy, this baby was also in her left uterus. She had ultrasounds every other week and then it turned into once a week. She was worried she would have gestational diabetes but luckily, she didn’t have it. She was worried about her one kidney, but it was fine. She had high blood pressure which was resolved with medication. She had preeclampsia just like the first time, too.
For this pregnancy she went to a different OB. It was years since she saw her first doctor and she was recommended to this particular doctor due to all of her circumstances outside of the pregnancy. She had stress tests through the third trimester of the pregnancy. Her first pregnancy was filled with a lot of fear. This pregnancy, she was so happy. She felt relief and felt like there wasn’t anything to worry about. What did she have to complain about?
She found out the gender of her second at the gender reveal party. They invited some of their family over to their house to find out. They ordered cupcakes and sent the ultrasound with the gender to the cake place. They asked them to put a color that represented the gender of the baby inside the cupcakes. Everyone was given a cupcake but her because she wanted everyone else to eat them. Of all the people, her sister with four girls bit into the cupcake first to reveal the pink frosting inside. Everyone laughed because she only has girls and now La-Anna will have two girls. Everyone wanted her to have a boy, but she just wanted a healthy baby.
Because of her age, she had to get genetic testing during the second trimester. They noted the baby’s nose was wide and worried it was down syndrome. She says through a laugh that she is African American and that is a cultural trait. Her husband was calm about it, but her second thoughts had her worried. She had back pain that she saw a chiropractor for. Her pregnancy pillow was so helpful, that she still sleeps with it to this day.
Her daughter kept asking for a sibling. She didn’t care if it was a brother or a sister. Her daughter would sit in the backseat of the car and tell her she was imagining her brother or sister sitting next to her. La-Anna’s heart broke telling her daughter they were trying to give her a sibling, but she had her cousins to play with. To tell her daughter the good news, they took her to build-a-bear where she built a beautiful rabbit. Her daughter put the heart in it and picked out clothes for it to wear. Her daughter was so happy with the rabbit when La-Anna knelt down to tell her she had some happy news to tell her: Mommy and Daddy want to tell you Mommy has a baby in her belly. Her daughter looked at her in disbelief while La-Anna cried happy tears. Other customers and employees were clapping for them. The store offered to put a special message from her daughter into the rabbit. “No matter what you are, no matter what you’ll be, I will always love you. Your big sister I’ll be.”
To prepare, La-Anna did take one class. Her first pregnancy she didn’t get to breastfeed because her baby was born at 32 weeks 4 days. While she was in the NICU, La-Anna had an allergic reaction to the birth control they gave her. She tried to pump and broke out in hives all over. This time she wanted to learn how to properly nurse.
She’s had 4 surgeries, scar tissue and her double uterus, so the doctor didn’t want her uterus to contract. She scheduled a c-section. She was having Braxton hicks at 34 weeks 6 days when she messaged her doctor after they got stronger. She’s already been to labor and delivery twice which were both false alarms. This time they gave her injections to slow down labor. Two shots later the contractions kept coming. They told her husband to rush home and get her things because they wanted to move forward with the c-section now. Even though there is one baby, both uteruses can contract. She describes it as two separate systems with the same mind.
She was put on magnesium before the c-section because of the preeclampsia. She said it felt like she was sun burned from the inside out. While she was getting prepped, she was in shock when they told her she would have a vertical incision because there was too much scar tissue. That made her blood pressure go up. While they were putting in the epidural, she was feeling like she was going to pass out. Her husband came in on her lefthand side. He put his face right next to hers because she was so scared. She felt so much tugging that she could feel it up in her lungs. She heard them say: there’s so much scare tissue, we have to cut up. She could hear the conversation of the doctors while they worked. She can’t explain the pressure. It didn’t hurt but it’s not comfortable at all. The anesthesiologist saw the panic on her face, so he was constantly by her side telling her everything was going to be alright. Her husband was on the other side praying in her ear. She remembers hearing: she’s out! All of her panic completely disappeared when her daughter appeared by her side. Nothing else mattered in that moment.
She couldn’t stand up right away. Air from being cut open was trapped in her body. She could feel pain in her arm from this and chewing gum helped the pain subside. She talked herself into walking down the hallway. She felt like she was in a good place even though she just had a c-section. She stayed in the hospital for five days. After three days, they said her blood pressure was a little high but she could go home if she wanted to. Leaving with her second daughter felt like a dream, she was so happy. She had to use nipple shields to breastfeed. She was able to breastfeed for a month and a half. At that point it was getting painful and she felt stressed. Her baby could latch, but the milk wasn’t coming down as much as it was in the beginning. She had frozen some breast milk, so they used that and formula from there.
She had some moments of postpartum depression. She started to feel those same feeling she had before she was pregnant with their first daughter. She felt like she was the only one going through this and she felt alone with the baby. She felt like no one cared. For her, all of those feelings she had before she was pregnant, they don’t just go away. It stayed with her to help shape her into the woman she is today. Prayer and just talking about her thoughts helped her through the toughest moments.
Resources:
Over 40 Fabulous and Pregnant on Instagram
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