Woman With Stoma Bag Shares Baby Joy As She Breaks Pregnancy Stigma

In November 2021, 29-year-old Holly Fleet was in an emergency ward, undergoing surgery to remove her colon. Just over a year later, she is pregnant with her first baby.

Fleet, aka Stomababe, was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2020 and was fitted with a stoma bag, also known as a colostomy bag, in 2021 after her bowl split open. She has since been using her social media to dispel misconceptions and stigmas associated with living with a stoma.

The North London journalist has shown that with a stoma bag it is possible to run a marathon, travel the world and, most recently, get pregnant.

"There's this assumption that if you've got [a stoma] you won't be able to have a baby," Fleet told Newsweek. "And I'm not sure where that comes from because a stoma is actually when your large or small intestine pulled out onto your stomach. So it's the bowel area that's affected by the stoma, not the reproductive organs. The reproductive organs are all entirely intact and ready to go."

Fleet said that a lot of this negativity was due to a lack of visibility and discussion among pregnant women in the stoma community.

"I think a lot of the time when you're pregnant, even without a stoma, you can feel conscious about your body and how it's changing," she said. "And then if you have a stoma as well, you might feel even more self-conscious. So people don't share those kinds of photos, which then obviously can add to this false narrative that you can't have babies [with a stoma]."

Before having the surgery, Fleet said that there was no way she could have had a baby. "My condition] took over my whole life. I couldn't leave the house, I couldn't get off the floor, I was always on the toilet. I could never have had a baby in that shape. Since having my surgeries, I'm able to now be fit and up for doing stuff."

In the United States, about 100,000 people have a stoma fitted each year. This can be due to a range of conditions, including colorectal cancer, injury, intestinal obstruction and forms of inflammatory bowel disease, or IBS.

Usually, patients who undergo emergency stoma surgery are given the option to undergo reverse surgery to reconnect their colon to their rectum. However, Fleet said that this can come with health complications and is not always successful.

"I chose to make [my stoma] permanent because it's never been about looks for me, it's been about my health and quality of life," she said. "I think also mentally at that point I'd been through so much, and there's no guarantee [the reversal] is going to work. I couldn't take that risk."

To make the stoma permanent, Fleet underwent a proctocolectomy, also known as a "barbie bum" surgery, where the rectum itself is removed and sewn up. In a TikTok video, Fleet described this as one of the "world's most painful surgeries," scoring it "100 out of 10 on the pain scale."

Although she tried to stay positive, Fleet said that after this second surgery she felt "a bit like Frankenstein." It did not help that she and her then-boyfriend broke up soon after. "I was l like, 'Oh my God, what do I do now? I'm single and I have a stoma."

She turned to social media, with the handle @stomababe, to share her experience of life post-surgery and to attack stigmas, including how to navigate sex with a stoma. Her videos have received hundreds of thousands of views,and before long she met her current partner.

"He was so chill about it," she said. "Because it really impacts the person who has [the stoma], not who they're with."

Fleet said that she and her partner had initially decided to try for a baby after receiving negative comments about her ability to conceive on social media. "A month after coming off the pill, we got pregnant," she said. "It was such a surprise—I just thought there was no way I was going to get pregnant. But then I realized that a lot of it is just the stigma."

For the most part, having a baby with a stoma is just like any normal pregnancy. But Fleet said that there will be some differences. "It's more likely that I'm going to have a C-section, and an early C-section so that the baby doesn't go to full term, because that can cause health complications if you've had surgery like mine.

"I think as well your stoma does change when you're pregnant as your body changes shape, so that means that you have to get different bags, change the bags more often and get different sizes."

Fleet found out she was pregnant on February 19, and she has since been taking each day as it comes. "I have no idea what to expect," she said. "I've spoken to a lot of other people that have been through it, and they've had no issues.... If you've done two months in hospital in intensive care, having a baby is like a walk in the park.

"Nothing should ever hold you back from doing what you want to do in life."

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