A mum took the extraordinary decision to deliver her own twins when she gave birth – even though she had a C-SECTION.
Gerri Wolfe, 41, of New South Wales, Australia, was determined to give birth to her infants normally, just like she had with her previous two children. However, physicians warned her that a natural birth would be perilous because one of the twins was pressing on a scar from a previous caesarean.
“I was desperate for another and, when the doctors told me it was too big a risk, I cried and cried,” she said.
“As my hope for a natural birth slipped away, I began thinking about how I could still have that ‘I did it’ feeling.”
Refusing to settle, Gerri researched her options online and instead opted to give birth via maternal assisted caesarean. With the exception of the last seconds, during which the mother is allowed to physically remove the kid from her own womb, the process is essentially a typical C-section. Who even knew this approach was possible?
Gerri’s doctor sure didn’t. Gerri was adamant she would try the assisted caesarean. But he loosened his stance after Gerri pleaded with him, inspiring him to do his own research.
Gerri upped the game on her risky self-assisted delivery by yanking out not one, but two kids, giving birth to healthy twin girls named Matilda and Violet. Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t Gerri’s first time giving birth. She has given birth to 10 and 11 children, respectively, so she is experienced in the process.
“My other caesareans were very sterile, very surgical, very impersonal,’ she said.
“People were talking about what they did on the weekend without even thinking about me laying on the table, going through this momentous experience of having a baby.
“The doctor was quite willing once he realised the risk of infection wasn’t as high as he perhaps first thought.”
Before her caesarean, Gerri was taken into theatre, scrubbed down and given two pairs of elbow-length gloves to wear, before being given an epidural.
Then, with one set of gloves off, Gerri stood with her arms crossed in front of her chest before lowering her twins into the world.
“I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. I wasn’t allowed to move. Wasn’t allowed to do anything until they had told me to,” Gerri explained to the paper.
“That way, I was completely sterile. Then, after a while, he leaned over to me and went, ‘are you ready to meet these babies?
“It was just like a normal Caesarean from then until he said, ‘reach down and grab your babies.
“I just brought her, Matilda, up to my chest and I held her in my left arm. And then a minute later he said, ‘come and get the other one.
“It was tough to pick up Violet because she had been violated. However, as I extended my right hand, someone assisted me in turning her in the proper direction so that I could also place her on my chest..
“And then I had both of them!”
After their wild introduction to the world, the babies were allowed to leave the hospital and rest comfortably at their home with their mother, surrounded by nine older siblings and their loving dad.
Gerri says she has no regrets on bringing the twins into the world on her own terms.
“It’s my body, it’s my birth, it’s my baby,” she said.
