Motherhood begins with an unexpected heart condition for twenty-three-year-old Dewi de Koster, Kek Mama reported, after doctors discovered a large hole in her organ fourteen weeks into her pregnancy.
De Koster was twenty years old when she discovered she was pregnant with her daughter Maan. She had taken a gap year following a difficult time in secondary school and planned to study International Business Management at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, booking an initial appointment at an abortion clinic.
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” her mother told her when she shared the news. De Koster had just 34 cents across her bank accounts, lived with a housemate, and worked in hospitality, but she ultimately decided to carry the pregnancy. Extreme illness and fatigue plagued her first trimester until week fourteen, when physicians found the congenital heart defect.
And then you are told that it might still not be possible because your heart can’t handle it,” de Koster told Kek Mama. Physicians cleared the pregnancy to continue at seventeen weeks after she felt her daughter move. At thirty-eight weeks, medical teams attempted an epidural that failed to function during her labor.
“If this is giving birth with an epidural, I really don’t understand how people do it without one,” she told Kek Mama. Maan experienced fetal distress during the delivery, prompting a rapid extraction that resulted in a birth after two hours and fifty minutes.
De Koster heard no initial cry as medical staff whisked the infant away, leaving her feeling that her world had collapsed before the newborn finally cried.
Four months after Maan’s birth, de Koster’s father died unexpectedly following a previous stroke connected to his own cardiac history. The loss triggered severe health anxiety and panic attacks over perceived chest pain, leading her to call emergency services on multiple occasions.
She entered therapy while simultaneously managing her recovery, grief, and infant care, looking back on those initial eighteen months with harsh self-criticism.
‘’I don’t think I was able to really enjoy motherhood for the first year and a half,” she told Kek Mama.
Medical teams closed the hole in her heart this past January by threading a device through a vein in her leg.
Her recovery is ongoing, but the procedure eliminated her panic attacks, ended her need for therapy, and allowed doctors to clear her for future pregnancies.
Unable to work or socialize due to her illness, she began publishing videos on TikTok as an outlet. Her content eventually attracted a management agency, turning video creation into a full-time career that resonates with other young mothers and individuals experiencing grief or cardiac issues.
She now raises Maan as a single mother in the Netherlands while her mother, brother, and sister live in Indonesia, acknowledging feelings of isolation when comparing her life to peers completing master’s degrees or buying homes.
“Maybe I’ll want to study then. But until then, I really want to be there for her,” she told Kek Mama.
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