Giving birth

The experience of giving birth is completely different from one woman to the next, and also from one country to another. In France we have a remarkable health system. So when a woman is pregnant, she usually checks in with the nearest hospital’s maternity. From then on she goes in each month, not quite knowing who will examine her, for her routine check ups and exams until the delivery date comes. Compared to many countries this is incredibly comfortable and easy and accessible. It also means that French women’s birth plans are, by default, thouroughly medicalized, assisted by overworked hospital professionals who share information on a need to know basis.

I gave birth to three babies in Paris.

Now the thing with a first pregnancy is that you have absolutely no idea what to expect. And it makes it quite difficult to know which questions to ask and what are the alternatives to the route you are being guided through.

It is only when I got pregnant the third time that I had become knowledgeable enough to look for the right birth plan for me and how to make it happen with the ressources at hand. If the luxury of a good national health system means that great hospital care is accessible to all, it also means that specific care is only known by and dispensed to a handful of enlightened insiders or otherwise privileged.

As it is always the case with pregnancies and giving birth, my history is very personal. And as an expecting mother I changed drastically from one time to the next.

My first delivery was very difficult. It lasted 23 hours and my baby was in distress and I felt terrible and so guilty not to find ways to make it easier for her. My job as a mother hadn’t officially started and I was already failing.

The first ten hours of contractions had had no dilating effect because my baby was facing toward the sky rather than toward the ground. It went unnoticed, as far as my attending was concerned, the head was downward hence all was good. After ten hours of pushing, my baby was exhausted. The doctors gave me oxytocin to induce artificial contractions and keep labour going; and they regularly increased my pain killers to help me through 23 hours in labour. When it was time to push, the complications escaladated, more and more senior members of staff joined in and we finally, in a team effort, managed to get my daughter out with a vacuum - whilst another team was already preparing the caesarian cart. The most senior doctor that was present casually told me that we were lucky, had we been in a less developped country, neither one of us would have made it. She also explained that if we had noticed 20 hours earlier that my baby’s face was facing toward the sky, all it would have taken was to turn me on my side for the baby to naturally roll over and face toward the ground. Dizzying…

So I don’t know what to conclude. Were we extremely lucky to be surrounded by this incredible team of professionals and all this medical machinery that saved both of us in extremis? Would I have felt an instinct to roll over if I were not chemically disconnected from my body’s sensations and if my natural hormones had been in charge of the labour process? I don’t believe there is an answer to this question. I think I was incredibly lucky, albeit the 23 hours labour.

I do not want to advocate for natural births. If anything it rather upsets me to see how much pain and bewilderment can still be experienced in this equally extraordinary and common act of giving birth. I’m pretty sure that if men were the ones concerned by this ordeal, medical researchers would have already worked out how to ensure pain free deliveries and perfect success statistics. But it is a woman business and somehow it is generally admitted to leave women to endure hardship. So yes, epidural is a great progress, a wonderful invention, a crucial option. My only regret is that it still comes in the shape of a gigantic needle piercing through your spinal chord, because I find that pretty much as scary as having a baby pass through my pelvic bones to reach my vaginal opening.

My second delivery went very smoothly. I was able to push after 13 hours of contractions, which was in my experience, a relatively short labour. However when my baby came out, she was very purple and she didn’t scream for a couple of eternal seconds. The ombilical chord had wrapped itself around her neck on the way out. Thankfully the midwife massaged her back to us and all was fine and dandy.

When I learnt about my third pregnancy, I thought that this time I wanted to be the main actor in my child’s birth? Not give full power to the established medical body and be a guinea pig to their current trends (such as default episiotomies). I wanted to be in charge, not some sort of half involved patient in the background. To do so it was necessary to opt for a natural birth. It is still, in many countries, the preferred style. My compatriots though thought that I was out of my mind or some sort of enlightened hippy on the quest to guilt other mothers who’d chosen drugs (such as me in fact on my first and second pregnancies).

I will always advocate for the promotion of educated choices. I knew that it would be hard to have a supportive team at the hospital if I asked to walk outside the most travelled path so I went on the internet and started my search. And this is what I found in Paris.

I found the Groupe naissance, a collective of OBs, midwives and psychologists who believe in a more holistic approach to giving birth whilst relying on the comfort of today’s hospitals. http://groupenaissances.org

I also turned to Hormonal yoga. I joined the pre-natal class of an outstanding Hormone yoga teacher, Sharon Bales. https://sharonbalesyoga.com/

I prepared my body, I walked at least 30 minutes every day, especially toward the end. I practiced breathing exercises well ahead. I can’t recommend enough to practice ahead the golden thread breath, which is a precious help both to appease your mind and diffuse the sensation of pain.

Expecting mothers often ask me if it was much harder to give birth naturally. Again there is no answer to that question because going through childbirth is anyway the most personal experience we can go through.

It was my third delivery and I wasn’t scared of the unknown. I could make the difference between an early contraction and a more advanced one, so I went for a walk until the last moment. It was more relaxing than being attached to tubes in a hospital room. I arrived to the pushing call in a more positive mental disposition than the times I had waited restlessly on a hospital bed while aprehension built up. I liked how mobile and alert I was during delivery. And also I felt that I was giving the pace and my medical team was providing support when I needed. I felt taken care of, taken into account and heard. I definitely felt the passage much more sharply, and this is really the one harder element that needs to be accepted. Finally I loved how fast my body recovered thanks to my natural hormones working at their full capacity.

The act of giving birth is a miracle. No matter how mundane it is given the regularity of its occurence, it is a miracle each time it happens. For us, mothers, it will always remain a most significant event in our lives. A pregnancy is also a wonderful time to bond with fellow expecting mothers and exchange information and feelings. It is really worth engaging yourself in the preparation of this event. If you have any knowledge you would like to share about safe birth planning, pre-natal yoga classes, or such ressources in your own city, please leave us a comment.