We've Come Home Somehow
"The way we process pain here... we don't process it," Kaata says, remembering the day her friends brought ice cream and gathered around her bed after her miscarriage. In a culture where women are told to move quickly past such losses, where a six-week pregnancy is dismissed with "that one was not meant to stay," this simple act of solidarity - eating ice cream, crying together - marked a quiet revolution.
Her womb's story intertwines with her journey of questioning society's expectations. "I think like most, almost every woman, when we think about our womb we see it as a home for life," she reflects. But something within her pushed back against this narrative: "Why would I put that on me to be the bringer of life? What if I don't want to bring life into this world? That's okay because I did not ask anybody to give me a womb."
Her first child wasn't planned but felt right - she had finished university, was in love, felt young enough to build a family. But pregnancy transformed her completely: "I'm a whole different human being. I don't mind, I'm somebody who likes to dress up, but when I'm pregnant, I don't have time. I literally can tie a lappa and go anywhere. I don't care, it takes me completely away from me."
When her partner had to leave for three years, everyone pushed her to "get pregnant once and for all." But she knew the relationship's problems ran deeper. "I was very intentional," she says. "I made sure every time he was going to come, I had some sort of contraception, even against his own wish, against anybody's wish."
Then came the miscarriages - three of them. She remembers March 8th, International Women's Day, with stark clarity. Sitting at an event where a prominent woman speaker was sharing her success story, "I felt something come down in my pants." Even as she was losing her pregnancy, she had to maintain normalcy, meeting a client about a child's birthday party. "I went to the bathroom and there's blood all over and I'm alone and I drove and I'm like, what do I do next?"
The losses hit hard. "My body keeps failing me - what did I do to you?" she remembers thinking. "This is not my body, this is not mine." Yet she kept trying, driven by voices saying she was young, it would happen. "It never became a thing to pause, maybe wait for my body. As soon as they're cleaning me up, I'm actively finding another baby."
When her rainbow baby finally came, it was during COVID-19, following a pregnancy sustained by "pepper injections" - hormone shots so intense the nurses had to massage them into her veins. She knew then: no more. Her body had reached 120kg, unrecognizable in the mirror. "My mission is to put this body the way I like it and nothing else is coming in to destroy it for me again. I want now the body to be my body."
Today, she speaks with certainty: "If they're doing research with wombs, I don't mind giving my own to help somebody else. I don't want to be a surrogate because I hate being pregnant, but if there are ways it can serve other people out of my body, I'm happily, freely giving it away."
Her sister calls her the "queen of silver lining," and this gift for finding light in darkness has carried her through. "In the worst situation there's always something to laugh about," she says. "I want to always be reminded that it doesn't get that bad. Even if it gets that bad, it will get good somehow, someday."
This journey has brought her home to herself, though home looks different now. "I'm not there totally," she reflects. "I'd probably be there like 90% at this point but I probably would never be there totally anymore. But I can confidently say we've come home somehow, and home is a bit different now but it's still home."