Month: February 2021

Hi, welcome to the show. Can you tell us your name and where you’re from.

J: Hi, my name is Jules Theis, I’m from Toronto Canada but I live in Cannes France right now.

P: Oh nice lovely. And how many kids do you have?

J: I have two little boys, Oslo is five and Louie is three

P: oh wow nice those are good names.

J: Thanks

P: so many people come to pregnancy with an idea of what it’s going to be like before they actually embark on it. What were your ideas about what it would be like?

J: yes so when I first became pregnant I think I was a bit of an idealist, and I just thought pregnancy was going to be amazing. The first couple months were wonderful I’d always wanted to be a mum so I just fully embraced the pregnancy. And then as it unfolded obviously symptoms come up which are normal, but it sort of changed my perception of how pregnancy can be, but I still kept going with this, believing that the pregnancy and the birth will be really beautiful. And so I started planning for a homebirth really down to like every detail, ensuring that the expectations I had of this pregnancy and birth would be the complete dream.

P: Wait, tell me about a home birth, what do you need for that?  like what does that look like?

J: Yeah, so in France, it’s pretty different than what I thought it would be like in North America. So it’s not really supported by the medical system in France, as much as it is in Canada and the US. So, when I went to Google home births in the south of France. There was one registered midwife for the entire department. And so I immediately contacted her and at that time I didn’t actually speak hardly any French so I was like hey, this has to work like it’ll only work basically she speaks English.

P: Yeah.

J: And so I contacted her and luckily she did speak English. And basically, she is there to assist in the birth, but you have to kind of supply your home with all of the medical stuff she doesn’t do this. So, in France, you have to register with a medical supply company and they basically delivered to your front door, a level one. ER room.

P: Wow

J: so there’s oxygen there’s all the medications you might need if there’s an emergency, but, like I said I was planning my perfect birth so I literally just stuck it in the corner of our bedroom. And it just sort of collected dust over the months and I didn’t even really think about it, and then Apart from that, it’s just whatever you want to make comfortable so for me it meant like putting up birth affirmations all over the walls. I had like a mattress for the floor, the bathtub I had all this stuff prepared, just to make myself comfortable.

P:  Yeah.

J: And then when it’s time to just basically called the midwife up and she comes to your

house.

P: Wow, I feel like that’s pretty brave, that’s feels like a spirit of adventure.

J: Yeah, sometimes I look back and think what was I thinking, because I wasn’t actually that prepared i mean i think i was just so excited to do it and to, to, kind of, you know, give birth and be a mom, I didn’t really think much about the process of laboring in terms of okay well what happens if I’m in uncontrollable pain or something goes wrong,

P: pain is a tricky one to plan for right because it’s impossible to have a sense of what it will be like so.

J:  Exactly,

P: you know, your, your on fair ground there because like, how could you know, right?

J: yeah. Yeah, exactly.

P: So did you get pregnant easily?

J:  yeah, so the first time, it took about five months, which I know for many of my friends and people stories is is quite short. But when you’re going through it, it felt really long. And for me, I never actually tracked my periods or ovulations so it was sort of the first time I was understanding my body and like the cycle and the timing. But yeah, I took pregnancy tests every month not really knowing but once you become pregnant you instantly know, so when I did that test I was like okay I definitely felt it that time. And then the second time I got pregnant with my second son. One year after I gave birth to my first. So really close together and I got pregnant. The first try. It was. It shocked me.

P: Yeah, I think our expectation is because you’re told you know as a teenager, you’re going to get pregnant instantly. And so I can see that in the five month span every month that you’re not pregnant you don’t know how long that’s going to go on right so it’s a stressful. It’s a stressful thing, and I totally relate to the idea of like well, now we’re not preventing pregnancy, obviously, I’ll be pregnant.

J: Yeah.

P: It will be Immediate. So I’m glad it was, you know, relatively quick even though it doesn’t feel that way.

J: Yeah,

P: and then with your first one, how was the pregnancy itself?

J: So the pregnancy was pretty easy going and think it was quite normal I just had some, like all day morning sickness which…there’s not much you can really do but I was really healthy my levels were great, but that’s how I was allowed to have the home birth, because you have to be stable. Everything has to be fine.

P: So did you have an OB somewhere that you were like going to check in with?

J: I did for the first couple of months and then after I strictly just went to the midwife, and then to get any ultrasounds, you have to go to a separate doctor to do that so they, they monitor the baby. But it was, it was pretty natural in terms of the care like there was no ob gyn monitoring me.

P: It sounds like it’s all pretty smooth sailing and then let’s talk about the birth. How did you know what happened you know where were you?

