If everything goes wrong during your delivery that can go wrong

Of course I was nervous anyway. Of course it's exciting no matter what. But that it could go so, so wrong, phew. I'm glad I didn't know that beforehand. I didn't know that in advance.

My delivery was definitely not a do-it-in-a-jiffy or a whoosh-quick-that-kid-out-in-an-hour.. It was not easy. It was hell. Worse. Because there were two babies in my belly and Bodi was in a breech position, it became a cesarean section. I knew that and I thought I could prepare for it. Or so I thought. Because I've learned one thing now that I'm a mother: you can never really prepare for a delivery.

I go to pee and suddenly there's a puddle of water on the bathroom floor. Weird, didn't I just pee? I just walk to the shower. Relax in that warmth for a bit and then take a nap. Oh god. Another puddle on the floor. This. Is. My. Water. And it's breaking now. After 36 weeks. My heavens, yes really. It's about to begin. With a trembling hand, I first call the hospital: I'm on my way. And then my husband. He's on his way too.

It's one o'clock in the afternoon when my water breaks and from that moment on the contractions start. But as it goes in hospitals, apparently: as long as you don't have an emergency, you just have to wait. Pain or not. Because the operating rooms are occupied. Fully booked. Hallelujah, there you are, huh. Picture it. A belly weighing twenty kilos. Two fully developed boys in your belly flailing: they want out. Contractions. Nine centimeters dilation. And then that doctor comes to ’just feel down there‘. Yes, no, now I really need to go to the OR urgently, because otherwise I'll be at ten centimeters dilation and pushing is not allowed. Because of that breech. Puffing, sweating, and crying, I have to climb onto a hard table. Bend forward for an epidural. It's fine, you know, with that immense belly. He misses the needle three times. Doesn't matter. I'll wait. I'm just puffing away some contraction waves, you know. Then I feel myself going completely limp. I need to lie down quickly.

Sorry to everyone who still wants children: it is really very miserable. All those surgeons around me. No one says anything. There's a sheet hanging between my upper body and my lower body. So I can't see how they, you know, cut into my belly. I'm crying, I'm screaming, I find it inhumane. My husband tries to encourage me but I just almost don't dare anymore. Being conscious while doctors operate on you is just not nothing. Jesus, how much longer? Are my boys okay? I don't hear any cries? And then... I see Bodi. Through the ‘window’ they show my first child. My little boy. He is beautiful. Three minutes later I see Daaf. It's eight o'clock in the evening. Seven hours ago I was still having lunch, now I'm the mother of two children. I'm still crying. I have another son. He is placed on my chest and I say nothing more. The panic is gone. The feeling of happiness times a billion, indescribable: as if I'm floating and flying and dancing at the same time. Feeling that little body on my skin. Intense. I can finally see them. They are here. I'm also glad I hear the doctors talking calmly: they are done and are closing me up again. Nothing wrong, I think. But unfortunately.

In the days that followed, I didn't recover. I keep saying that I have such a stomach ache. ‘Yes ma'am, that's part of a cesarean. It's a major abdominal surgery.’ But it doesn't hurt at the wound. It hurts in my lower abdomen. But no one listens and I'm sent home with paracetamol. At home, I completely collapse. I can't get out of bed. I can't move or it hurts so much in my belly. When I try to change a diaper, I grab onto the changing table, moaning in pain. My maternity nurse knows: this isn't right. She sends me back to the hospital. It's a bad situation. I have to stay in the hospital for another two weeks and be operated on two more times. There was blood left in my belly and it became infected. Those infections were on my abdominal muscles, which is why I couldn't move. Which is why I literally had to scream from the pain. Gynecologists ‘had never seen anything like it before’. I said it before: it was hell. It was terrible luck.

But the worst of all was not even that pain. Those pain spikes that made it impossible for me to breathe, talk, walk, or lie down. No. The worst part was that I couldn't be a mom at all during those first two weeks. They were there, my babies, but everyone took care of them except me. I was a patient and could do nothing. I had to recover myself while my little ones were at home with their father. It was lonely, bizarre, unreal, and sad. How I cried from misery.

It was a false start. When I go to pee now, I often think back to that moment in the bathroom, to the moment I knew it was going to happen. When I walk out of the street, I sometimes think to myself: wow, I can walk again. Without an IV pole attached to my body, without a catheter, without blood transfusions. When I get up in the morning, I remember how it was when I couldn't do that, get out of bed, without help from a nurse. Without morphine to numb the pain. Yes, I've come a long way.

But it's going well and I'm happy as can be. As the mother of Bodi and Daaf. The most beautiful children in the world. And now I know it, I know it, I discover it a little more every day: that nothing comes close to the feeling of being a mother. Nothing. False start or not: I am a mom. And I wouldn't want to be anything else.