Esra: ‘Heard my husband say that I was having contractions, but she was already born’

Acute urge to push

But then Esra wakes up around 3:30 am. “When I went to the toilet, my water broke. I felt an acute urge to push. I shook my husband awake and said, ‘It’s coming now! Our child is coming!’ He raced downstairs to call the midwife. I went into the shower. I felt like I had to poop. I felt carefully and I could already feel her head.”

“I tried to stop the pushing, but I couldn’t. I pushed twice, caught her and immediately placed her on my chest. I panicked for a moment because she wasn’t crying, but when I heard her breathing I calmed down.”

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In the meantime, her husband is still busy calling the midwife. “I heard Yusuf say: ‘You have to come now, because she is having contractions.’ The midwife was on loudspeaker. I shouted, “She’s already here.” He looked at me and repeated that I was having contractions. Only then did he realize what had happened. He looked at me and was in shock.”

Maternal instinct

The midwife advises Esra to sit down so that she cannot fall with her newborn daughter Ayla Dua. “Ten minutes later she was there. My son was still sleeping in our bed next to us. Next to him I squeezed out the placenta. An hour later he woke up. He wondered what was going on and who those people in the room were,” Esra laughs.

How does she look back on the birth? “If it had been my first, I don’t know if I would have started a second one. The week leading up to the birth was quite intense. The preliminary contractions that I had suffered from were, in retrospect, just contractions. But it was also special to experience that I was able to do this all by myself. I didn’t panic and thanks to my motherly instincts I knew exactly what to do.”

Find your way

Ayla Dua is now two months old. “I’m grateful that everything is going so well. My husband has taken parental leave and has been off for six weeks. He went to the petting zoo with Ayaz almost every day, while I took care of our daughter. I find it exciting that he is going back to work, but we will find our way in that.”

Do you also have a special birth story? Email your name and story in a few sentences to [email protected], stating ‘Special deliveries’ and who knows, you might soon read your story on LINDA.nl.

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