Most young girls often dream of growing up, getting married and having children, It’s something we often take for granted, we think it will happen one day, as if it’s something we’re entitled to. We don't bank on the fact that many couples find it hard to conceive and that a child is not something that is owed to us but someone we will always have to fight for.
As I have grown into a women, I did not dream for marriage or children, I Had grown up being told I would find it hard to have a baby and as a sixteen year old child I did not think it was a fight I would ever be prepared to start, I Had heard stories from my mother who struggled for years to have me and I never dreamed I could be as strong as she is.
I constantly found myself wondering what really made a women a Women, If having children was the miracle of being a women, then did I not count, and did this mean I would not deserve to find love as I could never give him a family.
I believe being told I would struggle to have children effected me more than I realized at the time, I told myself I didn’t want a family and It effect my confidence, I did not feel I was a beautiful, strong women who deserved to be loved, I was just a being, I was breathing but not really living.
It amazes me how much life can change, how you can find parts of yourself you never knew existed and the pain you can survive when you have something to survive it for. There are many things in life that I am not and many things I struggle to try and be, but if there is anything that I just am, it’s a mother.
I found my partner and he excepted everything about me, the fact that we may not have children the fact we may not get married and the fact that sometimes I felt so lost and couldn’t find my way in the world.
Today I sit here, a very blessed women, and I will never take for granted all the many things I have to be thankful for, But I also wonder about the bad things I have experienced over the last year and wonder how women with less support than me survived it. Having a baby is one of the most amazing things you can do with your life, and after thinking I could never conceive I sometimes feel I have no right to feel hurt and that I should just be thankful me and my baby are alive, but 6 months on there is still this little feeling at the back of my head, a pain, a dark feeling that should never be present at your memories of your child's birth.
During my pregnancy I suffered from gestational diabetes, I have watched my mum suffer for many years with diabetes, I felt so guilty that I had let myself get so ill and put my babies life at risk. Most of my pregnancy and even after I spent feeling guilty for something, I feel the NHS staff did not help with this, I really believe if it was not for my mother who understood what I went through, I would of slipped into depression.
Having gestational diabetes meant that I had to be induced a week early, nothing could have prepared me for what it would be like, Three days in hospital before he came, being on drips, not aloud to walk around, having someone break your water, eighteen hours of labour, not even being aloud to leave the room to go to the toilet, having to stay in hospital for over a week and being so longly from not being aloud many visits, It was the most painful and humiliating thing id ever been through, Yet I kept on and did everything I was told to try and have my baby naturally, It didn't work and in the end i was rushed in for a C section. I don’t think anyone can really understand what a cesarian can do to you unless they've experienced it. Your body never quite understands why you've let your baby, which it has been told to protect for 9 months be ripped out of you.
Once I got out of hospital I got an infection from my c section but I could not think of it as my baby got sick from not getting enough milk from me, another thing to feel guilty for, my body just wouldn't do what it was meant to do for my baby.I’ve never felt like the world was going to end more than seeing my poor boy in hospital on a drip and I’ve never felt I was such a bad person as I did when I was told my baby wasn’t being fed enough.
Im ashamed of myself now, If I wasn’t so tired and ill and vulnerable I would of never let someone treat me the way I was treated in hospital, I would never of let someone make me feel I was a bad person for being to ill that my body physically couldn't do something.
Out of all the pain I have suffered in this last year, I’ve forgotten it, I remember it being done and I remember being scared, but seeing my beautiful baby Freddie and hearing how happy he is lets me know why I went through it all, the pain I will never forgive is the heartlessness of the people who were meant to be my carers, they were cold and rude, I was made to feel I was being punish for being a young mum and that I deserved to be in such pain, I was ignored when I voiced my worries about breastfeeding, My partner was told he made a midwife feel sick for sniffing after he’d been crying along with me and nurses forgot to write down what drugs they had already given me.
I’ve learnt an important lesson, Just how powerful the word mother is, I looked after my baby alone, while drugged up, exhausted, not being able to walk and stitched in my stomach, I went through any pain, cruelty and rudeness these so called care providers through at me and I have thought I would die and still got up, pretended I was healthy and fine so I could get my baby home where he would be loved and know what a loving home felt like, and if that isn’t enough to prove the bond of a mother to there child, I think of my mother, who had to relive what she had been through and see it happen to her own child, who was there every step of my pregnancy and labour, just to be pushed out worrying while I went for my C section, she waited till midnight just for a gimps of me and my baby, just to know we were okay. She dragged me out of the depression I was heading for and kept me fighting every time I thought I couldn’t do it, No matter what the healthcare providers think they can do for you, it will be nothing compared to what a mothers love can achieve.
