‘While putting a child in the car, I get hit and suddenly my door is on the street’

An accident is in a small corner, they sometimes say. It really turns out to be so. When I pick up my children from the nursery, something unthinkable happens.

I’m strapping in one of my boys, leaving me crouched in the crack of the back door. My car is parked in the box in front of the nursery.

Just picking up the kids, I’ve been doing it for almost four years. And have been parked in front of that door for years. But suddenly I am hit: a van hits my shoulder and especially my back door, so that the door suddenly lies on the street. We’re terrified.

I stand trembling in that dark street, it is pouring with rain. My boys have a pout and have to cry softly. They understand the panic in mom’s eyes. Fortunately, the driver stops and comes to apologize. We fill in a claim form. Someone from the ANWB will stick my car door together with tape, so that I can at least still drive home with the children.

When I can finally leave after the accident, the shock really sets in. After all, I am also five months pregnant and that is sometimes worry enough. Is everything okay with the baby in my belly? Was that blow hard or soft, I don’t remember. It happened in a split second, before I knew I was looking at my smashed car door. I call my husband to tell him what happened and can only cry. The children are also shocked and are silent. My chatters are almost never silent.

Sometimes it’s just too much. Sometimes you can’t keep it all up, sometimes making a human in your belly and keeping two little toddlers alive, alongside a full-time job, alongside a social life, is just asking a lot of yourself. And that’s okay. I’m not a perfect mother and I don’t have to be. I am the best mother I can be to Bodi and Daaf and later also to my baby. And mothers sometimes have days when things go smoothly and occasionally there are those days… Which you prefer to forget quickly.

Tessa Heinhuis (33) is the mother of Bodi and Daaf, twins, and pregnant with the third. They live in ‘t Gooi. In addition to her personal stories for Kek, Tessa is editor-in-chief of Mama Magazine.