20 months ago, when my mum was still lying on the operating table, and doctor Iaschi was embroidering my mum's womb after having brought my big brother Oscar out of it, my mum asked the medical team when she could start to plan for the second child hoping to have a natural birth. The answer was: wait one year to become pregnant again, then you should be able to have a natural birth. My mum waited 11 months, and then she was pregnant with me, and she continued to cultivate the hope to give birth in a natural way. It was not that she didn't enjoy the birth of Oscar, actually she had been surprised to find out that the team of doctors and midwives at the San Matteo Hospital in Pavia did all they could to let her participate and enjoy my brother's birth, even if it was a programmed cesarean. It was just that she wanted to experience natural birth so much that she had tried everything possible to be able to give birth to Oscar that way, 2 months of
Moxa, two times the doctors tried to turn my brother in her womb, but he refused to turn his head down and in the end the cesarean was inevitable! This time she wanted it different, and when the 3° ecography (the one that cast doubt on my sex) revealed that I was cephalic, i.e. turned the head down in my mum's womb, she really launched herself towards this mission. The gynecologist that followed my mum's pregnancy in Ponte San Pietro was not so supportive to her decision.
There is a lot of risk signora Valgardblabla, remember that, he said and then closed the ears when my mum who had been documenting herself told him that the World Health Organisation recommended VBAC (Vaginal Birth after Cesarean), and that medical publications showed that it was actually riskier for women to repeat the cesarean than to have a
trial of labour as they call it. Terror propaganda, my mum called the attempts of Dr. Blaise to change her mind, and although he managed to saw a seed of fright in my mum's mind he did not manage to change it. So when my mum was sure I was staying head-down she went to visit the hospital in Ponte San Pietro and in Bergamo to check if they were supportive of VBAC -which both of them were, and then together with dad, she decided to opt for Bergamo, as it is a bigger and better organized hospital, and only a couple of kilometers further away than the hospital in PsP. At the hospital in Bergamo they told my mum that if the birth did not start before the due date, she should come in for monitoring, and then she would have one week to give birth. If things were delayed more than that she would have to program a cesarean. Fair enough thought my mum and then started waiting. The due date came and passed, and nothing happened. Actually mum was quite reliefed that I didn't decide to
land on the due date, for she said it was enough that I share half her stubborn and difficult genome for not having to share her birthday as well, with all the consequences that astronomy says it has on ones character. When my mum went to Bergamo for monitoring at 40w+2d all was ok both with me and my mum, and therefore she was surprised when the doctor, a young and skinny woman lacking a funcitonal pair of social antennas, told her that she should go to the hospital the next day to be recovered for a programmed cesarean!
What happened to the week overdue that my mum had been promised? Where was the relaxed and supportive VBAC policy that my mum had met when she had gone a couple of weeks earlier to the hospital? Why did she have to program a cesarean if all was ok both with herself, me and the placenta? First my mum got angry, then immensely sad, and in the end she left the hospital in tears, leaving my dad to search a diplomatic agreement with doctors and midwives. The results of this monitoring was that my mum was to come back to the hospital the next day -and only if she met the right doctor would she be allowed to escape the second cesarean for another couple of days, and more importantly she was more convinced now than ever that she wanted her natural birth. When my mum came home she decided that she had to try everything she could to get the birth going. She had noticed on the monitoring sheet that there were some vague contractions of the uterus, so she decided to go for a long walk to try and get them going. And off she was. Ponte San Pietro is not a big town, but my mum walked all around it in order to kickstart things, and when she came home about 2 hours later, she was happy to notice some cramps in the uterus. As the afternoon went on the cramps became more evident, and when she timed them around nine in the evening, they were regular every 6 minutes. Time to go to the hospital for some monitoring as she had been instructed to do. At the hospital they confirmed that the contractions were there, but they told my parents that there was still a long way to go, so my dad was sent home, but my mum was recovered in the hospital so that she could be monitored and followed by the