Editor’s Note: In partnership with The 2023 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction, Isele Magazine publishes the winner, the runner-up, and the notable essays selected by the curators of the award. Nana-Hauwa Sule’s “Birthing the Mother” is a notable entry. 

Award Founder’s Note: There are some stories that can only be told by those who have felt the heft of it in their bones. “Birthing The Mother” is one of such stories. Told from the battlefield of childbirth, this essay is a raw rendition of the life-changing, dangerous, mystical journey that is becoming a mother. Where tales of fluffiness and joy are the prevalent narrative, this essay paints the truth for us in a different hue. It shows us that to give life is to court death and return from battle forever changed. 

I

To be a mother, you take an axe to yourself. 

With it, begin to hack the parts of you that are free and wild. You then come to your heart, weed out the occupants till the object of your worship has enough room. To be a mother is to first taste death.

II

They say it is 4:55 pm when he enters this world with a loud cry. They say that I begin to cry too. 

III

The way my husband tells it is much simpler. 

We had been waiting for his arrival, but his head was now stuck in my cervix and I was growing weak. My husband was terrified, but the doctors had reached a decision; I was to have a caesarean section. He had gone to make payments for the procedure and the drugs that were to be used when his mother’s call came in. He swears he didn’t hear a word his mother said, because in the background he heard a cry.  In his version of this tale, he claims that he rushed back to me, to gather me into a hug, to plant a kiss on my head. But he says that it was as though I was not there, or that I could not see him. He says that I refused to tear my gaze from the nurse as she cleaned and dressed our baby.

I remember that part. I remember it because I only see our son. He says that I start to get impatient, and this might not be a lie as I am anything but a patient person. He says I start to demand that they bring him to me. I remember this faintly too; the asking for him, wanting to hold him. I also think that his version might be true because, since carrying him in my body, and feeling him grow and move, I have been concerned. And there really is no other word to explain it than concern.

When they finally place him in my arms, he reaches out to touch my face. His eyes blink ever so softly as he tries to adjust to the light. There are moments that he is able to look into my eyes, his dark pupil finding my not-so-dark one, his fingers tracing the skin on my face as I look back into his perfect face and his dark hair and his nose that looks like mine. When I think back, nothing compares to this. All that I have experienced, all that I have endured, all that I have loved falls short. This is where my heart opens, and he pushes himself in and stitches it back up. This is where he has encased himself. This is the true love of my life, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, hand on my cheek. MY son.

IV

I remember the events a little differently.

You see, I have never been a very possessive person. Life has taught me that you can never own anyone, or let yourself latch onto people. It was sort of my motto; to not hold on too tight, to always leave enough room to let go. And it has served me well, and kept me grounded and sane.

I remember the cry. I remember crying with him. I remember watching without blinking as the nurse cleaned him up, and wrapped him in the beautiful blue shawl I handpicked for him. I remember holding him, his hand on my cheek, his bright eyes staring into mine, holding my gaze. I remember because all that I had learnt about possession left my eyes when I gazed into his.

I remember the panic that descended on me when the nurse tried to pry him out of my arms. She started to say things that I didn’t quite catch. I looked everywhere else but at her; there’s the doctor wearing his gloves in one corner, my mother-in-law sitting in another corner, joyous and sharing the news with family. I caught a glimpse of my husband at the door, not quite in the room, not quite out. He doesn’t approach me.

Later, he says that he didn’t have the heart to interrupt that moment and that he wanted to afford me as much time as I could to marinate in the feelings I was experiencing. And he was right not to come near. In that moment, I felt joy, I felt a giddiness that was almost pristine. But there was also anger at the violence that my body had experienced, there was pain that I felt no one could understand. And if I could be sincere, there was also feelings of entitlement… because although we had this baby together as a family, it was my body that held the scars, my body that shifted and expanded to create this life. I felt entitled to our son. 

But a cold from nowhere grips my body. My teeth start to chatter, I start to shiver and suddenly, the child nestled on my chest and in my arms is too heavy for me. That is all I remember before I see nothing.

I think that I blanked out for a minute, or maybe I imagined it. I imagine sometimes that it was the hand of death that reached for me. And believe that I only survived, only still exist because I was being born again. I think of it as a baptism, a right to a new life, a birthing of me, for the role I now have to play.

