My name is Charline, I'm 39 years old, and I'm the mother of a little boy named Ysma, who turned one this summer. I waited a long time for this child – it took two years for us to even start trying, two years for me to get pregnant, meaning it was over 4 years until he arrived. Let me explain.
The desire for a child
This desire for a child came to me around the age of 34. I hadn't wanted one at all before that age, but motherhood had always felt like a given to me. My partner, on the other hand, didn’t want children... at all. He told me this from the moment we met 10 years ago. He’s a photographer, and most of his work takes him abroad, to the Middle East and Iran, where he follows and documents the last nomadic tribes. At the time, he felt that his lifestyle wasn’t compatible with fatherhood. Yet, we fell deeply in love. So, just over 5 years ago, I hinted at the growing desire I had, which had started to take root. It wasn’t for right away, but it was with him that I wanted to experience family life.
I left it there, hoping to plant a seed in his mind so he’d think about it. Since his decision to never have children and my wish to have one seemed to clash, it appeared inevitable that our paths would eventually diverge. Not wanting to give up on motherhood, not wanting to wake up at 40 with no children, I wasn’t about to “sacrifice” myself. When I say 40, of course, I’m exaggerating because, in hindsight, I realize it’s entirely possible to have a child at that age, or even later. But I was 34, and those 40 years felt so far away. It seemed unthinkable that nothing would happen in the next 6 years. I couldn’t bear the idea of hitting a dead end, the dead end of my own body. So, we talked, a lot. There were many discussions, often accompanied by tears. It took me almost two years to reason with him, and it was an "ultimatum" that changed everything. He had one year to decide, and that year went by so quickly. When the deadline came and went, we still had no answer, neither from him nor from me. I was still there, counting the months, my age, the time passing. I was 35, I wanted a child by the time I turned 36. Don’t ask me why numbers had such an impact on my thinking; I can’t explain this obsession. Naturally, our relationship wasn’t in a good place, it made us both sad, I didn’t recognize myself anymore. Pessimism had overtaken love.
We tried for a year naturally, we had sex often, spontaneously, lightly. We had never loved each other more than during that time. But after a year, nothing. It didn’t happen. I had asked my gynecologist, who I saw regularly every few months, to run some tests. She replied that she would only prescribe them after 12 months of trying. I had, however, had my ovarian reserve checked, and for a woman my age, it was more than adequate, considering I was turning 36.
The last time I went, she asked me my age again: “37 in three months.” Suddenly, it became urgent. According to her, there was no more time to waste. We had already wasted too much. She directed me to an IVF protocol.
The woman who had been looking after me for 13 years, who had my trust, and who was supposed to guide me, had now become a complete stranger to me, someone I would probably never see again.
The IVF Protocol
She directed me to Tenon. Tenon? I left that last consultation super angry and somewhat clueless, but luckily I knew who to turn to. I called a friend of mine, a doctor in the abortion services at Cochin-Port Royal—completely the opposite of IVF—but a doctor, so what does it matter? She suggested I go to Cochin for the IVF; that public hospital is highly rated. After our conversation, she took me under her wing. The next day, she confirmed that I had an appointment in April. It was the end of January, so I still had to wait two more months. I was disappointed. She explained that it was super fast to get an appointment like mine. But two months felt like an eternity to me! Yet another number bugging me, another obstacle in my stubborn mind.
With all the prescriptions my friend gave me, I spent the next two months going all over Paris to different labs and women's radiology centers. She was right, those two months flew by when you're busy. Thanks to all these tests, they randomly found a polyp in my uterus during an MRI. A small adrenaline rush before realizing that a polyp isn’t anything serious, just a little beauty spot, according to the doctor. I couldn’t see what it was doing there, other than stopping me from getting pregnant, and just being a pain in the neck. Suddenly, I understood it wasn’t my fault—I had this little fleshy growth, crescent-shaped, lodged in my uterus, preventing the implantation of a potential embryo. I could’ve been trying to have a baby for years and never known why it wasn’t happening.
They made me do a hysterosalpingography. They inject liquid into your fallopian tubes to check if they're blocked. Not everyone reacts the same way, and it can be quite painful. For example, a friend of mine passed out from surprise and the sensation. My friends and I all had children later in life, so we all went through this test to get a diagnosis, not necessarily in preparation for IVF. You can have a perfectly good ovarian reserve, and still have blocked fallopian tubes where nothing passes.
