Share your story with ICAN to be featured on our Instagram and Facebook! All cesarean and birth-after-cesarean stories are welcome: the difficult, the triumphant, the still-processing, and the stories which haven’t yet been shared. Sharing your birth story can be freeing, healing and profoundly powerful. It can bring others hope, comfort, and reassurance that they are not alone on their birth journey.
Submit your story HERE: https://airtable.com/shrJOtXla9O9MVBaj
My name is Naomie. I am a native Kenyan living in the Netherlands. Together with my husband Tom we are raising 3 love babies.
My recent birth had to be planned for medical reasons. At 20 weeks scan we found out our little boy had transposition of the great artery, a heart condition that needed to be rectified immediately after birth for him to survive.
I held on to the hope that he could be fixed and that helped me enjoy his existence from then onwards. We decided to book a Doula for this birthday following a previous traumatic birth which left us with a disabled child to raise.
So I sourced out a dear colleague of mine, Laurina Cerredo in Amsterdam. There is a reason why it had to be Laurina. We clicked and connected on a special level from the moment we started making contact with each other on social media. Well, Laurina and I share the same story! Her own son was born with the same condition as my child, so she had walked this journey and it was comforting to know my husband would be supported fully on that day whilst I focused on myself and our little boy.
The whole 9 months I was attended to by one OBGYN at my local hospital and again, there was a beautiful click with this doctor, it was incredible. She gave without measure, she listened without judgement, she walked beside us never taking charge of authority. We felt VERY supported in every aspect of our pregnancy. We had the most difficult questions but she answered our questions very clearly and with lengthy elaborations too
To help make the birth as special as could be that day, Dr Haak offered me a clear curtain and therefore I was part of my son’s birth. I watched her help him birth himself because she was very gentle also in the way she assisted in getting him earth-side. She held our son in steps as he emerged through the incision, first the head, then the shoulders.. etc.
She instructed her team what to do according to our birth plan, she dimmed the lights immediately after my son was born, and reminded them that we had requested for calm, quiet room too. It was magical how we first locked eyes with each other, seeing him still attached to me on my belly separated by curtain.
My husband was even able to cut the umbilical cord of our son, and what was special was that this birth was featured on the TopDokters TV programme in the Netherlands (I am waiting for the subtitles version to share) because it is a story worth sharing!
I have been stopped in the streets from people who remember my face following the broadcasting of the program, well wishers, people wanting to know how we are doing now, and other mothers going through the same journey looking to speak to another experienced mama whose child had a tough start of NIC, ICU, open heart surgery etc.
Our son went on to have an open heart surgery at 6 days of life, that took 8.5 hours long, his chest was left open for 2 days before he could be closed back. The surgery was a success and today at 7 months old he is thriving and is a happy baby. I look at him in disbelief.
For me it is empowering and the knowledge that with the right team beside you, even the most daunting journeys can have a positive outcome and leaves an impact on how you travel that journey. For us, trust was a huge thing that helped us a lot. We trusted what Dr Haak would advise and she spoke to us not like a doctor but as a fellow mother, a fellow woman, and a professional.
