A Georgia personal trainer is sharing a laborious tale of giving birth — minus the actual baby.
TikTok user Holly Smallwood claims she went through the painful and terrifying motions of labor, all because her body was rejecting her intrauterine device.
“Single-handedly the most physically traumatic 45 minutes from start to finish,” she captioned the three-minute clip, which has been viewed 1.1 million times since it was posted online this week.
“I decided that I wanted to come off hormonal birth control and get the copper T, the non-hormonal IUD,” she explained of the T-shaped plastic device wrapped in copper that’s placed inside the uterus to prevent pregnancy.
She said she was advised by her gynecologist, whom she did not identify, that it would be a painful experience — but says she wasn’t worried.
“I was like, ‘I got a pretty high pain tolerance, I’ll be fine,'” she recalled.
She reports she was told there would be some cramping seven to 10 minutes after the IUD was inserted.
She claims she was suffering extreme pain and nausea five minutes later when a nurse, who was also not identified, checked on her.
“I’m like, ‘Give me a bag. I’m going to throw up.’ So she hands me a bag and I start vomiting,” Smallwood recounted. “And at this point, I start to see black, and I’m like, ‘I might pass out’ — and I do.”
According to Smallwood, within the next five minutes, “all hell broke loose.” She claims her extremities went numb.
“I couldn’t feel my legs,” she continued, adding she was “sweating profusely” and changing positions to try to ease the pain — before she realized what was happening.
“I start to feel something that I have only ever heard explained in movies,” she said. “I don’t even know how I knew what it was, but I knew that I was having contractions.”
Smallwood said the nurse asked if she had a family history of seizures — she says she doesn’t — before calling the doctor back in. She said her IUD was removed immediately.
She claims she asked her doctor afterward, “What the f–k just happened” — only to be shocked by the response.
“[The IUD] had gotten placed on a nerve. She said she had only ever seen this one other time in her career,” Smallwood recalled in disbelief. “And it sent me into labor. My body was trying to push it out.”
Smallwood alleges she was even dilated — but didn’t have the benefit of an epidural for the pain like a pregnant woman might have.
The surprising saga spurred several TikTokers to pull out their own birth control horror stories.
“The fact every woman who’s gotten an IUD says this is the worst pain I’ve ever felt, and there is still no anesthesia administered,” one user moaned.
“The copper iud was hands down the worst experience of my life. Couldn’t wait to get it out,” howled another.