midwives and doctors. My mum did not sleep at all that night, partly because of the contractions that continued, partly because of a human-tractor that shared a room with her and partly because of all the crying newborn babies that woke up at all hours during the night to be breastfed by tired new mothers. Next morning at 7 my dad was back in hospital to support my mum, and together they passed the day walking around the hospital corridors trying to get things moving again. The contractions came every 4 minutes, and lasted 45sec to 1 minute most of the day and were effective, for my mum was 4cm dilated in the afternoon, but Ilaria Trussaud, the midwife that followed my mum, said that my mum was not yet in true labor, for it was impossible to be smiling through the pain as my mum was doing if it was true labor. At 7.30 in the evening the midwife decided it was time to give nature a little help, and with something that looked like a crochet hook she pinched a hole in the amniotic sac. It was a bet she said, for it may also result in endurance of the uterus and then we have to do a cesarean. But the bet went well, and if mum thought that giving birth was like walking in a difficult terrain until then, now it seemed more like climbing an icy mountain side during a thunderstorm for suddenly labour started with such a brutal series of contractions that my mum who hadn't vomited since she was a baby herself found herself vomiting repeatedly. Luckily my dad was there to give moral and physical support to my mum, and to lead her through this difficult mountain-trekking. The midwives were surprised to find that despite the pain of labour my mum was smiling through most of it, not because she was particularly enjoying the pain, but because she was doing what she had dreamt of, she was experiencing birth, and she felt that she was in a way
showing the finger to the skinny anti-social doctor she had met the day before and which so thoughtlessly had condamned my mum to the second cesarean. Once things started going they went quite quickly, and around 11 o'clock my mum started to feel that she had to push. The midwife said that she should still wait another 15-30 minutes and use the contractions to move me down the birth channel. This was the hardest part of labour -where my mum had to fight the urge to push. She vaguely remembered techinques she had learnt in the prenatal-course 2 years earlier, so she tried to breath as if she was trying to hold a feather flying in the air, and simultanenously to refuge with her mind to a happy place. The only problem was that the happy place she had used to practice the technique a couple of years earlier was not working at all, and so it was time for my big brother to step in. For the next half an hour my mum supported the urge to push by squeezing the thighs and hands of my dad, breathing as if she was holding a feather flying in the air, and by picturing my brother happily playing with his LEGO. Then finally it was time to push. It took my mum about 3 contractions, a swift refreshing of the pushing technique she had learnt at the prenatal-course (the practice of which had strained a muscle in my mum's tummy and sent her to the emergency room 10 days before Oscar's birth), and valuable instructions from the midwife ("don't use your throat to push, the baby is not going to be born through your throat signora valgablabla!") to learn how to use the contractions efficiently, and then I started to move quickly through the birth channel. When my head was out, my mum thought for a moment that the birth was over, so when the midwife said to the midwide-student "hold the baby's (
il bambino in italian, i.e. masculine) head". My mum raised herself in the bed and said: ah, so it's a boy (remember that there was some doubt about my sex). Well, signora, said the midwife patiently, it is difficult to tell when all we can see is the head. Before my mum could laugh at her own stupidity there came another contraction and suddenly I was out of my mum's womb, ready to scream so powerfully, that everyone in the province of Bergamo knew I had arrived.
The midwive told my mum that now that I was out they could confirm that I was a girl, and then my dad told the world what my chosen name was,Irene, and after a refreshing bath, weighing and dressing and counting of fingers and toes, I was brought back to my mum so she could breastfeed me for the first time.
Mission completed, a happy and successful natural birth achived!
Maybe my mum should thank the skinny doctor lacking the social antennas for kickstarting my birth with the emotions she brought up in my mum's mind, for convincing my mum once and for all that she wanted her natural birth, and moreover. My mum is sure that her reaffirmed convinced mind gave her the strength to support the birth without screaming for an epidural or a second cesarean to escape from the pain. It was well worth it!
p me in their arms so I could see this little miracle better.
