Made In Chelsea's Caggie Dunlop compares giving birth to a 'car crash'
Made In Chelsea star Caggie Dunlop has compared giving birth to a "car crash" - admitting the experience of welcoming her first child was "both horrific and magical".
Caggie Dunlop has compared giving birth to a "car crash" because the experience of welcoming her first child was "both horrific and magical".
The Made In Chelsea star, 36, welcomed a daughter on June 2 with her longtime boyfriend, who she has not named publicly, and she's now opened up about the birth revealing becoming a mother has been full of challenges.
In a post on Instagram, she wrote: "The first moment I held my daughter. Everything moves so fast. After nine slow months of pregnancy, labour arrives - and from that moment, it’s one initiation after another.
"The challenges come thick and fast. I underestimated what recovering from birth would be like.
"Someone once described it as being in a car crash and then being handed the most precious thing imaginable to care for. And honestly… that feels pretty accurate. Motherhood is the ultimate paradox. So is birth.
"But maybe that’s what it means to be a woman - not necessarily to become a mother, but to hold the complexities and multitudes within us. So much tender care ... and yet, a wildness too. Pure, primal instinct. Deep, quiet strength. Intuition that roars.
"Birth is both horrific and magical. It’s unimaginable what you go through. You might feel traumatised. And yet, if I were told I had to do it all again tomorrow for her - I would, in a heartbeat."
She went on to add the experience of giving birth helped her find a strength she didn't know she had.
Caggie added: "Birth showed me I could be stretched to the very edge, seconds from breaking. And yet, I didn’t break. I found a new depth. A new strength. A new edge.
"I’m in awe of my friends who are mothers. Of every woman who, behind closed doors, walks this path. How did I not know? It is not for the faint of heart. It is the work of warriors.
"If you’re in the thick of it - the baby blues, the blurry early days - I’m sending you all the love I can. And a gentle reminder: just like every other phase you thought you wouldn’t survive, you will rise from this too.
"Softer. Stronger. And with an even bigger heart. To birth a child, you contract. But you do so in order to expand. And the expansion is vast. Breathtaking. Sacred."
Caggie concluded her message by vowing to slow down and look after herself in the first few weeks of motherhood.
She added: "I’m doing my best to lean into rest and recovery - but I’ve been overly ambitious and set myself back once or twice.
"So this is also my reminder to myself: Go slow. Honour the sacredness of this time. The rest is not a pause. It’s part of the becoming."