I had an amazing doctor at a radiology center. I passed his name on to all my friends after, especially since he had been recommended to me. Word of mouth, the key to sisterhood. A woman of a certain age came in with another doctor right after me, and I overheard her in the waiting room. I found him super invasive. He was describing her cervix’s width out loud, as if her vagina was just another object.
This doctor knew the one I had an appointment with at Cochin. He called her in front of me to explain the situation: “I’m sending you a patient named Charline, super sweet, but her guy’s never around because he’s a photographer, so the clock’s ticking. You can skip a few steps for her, I’m giving you my diagnosis.” Basically, let’s get started.
Then I had a hysteroscopy, which is when they pass a camera through your cervix into the uterus. It's a relatively simple exam, not very pleasant, and once again, not everyone reacts the same way, and I ended up fainting.
After the MRI, hysterosalpingography, and hysteroscopy, all the results pointed to the need to remove the polyp. By coincidence, the day after my birthday and the day before my first IVF appointment, I had the surgery.
So we arrived at the first IVF appointment, with the full dossier in hand, feeling light-hearted and with a body free of anomalies.
The doctor who saw us for the IVF asked what we wanted to do now that the polyp had been removed. We could very well get pregnant naturally. My partner looked at me and said, “You’ve been waiting for over two years, so it’s up to you to decide.” I chose to go ahead with the protocol, which would give our project an extra push. And nothing stopped us from making love.
That appointment was in April, and my first egg retrieval was in July. I handled it very well, while some friends of mine, who knew they had a problem to address, found it a big emotional challenge. For me, it was just a fertility booster.
In July, we had the first embryo transfer, but it didn’t take. We had a 50/50 chance—no drama. There was one frozen embryo left, which was implanted in October. That’s my son who’s here today. In the end, it all happened very quickly for us. Our IVF journey lasted six months, because I didn’t have a problem, and neither did he.
The pregnancy
One morning, I got up to go for a blood test, the one that tells you whether the embryo has successfully implanted in your endometrium. I remember it was a Saturday. I went back up as if nothing had happened, and then we headed to the MEP. It was there that the lab technician called me, spoke about my levels (of course, I didn’t understand a thing), and said: “It’s starting slowly, but it’s starting.” I had the biggest smile on my face, whispered to my partner, “We’re off!” We were so emotional, right in the middle of an exhibition—no neutrality, but honestly, the best place to hear such news. We went back to my mom’s, where we were living while the renovations were going on, like two teenagers with a secret in our pocket. Since everyone knew that my partner didn’t want kids, we hadn’t been asked about it in ages, and that was for the best—the surprise would be that much bigger.
We didn’t want to tell anyone until the end of the first trimester. The tests started piling up. We did an ultrasound pretty quickly. It was December 1st. We saw and heard the little heartbeat. Ocean of tears, tsunami of emotions, galaxy of happiness.
I had an amazing pregnancy. I wished it could have lasted much longer, I wanted to be like an elephant. In fact, I ended up giving birth two days later than expected. I had to be induced because I just didn’t want to leave this stage. I was living my best life. Before I got pregnant, I had always seen myself as a girl or a woman, but for the first time, I felt like a woman. I felt beautiful, desirable, and I liked what I saw. Then came the pandemic and the lockdown. I started to enjoy my own company within the four walls: daily yoga, cooking like crazy, resting, disconnecting from my social life—a real bubble to center myself. I only saw the positives until April 2020.
I was in my sixth month of pregnancy, and it had been a month since Covid had put the entire world on pause. We both got sick, we caught the virus. It was especially tough for my partner. Three weeks in bed, a heavy weight on him, no taste, no smell, fever, and a lot of worries. As for me, it was non-stop coughing. At that time, there were no tests available for the public, only suspicion. I had warned my midwife, the maternity ward, and my friend who works at Cochin about my symptoms. They all told me not to worry as long as I didn’t have a certain fever. But the next day, my friend called me back, asking me to come in urgently to Cochin for a baby monitoring at the emergency room.
I went there with a pair of underwear in my bag, just in case they kept me overnight. My partner was in bed, completely wiped out, when I told him I had to go to the ER, and that I had to go ALONE.
