“I’ve now accepted that I’m an imperfect mother and that’s okay.” Sonia Bruganelli he returns to talk about his daughter Silvia’s illness. The TV producer and commentator retraces her first motherhood: from the diagnosis of heart disease to her daughter’s hypoxia. “I have always seen Silvia’s illness as an injustice. I discovered that she had a heart condition in the eighth month of pregnancy, when the clothes were being prepared and the bedroom was being painted. It should have been the most beautiful moment and instead the doctors, directly , they told me: ‘If you don’t operate as soon as she’s born, she’ll die'”, Sonia Bruganelli tells al Corriere della Sera.
Silvia underwent surgery immediately after birth: “She was born on December 23, 2002 and immediately underwent heart surgery. But the damage due to postoperative hypoxia was discovered after a week. I had already understood that something was wrong, but everyone said I was seeing things that weren’t there.”
In the interview, Sonia Bruganelli also retraces her difficulties in accepting her daughter’s illness: “I had a breakdown: I was 27 years old, she was my first daughter, I hadn’t done anything wrong during the pregnancy, I had been careful. Paolo had 40 years old and broader shoulders, he took care of everything. I have the first photo with Silvia when she was three months old: before that she had always been in the neonatal intensive care unit.”
The TV producer faced a journey of acceptance: “I have made a long journey, which I am still making, to accept the situation and begin to enjoy Silvia’s motherhood without pretending to also be a teacher, physiotherapist, speech therapist for her… Not I should never have made a mistake. For a long time I dealt with the sense of guilt and anger.”
After Silvia, Sonia Bruganelli and Paolo Bonolis had two more children: Davide and Adele. To the question “Weren’t you afraid of having other children afterwards?”, he replies: “No, on the contrary. I was no longer afraid of anything. But the problems arose when Davide was born, a year and a half later, because in front of such a beautiful, healthy son, for whom I had put the blue ribbon outside the door, I began to tell myself that I didn’t deserve it, that I was taking something away from Silvia. That’s when my relationship with her became obsessive. while I could no longer be close to Davide. And that’s when I started working on myself. I only calmed down with the birth of Adele, in 2007, when Silvia’s health had stabilized and I could take a breath.”
As for the future of Silvia, who is now almost 22 years old: “I would like her to go and have fun in the evening and have an aperitif with her friends. My fixed thought is about the future, because she is not yet self-sufficient and will always need someone that he helps her. But I also think that she will never be alone, because she has four brothers (the reference – in addition to Davide and Adele – is to Stefano and Martina, the eldest children that Paolo Bonolis had with his first wife Diane Zoeller ed). Whoever will take care of her will have the financial resources to ensure that she doesn’t lack anything, and this is a great fortune in misfortune”
Sonia Bruganelli says of motherhood today: “At a certain point something triggers that tells you enough, do what you feel like. Now I can be better with myself. I’ve learned that you should never judge: the mother-son relationship is different and everyone finds their own way to live it. I found mine.”
June 20, 2024
