I never thought I would be a C-Section Mum….

Or a NICU Mum, yet I am both

I never thought I would be a C-Section mum…

Or a NICU mum, yet I am both.

It has taken me six weeks to get into the space where I feel like I can finally write about my birth experience. Six of the most magical, difficult, consuming, exhausting, transformative and heart-expanding weeks of my life.

I am writing this with my daughter sound asleep on my chest — my daughter. For ten months I carried her, dreamt of her, but it wasn’t until she was here, in my arms, that I truly felt like a mother — and not just any mother. I am a mother whose birth did not go to plan. In fact, it couldn’t have gone any further off course if it tried. I am a mother who wears the scar of my journey and who has spent every day for the past six weeks moving between unimaginable joy and unimaginable grief. I know I am not alone in this. I have joined a group of mothers who are not only learning how to dance through each day with their babies but who are also learning how to hold themselves through a healing process they didn’t anticipate.

I am one mother's voice amongst many.

I didn’t for one second consider that I wouldn’t have a physiological homebirth. For the ten months I carried Ryla, I only ever envisioned one outcome — safely and calmly delivering my baby at home. I almost had an ignorant confidence when people would talk about the ‘what ifs’ or share their experiences of births that didn’t go to plan. When people told me you can’t plan for your birth outcome, I would politely smile, internally thinking that we would have our homebirth. I prepared my mind and body and followed every Instagram mum sharing their freebirth and homebirth experiences. It was my dream, and no part of me considered any other outcome.

At 41 weeks and 5 days, my waters finally broke, and we patiently waited for contractions to begin. At 41 weeks and 6 days, contractions started, and they were nothing like I expected. They were not gentle or spaced apart — instead, they were intense and only a minute apart. The TENS machine quickly went onto the highest setting and I mentally and physically entered a space I didn’t know I could reach, just to get to the other side. A minute on, a minute off. Time disappeared as I desperately tried every tool I had available to find relief. Minutes turned into hours and suddenly we were eight hours deep. At home, supported by my two midwives and my partner, I moved between the shower and the birthing pool, pushing for another two hours. Ten hours at this point and, despite being fully dilated, I couldn’t get her out. I was exhausted. I pooped and bled all over the house — literally all over the house — cried, moaned, and screamed. Instead of feeling empowered or connected to my body, I felt depleted and disconnected. I just wanted the pain to stop. It was at this point, fully dilated yet no closer to delivering, that my midwife said it was time to go to hospital.

Our drive to the hospital is a complete blur. It was 10:30 p.m. and Ben was doing his best to coach me through my contractions whilst getting us there as quickly and safely as possible. I genuinely don’t have the words for how incredible he was — and has been — through this whole experience. To see me in this state and to hold it together for the both of us... he showed up for me in ways I never thought he would have to. The 28-minute journey meant 14 contractions. My body developed trauma shakes due to the intensity of the ten hours of labour. I genuinely have no idea how we made it there, but we did, and I was quickly loaded into a wheelchair and rushed into a room of waiting doctors and nurses.

This part is very much something I haven’t fully processed, but I remember sucking on gas, attempting to push, being rushed into a room for an epidural, and the doctor declaring that I was no longer eligible for a vaginal delivery — that I was now a Category 1 C-section due to Ryla’s decreased heart rate. I was entirely reliant on my midwife and the doctors to make the best decision for me and Ryla. Within ten minutes of being declared Category 1, I was on the operating table being prepared for surgery.

As someone who hasn’t been to hospital since I was a teenager, I found this whole environment completely foreign. It was exactly the environment I had tried to avoid: sterile, cold, and bright. For decades I have prioritised my physical and mental health above anything else — investing in organic food, choosing low-tox living, and ensuring I was consciously aware of what I put into my body. I didn’t think I would end up here. I hadn’t prepared for this. Yet here I was, having major surgery to deliver my daughter safely into the world. I will spare you the details of the procedure itself, but for anyone who has had a C-section, you will understand the completely uncomfortable feeling of being fully awake whilst your insides are cut, pulled and manipulated. For me, this was all happening whilst my arms shook uncontrollably from trauma, and I was vomiting due to the medications I had been given.

Not exactly the peaceful homebirth I had envisioned.

Then I heard six words that will stay with me forever: Your daughter is limp and pale.

She was being taken to the resuscitation table to be resuscitated, and they were asking Ben to go and talk to her and hold her hand. She wasn’t breathing. My beautiful baby girl — who I had carried for ten months, sung to, talked to, shared almost an entire year connected to — wasn’t breathing, and there was nothing I could do. I was lying on a table, cut open, at the mercy of doctors, whilst my little girl needed me. I didn’t expect this.

I cannot tell you how long it took for her to cry; it felt like an eternity. But eventually, she did cry, with her daddy holding her hand. She was alive.

