At age 34 I decided to have a child. I was postponing it for a while but then I felt I was ready even though deep down I was super scared of the birth, the unknown and having a responsibility and taking care of a baby. Also, my husband wasn’t sure if he wanted to have children so I didn’t feel 100% supported. This new journey felt overwhelming and still very unknown. When I was pregnant with my daughter 15 years ago, I didn’t educate myself too much. I didn’t do a lot of deep diving into learning about labor, I just read one birth book, went to one birth class and followed my OB follow-ups.

I ended up with a C-section, lots of pain, depression and a trauma that I still have to face it.

Two weeks before the due date, on Sunday I started having contractions during the day but I was able to go through my day to day activities. I started to count contractions but they were still irregular and not strong enough. At night my husband went to sleep and I was on the floor counting and sleeping/resting. I remember I was mainly in an all-four position on the floor and sometimes I was lying down on my side. At around 3 am, I started to have more intense, about one-minute apart contractions. I took a shower, packed my bag, woke my husband up and we drove to a hospital.

While in the hospital room a nurse checked me and told me I was about 6 cm dilated. Then another nurse checked and she wasn’t sure about something so they decided to check me with an ultrasound. That nurse announced that my baby is in a breech position and I had to have a c-section emergency. I didn’t know what to think (as I was unprepared about breech positions) I relied on the staff not knowing what really was ahead of me. I was extremely scared of needles so poking me with a needle on my spine was super uncomfortable. (When I was sick as a kid in Poland, I got shots of antibiotics on my buttocks, and I remember screaming and running away from a nurse.)

Soon after that they moved me to a very cold operating room. I was super numb from chest down. They moved my body onto the operating bed and I felt heavy and awkward and uncomfortable. Then they put a curtain in front of me and they started the procedure. I did feel the sensation of pulling. I started to shake and nurses put a warm blanket on my chest. My husband was next to me but I think he was scared and clueless at the same time. I don’t remember a lot after what happened. They gave me my daughter wrapped in a blanket and they put her next to my head. Were my arms strapped? I don’t remember that part but I think my arms were strapped because I was not able to hold her. I remember saying hello to her and she was responding to my voice.

After that everything felt hazy. They moved me to another room and then to my room. The nurses kept asking me about my pain level. I remember a day after the surgery or it might have been the same day, two nurses helped me walk to the bathroom, they picked me up from the bed and helped me walk to the bathroom. They held me down to sit down on a toilet to pee. I was still in a lot of pain and in a shock/disbelief that two women had to hold me to sit on the toilet. I felt powerless. I saw pictures of me after the surgery and my whole body swollen up. I remember one time I had to sneeze and I was trying to stop it because I was so scared of the wound pain and I also thought the incision would open up from the pressure. A nurse told me to put a pillow on my incision but it didn’t help, it was still pretty painful. I remember that laughing and blowing my nose was also pretty painful.

Since day one I had milk, I was lucky I was able to breastfeed my baby.

When I came back home I was trying to bend down and pick something from the floor but I was stopped with a very strong pain. I remember the process of healing the incision lasted two years. I felt zero pulling sensation in that area after two years.

All that didn’t help when I went back to a full time job after being at home for 2 months. This experience kept me from wanting another child. “How can anyone want to have another child after that experience?” I felt exhausted, overwhelmed and when I was driving to work and sitting in the LA traffic I felt guilty I was not with my baby. While sitting in a traffic I also had suicidal thoughts, everything was too much for me, I felt exhausted and overwhelmed. I realized I had postpartum depression. After two years driving to work in really bad traffic for an hour and sometimes more one way, I made a decision to leave the job. After a month I found a part-time job which led to full-time but that place was more relaxed and closer to home.