J: So, it was, we ended up September, and the week leading up to that everyone, everyone was talking about this like super red moon, there was like this lunar eclipse. So all these French people because they are always really big on the moon and full moons have seen Oh your baby’s going to be coming really soon, but it was like a week early. And so I thought no no like I planned this he’s not coming, a week early and the night of the full moon I started to feel the surges. And I kind of was in a little bit of denial that it was happening but by at about 5am.

I was like okay this is actually happening.

P: You mean contractions? , is that….

J: Yeah. So, the problem at first was that my midwife had told us a couple of weeks before that she was going to be doing a training, out of the country. And so if I went into early labor, she wouldn’t actually be there. And so she gave us the contact with another midwife, just in case. And this midwife we met her. She didn’t speak any English, and I just didn’t click with her. And so the whole time I was like it’s fine it’s fine I’m not going to like she’s not going to be there for my delivery. And so, the first early stages of labor were kind of coated in this disappointment because I was not only early and I didn’t feel prepared the midwife. Our midwife wasn’t actually available. So I labored at home for about 12 hours on my own with my husband James, the contractions were okay i mean they’re painful but I could breathe through them I did some hypno birthing

P: Hypno birthing is a birthing method that focuses on self hypnosis relaxation techniques to reduce the fear, anxiety and pain, often attended to childbirth. It involves breathing techniques, focus on positive words and thoughts, and guided visualization to help relax the body before and during labor and birth evidence on its effectiveness is mixed I’ll link to studies in the show notes

J: I kind of went in and out of the bath. And then at about 5pm, they started to get really bad, like I knew it was official like I definitely needed help at that point. So we called the second midwife the backup midwife and she came like maybe 30 minutes after. And she arrived and checked my cervix and I was like, Oh, for sure I’m gonna be at the end, like I’ve been in labor for so long, and she checked me and I was only five centimeters. And I was so upset because I just couldn’t believe that I had gone through that much and I was only halfway there. And then I continued laboring. And I had mostly back labor. So it was like a pain I never experienced so every time I had a contraction instead of being like in my uterus where I expected it was all through my back and my sacrum. And she started figuring out which obviously wasn’t monitored was that the baby was back to back with me. And so usually when you have contractions like that it’s, it’s all forced to your spine. And so,

P: that doesn’t sound comfortable.

J: No, and I learned after usually if that happens look into an epidural at the hospital because it’s it’s it’s just excruciating but I didn’t have that option because I was at home. So I just had to kind of like suck it up and try and power through. And yeah I labored at home for a total it was nearing 24 hours I labored at home.

P: That sounds exhausting…so no sleep I’m assuming…

J: no no sleep. No, they always say like, oh, try and take a nap if you can, but I think if you’re having a natural labor with just no assistance, you just feel every contraction, and you have no relief so I didn’t rest at all.

P: Yeah, I imagine, feeling like someone’s pushing a spike in your back is not, you know, conducive to a nap.

J: Yeah,

P: so we’re 24 hours in and what happens next.

J: So, we get to 24 hours she checked me again and I’m, I’m done like I’m at the end I’m just like get this baby out every like thing I learned about natural labor about the hypno birthing and moaning and connecting. I completely disconnected to that. And all the while she’s speaking French to me, and I’m speaking English and James is in the middle trying to like translate everything. So it was, it felt very lost in translation the whole experience. So, I’m at the 24 hours it’s like nearing midnight. And I tell her I’m like oh I have this urge to push and prior to that I was in the bathtub and my, my waters broke in the bathtub. And I was like, Okay, this is great, again like the movies you think if the waters break your baby’s gonna come right

P: through pregnancy your baby is surrounded by a fluid filled amniotic sac when the baby’s head puts pressure on the SAC your water breaks. It can happen too early, before labor. At the beginning of labor or during labor, or they might not break on their own and the doctor breaks them in the course of delivery. According to Web MD, and about 10% of cases, your water breaks and the TV sitcom way. At the end of full term, your water breaks suddenly and contractions begin.

J: And so she’s like okay I’ll check your cervix again because if you have the urge to push you’re probably at 10 centimeters so you’re probably just like at the end. and she checks me, and she tells me I’m at 10 centimeters, but really I’m at nine centimeters, and she tells James like she’s at nine centimeters I don’t want to tell her because she’s gonna feel really discouraged. But if she has the urge to push, I’ll just let her do it.

P: I thought it was not safe to push on a cervix that wasn’t ready.

J: That’s what I thought too, so I assume because she told me 10 centimeters I could.

P: Yeah.

J: And so I start pushing because it felt good and I had that urge to.

