Chapter 1 - The beginning

Dear Diary,

Let’s rewind and start from the very beginning. 

My, I’d call it „womanhood“ or „intense adulting“- story starts in the summer of 2018 — London. The birth of my first daughter.

After I gave birth, something shifted — not only in my body, but in the way the world looked at me. Suddenly, I felt like I had disappeared.

Most of the people around me — nurses, doctors, friends, family — asked about the baby first. Is she healthy? Is she feeding? Is she sleeping?

Almost no one asked: Are you scared? Are you okay in your own body? What do you need?

I remember lying in the hospital bed, still slightly shocked by how giving birth had been for me — different than I was told, different than I imagined it to be, just… different. I was still trying to understand what had just happened.

I felt fragile and tired. Afraid, cold and vulnerable. Sad with tears in my eyes, yet happy with a smile on my face at the same time. Were these the drugs wearing off or my real feelings? So many feelings at the same time. 

But the attention had already moved on. The miracle had a face — and it wasn’t mine.

Fast forward to my six-week postpartum check-up. I told a nurse that something felt wrong. I told her things felt different than described and that I was scared. I felt a pain that didn’t feel normal and I saw blood that didn’t look right. I said that my body felt like it was still fighting something….

…she brushed it off.

She said it was normal — I had just given birth. That I was overreacting — that’s what it’s like after birth. She said I should rest. But the fear in my body didn’t quiet down. Something wasn’t right.

And ten weeks later, in Zurich, I learned that my fear had been right — placenta remnants had been left behind. My body was still in danger. What I felt wasn’t anxiety, it was instinct. I needed an emergency operation. One that would change the course of my motherhood journey for a very long time.

I learned that being dismissed has consequences.

What stayed with me wasn’t only the physical pain. It was the realization that once a woman becomes a mother, her suffering can become invisible — at home, in relationships, in hospitals, in society.

The child becomes the headline. The mother becomes the footnote.

This is where my story begins — not with heroism, not with gratitude, but with the quiet shock of realizing that my voice mattered less the moment I gave life. And I am writing now to take it back.

And I’m writing now, because my pregnancy story the second time round is a different, even more challenging one, yet I felt seen, secure and supported the whole way through.

Dear Diary, thank you for holding this.

Until next time, 

your Woman on a Mission

-Do you have a story to tell? If you want to share - I'm all ears under on maurer_alexandra@yahoo.de anonymously or open, it's your choice. x