‘Pregnant’ for nine years

In a cruel twist of fate, strangers thought Beryl Romain, 50, from Barking, was expecting a baby…

Flicking through the wedding magazine, I couldn’t believe how many gorgeous dresses there were. ‘Decisions, decisions,’ I smiled. I’d just got engaged to my boyfriend Michael.

We weren’t planning the wedding for a couple of years, but, like any bride-to-be, I was bursting with excitement.

After the wedding, we’d get started on having a family. The whole future looked bright. There was just one thing hanging over me…

‘I just want rid of this tummy,’ I frowned to Michael.

Back in 2001, I’d felt hard lumps in my tummy one day when I was in the shower.

They weren’t protruding, but they felt like little bunches of mushrooms.

I’d always prided myself on keeping myself in good shape, and had been a trim size-12.

But now, my tummy was so swollen, I was struggling to get size-14 trousers done up.

I had no other symptoms, and had been back and forth to the doctors so many times, but they’d not been able to find the problem.

‘I can’t carry on like this,’ I moaned to Michael. ‘It’s driving me mad.’ So I went back to my GP again and demanded more tests.

This time, I was referred for scans and blood tests.

A couple of weeks later, I was called back in.

‘You have fibroids,’ the doctor explained. ‘They’re non-cancerous growths, and yours are around the circumference of your womb.’

‘What are my options?’ I asked.

‘There’s no treatment,’ he said. ‘The only option is a hysterectomy.’

My world crashed down around me.

I was only 33. ‘But I want children,’ I cried. When I got home, I broke the news to Michael.

‘There must be something else that can be done,’ he wept.

I knew how desperate he was to become a father, too. We plodded on for another year, but I felt totally deflated.

I gave up my journalism college course and went travelling around West Africa to try to find a natural solution to deal with my problem – something herbal.

But the ever-swelling tummy was a constant reminder of what was going on inside me.

So, when I got home, I called off the wedding.

‘This is not fair on you,’ I sobbed to Michael.

‘You need to find someone who can give you what I can’t.’

‘I’m sorry it had to come to this,’ he sighed.

As he turned and left, I just felt so angry.

Fibroids were robbing me of everything I loved in my life.

I refused to have the

hysterectomy. I wouldn’t allow my womanhood to be ripped out of me. But, while my dreams of a baby grew further away, the cruel reality was that I was starting to look like I was pregnant. My tummy swelled more and more until, one day, when I was on the bus… It was full, and I was quite happy standing up, but a man suddenly jumped up from his seat. ‘Please, sit down,’ he insisted, nodding towards my tummy – and I felt my cheeks burning. He thought I was expecting. I wanted the ground to swallow me up. But I could understand where he was coming from. By now, I was wearing a size20, and had ditched my fitted jeans and blouses, instead opting for elasticated trousers and baggy smock tops. ‘I can’t believe I look pregnant!’ I sobbed, staring at myself in the mirror. Only, I’d never get the beautiful baby at the end of it. Soon, I was wearing a size-22. I had stretchmarks and aches, waddled like I was expecting… One day, I was at my job as a housing contractor when I eased myself into my chair.

‘When’s your baby due?’ a girl smiled at me.

She was fairly new, and didn’t know anything about me. ‘I’m not pregnant,’ I mumbled. I don’t know who was more embarrassed, her or me. By now, it was 2012. I’d lived with this monster inside me for 11 years.

Wherever I went, people asked me when I was due.

My body was being so cruel, teasing me with my ‘bump.’ I was 46 and still single… I knew that it was never going to happen.

Yet still, having a hysterectomy seemed so final.

Hanging onto my womanhood felt like sticking two fingers up at the fibroids somehow.

I hated my body inside and out. And I felt totally unsexy. But, amazingly, I did fall in love again – with Richard. ‘I think you’re beautiful,’ he said. And, the longer we were together, the more I began to believe him.

Perhaps it was that, as well as the fact he had two children from a previous marriage, that in 2015, I finally made the decision to have the hysterectomy.

‘I’ll never be a mum,’ I told Richard. ‘But I can take back control of my body.’

I’d thought that’s what I was doing by not having the operation.

But, in reality, I’d just been punishing myself, day by day.

Of course, I was nervous, and afterwards, my surgeon told me I’d had the third biggest fibroids she’d ever seen.

‘Stretched together, they were the length of a newborn,’ she said. ‘My pseudo baby,’ I sighed.

I couldn’t even lift a kettle after the op.

But every day, I slowly grew stronger.

And now, three years later, it feels like the best decision I ever made.

My tummy shrank almost immediately.

I’m now down to a size-16 and feeling normal again.

My skin has stretched, though, just like it would have if I’d really been pregnant. But I try not to let it get me down. Now I’m back on my journalism course, and I’m happier than ever with Richard. I also help manage an orphanage in Ghana, and I say I’m mum to 50 children!

I’ll always be sorry I didn’t get the chance to have a baby of my own, but, after being ‘pregnant’ for nine years, enough was finally enough.