Jessica Thivenin would never have thought of living all this by becoming a mother. On October 7, 2019, when she welcomed her first child Maylone, her life changed completely. “It was the best day of my life and, at the same time, it was the worst“, she confided for her first birthday. And for good reason, the toddler encountered serious health problems. He was born with esophageal atresia. Despite an operation, the situation went from bad to worse and Maylone was very often the victim of suffocation, until the day he was close to death.
During an interview for Rawon the occasion of the release of his book My children, my battles, Jessica Thivenin remembers that day, still overwhelmed by emotion. “We go to the restaurant with friends and I give him the bottle and very quickly it turns into a nightmare. I realize that he is starting to change color, that he is starting to turn gray, blue… I give him to my husband because I am completely panicked, I don’t know what to do with an infant that is changing of color. I try to pat him on the back and I see a little blood coming out of his mouth. We get up from the restaurant and head for a taxi. When we’re in the taxi, my husband has him in his arms and I ask him how he is, he tells me he’s dead, it’s too late. But I can’t accept that my son is dead and I have the idea of giving him cardiac massage because there’s nothing left to do anyway. By doing the cardiac massage, after three times, I hear a very small breathing, it was small, minimal but it was already so huge. We arrived at the hospital, they immediately took care of him“, she explained in tears.
He becomes dead again
Things are getting better, but Jessica Thivenin feels that at any time, Maylone’s life could once again be in danger. A few months after this first frightening episode, her son choked again before her eyes. “What I was afraid to happen happened a second time. I’m at home, with friends, and Maylone, after the bottle, glues her trachea back together. Tracheomalacia closes. And so, there you go, it starts all over again. He turns blue again, he is no longer breathing. He becomes… dead again. I take him, he’s very small, he’s only four months old, I lay him down on my little rug in my living room. My husband, next door, has trouble calling the ambulances, he is so panicked that he no longer understands anything. Suddenly, I have to try to manage the telephone and at the same time the cardiac massage pumps“, she confides.
Maylone ends up coming to her senses”Like nothing ever happened“. Living with the perpetual stress of losing her son, Jessica Thivenin, however, managed to put things into perspective by telling herself that she was in spite of herself. became a “pro” in resuscitation.