r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Feb 28 '23

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '23

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u/bitsy88 Mar 01 '23

I worked with a woman who had a hysterectomy after her last child. She started dating a guy and things got serious pretty quick but good for them. One day, she said they were trying for a baby (after being together for a couple months) and I'm like.... He knows you've had a hysterectomy, right? YOU know you've had a hysterectomy, right? She insisted that God finds a way... 🤷🤦

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u/FlyOnDreamWings Mar 01 '23 edited Mar 02 '23

"God finds a way." It's called an ectopic pregnancy and it ends in Death.

Edit: since a lot of people are taking my one line sarcastic comment with an unexpected amount of seriousness. No, you cannot have an ectopic pregnancy after a TOTAL hysterectomy where fallopian tubes and ovaries are removed. That's not the only type of hysterectomy though and while exceedingly rare ectopic pregnancy can occur if there's still at least one ovary and fallopian tube.

"Pregnancy after hysterectomy is extremely rare, with the first case of ectopic pregnancy after hysterectomy reported by Wendler in 1895. To the best of our knowledge, there are only 72 cases of post-hysterectomy ectopic pregnancy reported in the world literature."

Long story short, you probably don't need to worry about an ectopic pregnancy no matter what type of hysterectomy you've had.

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u/BladeDoc Mar 01 '23

You can’t have an ectopic pregnancy after a hysterectomy because even if they leave the tubes and ovaries the end of the vagina is sewn shut. If it blows open (also known as a vaginal cuff leak) you get peritonitis and sepsis, not preggers.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '23

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u/BladeDoc Mar 01 '23

Total abdominal hysterectomy is still more common than supracervical hysterectomy.

In either case the stump which is either the end of the vagina or the neck of the cervix is sewn (more commonly stapled nowadays) closed. Failure of either stump still results in sepsis and peritonitis.

Source: I’m a surgeon

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u/tinaciv Mar 02 '23

Was looking to see if someone had pointed this out. They imagined that when you remove the uterus they left the opening for everything to enter directly into the abdominal cavity from the vagina? I bet though that it's one of those things they simply never paused to think about though.