Birth story - Juliette and baby Léo

After having a relative unproblematic pregnancy, besides a big belly, I had decided relatively early with my partner to give birth at home and to hire a birthing pool for the delivery.

I informed myself a lot, participated to birth preparation courses, yoga course, and was determined to have the least medical interventions as possible.

However, after I passed my due date, at 40 weeks and feeling still fit despite my huge belly. I was determined to refuse any inducement and wanted the most natural process as possible. However after passing 41 weeks, and still no contractions it became a bit more stressful, when will the baby come? I tried the membrane sweep but it was impossible as I had 0 dilation at that stage. 

I was determined to not being induced and wait until the contractions comes naturally, that would be when the baby is ready to come out. Even if it put quite a lot of pressure on my shoulders.

At 41 weeks and 4 days, the real contractions finally started, but they progressed very slow. I remember I woke up my husband on the Saturday morning telling him I thought labour had started. We were so excited! We knew it could take some time so we started the day by going to drink a coffee to the place next to our home and playing chess… 

A few hours later, back home, I called the midwife telling her my contractions had started, she told me to relax, and to call back when I would reach the step 5-1-1. The doula came home in the afternoon to support me. I thought, if everything goes well, I will have given birth by the end of the day or in the night at latest tomorrow morning… Sometimes, it’s good we don’t know what life has in store for us. Because in the night from Saturday to Sunday, after a whole day of unregular contractions, I finally called back the midwife to let her know that I had reached that stage and was feeling a lot of pain, so I needed the TENS machine immediately and if she could come to check on me. It turned out that at that point, I had only 1 cm dilation.. what a disappointment! So I had to be more patient.

After a sleepless night, there were still not much progress, but I should “keep going” she said, it might take some time. Our doula also came back on the Sunday morning in the hope that now the contractions would become stronger. A few hours later and more and more painful contractions, but not much more dilation (at some point she said better to not focus on the number of cms…), the midwife broke manually my membrane in order to speed up the process. By sunday afternoon, I had a huge amount of pain every time I moved around, tried showering, etc, went into the birthing pool, but still the dilation was not really progressing, I was feeling so desperate!

I never thought I would experience such feelings in my life, I was hallucinating, loosing myself, doubting that the baby will ever come out. And why on earth my body was not cooperating with me and I had to suffer so long with no effect? And mostly, I was slowly feeling that my strength was going away while I was not even at 5 cms dilation, so how would I handle the pushing phase? I started crying, feeling so helpless, although my husband was trying to do everything he could to support me, I was not able to eat and barely to drink with all the waves of the pain in my body.

Around 5 pm, the midwife came again and after the internal check, she advised us to go to the hospital to get the synthetic oxytocin to increase the dilation. At that point, I was feeling completely broken, I could not think anymore, I just wanted right away the epidural! My husband had some hesitations and wanted to try a bit longer at home. But I felt right away that it was really not possible to continue any longer. So we rushed to the hospital, I could barely hold on my legs, with half of the stuff, not knowing what was going to happen.

After 30 min, I could finally get the epidural, starting to feel myself again and be able to think. With the infuse of the synthocin, the heartbeat of the baby had also to be monitored and it seemed very stable so we felt reassured. After 8 hours and having received an increasing doses of synthocin, the dilation progressed of 1 cm, to eventually reach 5 cm. So we accepted that the only solution left at that point was a c-section. It felt so unreal, from having a home birth to ending up on the operational table to have a c-section delivery, somewhere I could not believe it. But at that point, I was just happy the baby could finally go out of my body!

The c-section was scheduled right away in the night, so our son Léo was born at 4h15 on the Monday morning, with my husband next to me during the operation, which helped me a lot going through the process. It was quite intense, after the past 2 days and ending up on the operation table, but at least I could be conscious and witness the birth, which was so important to me. The medical staff was very sweet all the way long and they lowered the curtain as soon as the baby was out of my belly, so he could be on my chest for a short moment. I will never forget that moment, which was so magical and so emotional at the same time.

The nurse took a picture and gave it right away to me. She also reassured me announcing that the baby was all healthy and weighting 4,5 kgs, so that was probably the reason the natural birth I had imagined could not happen, the head of the baby was just too big to engage in the birth canal! To be honest, I felt quite relieved hearing that it was not “my fault” and there was nothing “wrong” with my body. After that, the baby, the father and the nurse went away and I was being sent to the Intensive care unit to be monitored, but with the picture in my hand. After 2 Hours and a half of monitoring, I could finally be reunited with my baby, who was already very very hungry ! So Léo was put on my chest right away to start breastfeeding immediately. Although I was over-exhausted, it was the most beautiful feeling to be able to feed my baby, who had been 9 months in my belly and who finally came out! So this birth completely changed my view on c-section birth and on how natural birth was so important to me.