P: Yeah,

J: and I kind of start switching positions I’m on the floor, I’m on all fours and squatting, and the baby just like not coming obviously. And so she I do that for about, maybe 20 minutes. And she checks the heartbeat and she says oh the baby’s heartbeats actually like a little bit low. I’m not really comfortable with this, I’ll let you push for 10 more minutes. And if he doesn’t come out, we’ll probably have to go to the hospital. And it’s so interesting because I was so terrified of the idea of the hospital, I was so scared to give birth there that’s why I wanted to have a home birth initially,

P: because you like have not had surgery before like what about the hospital scared you?

J: I just think I associated the hospital with only like bad things

P: yeah that’s fair.

J: Yeah, I didn’t never had a bad experience in the hospital like I never I’ve never had surgery I’ve never really had to be there for anything negative, but I think because I had read all the statistics of births in France, and seeing the percentage of epidurals, especially when people didn’t want epidurals because when I checked it was higher than 80%.

P: Yeah,

J: so for me , that scared me. And then reading,

P: so you thought they’d force an epidural on you?

J: yeah, force and epidural and that can lead to complications, for cesarean, and that’s what really scared me. So I thought if I stay at home. If I stay natural, then I’m in control of whatever happens. But what I later learned is your, you can’t control your body especially where it does what it does, you know. So I push for 10 more minutes. And nothing’s happening. And so she calls it and she’s like, okay we got to go to the hospital. And we hadn’t packed a bag, we hadn’t prepared in any way so I’m just like screaming out at James to pack, you know whatever we can glasses and toothbrushes and,

P:  yeah,

J: a change the clothes. And we rushed downstairs so I live in. I lived in an old 300 year old village house with four stories. And so I’m at the top.

P: No!

J:  and I have to walk down this like winding staircase down the streets to get to our car, and doing that like nine centimeters, it’s not ideal. And I sort of just lose control walking down the street to the car I’m just screaming, I don’t care who I wake up at midnight, I just am like howling. And we drive the 10 minutes to the hospital. It feels like 30 seconds. And we arrive at the, ER, and I suddenly felt like quite calm about being at the hospital like it actually felt kind of nice to feel like this would be. I’ll feel safe here.

P: Yeah,

J: I’ll have a team of support. And we arrived we arrived to the emergency room and then they take us to the maternity ward. And we’re freaking out we’re like, the baby’s heartbeats really low like this is really scary. And in France, the there’s, instead of nurses and doctors running the maternity it’s typically midwives, and then the OB usually comes in just at the end to make sure everything’s okay so as a team of amazing midwives and they check the baby they check me and they’re like, What are you talking about like everything’s fine. Baby’s fine. You’re great. You’re actually at 10 centimeters now, so whenever you feel ready to push, go for it. And I was like, Okay, this, this was great, and the head midwife. I’ll always remember her she had her mask on, but she had this like platinum blonde spiky hair. She was a big presence, and she spoke English and she looked at me right in the eyes and she’s just like you’re gonna do this. You can do this. And it feels so good because it was like the first sort of clarity I had for the entire labor because before it was just running back and forth between a French midwife and James. And so, I feel the urge to push with the next contraction and the French midwife that I had at my house the home birth, midwife was holding my one leg, James was on my other side holding my other leg, and I had the midwife in between my legs, and she was like, go. And so I start pushing and it feels really good. Like I loved the urge to push. It’s almost like there was so much pain happening at the same time that you just focused me in on what I needed to do.

And I push I push for about 10 minutes it’s about three pushes and she looks at me and she’s like, okay the heads out. The next push. He’ll be here, and actually it was a surprise so I didn’t even know it was a boy or girl so I was just like yeah okay I’m gonna meet my baby this is amazing. And I push as hard as I can. And I start to just shake vigorously. And my teeth are chattering and my eyes are fluttering, and I look at James and I look at everyone around me and everybody’s like, looking at me kind of confused. And then, everything goes black and

P: goosebumps. Goosebumps….yikes! I’m nervous about you… keep talking.

J: And I wake up the next morning about eight hours later and I’m in the intensive care unit of the hospital. I wake up, and there’s machines all around me beeping. I have three IVs in my arm. And I’m like, okay, where am I, it feels like I have a really bad hangover so almost forget for a second, like, like why I was here in the first place. Why am I like did an accident happen. Did something go wrong. And then I kind of am triggered to remember that I was pregnant, and I feel the pain in between my legs from giving birth. I lift up the covers I check my belly there’s no belly there’s no baby. And so I’m completely confused. I just think of the worst like something really bad has happened to me baby. And I catch the eyes of a nurse, out of the ICU and she comes in and in her broken English she explains to me that the baby’s okay I had a baby boy. His name is Oslo. He’s fine he’s with my husband James in the maternity ward. And at that point she called the doctors to explain what had happened to me as well as James to come see me. And basically what happened was, while I was pushing, I was totally healthy my levels were fine. As I was pushing my blood pressure skyrocketed. And I started having a seizure. And it was basically having the symptoms of eclampsia with no preeclampsia.

