In her columns, our collaborator Nathalie Plaat calls for your stories. In “Born under guardianship”, she invited you to tell her about “being born” as you would like it, that you experienced it or that you would have liked to experience it. The “News from you” section provides excerpts from your responses.
I’m walking a very fine tightrope at the moment. From the top of my 38 weeks and a few days of pregnancy, I look down, feeling very dizzy. I dreamed so much of giving birth surrounded by loving, reassuring, confident faces. In a living environment that welcomes mothers and their babies without judgment. Without worrying about the centimeters and percentiles which currently colonize the world of births and which raise the level of anxiety of mothers (with what consequences, which we will never measure, on their baby?).
Three years ago, after a follow-up in a birthing center, I found myself in the hospital at the end of the process. Three years ago, my boy was torn from my stomach, in a sterile operating room, too white and too bright, by the hands of men who worked over my body without ever looking at me or paying attention. addressing me and taking my baby away from me for his first hour of contact with the world. Not because he wasn’t well. Not because I wasn’t well. For reasons of management and organization of care. Three years later, tears still accompany the words when I talk about the birth of my son or even when I think about it.
This time, I had to be transferred even earlier from the birth center to the hospital for the same complication as my first pregnancy. The beautiful, happy confidence in which I bathed, accompanied by committed women, with gentle and respectful hands, with ears wide open to welcome my vision of giving birth, my values, my fears, my needs, my story — women with words frank and transparent, who are keen to explain to me why and how so that I can make my own choices for my well-being and that of my baby – has flown away. I watched it disappear into the sky, fully aware of the great mourning that I would have to accommodate in my bundle. To continue my journey.
I found myself in the hospital every three days in front of different doctors, who did not know my file and even less my history, having to put on armor and gloves to defend what hope I had left of preserving a part of the sacred ritual specific to birth. To the logical arguments that I brought into the discussion, referring to my particular situation and supported by facts and science, to avoid as much as possible from being butchered or induced again at 37 weeks when my body and the baby are They were clearly not ready, I was presented with standards, directives and risks.
We closed our eyes to logic in favor of meaningless numbers, but so practical when we want to maintain control and protect ourselves. How many times have I left the doctor’s office in tears, crushed under the weight of my armor, with bruises in my heart caused by these harsh words: “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to give you these new blood tests that you have necessary to ensure that you are not poisoning your baby who could die, especially if you refuse the recommended behavior. »
I accepted the induction at 39 weeks. Because I understand that this is what is best for us and that we will have put all the chances on our side so that my body and my baby are ready. But also because I must try to reconnect with my roots, my great strength as a woman that I draw from those who have been doing the same for millennia. Anxiety and fear can only get in the way of this powerful birth process.
By the time your next column is published, I will be giving life. I have four days to regain my footing, while this anger that you carry in the face of the need again and again to defend the practice of midwives also flows in my blood, today more than ever.
Not only should we listen to them, these wise women, and stop constantly wanting to take away their professional autonomy, but we should take inspiration from them in medical practice. So that the hospital system can open a little more, a little better, to the needs expressed by women, it must consider the full impact that this event of rare intensity in the life of a family can have. long term (and perhaps even on these famous postpartum depressions which we talk about more and more, but always putting hormones first, never the experience of childbirth because after all, the important thing is to have a healthy baby!).
Four days to replace armor with love.