Stories are written by people who don’t necessarily work or study in fields related to sexology. They convey emotions, perceptions, and subjective perspectives. Opinions voiced in the stories are those of their authors, and in no way represent the position of Les 3 sex*.

Ce témoignage est aussi disponible en français [➦].

Translated by Gabrielle Baillargeon-Michaud.

Marvellous scent! The scent of blood, milk, amniotic fluid, and vernix. The scent of soft, sweet, intoxicating skin. It lingers briefly: a week at most. The joyous scent of birth, emerging from you, my beloved, and emanating from me, your mother. A time of immense love… I breathe you in, my daughter, and I feel that you are from me and I belong to you. As you nurse, the images of your birth unfold.

***

One contraction. Then another. And yet another. I moan softly, serenely: our journey will be smooth. It’s warm, it’s ecstatic; I am a goddess, I revel. Beyond myself, outside of time, within me and in the now. Soon, we will meet in this hospital room and I will greet you with my own hands. This is what I requested and was “promised.” For although I was inspired by feminist ideals advocating the reappropriation of the act of giving birth, I still felt the need to ask the midwife for permission to give birth at my own pace and as I wished.

The shower’s hot, cascading water. The gentle rhythm of my tightening belly and the elating breaths. Your father, behind the curtain, reaches out, lifts me, dries me. Tender gestures, the instinctive gentleness of someone who knows how to be present while letting me be alone, in my plunge towards you. What a joy this childbirth is! I am your mother, but it is you who are bringing me into the world, my daughter.

Now it’s time for the push, whose intensity is such that it pins me to the chair I requested to welcome you on. It flows, it’s hot, I am sweating, the air filled with the scents of sweat, blood, bleach, latex. I press my hand against my opening sex. We surrender. My feet against the cold tile, I reach out with my hands.

But they drag me onto the bed, and I weep for it. “Your baby will fall to the ground,” they say, then, “it’s not sanitary.” Once a queen, imbued with strength, upright and proud, I now forfeit my demands before they even escape my lips. The pain is too great, and I vaguely sense it’s not just the contractions hurting me. Forced to lie down, my gaping sex exposed to the gaze of residents, I distinctly hear: “You wanted to see a natural birth? Well, here you go.” I’m in pain, I shit on the table without even noticing it; your father wipes me off, thinking he’s preserving my dignity. A tender gesture, yet what dignity remains, my legs spread, surrounded by strangers embarrassed by the doctor’s booming command: “Push, push, push A-G-A-I-N!!!” But what can I do? My child is making her way, and neither you nor I can help it. I feel distraught, and it’s only a few years later, when I figure out that I won’t have any more children, because your father and I have decided so, that I will grasp the full extent of the betrayal: the birth of my child was taken from me. 

Despite the promises of a delivery at my own pace and in line with my wishes, I had to comply with the [i]desiderata[i] of people I’ll never see again.

***

You do not move. You are taken from me, swept away. Do not go, my beloved! I have been cut, and they will sew me up, expel and weigh the placenta. You will be wiped, pricked, weighed. So much pain! Do not leave me, you who have inhabited me these nine months.

But I find you again. You nurse with such strength! Such power! Nurse and nurse again. Clutch my breasts, I give them to you. You are brand new, you smell of the beginnings of the world and I have a lifetime left to discover you.