How many pads did you use on your heaviest day last month?

When mine was at its worst I stopped counting around pad seven. Before noon. And I had stopped being shocked by it — that was the part that scared me most. That I had just accepted it.

I think you’ve cancelled plans because the bloating was so bad nothing fit and you couldn’t face going out and having someone ask. You know the question. “Are you expecting?” You smile and say no. You go home and sit on the edge of the bed for a while.

I think there’s a distance in your marriage nobody talks about out loud. Your husband hasn’t asked in a long time. You haven’t explained. You’ve both quietly adjusted to a smaller version of your life.

I think you’ve spent real money on supplements from Instagram pages that promised everything. Nothing moved on the scan. You told yourself at least you tried.

And I think you’ve sat in a doctor’s office nodding calmly while they said “the growth rate is concerning” — then walked out and sat in your car and stared at nothing for a while.

That’s where I was eighteen months ago. Scan results getting worse every three months. A surgery date being quietly suggested. What I found wasn’t in a hospital or a pharmacy. It was at a family ceremony, under a mango tree, from a 71-year-old retired midwife.

My grandmother had seven children. My great-aunt had nine. Neither was ever told they needed surgery on their womb. The women in those generations knew something that got quietly lost — replaced with hospital waiting rooms and supplement vendors and advice that mostly doesn’t work.

My name is Ndidi. I’m 38, three children, husband who works in transport. Until eighteen months ago I had a 6.8cm fibroid my doctor had been watching grow for two years. Every appointment ended the same way — her mentioning, gently, that at some point we’d need to talk about surgery.

I’m not a doctor. What I have is seven pages of handwritten notes from a retired midwife named Mama Chinwe, a scan result that went from 6.8cm to 2.3cm in sixty days, and a cancelled surgery appointment.

It started two months after my third child was born. My periods — always manageable before — got longer, heavier, different. The cramps were deeper. The kind that wake you at 3am and just sit there.

“Your body is still adjusting,” the doctor said. “Give it a few months.”

I gave it months. Then more months.

By the time my youngest was eighteen months old I was bleeding for nine days every cycle. A full pack of pads in two days. Clots. I was so anaemic that climbing one flight of stairs meant sitting at the top to catch my breath. My colleagues thought I was unwell. My husband thought I needed rest. Nobody knew what was actually happening because I hadn’t told anyone.

The part that broke something in me wasn’t physical. It was my marriage.

Emeka is a patient man. But “not tonight” had gone from occasional to just… understood. He stopped asking. I stopped explaining. We slept in the same bed every night, completely fine on the surface, a distance between us neither of us had words for. I used to lie there wondering if he was looking elsewhere. I never asked. Too afraid of the answer.

The scan: 6cm. Then 6.2. Then 6.5. Then 6.8cm.

“We should think seriously about surgical options,” the doctor said, with the calm of someone who says this every day.

I sat in the hospital car park for an hour. Didn’t cry. Just sat there thinking about the cost, the recovery, whether I wanted a fourth child someday, what surgery would mean for that. I was 38.

That night I called Auntie Grace — 71, raised eight children, seen everything. She listened. Then: “Something is feeding it. The hospital will cut out what’s growing without asking what’s feeding it. Find Mama Chinwe.”

Before Mama Chinwe, here’s what I tried. I’m telling you this because I think you’ve tried some of it too.

GHS 380 on supplements from an Instagram vendor with three hundred testimonials in her highlights. Two bottles. Nothing on the scan. I cut out meat, then dairy, then sugar — three months of eating vegetables while my family ate normally, miserable, period somehow worse on day seven. I tried vaginal steaming. Burned myself. The fibroid didn’t care. Four different herbal teas — nausea, cramps, nothing else. Birth control pills for six weeks until the side effects made me stop.

Close to $800 over fourteen months. Fibroid growing every three months. Surgery conversation getting louder.

Mama Chinwe was at a cousin’s naming ceremony. Retired midwife, late 70s, delivered babies for forty years across three villages. The woman your mother called when doctors gave up.

I sat next to her. Hadn’t planned what to say. But the whole story came out — the numbers, the money spent, the surgery date, the distance with Emeka I hadn’t told anyone about. She didn’t interrupt once.

When I finished she said: “Every vendor you bought from was treating the fibroid. Nobody asked what the fibroid is eating. Stop feeding it. The body will do the rest.”

She told me about castor oil packs — not vaguely, specifically. The exact method, how long, how often. Bitter leaf — the preparation, the timing. Food — not “eat healthy” but which exact foods raise estrogen and feed fibroid growth, which lower it, which to eat on which days of your cycle. The sequence matters, she said. Most people get the information but not the sequence.

Seven pages of notes, front and back. Before I left she held my hand: “Twenty-eight days. Don’t expect drama in week one. Week two is when the body talks back.”

I told Emeka I needed one more month before agreeing to surgery. He looked tired. Said okay.

The first six days, nothing obvious. I followed it exactly — castor oil packs every other evening, bitter leaf preparation each morning, the food calendar taped inside the kitchen cupboard where Emeka wouldn’t see it.

Day six, something shifted. Physical but subtle. Like something that had been clenched for two years released a little.

Day eleven, Emeka looked at me in the kitchen and said: “Your face looks different. Less tired. Like you’re actually here.” He didn’t know I’d been doing anything.

Day twenty-eight. Back for a scan. The radiologist looked at the screen, then my previous results, then the screen again.

“What have you been doing?”

6.8cm was now 4.1cm.

I continued another month. Day sixty: 2.3cm. Surgery cancelled.

There were four other women near Mama Chinwe that day. I got contacts before I left.

Abena from Accra — 5cm fibroid, told she might struggle to conceive. Eight weeks: 2.8cm. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” her doctor said.

Thandiwe from Lusaka — nine-day periods for three years, every single month. Week three of the protocol her period lasted five days. She sent me a voice note crying in her bathroom.

Achieng from Nairobi — daily iron supplements for over a year. Two months later, haemoglobin back to normal. Her children asked why she was happy all the time.

Same method. Different women, different cities. Same direction on the scan.

The messages started coming — through church groups, family WhatsApp chats, conversations in low voices when men weren’t in the room. I couldn’t respond to everyone. So I went back to Mama Chinwe for three days, got the full protocol properly documented, had it written up in plain language any woman can follow.

That document is what this page is about.

I went back to Mama Chinwe for three days. Got the full protocol documented — the herbs, the timing, the food calendar, the signs that tell you it’s working, what to do after day 28. Had it written up clearly so any woman can follow it from day one. No jargon. No guesswork.

Everything in this guide you can find at your local market. Kejetia in Kumasi. Soweto market in Lusaka. Gikomba in Nairobi. No imports. No prescription. No herbalist visit required. Over 500 women have followed this protocol. Most found this page through a friend or a WhatsApp group where someone quietly shared the link.