Influencer Ana Johnson: “It is absolutely not natural to get pregnant.”

Brigitte.de: Not only did you recently make your diagnosis of endometriosis and adenomyosis public on Instagram and YouTube, but also your previous fertility journey. Why did you choose to share this now?

Ana Johnson: We’ve kept this to ourselves for over four years, but recently there was a pivotal sad moment in this fertility journey and that was our miscarriage earlier this year. I just couldn’t take it anymore not to talk about it, to feel all the pain just between us and wanted to share this with others because I knew that talking about it will help me. I already experienced this when we gradually told family and friends about it.

After that I got better every time. And of course I know that I can also help other affected couples and give them the feeling that they are not alone and that there is no need to be ashamed of wanting children.

Was that why you didn’t confide in anyone? Because you were ashamed?

Yes, I also experienced this feeling of shame and that’s why I didn’t dare to talk about it the whole time.

How do you feel about it now everyone knows?

I feel very good about it. But it’s also overwhelming to suddenly experience so much love, especially because you’ve been hiding it for years and suddenly you’re talking about it so much and so openly. It’s still very unusual and it still takes a lot of strength for me to bring it up again and again and talk about it.

But it’s nice to exchange ideas with others. I have received so many messages and heard stories that have touched me very much and at the same time it makes me sad that so many are affected – at least one in seven couples.

You always think that getting pregnant is easy because we girls are drummed into it too. When did you first feel like something was wrong?

That started in 2019. We had married the year before and felt ready to take the next step and start a family. So we decided to just take a chance. We went about it very naively because we only ever heard stories that worked straight away.

But when nothing had happened to us after a year, I started to worry and then we aimed a little more at it. But when another year passed without a pregnancy, we had a check-up and that was when the first major concerns arose.

What are the difficulties and why was it recognized so late?

It’s not unusual for it to take up to a year to get pregnant. But if it hasn’t worked out by then, it’s recommended to get checked out. Just because I was already ashamed back then and thought to myself: “Oh God, something could be wrong”, I talked myself into it again and again. So two years passed. After that, I spent another year with another gynecologist who specializes in the desire to have children and who has already done a lot of examinations on me.

But people always said I was young and healthy, it just took a while. But everything that has been tried has not worked. The only measure that could bring other insights was a hysteroscopy. I then had it done in October 2021, with the certainty: everything will be ok, they won’t find anything there anyway. But when I woke up from the anesthetic, a doctor told me, quite insensitively, that I have very severe endometriosis and adenomyosis and, as a result, also blocked fallopian tubes, which is why I would never be able to have children naturally and we are going to a fertility clinic should.

Why didn’t your doctor check this out sooner?

In my case, endometriosis is apparently rather asymptomatic. I’ve always had severe menstrual pain, but I’ve always accepted it as “That’s just the way it is”, because I’ve always been told that by gynecologists who I asked – “Every woman has to go through that.” But since I had no other symptoms, it took so extremely long to diagnose endometriosis. And that, in turn, is only possible via a uterine mirroring if you want to be 100 percent certain.

You say in your video that you hadn’t told friends and family for a long time. Why?

For a long time, it was totally uncomfortable for me to talk about it even with my closest people, because I thought: That can’t be, it works for everyone. Even a friend who also has endometriosis got pregnant on the first try. Why are we so different? I felt excluded and lonely and thought that no one could understand me.

If I open up with this wish, I’ll probably hear sentences like: “It’ll just take a while”, “You have to relax”, “Why don’t you go on vacation”. Nobody needs such sentences in this situation because they imply that you just have to try harder to make it work. You already do everything. You think you’re completely alone with your story because no one is talking about it.

What has changed then?

When I decided to talk about it, I first let my mom and my best friend in on it. That alone took so much pressure off me. Because suddenly you heard stories from others who had similar experiences. That really helped me to deal with the situation better.

From your perspective, why is fertility treatment still something that is not talked about?

Because it is still very shameful and very few dare to talk about it. At the same time it’s such an emotional, intimate and private topic – I totally understand when couples or women don’t even want to talk about it. Certainly, the fear of how others will react also plays a role, for example that the wish will be downplayed.

Quite often you also hear: “If it doesn’t work out, then adopt a child”. Many people always think of it as easy as going into a store and choosing a child. Or sayings like: “A life without children is nice too”. These are sentences that hurt twice or three times in this situation.

Have you felt pressured or pressured because children are slowly being expected after marriage and building a house?

After our wedding, the questions really started to arise as to whether we wanted children, how many we would like to have, or why we don’t have any children of our own when we showed up together with families we were friends with. In other words, the entire range of insensitive questions that naturally put us under pressure. At some point I stopped doing Q&As on Instagram because really every second question was about the children’s topic. When you’re about to undergo fertility treatment, it’s incredibly stressful.

You’ve now had five attempts and had to cope with two miscarriages. What gives you and yourselves strength in the hard time and what keeps you going?

My husband Tim and I are generally two very positive people and don’t give up easily. We are a super strong team. But every unsuccessful attempt made us fall into such a black hole, because you know how much you’ve already accomplished and of course there are moments when you have doubts and wonder if that’s all still makes sense and whether it will ever work out.

But whenever I have such a moment, my husband is a super strong support who always pulls me out of this hole, even though he is feeling bad himself. Of course, our friends and families also support us. We love our jobs, which sometimes distract us and take our minds off things, because the desire to have children naturally takes up so much space. And we found a really great clinic that always gives us hope. Every failure leads to new insights that help and also allow us to draw strength and energy.

Joy and disappointment are very close together on your journey, how do you manage that emotionally?

At first I thought naively: Oh, that will somehow work in the first three attempts. When that wasn’t the case, I was devastated and thought, I don’t want all this anymore, it’s taking me far too much and I don’t know how I’m supposed to endure it. But you learn to deal with that pain and grief, and you cope better and better with it. Therefore: As long as we can do it physically and mentally, we will keep trying.

The last miscarriage was not long ago. How are you doing physically and mentally?

Pretty good now. Of course, the first few days were terrible. We found out about the pregnancy shortly before New Year’s Eve and then shared it with friends with whom we were on vacation together. It was really hard to tell them that unfortunately it didn’t work out when we were so happy together only recently. But it also helped me a lot to go public with it, because I received so much positive encouragement. I don’t think I’ve ever been as positive as I am right now during this entire phase of trying to have children, because we are so overwhelmed by love.

What did the Fertility Journey do to you as a couple?

In any case, we learned during this time to be extremely good at talking about feelings. We’re both super emotional. And in the last few years we only had each other to exchange ideas and that brought us even closer together. That brought us to a completely different level in terms of trust and support.

How are you doing now?

We recently had another appointment at the fertility clinic to discuss how to proceed. We’ll most likely be able to start again in the next few weeks, but give my body and heart some recovery time.

I think we’re on a super good path. This time we will try a different method and do one or the other investigation. We gained important new insights from the last treatment. I am very, very sure that it will work out at some point, we just have to find the right way.

Is there anything else on your mind?

I just want to reiterate what a gift it is to have children. It is absolutely not a matter of course that it works by itself. There are so many more couples out there than meets the eye who would like to have a baby. You can count yourself really lucky if you have healthy children and can get pregnant.

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Bridget