Alive — but needing to go to NICU as she was on breathing support. But I couldn’t go. I was still on the table, being put back together. She was wheeled past me, and for the briefest moment, I was able to stroke her face — and then she was gone. I remember looking at Ben, telling him not to leave her side and to do skin-to-skin with her as soon as he could. I didn’t need to tell him; he already knew. But as a mother who felt so helpless, it was all I could offer in that moment. And then they were gone.

I didn’t see my daughter again for twelve hours.

Twelve of the longest hours of my life.

Twelve hours going in and out of consciousness.

Twelve hours of people coming in and out of my room giving me different medications.

Twelve hours of knowing that every minute apart was hurting us both.

And then I finally got to see her. So healthy and perfect, all 3.5 kilos of her. Off oxygen, breathing on her own, looking very out of place amongst the premmie babies in NICU.

I never thought that I would meet my daughter twelve hours after her birth, or that I would be wheeled to NICU and have to locate her in a room full of babies in plastic boxes. Plastic boxes containing little tiny fingers and toes, waiting to be kissed. It didn’t feel right — her being so separate from us. A necessary environment, but one that feels very disempowering. Despite knowing she was ours, I felt like I couldn’t pick her up or honour my motherly instincts. I had to ask permission to do things that felt so natural to me — as if she belonged to someone else. Under constant observation, with multiple opinions on what we should be doing — opinions that often contradicted each other.

Ryla spent eight nights in NICU. To the mums and dads of NICU babies — I had no idea what you were going through before I became a NICU mum myself. I had no idea how stuck in fight-or-flight mode you were, or how each day was purely survival. I had no idea how lonely it was, or how exhausted you were. I had no idea of the heartache you were surrounded by whilst trying to care for your little one. I had no idea how disempowered you must have felt. I had no idea of the depths you had to reach into to survive. But you did — and so did I.

Every day I was either wheeled or walked the corridors to the NICU room my daughter was in. Every day I sat by her tiny plastic box, only leaving to go to the toilet or when I was forced to eat. I held her tight for skin-to-skin and learnt to breastfeed her in a room filled with prying eyes, beeping monitors, and exhausted nurses. I cried throughout the day, grieving the experience we didn’t get to have, whilst also trying to find acceptance for the one we were having. I spent hours moving through the emotions of a traumatic birth and a birth that did not go to plan. I questioned my body and wondered if it had failed me. I asked myself if I could have done anything differently. I slept little, pumped religiously to encourage my milk to come in, held her close with a protectiveness I didn’t know I had — and in the walls of NICU, I became a mother. In those eight nights, whilst deep in grief, my heart was also bursting open with a new level of love. The love of a mother.

And then, after eight of the most difficult nights of my life, it was time to take her home.

This is where we get to experience joy.

I don’t think I have ever experienced the level of joy I felt when we exited the hospital into the fresh air as a family of three, with our daughter safely tucked into her car seat, carried by her daddy. On the drive home, we cried tears of joy. We were on our way home.

It has been six weeks since Ryla entered the world, and those six weeks have been a dance of surrender, grief, joy, and love. I find myself quickly scrolling past posts of other mothers sharing their positive homebirth experiences, trying to avoid the grief that I know will follow. But I have started to find acceptance in our story. Grief appears each day — triggered by a song, a post, or an innocent question — and when it does, I am finding space to allow the tears to fall. I often talk to Ryla about our experience and find myself apologising for the start she had.

She is my constant reminder of the importance of releasing our trauma. I don’t want our start to decide her future. We are working with a chiropractor, osteopath, and craniosacral therapist to help her release what her body is holding onto. She never leaves my side, and we spend our days baby-wearing, contact napping, breastfeeding on demand, and bed-sharing at night. I know that all of this is helping not only her nervous system but also mine — and together, we are learning how to regulate.

There’s nothing I love more than waking up to her little grunts as she nuzzles beside me, searching for her favourite thing in the world: my nipple. We find comfort in each other’s arms. I’ve come to accept the messy house, the piles of laundry, the all-day pyjamas, the breast milk-stained clothes — and a life that, for now, is focused on nothing outside of her.

I used to be a strong advocate for women not getting lost in motherhood, but before she arrived, I started to wonder — is getting lost in motherhood the point? (I explored this in a previous blog.)

Now that I’m here, I can’t imagine anything more magical than getting lost in it. I don’t know what day of the week it is or what’s happening in the world. I no longer feel like who I once was — and yet, I’m excited about who I’m becoming.

A version of me that is being shaped by motherhood.
The most powerful and beautiful thing I have ever done.

I have had to grieve that we didn’t get our home birth, we didn’t get our delayed cord clamping, or our immediate skin-to-skin. Our start wasn’t warm or gentle; it was cold and harsh — but we are here.

Loving in a way I never thought possible.
Showing a strength I didn’t know I had.
Holding multiple realities at once with a compassion and understanding I rarely allowed myself before.

Motherhood is the most incredible thing I’ve ever done — and I want to keep getting lost in it. Because in the losing, I am finding.

So whilst my birth went nothing like I had planned, I am choosing to wear my scar proudly — a reminder of our journey, which, despite only just beginning, already feels like my greatest adventure yet.