Welcome to NAYDAYA’S #SCARDIARIES

Every week we talk to women about their story, their scar, and their recovery. 

Here at NAYDAYA we see it as our responsibility to help open up the conversation about all scars - we know everyone feels differently about them, personally we love them, and we believe we should share honest stories and journeys with each other.

Over the next few weeks and months we will be sharing real scar stories from our amazing community of women and mothers, who are incredibly brave to share their stories.

Want to tell yours? Send yours via DM or to info@naydaya.com. 

Next up, warrior mum Laura!

“Trust me when I say I'm the last girl in the world who ever thought they would wind up having an emergency c section. In my absolute naivety as a first time mum, I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was letting myself in for. 

There really is no way of understanding what a labour is like until you have been through it.

My journey started the day after my due date. 

Babies are notoriously late in my family (myself included) and I figured I would be weeks over. However, on the 28th November 2019, while digging out some meat for the fridge to make yet another large meal that we could potentially freeze, my water broke. I was pretty relaxed about it and still had a shower and put on my jammies and figured contractions would start in the night. But they didn’t.

So what did I do? I got up the next day and phoned the hospital who told me to come in to be checked as they would prefer for contractions to start within 24 hours of water breaking. Instead, I went Christmas shopping. Once my husband finished work, I said maybe we should go to the hospital and get checked out.

From then on, it was a pessary induction where my contractions started to kick in around 8pm on the 29th. A pelvic exam confirmed I was only 2cm so I was in for the long haul. And by the long haul, I mean labour was INTENSE.

I can only describe my contractions as feeling like I am being murdered from the inside out, and that’s being as mild as possible coming from me. They made me feel sicker and weaker than I ever thought I would - I couldn’t keep down food, water, nothing. I didn’t get an exam for 10 hours and when I did I was still only just 4cm. However, then the bad luck. No anaesthetists were free to administer an epidural which I was DESPERATE for.

I proceeded to shout to my husband that “everyone is a fucking liar” - it’s safe to say all my hypnobirthing techniques had long since left the building. When I finally did get an epidural around 11pm on the 30th of November, it made a huge difference. I started to dilate much quicker and I was 9cm within the hour.

But then came the news I didn’t expect; my little baby was showing a very irregular heartbeat and the midwife was getting concerned. My husband had popped to the loo for the first time in hours as he thought we would be getting ready but alas by the time he came back I was getting wheeled to the theatre and he was being handed scrubs and crocs!

I was numbed down further and my little man was born via abdominal birth at 3.11am on the 1st of December (which just so happened to be my birthday month too) He was just everything and it doesn’t matter to me how he was born. The scar is part of our story and I wouldn’t change it.

The first time I saw it, I cried. It had happened so quickly and I didn’t really process what it would mean on my body. But that is the last thing I care about now. My son is 17 months now and I’m now almost 30 weeks and staring down the barrel of a potential elected c section for the delivery of my second child.

My journey as a mother has made me feel stronger, more powerful and the scars I bear are because that is the story of my children’s birth, and us and our family. Scars are proof that we have lived our lives and each one we get will tell a story. There is something in that that makes me very proud.

Being a mother has made me stronger and so more grateful. My life feels all the more precious since I have stepped into motherhood. It makes me feel capable of anything, which is something I only hope I pass on to my babies.”

Connect with Laura @theglamshamrock