I awoke from an operation to find my uterus removed — and my ‘mom dream’ crushed

A woman from England said that she went in for a routine internal checkup – and woke up without a uterus or a cervix.

As a result, Zoe Bailey, 31, has been left unable to get pregnant and can’t carry her own child, something that she’s always dreamed of.

“All my life I’d wanted to be a mum and to be told this wouldn’t be possible broke me,” Bailey told Jam Press.

“Some days, I feel like a failure – I’m a woman who can’t do the one thing women are meant to do, which is carrying a baby.”

In 2013, Bailey was diagnosed with a condition called endometriosis which means that there is a growth of tissue similar to the lining of the uterus growing outside of it, according to the Mayo Clinic.

One of the symptoms of endometriosis is infertility, but she had been reassured by doctors that this wouldn’t be the case for her – until it suddenly became her reality.

Since she was 14 years old, she has always had painful periods, about which she recalled vomiting and even blacking out.

Many doctors pushed her pain aside and called it “normal,” but it later turned out that she was suffering from the disorder.

After going to the doctor, she was put into temporary menopause twice, the most recent time being in 2015, in order to give her reproductive system a “break” – but, unfortunately, her symptoms still came back.

The pain of having endometriosis was so unbearable for Bailey that she ended up spending a lot of her days in bed and even had to quit her job because of it.

“It’s not just a bad period – it affects everything: day-to-day life, relationships, my sex life, the list goes on,” she said of the condition.

In 2018, she was in so much agony that she had to be rushed to St. Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, where she was just supposed to have an internal medical check.

Instead, she woke up without both parts of her cervix and uterus.

“I didn’t expect to have any of my body removed that day but the doctors said they had no choice due to the severity of my condition,” she explained.

“I was so upset and angry – even more so at the fact I’d been told there was no chance [the endometriosis] could be back as I’d had surgery to remove it.”

She said that all she’s wanted for her entire life was to be a mom and that it “broke” her when she was told it wouldn’t be possible.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the road for Bailey and her horrible symptoms.

In 2019, she had to go in for another check-up, and she woke up without a bowel and had a stoma bag attached to her instead.

Bailey claimed that the stoma bag was only supposed to be there for six months, but she has to live with it for life after doctors found a blockage full of endometriosis tissue in her remaining intestines.

“Waking up to the bag on my side and seeing the scar, knowing this was now my life, deflated me,” she admitted.

“It knocked my confidence and I hated looking at my body.”

The 31-year-old said that the stoma bag has changed what she eats, and she has to be super careful about what goes into her body now.

She also has to take into account where she’s going on a day-to-day basis, as she has to make sure there’s a toilet nearby.

However, the hospital told Jam Press that they are currently investigating what happened during Bailey’s procedure.

“The PALS team are investigating the matter further with St. Mary’s as part of their standard complaints process and will feedback to Zoe as soon as the investigation is complete,” they told the outlet.

But, unfortunately, even after having all of those treatments and surgeries, she is still in excruciating and extreme pain every single day.

She said it’s left her depressed and anxious.

Doctors have told her that the only way to make her symptoms go away would be to have a full hysterectomy, a surgery that would remove all of her reproductive organs, like her fallopian tubes.

That means that she won’t be able to produce any eggs – so she’s trying to freeze them before she undergoes the surgery.

Bailey has set up a GoFundMe in order to raise money to freeze her eggs.

She’s hoping to gather a little bit more than $6,000 and has already raised more than $1,300.

“I think of all the people that have children and give them up or hurt them and I don’t think they understand how lucky they are,” she said.

Through this devastating ordeal, Bailey hopes to raise awareness about endometriosis for other women and to encourage them to work with their doctors if they don’t feel like something is right in their bodies.

“All of this could have been prevented if I was listened to at the beginning and everyone should be able to have the chance to be a mum,” she claimed.

“I don’t want anyone to have to go through what I’ve been through.”