I never realized how strong my wife was until I saw her give birth!
We often grow up with stereotypes and beliefs about women's weakness. "He cries like a sissy", "He hits the ball like a girl", they tell us when we are children.
We are inclined to think that a woman is always the weaker one, frail, and to be protected.
But often life itself teaches us that within women and despite their apparent fragility, there is a great strength. An explosive and irrepressible force that we can more easily observe when a woman becomes a mother.
When a woman becomes a mother, she becomes the bearer of a force that she herself probably does not know she has.
Eleven years ago, our son Jon arrived and we, as a young and carefree couple, knew nothing about children or being parents. My wife was 24 years old and I was 26 years old and that is when the transformation began, then I saw her strength right before my own eyes.
When she went into labor, she had very strong, epidural contractions and finally an emergency cesarean. I did not know what to think, what to expect, I was afraid.
But she experienced everything as part of the game, without taking her eyes off the child, without thinking about the pain. That stressed belly did not bother her. Her eyes and her attention no longer belonged to her: they were already focused on our son, Jon.
The pain during breastfeeding did not give her respite yet she did not seem to care, once again everything seemed only a detail or a passing consequence of something bigger than her: to have become a mother.
I wanted to tell her, okay enough, and force her to use a baby bottle ... And then I realized that what a mother will do for her child, no one would do for another person.
Her second pregnancy seemed to proceed well until, at 34 weeks, the baby seemed to want to come into the world immediately and the contractions were close and painful.
"It is too soon," the doctors told us. "Every day in your belly is one less in the incubator." So, they hospitalized my wife to give her medication to stop her from delivering our child too soon.
It worked in part, except for the pain ... That never passed and she continued to feel painful contractions every ten minutes, for seven days, with another three-year-old child to look after.
You, tell me if this is not strength!
Seven days after the arrival of her second child, who needed six days in an incubator, she wondered if she could still stand a little more.
Consequently, her third pregnancy was characterized by nausea and dizziness from the beginning until the end. Only after the birth of this third child did my wife succeed in feeling once again reborn.
I'm not saying that all women should face pain the same way, but I am sure that if we look closely we will always see a great strength in these women.
Now when I hear about women being seen as fragile creatures to be protected I have to laugh, and when I encounter mothers with their little ones; when I see them walking or shopping, I cannot help but think how strong they are.
With how much strength women face the pain of childbirth and with how much strength they manage to love. Do we still have the courage to call them "sissies"?
