I Carried, I Fought, I Survived—Why Is That Not Enough?

I am a mother of three beautiful and wonderful children. Children who call me “Mama.” A word that keeps me going. A word that has made me realize that I can do almost anything one handed.

I carried each of these children with hope, fear, and love and each came to these world the only way they could—through caesarean sections (CS). This was not by choice, but by necessity. Each time I had to be wheeled to the emergency operating room. Not because I was weak but because I had to save a lives. Mine and theirs.

Each surgery carried fear, pain, and risk. I remember the cold air. The bright lights. The silent prayers I whispered in my heart. I remember wondering if I would come back alive. That is what my childbirth looked like.

Each time I survived, I celebrated myself as a true warrior.

However, in my home, that is not how the story is told.

To my husband, I did not truly give birth.

He reminds me of this often—sometimes in anger, sometimes in passing words that cut just as deeply. “You didn’t push them out,” he says. “You don’t know what real motherhood is.” At first, I tried to explain. Then I thought, why should I? I didn’t choose surgery, it chose me.

You see, he was there in at least two of the sessions. He was there when the doctors were explaining the risks, the complications, and their decisions to save my life and the baby’s. He was there when I was wheeled out of the OR unconscious.

But he had already decided what my story meant.

In his primitive thinking- the thinking he has carried from the community around us, a “real woman” gives birth naturally. Pain is proof of strength. Endurance is proof of love. And because I did not give birth that way, to him, I failed.

He has echoed these words over the years we have been together. And they grow heavier with time. They come out in all aspects of our conversations, agreements and disagreements, and sometimes at my weakest.

Every mistake I make, be it real or imagined, ends up with the same conclusion.

Every time I want a break or a rest day becomes a reminder of how I am insensitive because I didn’t bear the pain of childbirth.

For example, One day I overslept, not as a routine but because I had a terrible headache. I had barely slept the night before. For once I couldn’t wake up before everyone else as usual.

The children, with their usual morning energy were moving around the house, hungry and fussy. I had to wake up and he was already angry.

“You see?” he said. “This is what I mean. You don’t care about them.”

I tried to explain that I was unwell. That I just needed a moment. But he shook his head.

“A real mother would not sleep while her children are awake,” he said. “You are like this because you didn’t give birth properly.”

In that moment, my headache became something else entirely. It became proof—at least in his eyes—that I am not a good mother.

It did not matter that I carry these children every day in every way I know how. It did not matter that I wake up in the night when they cry, that I cook for them, clean for them, worry about them, and love them with everything in me. But still, I am made to feel like I am not enough.

What matters to him is how they entered this world.

I am constantly judged. By him, the in-laws and everyone in his circle. They have turned my survival to something I should be ashamed of.

That is what these words do. That is what this kind of thinking does.

Living like this is exhausting. The words cut deeper than the three surgeries I have gone through. You see, these words have made me to constantly wonder, I am enough, am I failing them? Even when the truth of the matter is that I am doing my best.

This is not just my story.

It is the story of many African mothers where women are expected to endure, to prove strength through pain, to meet a standard that has been passed down for generations. Natural birth is seen a badge of honor and CS is often misunderstood. It is associated with fear, weakness, or sometimes failure, even if it is for life-saving reason.

It becomes depressing when the judgment comes from the person you trust the most. Like in my case. The person once perceived as a safe space.

I am sharing this experience because I am tired of carrying this silence. Tired of feeling ashamed for something that saved our lives. I am tired of some people measuring my strength and worth by how I gave birth and ignoring the fragile line between life and death.

I didn’t fail, I survived three times. And no one has a right to make me feel less of a mother.

I know I am not alone. As I share this, I know there are so many women who have carried this pain in silence. Women who are made to feel less of a mother because of circumstance they couldn’t control. I would like to say this: CS is not a failure and your motherhood is valid.

Because motherhood is not defined by pain endured in one moment.

It is defined by love given every single day.

And that is something no one can take from us.

We must begin to change these conversations in our hearts, homes, and in our communities.

If anyone is willing to join me to start an initiative of awareness within our communities would be so much welcomed.

I am not aware of how to start an initiative, so I am requesting for guidelines on how to start one.