This story is part of The Wall of Wombs, our 2024 exhibition sharing honest, deeply personal journeys of motherhood.
What you’re reading is a direct transcription of a spoken story — shared bravely, in the speaker’s own words.
Listen to this story and explore others at wallofwombs.com.
My journey to motherhood was surprising. My first child was a surprise baby, which was interesting in terms of the emotions that you’ve got to process to get to that point. It’s a combination of excitement, fear, and happiness. It’s wild.
But after my second pregnancy, which was not a surprise, it’s more a lot of gratitude. I think for me, why I was interested in being part of this is I’ve had a lot of health issues in terms of my body. Now, coming out of my second pregnancy, it’s more pride in what my body has been able to do and how it’s withstood two pregnancies with existing issues. I’ve created two beautiful children, and now it’s just gratitude I’m left with.
I’ve had three spinal surgeries. I had quite severe scoliosis as a child. I’ve had two corrective surgeries and one quite extensive infection, and I’ve still got hardware in my spine holding it up. So the fact that I’ve been able to carry two pregnancies to term successfully, I think, has been pretty impressive. On top of that, two C-sections. I feel like my body’s been cut open into pieces so many times, but somehow it’s still functioning. For me, more so after this pregnancy than my first, I just feel really proud of what it’s achieved despite going through so many issues.
In my first pregnancy, I was in the hospital getting monitored for preeclampsia, and my obstetrician came in and she said, “You’re having a baby tomorrow. We’re having the C-section. This is how it’s got to happen.” With my back being the way it is, it was very much a question mark in terms of how it would cope with labour. My doctor said to me, “Okay, well, you know, you could be fine, but if it goes bad, it’s probably going to go really bad. There’s probably not going to be like a middle ground in terms of recovery.”
And I think as well, probably the most nerve-wracking part of the whole experience, not so much the C-section because, as I said, I’ve had more severe surgeries in the past. That part didn’t scare me. What terrified me was the spinal tap for the caesarean because, obviously, there’s so much trauma in that area. And my spine’s still twisted, so they had to get my X-rays out and look at them, and the first time it didn’t work. It was just really hard to remain calm while that was all going on. But I mean, it was small in the scheme of the whole process, but just that element of someone putting another huge needle into my already damaged spine was quite stressful.
In terms of recovery, it helps that I have already had spinal surgeries before. It was kind of like I knew what to do and how to protect my body from healing, rather than I knew what I was capable of and what I wasn’t capable of, purely from experience. But I can imagine if you hadn’t had a C-section before, it would be a lot more difficult. I knew what my body could sort of manage.
Going through this process with having the cast taken off your body three months postpartum is a little bit confronting, to be honest. But I think if you’d have asked me to do this after my first pregnancy, I would have said absolutely not. But now, I look at the whole thing with a different light after having my second. Again, so much gratitude, which probably gave me the guts to do something like this. It is very vulnerable.
I think as well, we’re shown so many images of women snapping back and looking like they never had a baby, but in reality, that’s not true. That’s not how it works. You can’t make a person for nine months, and your body stretches and does all these things, and then potentially feeds that baby and not expect it to have any changes. I think we just need to shift our perspectives.
Everyone’s so harsh on themselves a lot of the time as well. But really, I just think you just made a person, and it’s long-term as well. Like you can’t expect your body to go through that and look exactly the same as it did before you had children. That’s just not realistic.