P: So what so what does that mean?

J: they don’t know they don’t have the answers for why it happens, especially for someone so healthy during their pregnancy

P: I talked to a maternal fetal medicine doctor who specializes in preeclampsia research to make sense of Jule’s experience. Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show. Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re working.

Dr. Rana: Hi. So my name is Dr Sarosh Rana, I am a maternal fetal medicine specialist. So I take care of high risk pregnant women, and I work at the University of Chicago medicine.

P: So I’m wondering, what’s the definition of eclampsia? Can someone have eclampsia without preeclampsia or is there a linearity to that spectrum or No?

Dr. Rana: Yeah, so this is a common presentation that sometimes patients can present with an eclamptic seizure so this is seems like what happened to this woman without having all the symptoms or even any symptoms of pre eclampsia.  So preeclampsia is “pre” means before, it’s  something that would happen before eclampsia, though I can tell you that scientifically it’s not really true, because many times patients with eclampsia can actually develop eclampsia without hypertension, without any of those classical symptoms or signs of preeclampsia such as that happened in this woman. It is actually not uncommon to have the eclamptic seizures suddenly Out, out of the blue and the pregnancy or even during giving birth, and the prevalence of having the eclampsia is actually quite low it’s not, it’s not that high in developed countries it’s quite high and depending on where you’re looking so for example in Haiti in Sierra Leone and like African nations, because of the lack of prenatal care, the prevalence of eclampsia is a bit higher, but a large majority of eclamptic seizures actually happened during pregnancy so antepartum, but so about 60%, but 20% of them can happen intrapartum so during labor, and this happens obviously very dramatic that the baby was just being delivered but you can have it in your first day second stage of labor, and then about 20% of them can even happen after delivery and majority of them are happening in the first 24 hours of of giving birth. So yeah, it’s a very dramatic disease and it’s actually a major problem especially in developing countries.

P: And do we know like what chemistry underlies that that issue?

Dr. Rana: Well, so there’s lots of hypotheses about preeclampsia in terms of it’s a vascular dysfunction problems so in the brain people believe that it’s like because sometimes then you have elevated blood pressures and in this case she didn’t have it, but it can cause like laser genic edema, so they can be hemorrhages and they can be edema and they can be something called press, which is just reversible posterior brain edema so it’s mostly from edema and hemorrhage, that the women can have a seizure.

P: Okay, so it sounds like bleeding in the brain or swelling in the brain can be the issue here.

J: And so they monitored me I assumed the ICU for four days they checked my vitals they were really scared I had brain damage from lack of oxygen. After I everything went black and I passed out. I flatlined. And…

P: that’s terrifying.

J: Yeah, the most terrifying is just for James because he was just there witnessing all of this, not knowing what happened. Yeah, so the midwife saved Oslo’s life because she actually without knowing she cuts an episiotomy in me. And so she had enough room. As I was convulsing his body was being sucked back into mine.

P: Oh my god,

J: and she had enough time to just stick her fingers underneath his armpit, and yank him out. They cut the cord. They cleaned him up, gave him to James, and said, you go out in the hallway. And you, we’ll call you in, like, and then they rushed the emergency team in, and they for an hour and a half, they were reviving me. And then finally I stabilized and they had a ventilator helping me to breathe.

P: Wow.

J: Yeah, its intense

P: It sounds like these seizures can be quite dangerous and the danger is that you can have some sort of cerebral issue or what’s the danger.

Dr. Rana: So the danger is from the seizure, is so dangerous that you can aspirate so we’ve had patients and she had cardiac arrest seems like which obviously can lead to death.

P: Yeah.

Dr. Rana: Yeah, so she was lucky that she, I’m sure that they had very good services there that she was resuscitated and brought back. So you can have aspiration, you can have cardiac arrest you can have brain bleed. So you can bleed in your brain. Some people can also have stroke so that can lead to long term neurological damage. The majority of patients I would agree with that plan to actually recover because you can give them medications control their blood pressures. Magnesium is a common medication that is used to prevent recurrent seizures, you can delivery them and majority of the patients will recover but eclampsia is actually a major cause of maternal death.

P: Yeah,

Dr. Rana: So it’s a very serious problem so she was actually frankly really lucky, and also she didn’t have any others features of preeclampsia so you can have other things along with eclampsia so you can have HELLP syndrome, you can have other things so yeah I mean she, she escaped in cardiac arrest which is pretty phenomenal so she’s quite lucky.

P: Wow. Oh my god, I mean, my first thought is, Thank God you were at the hospital.

J: I know

P: what would have happened on the fourth floor of your old house right?

