my birth story - Victor

So now it’s my turn to tell you the birth story of my first son...

This is how I thought it would go: I would be at my house, probably enjoying the last moment of me, myself and I, when I would start having these famous “contractions”. I would have time to follow all the tips that I received from midwifes and friends i.e. breath, take a bath, continue breathing, connect with the baby, breath a lot, check the timing between each contraction for at least two hours... Then at some point my water would break (even though I wasn’t sure I would notice it), I would call my husband to tell him that it was time to leave the office and to go to the maternity WITH my suitcase (that had been ready for at least three weeks!) and that once there I would have time for an epidural which would save me from pain. Finally I would have my baby with me and be completely in love with him.

This is how it really went.

On a late Tuesday afternoon, I was enjoying a nice walk with my sister in law (who is a midwife: this is clearly the key factor of this story!) and her 7 months old daughter when it all started. At first it was OK - 4 contractions in 45 min - for sure they made me stop walking and bend in half, so I thought that's it, I'm going into labour (and it still could go how I imagined it would go). We decided to stop in a cafe and this is where it gets slightly different from what I had imagined.  
I sat on my chair for approx. 5 seconds but it was way too painful - contractions were there way to often to stay on that chair! We went back out onto the street, planning to go home, but by then the pain was such that it took me 10 minutes to do 1 meter,  holding onto the walls and shouting that I was probably going to die soon (just to remind you that the streets in Geneva streets are slightly less crowded than the ones in New York and that I was getting a lot of attention). 
This is where I don’t remember exactly how it went but I must say I only survived (at that point I was really wondering if I would survive this moment) thanks to my sister-in-law who did everything right. She called her husband to pick us up, put everybody in the car (including her daughter!), called the hospital to let them know we were coming in soon, transferred me from the car to a room, helped the midwifes there and waited for my husband to arrive (without the suitcase though .... not his fault I guess).

When we arrived, I had reached 8cm dilation. I screamed for an epidural to save me and it dit...but only for 30 minutes - 30 minutes during which I was completely stoned and making a lot of jokes and my husband had to remind me that the baby was not there yet. My water finally broke, (I think this one is really difficult to miss!) but the baby was still high so I had to push for a very long time with no more epidural - I won't lie to you, that was a tough way to end the day! When the baby finally came out, I was more like “I think a 40 floor building just fell on me” rather than “oh what a magical moment”...

But don’t worry the magical moment arrived very quickly. Just took a bit of time to realise that I did survive these pretty crazy 4 hours of my life and that this time Victor was with me, for real.

Xxx

Laure