Saturday, 2pm.
We were having lunch with two friends and their 11-month old baby. I haven’t stopped dreaming of giving birth. One day has passed since my due date, and the last 10 days have felt so long.
This morning I had pain in my legs, like a nerve was pinched or something.
By the end of the meal, I start feeling my first contractions. It feels pretty soft but regular. I’m excited, day X is beginning.
7pm
I spent the whole afternoon having contractions. They are so far soft and I don’t understand why women complain so much about it (little did I know!). I feel confident but also uncertain. I don’t know at which point we should head to the birthing center. Jérémy is busy in the garage and pops in from time to time. He’s pretty relaxed and we laugh a lot, sharing the excitement and the joy for what’s to come.
I told Jérémy to prepare his bag and 15 minutes later we are on our way to Bourg Saint Maurice, the larger village in our area. In the car, the contractions feel more painful due to the shaky downhill driving. I can’t stay sitting during a contraction, I always have to move to all fours.
I start breathing more forcefully, it helps to take away the pain.
8pm
When we enter the birthing center, which is connected to the hospital, I feel pretty good. The midwife checks me and sees that I’m still pretty early in my labor. She examines the opening of my cervix and uses the monitors to hear the baby’s heartbeat and to observe my contractions.
Everything is looking good but I’m still miles away from giving birth. Since we live far away, the midwife invites us to stay here at the birthing center rather than return home. We feel kind of silly with our little luggage, well packed for over a month. Jérémy orders a couple of pizzas and we have fun eating them between contractions.
July 3th, 1am
I’m lying in my bed and every 6 minutes I have to get up and hang from the bar above my bed. The contractions are starting to feel very intense. Jérémy asks if it’s ok for him to sleep for a couple of hours, he feels useless.
Once I see him sleeping, I feel myself enter another state. I feel high, and the fact that it’s nighttime gives me a feeling of drifting off.
The midwife comes to check on me every two hours. I do my work, she observes me and, with the two sensor belts around my belly, she continues to monitor the baby’s heart and my contractions. She offers me morphine, because this will take hours. I feel a little confused and say “no need” just before the next contraction. Jérémy wakes up soon after and confirms that I don’t want any kind of painkillers.
5am
My body starts producing his own painkillers. I start falling into 30 and 60 second naps between contractions. I’m suffering a lot and wondering how this is doable by half the women on the planet. The effort becomes like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
Jérémy wakes up and I ask him for help. I need him by my side, during every contraction he has to breathe with me. I ask him to fill up the bathtub, and he stays there with me for hours. The hot water helps me relax. I start to poop and to vomit over and over. I can’t eat one single bite or drink more than a few drops of water. My body is starting to make space.
11am
Jérémy and I enter a sort of symbiosis. He can’t leave anymore, as I need him at my side. He is quiet but very present. At the start of every contraction, he reminds me to breath. The pain is violent and my brain starts to drift away to manage it.
The midwife offers to check the opening: 4 fingers (about 6cm). It seems unreal that I’m feeling so much pain for so many hours yet my cervix is not further open yet. I stay positive and I don’t allow myself to worry. I compare the situation with a big wall: Don’t’ think about topping out when you’re in the middle of the wall. Take every contraction as a crux in a long and endless pitch. Stay focused and believe that the baby knows what they have to do and how fast they have to move.
4pm
My water has not broken yet, and this is becoming a problem. It has been leaking little by little for more than 12 hours, and I have to take antibiotics to avoid infection. The midwife offers to help reduce the pressure of the fluid with a little needle. I refuse.
6pm
The last two hours have been a little less intense and I was able to sleep and to recover a bit of energy. The midwife is checking the baby’s heart, everything is good. I ask her to help me with my still unbroken water. She takes a very small needle and all the sudden, I feel such a huge relivement. I’m impressed by the quantity of liquid running out in one shot and I immediately feel better. Now the baby can move through more easily.
8pm
I’m almost there. The contractions are very very intense and it is so, so painful. I start crying, just for the pain. Jérémy calms me down and talks to me with his confident voice.
Finally, my cervix is at 10cm and the two midwives lead me to the birthing room.
They installed a traction bar above the bed, so I can take the same position as I did during my labor. But in this hanging position, I don’t feel like I can push hard enough. I start to regret that I refused an epidural, the pain was so intense. In the moment I’m too proud and too busy to say it. I start pushing like I learned in the labor prep courses, but it doesn’t work. After 40 minutes of pushing in this room surrounded by Jérémy and the midwives, I start to panic. One of the midwives calls the doctor, just in case.
When the doctor came into the room and saw me suffering like this, he immediately offered to use the forceps. Jérémy knows that this is his moment: He jumps towards me, jelling into my ears: “No Nina, you don’t need help, you can do it. You worked 29 hours and now it’s not the time to give up. ALLEZ ALLEZ ALLEZ!”
I can’t deal with having Jérémy so close to my ears and I yell at him to shut up. So he goes around the bed to the other side, ready to receive the baby. I change position and end up on my back, laying my legs on the bar.
At this point I was totally desperate and started crying on the midwife’s breast. She gives me very clear orders on how to push. I feel the baby going down and back up, down and back up. I feel powerless to do more but I don’t know how to get the baby out. Jérémy can see the head of the baby and invites me to touch them, but I’m disgusted by that gooey thing. But at the same time I feel obligated to push this thing out.
After one hour in this state, the midwife pulls out one more trick. She inserts her fingers towards my pelvis in order to stimulate where the baby has to move to. And with enormous encouragement and a huge push, the baby’s head finally comes out. Jérémy is holding the head and on the next contraction, he takes the baby in his arms. He’s coming towards me with this little present and is laying down the baby on my chest: “Nina, it’s a girl”.
I feel knocked out. I can’t talk, nor laugh, nor cry. I’m empty. Little Lia is laying on my breast and 5 min later, the placenta comes out, just as it should. Now I feel relieved. Lia gives her first cry and with it, the start of a new chapter begins. We’re a family now.
Giving birth was the biggest event of my life. It took us a while, but Lia made it slowly and steadily in 30 hours.
I feel so lucky that I was able to have a natural birth, it feels like a very big gift.
I would love to thank all the amazing midwives of Bourg Saint Maurice: Elodie, Marianne and Alexandra which helped me so much during the work and the pushing at the end. But also Coralie, Aurélie, Laureline, Cyrielle, Nadien, Virginie, Gisèle and Laurie. They did such an incredible job and I felt that I was in best care. It’s funny that at the end I was swearing many times that I would never do this again. Now, 4 weeks later, I see it as the greatest and best event of my life. The pain is big, there is no way around, but it disappears instantly and you only remember it as a miracle.
And thank’s to Jérémy, who was living this experience to its fullest with me and who never had any doubt in my capacities. These 30 hours made us grow! He also respected my wish to document the experience, even if it was stressful and hard to take pictures while I was suffering. He choose 3 different analog cameras and we’re happy to share those intense moments with you.
And last but not least, big respect to every woman who has given birth.