J:  And these are all the questions that still play in my mind because you just wonder what would happen.

P: Yeah, well that’s amazing. Maybe because you’re so healthy you were able to recover from this kind of shocking thing that happened to your body.

J: Yeah, because the miracle that always, I had no like symptoms after I had no effects from it. There was nothing left or like my, my levels were fine Three days later, I could walk I could stand my brain activity was fine, they’re scared about the organs can sometimes be affected after like your kidneys and your liver. Those were all fine. So for me it was really jarring because something like really traumatic had happened but it had no like lasting effects.

P: Yeah,

J: so it was hard to accept that anything had happened really yeah.

P: Yeah. Wow. So you’re in the ICU for five days did you say four days?

J: Yeah, it was the four nights five days on the fifth day, I could go down to the maternity

P: and then when were you released from the hospital?

J: Eight days. I was in the hospital for eight days.

P: That seems both long and not long enough so on the eighth day you just walk out with Oslo?

J: Yeah, it’s. It felt very strange because it felt like they had checked all of my like physical and medical but they hadn’t checked my mental state so in my head I’m going. Are they seriously sending me home, because I felt like such a disconnect between myself and the baby. I was struggling to breastfeed I was just struggling to, to make sense of what had happened. And I just was like should I say something like I shouldn’t be going home yet. And it’s, it’s interesting James took a video of me leaving the hospital, and I look like kind of like a Bambi like I’m just like coming out for the first time and my I’m like squinting and all my senses are being like, you know attuned like the smell of the cigarettes, the sun, the ambulances everything was like too much for me it was such a strange experience to be outside of the hospital which felt so safe for me.

P: Yeah. And so did you just go home and carry on or how do you how do you transition from that very difficult thing.

J: So, the hardest part going home was because I knew, like home symbolized something so different for me now. It was always like a beautiful place for me to go to I always felt like a foreigner in the streets of France but home was felt like such a cozy nice place to retreat to. And now as soon as I came home, I was like, I don’t like this place anymore because it had the lasting feeling that I was meant to have a home birth and I didn’t. So sort of coated in this failure and shame. James did an amazing job of like cleaning everything up. So, there was no like remnants of the home birth left, but I still had this feeling. And yeah, we just went back to normal life, because I didn’t have any like lasting physical effects of the birth and like me dying and coming back and all of this, I could very easily just sort of like deny that that trauma, even happened, and I just sort of like buried it, and was like, okay, everything’s fine like my baby’s beautiful and healthy. I want our life to go back to how it was before, just like, you know, a happy young couple. So, yeah, I tried my best to sort of make it look like everything was okay.

P: Women who don’t undergo that kind of traumatic experience, but have their own sort of expectations dashed in different ways have a hard time going home. So I can’t even imagine how do you kind of come to grips with this thing that has happened.

J: So, when we came home my mum had flown in from Canada to help us, and everything that came to visit us like I think the hardest part was everybody just had known about what had happened but I always say like a new baby trump’s, whether you had a good birth or a bad birth.

P: Yeah,

J: if you’re doing okay or not. And it just felt very fake, all of it, you know, I’d hear another guest was coming over I’d put on some clothes. I’d really want to just stay in my pajamas, and I try and put some makeup on and brush my hair and I just didn’t feel like myself so I think that sort of helped me in a way to sort of have this facade for guests because I didn’t feel like myself I didn’t even look like myself, and so we just kind of pretended, we played house for a while like everything was fine and. And the good thing is the baby was totally healthy so I’m grateful for that because it just was lasting effect in James and I that we were the only ones that really knew about the trauma in detail, you know. And so, whenever a guest would come we’d just be  like, here’s our baby like everything looks great. But it became a lot and I was struggling so much with breastfeeding because I didn’t breastfeed him for the first four days. And so we tried but it just felt so foreign to me because I didn’t get to do it from the beginning.

P: Well also I would think your milk comes in and then it goes away. Right?

J: Yeah, so I, I had colostrum for the first three days and then I felt my milk come in and the first day. And so, that day they like tried to bring the baby to me. The hardest part about being in the hospital though was, I was in the ICU and he was in maternity and babies aren’t allowed it in the ICU and ICU patients aren’t allowed maternity. So I’d wait hours and hours every day just to find a room, we could meet at that was neutral ground. And I really only got to see him like once a day. James spent the whole time with him in the maternity. He was like, the mom from the beginning.

P: Yeah, yeah. At what point do you like feel yourself like how do you kind of get back to yourself?