When I start to get a grasp of my surroundings again, I feel warmer. Someone is giving me an injection. And for the first time since I entered into this birthing room some hours ago, I truly started to see where I am.

I am in a room with two beds in it. The beds are built in such a way that they are elevated on one end and low on the other… almost like beach benches. The mattress on them should be called a mat. It is covered in something that feels like the surface of those materials used in making a raincoat. Fluid can’t pass from it to the foam. I suppose it is smart.

Then there are some lights. I see some scissors in a bowl, I see a weighing scale and some equipment I can’t quite name. I let the nurse who has now given the baby to his grandmother, guide me to the second bed where the doctor is waiting with hands wrapped in fresh gloves. As I take the first step, I feel something pour out from between my legs. I look down to find a pool of blood; red clots mixed in the thick liquid of whatever was the lining of my uterus. There is a lot of blood. 

I waddle to the second bed and by whatever mercy, find myself on it with my legs open. With the help of a headlight, the doctor begins the torturous job of stitching up my vagina. 

It hurts.

 A lot.

I want to tell you how much it hurts, but I don’t know that there are words to do that. There’s just that it hurts. Every time I flinch and raise my pelvis, the doctor warns me to hold still. He wants to make it really clean and tight for my husband, he says. It only hits me days, days, days later, that in that moment, there was a line that was crossed. But at that time, what was going through my mind was pain. 

I had thought that once the baby was out, it would all be over. I did not take into account that a placenta had to be removed, and that most painfully, I would have to be stitched.

Well, I did know. I was told. 

I had asked two friends who were mothers before me, about getting cut. An episiotomy, it is called. I had asked my mum already but she responded with some vague, you will be fine words that didn’t provide any insight.

I found young mothers within my circle who would tell me the truth.

Bless their hearts, they knew what I needed and so didn’t try to sugar-coat the tale. I needed the truth. 

The truth; it is terrible. It will hurt, healing will hurt, everything will hurt. Sitting, standing, nothing will give reprieve. And even long afterwards, it will itch. 

I like to think this prepared me. And in all sincerity, it did. I knew what to expect, I knew there was pain, I just didn’t think that the pain was something so unbearable, so unfair, so soul-crushing. I must have mentioned a thousand times how I was never going to have another kid again and how it would be the last time.

When the stitches are done, and the doctor is certain I am no longer bleeding from the cut, I finally get a private moment, the first time since the day started… but the last time in a long time.

I am ushered into the only other door inside the labour room. It opens into a bathroom where water is waiting for me in a bucket, I am then left alone. 

I hurt all over, I feel weak.

I undress, peel off the blood and slime-soaked gown that I had over my body. I start to touch this body of mine that no longer feels like home. I touch my soft, soggy stomach, half expecting a kick, but it’s empty. It is also loose and riddled with stretch marks. I touch my face, lingering over my nose which was always big but got a little bigger as my stomach grew, wondering if it’ll ever shrink. I touch my neck which has gone even darker, I touch the different parts of my body where my skin has taken the shade of my neck. I touch the folds on my back where the weight had mostly gone. I try to relearn this body that has been reborn, to take in and photograph this image of my birth when a knock interrupts me-  it’s the nurse.

She tells me that I have to hurry out so she can teach me to latch. She says my baby is hungry. 

And it is only at this moment that it truly hits me, the gravity of the events that happened that day. I have indeed become a mother, birthed a living, breathing human. Just like that, a whole baby! And as I rush through my bath, worrying not for myself, but for the nourishment of my child- remembering how important it is to feed the little one as soon as possible, ignoring the pain starting to throb between my legs- I break into tears. Tears that are so silent, so swallowed that I nearly choke. The kind of cry where you wail with all your heart, snort running down your nose, a cry of loss but no sound comes out.

At the time, I do not know why I cried. I would read somewhere that it is a mourning of self; of the version of me that was not a mother. The realisation that there were no takebacks, no undo button, or rewind. 

It was also the tears of acceptance. That a part of me will always be buried in concern for this child that is my son. A part of me that is no longer mine.

About the Author

Nana Sule is a Writer, Journalist, and Communication Associate with Liberation Alliance Africa. She writes fiction, and creative non-fiction, and spends some of her time planning and moderating literary and corporate events.

*Feature image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay