The Adventures of a Xhosa Princess

I thought I’d feel a gush of emotions when our daughter was born, but I honestly felt none of that, mainly because our baby came into the world in every way I had hoped for it not to happen. All I thought about was the horrible experience I had going through Gynae visits alone, being in the hospital alone and being induced and laboring alone because of the covid pandemic and all the restrictions. I had also hoped, prayed, and prepared for a vaginal birth, but here I was in an ice-cold theatre room, shivering like a vibrator while being stitched up. I couldn’t do skin-to-skin, I couldn’t latch her onto my breast, I couldn’t even touch her cause my hands were placed like Jesus on the cross in Calvary.   I don’t know if I mentioned that my husband cannot stand the sight of blood. He sees a drop of blood and he’s ready to faint, so the surgeon suggested that after our daughter is born and I had seen and touched her for a few minutes, my husband would take her out to the recovery su...

I can’t describe the emotions I went through as I walked into the main hospital door alone with all my suitcases, a feeding pillow, and a cooler bag filled with frozen colostrum – these are feelings and emotions I do not wish on any woman. I took the hospital lift to the 7 th floor and rang the bell for the birthing suite. Thankfully, I was met with the sweetest midwife and OB/Gynae who was very patient and clearly very passionate about his career, but that didn’t change the fact that my husband was outside the hospital and waiting for an update instead of being by my side.   Haike, if you thought that was eventful. After a 20-minute-long scan, the OB/Gynae asks me if I was ever informed about cysts in my uterus because he just found two large cysts, one of which was below our daughter’s head and could potentially block her from coming down or burst during delivery. I’m also in the early stages of pre-eclampsia and cholestasis (cholestasis is the reason my skin was dry and i...

This is a safe place for all procrastinators, and I’m a mom so be nice! Why didn’t anyone warn me about the heaven and hell that is the third trimester? I’m just thankful that we were locked up and unable to socialize cause hyper pigmentation and water retention had me by the b*lls. I looked like those mamas from emakhaya. At this point, nothing has changed. I’m still getting a UTI infection every week caused by anything and everything under the skies, and I’m seeing the prenatal specialist, midwife and Gynae almost every week. I haven’t gained a single gram of weight since the beginning of the pregnancy and my energy levels were up there with the gods. Covid is still around, and because everyone was out and about living their best Ausländer life in Spain, Holland, and Greece over the summer/spring holidays – the numbers are increasing and Germany is back in lockdown, but my husband and I are unbothered cause isolation is our life now. We’ve also decided to move from our apartm...

So, the second trimester begins, and I’m over the moon because our little Gummy Bear is growing and forming into an entire human being. I’m finally starting to feel more energetic and can stay awake for much longer. I’m even able to tidy up the apartment without feeling like the world is about to end, however, the reality of the pandemic hits me like a ton of cement bricks and I sink into prenatal depression - this is not how I planned to have my first viable pregnancy!   Before I even fell pregnant, we had decided that our children would be born in South Africa. I wanted my husband to be at every Gynae appointment. I wanted a gender reveal party, a baby shower, a baby moon and a baby pinkeln for my husband - only the gender reveal party materialized, and that too was by chance because ngithanda ukufosta. I also wanted to attend prenatal classes, pregnancy yoga and aqua aerobics, but that very quickly became a far-fetched dream.   We were stuck in a 65m2 apartment in t...

As stated previously, the first trimester, though coupled with a few mishaps, was blissful!   There were a few negatives though, and on top of the list is my fingers, face, nose and lips swelling TF up and hyper-pigmentation from those very early days. I’m beautiful and I know it, but pregnancy turned me into the ugliest duckling on this planet (laughs in ‘oksalayo muhle utoothless bear wami’), and because the pregnancy was our little secret, I kept hoping that people on my social media wouldn’t notice the puffy face. I was also extremely bloated at some point and when that bloat went away, I couldn’t stop my farts from coming out for weeks, lol! I sincerely apologise to my husband for having to sit through those because on some days, I too would lowkey die from the smell, kodwa isoja lifela empini, so I maintained my straight face.   Another negative for me was the constant pelvic pain I had from my uterus expanding as the embryo grew into a fetus and so forth – thi...

One of the most common concerns I would hear from friends when I announced that I am pregnant was “I’m so worried about you being pregnant and birthing in a predominantly white society”. This obviously made me worry a lot as well because of how often I would hear it, and it changed my entire perspective of pregnancy and childbirth in Germany to a very negative/dark one. I kid you not when I tell you that had this post been written 2 months prior, I would have said everything is SH*T; without even blinking or thinking twice about it. However, now that I have had time to process and debrief, I can safely say that my pregnancy journey was top tier.   My husband and I had been discussing having children, and though we did not put pressure on ourselves by deciding on a fixed timeframe; I wanted to fall pregnant on our pre-honeymoon which was scheduled for June 2020. Therefore, I started booking appointments in February 2020 with the Gynecologist and Traditional Chinese Medicine Pr...