J: So it took years. So my son’s five. Now, I wouldn’t say I got back into my body until really this year. Because I like I made an intentional decision to feel it and get back into it because pregnancies are a really good way to sort of like bandage over any wounds and any pain. So, when also turned one year old. My husband and I decided to try for another baby. And for me it was almost like because I was in so much denial about the trauma. It’s like I never got to feel it fully. I kind of just like pushed it pushed it. And so when I got pregnant, the second time I kind of thought oh this is ideal because I never actually have to get out of my body I breastfed for a year, and your body is amazing when it’s going through their breastfeeding, like everything just feels great. At least it did for me once I had worked out sort of the issues with breastfeeding I really enjoyed the experience. And then we decided to get pregnant again. And I gave myself 10 days like between deciding to wean Oslo, and getting pregnant was 10 days, so I never really got back into my body before I became pregnant again.

J: Do you and James have a conversation about we’re worried, this will happen again or.?

J: He was terrified. I was, I think because I was in just such disassociation with the trauma I didn’t even think about it like I knew I wouldn’t I knew I wouldn’t have a home birth again, I didn’t even want one.

P: Yeah.

J: And also I was considered high risk, even though, again I had no symptoms or anything. They just had to keep an eye on me. But yeah, I didn’t really think about it, he was really scared he was extra precautious, with all of that and for me, I was like, Oh, it’s a fluke it won’t happen again. But the, the birth of my second son, almost trump’s Oslo’s in drama. I was just, I’m not made to have birth…

P: how can that be? that doesn’t seem possible but also, like, the thing that’s hard is the thing you described in the beginning of this which is because you don’t know what caused this, and like what the seed is, it’s hard to avoid, right?

J:Yeah. Yeah, exactly, but I think women are so good at just having their survival tactics going so far into that, and for me that’s also like the way I was raised, when anything big and emotional happens, you just sort of act like it doesn’t. And so for me it was really embedded in my.

P: Yeah,

J: in the way I am.

P: That is a coping mechanism.

J: It’s huge. Yeah. And so when you ask me if I like when did I feel back in my body, it was more this year because I told myself like I cannot disassociate from this anymore I have to feel it. Yeah. That’s why the healing process is so hard and I think it’s it’s why it’s so hard to be a mum because you do have to allow yourself to to heal from whatever trauma you’ve experienced.

P: Yeah, and there’s not that much space if you’re lucky enough to bring the child home and you’re instantly into up every three hours, feeding…

J: Yeah, motherhood

P: Yeah. So how was the second pregnancy?

J: So the second pregnancy was just like the first. I was so healthy, I had the normal symptoms of just nausea, acid reflux, Charley horses and things like that but really amazing. And I always felt just so good pregnant. it just made me feel. I was actually in my body. And it was really nice. The second time because I feel like I wasn’t in my body that entire year after I gave birth to Oslo. So to be back to growing life again, it did feel like it filled it, it felt like it filled a void. Again, which was really nice I loved it. And so during that process I knew I couldn’t have a home birth so we found this amazing doctor this OB who spoke English and French so it’s perfect for us, he worked at this amazing Hospital in Niece, called Lon Val it’s like a private hospital with a sea view so I was like if I can look at the Mediterranean Sea and give birth at a hospital I’m happy I was really excited actually to have a hospital birth, and I had to be monitored every single week to make sure my numbers were fine they didn’t want to repeat what had happened with Oslo. And so, I had to see this amazing midwife Nedege every week she came to my house, and we became quite close it was, it was really nice she did some home births but for my sake, it was just to, to make sure I was healthy, and my baby was due. The week after my birthday. My birthday is July 3 he was due like, I think July, 10 or something. And it was on my birthday I woke up and I had contractions and I was like, No, I don’t want my baby on my birthday, I kept thinking I was like mums never get a day so like I don’t I’m not giving them my birthday. But again I was in denial about the whole thing so. So I started having pretty intense contractions, I’m only like two hours in, we call my in laws to pick up my son Oslo who’s like, he’s like 20 months at this time so he was really little. And I call Nedege my midwife to say I think I’m in labor, can you come over and just like check, because I still had the fear at the hospital that I wasn’t in enough. Like if I wasn’t enough.

P: dialated enough?

J: Yeah, exactly. That that can always cause for intervention because again I didn’t want to have an epidural I just went to a natural birth. So she came over like 30 minutes later, and she checks me and she’s like, you’re at seven centimeters, you need to get to the hospital now, which is, if there’s no traffic it’s like a 30 minute drive. If there’s traffic, it can be like an hour. So, we’re panicking, and I’m like, oh my god okay this, we’re doing it James goes and gets the car. I’m screaming down the street. It’s in the middle of the day, people are passing by and French people they’re like yelling felicitations! they’re like screaming congratulations happy, just like, oh my god, so I get to the car. And I tell her I can’t get in the car, like I feel he’s, he’s here, I can’t get in the car, and I’m like I don’t know what to do I don’t know what to do. And she’s like, Okay, well, you have to decide I don’t know, and so I was like you have to check me again. And so she goes well we have to go back to the house, we walk all the way back to the street, she checks me. I…baby’s there,  head is there.

