Hysterectomy at 30: ‘I HAD TO DO IT FOR MY KIDS'

Sinead took desperate measures to be the mum she wanted to be – and to lose the bloat

- Cloe Willetts

After a decade of agonising pain that felt like she was being burned and chiselled from the inside, Sinead Hodder is finally free from her anguish, thanks to undergoing a hysterectomy at the age of 30.

“My kids missed out on so much because I was in constant pain three out of four weeks a month,” shares the Auckland mum-of-three. “It felt like someone had a jack hammer and was attacking my cervix, and other times it was like my abdomen was getting crushed.

“I’d bloat and look about seven months’ pregnant, and couldn’t wear pants because the pressure was too much. Even underwear sometimes hurt to wear.”

Sinead – mum to Aleesha, 11, and identical twin boys Declan and Noah, three – only has her left ovary remaining after surgeons removed her right one in November last year, along with her uterus, Fallopian tubes and cervix. The ovary they took was riddled with cyst scars and adenomyosis, a condition Sinead describes as endometriosis’ ugly sister.

While endometriosis causes uterine tissue to grow outside the womb, adenomyosis is responsible for the tissue growing into the uterus wall.

“Originally, my doctor thought I had endo, since I had surgery for it back in 2011, but I had a gut feeling it was something else because the pain was different,” explains Sinead. “It got far worse when I had a termination a year after giving birth to the twins.”