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Warning: mommy loving on the way
I love the creations I put on this earth. I love it like crazy. I love my daughter more than i like my own life and I would give up everything to make sure that she would be okay. I love how she smiles, the really weird copy laugh she got from me, I love how she runs and I even love how totally stubborn and full of temper she is. Nothing she could ever do will make me stop loving her.
Nothing great about it
So everyone heard of the film’s and models with the perfect bodies, perfect glow and wonderful pregnancies where they keep running marathons and looking gracious. I am glad on their behalves, that is not totally correct, I am so jealous of them. My pregnancy was NOTHING like this.
The first four months I threw up. I had morning sickness, ALL DAY LONG. I couldn’t eat anything. That was probaly because I constantely threw everyting in my stomach up.
I tried acupuncture but it did not work, I tried walking and exercise, but it did not work, so I tried changing my fast food to super foods that would magically take away the nausea and make me glow, but it did NOT work.
So off course I went to the doctor complaining about this sickness and the doctor said I had preeclampsia. At that moment it didn’t feel like anything big. I live in a rich country with great doctors and hospitals, so pregnancy isn’t with riscisi anymore, right. I did not have any bad feelings about this. I was just really sad that I couldn’t go out doing the same things I used to do before I got pregnant. I really wanted to visit friends and family without having to go home at 20.00 because I was so tired. Or just take my dog for a walk without running out of breath.
Well, that wasn’t all the preeclampsia’s fault, my height is 160 cm (on a good day) so she really pushed on the bottom of my lungs.
The worst part at this point was everyone else’s good advices and sayings. You won’t be nauseous after week 12. Oh, are you still having morning sickness? It will stop by week 14-16. Oh, it still hasn’tt stopped? Maybe it will stop by week 20, I am crossing my fingers for you. It seriously just made it all worse.
When you can’t do your job
So for several weeks I was out of mind by the thought of giving birth naturally. I really didn’t want to do it. I have always thought it was insane that some women chose to do it, but nothing but respect to them. I just couldn’t imagine the pain, so for a few seconds I actually wished I wasn’t pregnant because I am grown enough to know that somehow the baby has to come out of my body, I just couldn’t decide how I wanted it to happen.
But as the world works I had the choice made for me. After weekly doctor visit for several weeks checking up on the preeclampsia and feeling sick but fine, things got really bad. Just after hitting the thirty week milestone I had to go to the hospital because of the sudden water in my body and my very high blood pressure. I very quickly was told that when I left the hospital again it would be with a baby in my arms. So the doctors hoped for at least a 6 weeks wait, but my body got worse every second at the hospital. So I was on immediately bed rest. I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. They had all kind of tubes in my arms, if it wasn’t tubes the stuck in, it was blood they tried to take out. I had my blood taken every two hours. I ended looking like a long term junkie with puncture marks everywhere.
So as the sometimes high maintenance person I can be, I already started bitching on the first day in hospital. Why should I be here, I wasn’t really sick, I didn’t want to be imprisoned. I would revisit my previous statemant of my personal thought; I live in a rich country, of course pregnancy wouldn’t kill me, I have the lucky fortune to be surrounded by good doctors and enough medicine and I truly couldn’t imagine anything happening to the little baby girl I had in my stomach. I was so looking forward to seeing her, I had imagined several times that she would arrive at any second so I wouldn’t have to wait for her anymore, but when it became real and i laid there at in the surgery room waiting for the doctor to cut me open, there was nothing I wanted more than having her wait a bit longer to see the world.
When bad becomes worse
So after 2 1/2 day at the hospital the doctors unfortunately had no choice but to deliver my baby to save my life. Even though I already had told them that I gladly would turn my body into a incubator for this little creature inside of me, that I haven’t met yet. So in loud protest and objection, I was prepped for surgery. I remember how fast my heart was beating, I was moments away from her entrance into the world and I wouldn’t be able to see her, maybe not even hearing her before she was taken away from me.
They delivered her, non hectic, in a calm setting of the sterilized surgery room. And she did scream from the bottom of her very small lungs. I have never felt that kind of happiness before in my life. She screamed so loud and clear that the nurse gave me the chance to get a glimpse of my baby before rushing to neonatal with my boyfriend running after to watch over our baby girl. So back in the surgery room I was left alone, I was surrounded by nurses and doctors, but I felt all alone.
Getting down to the recovery room where they had to observe me before i could be released, I spent the whole night counting seconds until 6 in the morning, that was the time they told me I would be released. My boyfriend used the whole night running back and forward between me and our baby, being the one feeding her every two hours. He came with pictures and updating me on what the doctors said about our beautiful girl. She was a survivor and she was strong.
Tik tok the clock said and when it finally turned 6 in the morning, no doctors had the time to come and release me due to a lot of complicated births. So we waited for what felt like forever, but in reality it only was a little less than an hour. Suddenly my boyfriend looks at me with worry all over his face and he asks me how I am feeling. I felt FINE! Nothing could come in the way of me meeting my baby girl for the first time!! But my boyfriend didn’t believe in me and my stubbornness, so he fetched a nurse to come and take a look at me. And just as my luck works, she found out that I suddenly had lost a lot of blood. I had lost around 2 litres and more counting every moment. I didn’t get released from recovery that day at all.
24 hours after she arrived into the world, I got 15 minutes to say hi to her before I was taken back to recovery and it wasn’t before 37 hours after giving birth before I could hold her in my arms for the first time.
No box fits all
I have a very close connection with my girl today, and I rarely let her out of my sight. We are talking a lot about mommy shaming and having to fit into standard boxes and moms to do a great job. But nothing about pregnancy, giving birth naturally or by surgery and having babies in general is standard. Every story is different, every story is unique. Some of them are sad, and some are just pure happiness. But they are all real and the story you bring with
you is what is shaping you. So If you talk with someone or something differently to what you do, remember to not judge, you probably don’t know the story behind their choices.
My favorite place in the world is next to my daughter. With her by my side I know I can do whatever I set my mind to, because I have seen how she fought to be with me, so I can fight all days to stay next to her. She gives me the most strength and the most frustration, I love her with every breath of my body and I always will. Just as any other mom or dad does with their kids.
Camilla