P: Wow.

J: That wasn’t a course of like 10 minutes, I went from seven centimeters to fully dilated. So James goes back to park the car, and I go up a flight of stairs and I can’t decide where to have this baby, so it’s still going in my head okay where am I going to have this baby. And I decided to just make a little nest on the landing in between the stairs going up and going down. Outside of the guest room. I don’t know why I chose that spot. It’s like, 35 degrees Celsius. I’m sweating. And I just want to have this baby. And I lie on the floor, James arrives back at the house he stays by my head, and Nedege is like crouching in between stairwells. And she’s like, whenever you want to push you can push like he’s here. we are not going to the hospital. And I was like, really calm it was so strange like I wasn’t stressed about being at home I was just like, here we go, we’re doing it. And I didn’t know that James had called the ambulance, while he was in the car because he was terrified that something bad would happen. And so he’s like I’m just gonna call the ambulance just in case something happens they can take her. So in between pushing, I hear this massive bang on the door and I’m like, Who’s knocking on the door I’m giving birth! And open, they open the door, and eight people come  

P: Wow,

J: there’s a doctor. There are two nurses, there’s firemen. They all come up, they want to take me away and my midwife was like, No, no, no, she’s giving birth like. Be quiet. Watch. And so I have all these people going up the stairs downstairs, watching me. Like, what is happening? just legs open, and I just

P: This doesn’t seem like part of the plan….

J: NO! This is not part of the….I was meant to be birthing to meditative music, watching, watching the sea with my husband and my OB. This was not a part of the plan. And so she’s like, she shuts everybody up. They’re all watching me and she’s like, she looks in my eyes and she goes, you get this baby out. And so I just push as hard as they can. And he comes out and I can see I’m looking everybody’s eyes are just like open, they’ve never witnessed like a normal birth. P: yes

J: obviously their emergency service workers so for them this is like so new. And I push him out, like, really, really fast. He comes out he goes on my chest. And the amazing part was the firefighter, she was recording the whole thing…

P: Oh, That’s awesome.

J: Yeah, so I have it on video and James and I  are just like crying and I just got that moment because for me the hardest part with Oslo. It wasn’t waking up in the ICU, it wasn’t going through all the process of all the medical stuff. It was really not having that moment with him that I’d worked so hard to have him on my chest and to connect with him. And so, I call it my stolen moment. And so the fact that I could get that with Louie was incredible. It was all I wanted. And so, You know, we spent like 30 seconds holding him and firefighters and the doctors like okay, allez! like we got to get her to the hospital. And I was like, can’t I just stay here like Can’t I have my home birth and just go back in my bed with my baby. And they wouldn’t they wouldn’t allow it. And so they carried me down all the flights of stairs. Put me on a gurney and put me in the ambulance and took me with Louie to the hospital. So that was kind of the bummer of it all was I got my home birth, but I didn’t actually get to have the benefits of staying at home.

P: I’m ambivalent about them taking you away, on the one hand, like thank god

J: yeah

P:  and on the other hand, it seems like you’ve passed the scary threshold.

J: Exactly. Yeah, I mean I get why they did it but yeah. And I think it just taught me a lot about expectations and things with birth, like it doesn’t matter how much we plan. What we want our bodies just really lose control and you just have to kind of go with the flow and be open to whatever happens because, you know, I had planned my both my births pretty much down to every detail and neither of them went to plan, which, you know, it taught me a lot.

P: Yeah, it’s a good lesson at the threshold of motherhood.

J: Yeah,

P: because you know the period in which you are in control of things is now officially over.

J: Yeah, it’s so true. You just have to ride the wave because seriously, that is that is motherhood, so I guess it prepared me That way,

P: what so you when you go to the hospital they release you like how long do you stay this time?

J: So typically in France it’s three or four days, but it was pretty crazy because I’m in the back of the ambulance and with the doctor and nurse, and they’re just like on their phones, watching videos…I’m going, are you kidding me?and I’m there like, bumping along I’m in so much pain because you’re just bumping on this road and all the streets are like ancient so it’s not like a smooth. Nice highway. And I have my baby. And I felt this urge to push again. And obviously with Oslo’s birth I didn’t know what it was like to birth, a placenta to have to come out. And I’m like, excusez moi I was like I think the placenta is like coming. And she kind of looks at like under the sheets and she goes, No, no, you have to wait until we get to the hospital to do that. And I go, No, no, I think it’s coming, and then it just honestly was the most bizarre sensation because it just comes out and then I was like I think it, I think it’s out, and she looks she’s like, yep. And I just like sat with a placenta in between my legs as we wrote to the hospital, it’s just so glamorous…

P: it’s so funny for her to say no, wait.

