I never imagined that the most important day of my life would begin with a cry.
Not mine, even though I screamed. All the women who gave birth screamed in one way or another, even if it was internally. But the cry that I remember most clearly is the one that came later, after the pain, after the pushing efforts, when the room stopped being mine and became a place where strangers were making decisions about my body.
It was my husband’s voice.
High pitched. Noisy. Sharp.
My name is María Fernández , and thirty years ago I gave birth to five babies in a public hospital in Seville. Quintuplets. A word that sounds like a miracle when you read it in a newspaper and that resonates like a storm when you are the one lying on the bed, your back aching, your mouth dry and your arms shaking from exhaustion.
My birth was long and painful. I remember the light in the hospital: too bright, too white, as if it wanted to erase all emotion from the room. I remember the smell of antiseptic, sweat and that metallic smell that always accompanies blood. I remember that nurse who kept telling me: “Breathe, María, breathe”, as if breathing was a choice and not a reflex.
I remember hearing my babies before I even saw them.
Five little cries, each tenuous and furious, like small birds struggling to fly away. This should have been the moment when my world lit up.
Instead, it was the moment when my world fell apart.
