While a woman’s body is capable of doing incredible things, there are also many things we don’t even realize our bodies could go through, until, unfortunately, it happens to us. women of BuzzFeed Community bravely shared their stories to remind women to always stand up for themselves, and if they feel like something is wrong, it usually is. Here’s what they shared:
Note: Some answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
1.“Enigmatic pregnancy they are very real. My uncle and aunt tried for ten years and gave up after my aunt’s second miscarriage. In 2021, she went to the hospital complaining about her belly and gave birth at the age of 45. Nothing was crazier than waking up and finding out that my grumpy 56-year-old uncle was now a father.
two.“I often see mention of early perimenopause, but I’ve never seen a comment saying it can arrive later than usual. I’m 48 years old and I asked my doctor to do tests, and she said I’m not close to perimenopause, much less menopause. I’ve been dealing with periods for 35 years now and I’m convinced I’ll deal with this crap until the day I die.”
3.“Did you know that not all women menstruate every month, or even bimonthly? It’s possible ovulate even without menstruation. I menstruate twice a year, in March and October. It’s been like this for at least 6-7 years. However, in 2019, I discovered that I was 24 weeks pregnant, which meant that conception had occurred during one of the months in which I didn’t menstruate. (Which also means I didn’t miss any periods and therefore didn’t know I was pregnant). If you have irregular periods, it’s important to see a medical professional to find out why. However, if your period is irregularly regular (irregular in general, but consistent for you), it’s also important to tell them that.”
4.“O Bartholin cyst! I’m recovering from surgery on mine. I had some discomfort ‘down there’ and I thought it might be from a recent period, but it only got worse. After a round of antibiotics and pain I couldn’t control, I ended up in the emergency room. The doctor who attended to me said that she couldn’t see anything and that I should go home, take painkillers and wait for it to ‘pop’ on its own. I couldn’t imagine another day with this pain, so I made her put her hand where the pain was. She then called the gynecologist who was on duty.”
“Fast forward two hours and I was in emergency surgery to drain it. It was about the size of a golf ball, and if we had left it any longer, I would have contracted sepsis. cysts in my uterus, which turned out to be the cause of the heavy bleeding I had every month and the anemia I had because of it in 2024 has been wild so far!
5.“What always strikes me is how much more likely it is that neurodivergent women have menstrual problems compared to neurotypical women. We’re more likely to have terrible cramps, heavy bleeding, PCOS and PMDD, and of course many of us have sensory issues related to bleeding and the products available to control it. The fact that women are rarely believed about period problems OR about being ND means there isn’t much information available about it, so I don’t know what my body and brain are doing that makes menstruation so horrible. I only received my endometriosis and autism diagnoses in my 30s, and finding out literally anything about their relationship since then has been extremely difficult because the research simply isn’t being done.”
6.“Hormonal imbalances it can also cause severe and debilitating migraines. My grandmother suffered from migraines since she was 12 years old. she had to lie in bed in a dark room with a cold cloth on her head all day. This went on for decades. No doctor could figure out why she was getting it. They just gave him painkillers to help. This was in the 1950s-80s, mind you. Then, she developed ovarian cancer. To stop it, she had a complete hysterectomy and double ovary removal. After that, she never had a migraine again.”
“The procedures instantly resolved a decades-old problem. They started doing studies on female hormones and migraines in the ’90s, I believe, and showed that there’s a definite link: if your hormone levels are out of control, it can cause migraines. at age 12, obviously, because hormone levels change when a girl menstruates. So, if you have very bad migraines, you may want to talk to your OB/GYN about a possible hormonal cause.
7.“Here’s one that a lot of people don’t seem to know: certain types of cancer are common during pregnancy. Last year I had what we call a molar pregnancy; this happens when there is no genetic material in the egg or when two sperm fertilize the egg at the same time. The genetic abnormality causes a cyst to grow and then several fluid-filled sacs along with some fetal tissue that is not viable. If left untreated, the cyst can grow into the uterine wall and, in some people, become cancerous.”
8.“I learned as a woman in my late 30s that pretty much everything I was taught about hymens – or rather, what was transmitted in half-whispers from friends who had older sisters, etc. because none of my health classes or so-called ‘sex education’ classes taught anything about hymens – it was wrong.
“When I started working as an advocate for victims of sexual assault and taking multiple SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) exams every month, I learned a lot from SANEs about how women’s bodies do or don’t work.
Most importantly, hymens are not how we were taught to imagine them. We are always presented with this image that shows the hymen as a flat surface of the skin. Instead, you should think of it as one of those elastic hair ties. Imagine making a ‘bird’s head’ by putting together all the fingertips on one hand. Putting the little elastic band around your closed fingers and then opening and closing them gets smaller and smaller again. Estrogen is what makes the hymen more flexible – more elastic. When we are born, we have leftover estrogen from our mother for a few years. Our hymen is really flexible then. It becomes smaller when we are children, and estrogen decreases and becomes more flexible again when we reach puberty.
So when the police or CPS would come to me, as the child advocate on the call, or to SANE, and ask, ‘Well, did something happen? Was the hymen broken? we would have to explain to them what I said above. Women should have better access to ACCURATE education about our bodies in the US.”
9.“Do you still ovulate with a IUD. So you can have all the symptoms, but you usually don’t bleed.”
–dead
10.“Two years ago I had a decidual cast, which I had never heard of until I owned one. Normally, when you menstruate, the uterine lining dissolves into blood and sheds over the course of several days. With a decidual cast, the tissue remains solid and emerges in a large mass in the shape of the uterus. My periods are usually light with minimal cramping due to my birth control. When I got the cast on, the bleeding was so bad it was almost a constant flow, and I couldn’t get up from the pain. Both went away almost completely once the cast wore off, but then I was freaking out and thought I had cancer. If you have no idea this is possible, it is very alarming to see something the size of a lemon coming out of your vagina.”
11.“My mom thyroid I stopped working when I was pregnant with my older brother. I have no idea why, but luckily, my little brother and I were at term.”
12.“Abdominal diastasis – when your abdominals separate and have a gap. Also, pelvic organ prolapse, which is exactly what it sounds like. When your bladder or uterus tries to vacate your body. My two weren’t mentioned until my bladder tried to come out when I was 34, after giving birth to two children in two years.”
13.“During pregnancy, I developed something called ‘incarcerated urethra.’ This meant my urethra was being torn away, so I couldn’t urinate. Fortunately, mine only lasted about a day and a half, and I could pee by pushing in one spot, but some women need catheters.”
14.“I had a blood clot in my spleen as a result of severe pancreatitis last year. The emergency room doctors prescribed me Eliquis (a blood thinner), even though they knew I wasn’t taking birth control and was menstruating monthly. bleeding A LOT, with huge clots, I went to my primary doctor, who insisted that it was a long period of time and could not have been caused by the blood thinner. , after passing two blood clots the size of my fist, I insisted on an office visit. The obstetrician sent me to the emergency room, I was bleeding, I needed three blood transfusions and I still had to spend another week in the emergency room. because my hemoglobin was so slow that my body could barely survive.”
15.“I have PCOS and we were trying to find an alternative to the pill for me. I got an IUD. After two years, dislodged. The gynecologist went to put a new one in, but couldn’t do it right away. He tried for three minutes straight, just trying to force it. He paused and tried again, but he still couldn’t. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to try Nexplanon, which made me bleed non-stop, so I ended up having to go back on the pill anyway.”
If you have your own story, share it with me in the comments below!