J:Yeah, it’s very French though, just like you’re no that’s not accommodating of you. So you’re just going to wait till it’s fine for us. Well no, it doesn’t my body doesn’t work that way.

P:Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. So, did they make you stay for three days when she got there?

J:Yeah, so I had to stay, I think it was three days, which actually was kind of nice because our house is an air conditioned and in the summer it’s so hot and the hospital is air conditioned It was nice to have my meals brought to me and. And we did plan to be at the hospital anyways so it was okay like I was prepared for that. Yeah, so we just kind of took it as like a mini holiday and at that point we’re already parents to a toddler so it’s actually kind of a nice little getaway for us with our new baby.

P: Yeah, so that’s nice. Wow, that is some, some entrance into parenthood for you. It sounds like you’re, you’re feeling more connected and you’re, you found ways to kind of overcome the trauma?

J: Yeah, this year. I mean, I think, for all of us 2020 and being in a pandemic was really difficult. I think it shone a light on all of the parts of us that we were trying to hide away from because we had so much more time on our hands like for me I had a small business that I ended up closing down this year, so I wasn’t working. I had this time to sort of just really sit with myself, and I no longer kind of felt the need to hide, and I basically spent the year just getting over it and and healing from it in different ways. We had visited a therapist, five months after Oslo was born. I didn’t want to be James kind of after a while I was like I think I need to speak to someone and I think you should as well. And so that sort of opened the door to the healing process, it started to give me a language for the trauma so the the stolen moment, the therapist, gave that to me, which was really helpful, because I think it’s really hard when you go through a trauma, whether it’s a birth trauma or any other just to find the words to explain how you feel, because it’s all new. Most of us have never experienced that kind of like event before where it leaves you really scarred. So this year for me has been telling my story more and finding the words to explain it but also just sitting with it and being okay with what happened.

P: Yeah, it’s definitely a process

J: for me I couldn’t say that I died, like I had buried that so much I didn’t even realize I had died, and then James told me a couple years ago and we were talking about it as we were discussing it as a couple because we hadn’t even talked about it to each other, really. And when he told me I was like, Oh my God, oh, like I was in such denial about it that that had even happened, which for me now is so strange because it’s not like I caused it to happen like it was nobody’s fault but I think when you have shame associated with it you just don’t want anything to do with with with the story. When I was in the early days at the hospital and there was telling me it just didn’t make any sense to me and then I kept saying to James that like I had died and they had brought me back to life, and, you know, it was hard for me to even understand what that meant I was like obsessed with googling like near death experiences and to just find like other people that have gone through that. Yeah, it’s a very strange thing to to experience,

P:  if you could go back and give yourself, your younger self advice about any part of this process what would you tell her?

J: I think I’d probably go back to when I was pregnant with also. I know I can’t really. It’s strange and the healing I’ve accepted the bad and the trauma and I’ve learned so much and I in a lot of ways I’m grateful for it because it’s taught me so much about myself and it was a huge learning curve for me. But what I wish I had known during the pregnancy was that. It’s really a process to just like let go, and to give in and let nature take over and to just accept what’s happening because I was just so controlling of every aspect of it and clearly nothing went to plan so I was totally caught off guard and I think it would have been nicer for me to just really have given the experience a little bit more and just let everything unfold the way it needed to without controlling it.

P: Yeah, that’s, uh, I feel like that’s that lesson is only learned when you don’t do it.

J:Yes.

P:  So think about like your life before kids. There aren’t that many things that feel out of your control, maybe really they are what but you know you’re planning you’re, you’re doing this and that to try to make things look a certain way and for the most part, we’re pretty successful at it. J:Yeah.

P:It’s hard to meet that moment kind of the right way. Yeah, until you don’t, which is I think like a fairly universal experience right?

J: yeah, definitely and it definitely helped me now as a parent to just know that like, I can’t control much like, you know, you just have to kind of allow your kids to show you and you just have to kind of go with it, because we’re all learning.

P:Yeah, totally. Well, Jules thanks so much for coming on, I know you’re working on a book about this. So yeah, I will link to the show notes about your Instagram and get kind of updates about when that’s available.

Unknown Speaker  11:14 

Yes, hopefully in the near future

P: perfect

J:Thank you so much.

P:Thank you. Thanks so much, Dr Rana, I will put a link for her on the war stories from the womb.com website and you can check out the amazing things she’s doing for preeclampsia research. Thanks again to Jules for sharing her story. If you enjoy this episode, feel free to like and subscribe if you’d like to share your story, go to our website and sign up. We’ll be back soon with another incredible story of overcoming.