At that stage of the pandemic, everyone was being super cautious. The people who welcomed me took 15 minutes to get dressed and put on their protective gear. They kept me for only two hours after a battery of tests. My baby was fine. I wasn’t feeling great, but I wouldn’t know more until the next day. I then walked home. It had been a month since I had last walked, and it took me three hours to cross Paris, alone in this ghost city. I was contacted the next day to confirm that I was positive. Strangely, it moved me a lot, and I kept repeating that everything would be fine. From that day forward, Cochin called me every day for 10 days to check in. It was mainly to see how we were dealing with things, because we were in full lockdown at the time. It was psychological support. As for the rest, nobody knew anything. There were no treatment recommendations for patients. And since I was pregnant, I couldn’t take anything, even Paracetamol didn’t help. The feverish symptoms lasted exactly ten days, but the coughing stayed for three months. Intense fits that prevented me from finishing my sentences. Eventually, I didn’t even notice it anymore. My partner told me I stopped coughing the day I gave birth, so in July.
The birth
The days passed in an incredible calmness. To the point that on the D-day, there were no signs of labor, except for the date on the calendar. I could have stayed like that for weeks, even months. But that was just in my dreams because on the D-day, we had an appointment at Cochin for a routine monitoring. My friends told me to take my bag with me, just in case. But I didn’t feel ready to give birth that day, or the next, because it was an odd day, and I didn’t want to give birth on an odd day. Me and numbers, again.
I still took the bag for the delivery room, just in case. I packed a spare pair of underwear (always take an extra pair!) and my toothbrush at the last minute. The test went well, the doctor confirmed that both I and the baby were fine. However, I was running low on amniotic fluid, so I had to stay. From that moment on, I was hospitalized, with a bracelet on my wrist to prove it.
They told me I would be induced the next day at 8 AM, but in my mind, there was no way I was giving birth on the 19th. I was convinced my labor would go just like my mom’s, just like it did for my sister and me—three hours, tops, like a letter in the mail. I wanted to believe in this thing they call generational transmission, but it didn’t go down that way at all.
First, I wasn’t induced at 8 AM but at 1 PM. I waited five hours for them to place the famous tampon that would mark the start of things. I would have liked to be surprised by the baby’s arrival, not have it feel like a race against time. So, we waited. During this wait, my partner by my side, we strolled in the park, danced, did squats, wrote little songs for the baby, telling him, “Okay, you can come now, the Cherokee is parked down the street.” The Cherokee? That’s a future-parent anecdote. My partner had this idea of buying a very specific car right before our son was born. We had a van up until then, but it didn’t have enough seats for the baby. He found a Jeep Cherokee three or four days before. So, during the waiting, that’s what we told the baby: the Cherokee was ready, he could come. As for me, I had ordered a bassinet from Australia, but it was stuck in customs due to COVID. No drama, though—one of my friends lent us one, so he could still come, we now had what we needed to transport and house him.
Even though I was induced at 1 PM, by 8 PM, nothing had happened. Yet, it seemed like I was having contractions, according to the nurse I was chatting with on the porch of my room. I had back pain, which was surprising because I didn’t even realize it. Alone and without an epidural (I still believed in my plan for a natural, physio-led, water-birth, harness, four-legs position, etc…), the labor started around 8:30 PM. I spent the evening under a super-hot shower, following the nurse’s great advice, who regularly massaged my lower back. I’d go back to the shower every chance I got, in between WhatsApp messages with my friends. Around midnight, everything accelerated. Those intermittent contractions became so frequent that they came every minute. I was then hooked up to a monitor, lying down. I lost control of my movements and my breathing. I kept repeating to myself that he was coming, but I wasn’t ready. At 2 AM, I broke down and called my partner as if everything was fine, asking him to come quickly but calmly. At 3 AM, he arrived, and from the hallway, he could hear me screaming. He had no idea what I was going through.
I had an allergic reaction to the Propess. They had to remove it, but it was impossible for anyone to examine me, unsuccessfully. I felt like I was being stabbed in the vagina and had this feeling of tearing. I told the midwife not to touch me! I ended up begging for the epidural. At 3:30 AM, I was urgently transferred to the delivery room, in a wheelchair, screaming so loudly that I could have woken the dead between my first room and this new one, which I wasn’t going to leave for the next 24 hours. They gave me that sacred epidural around 4 AM, and then… silence. What an amazing invention! I didn’t feel anything anymore. The midwife could examine me, easily entering me like butter (sorry for the image), and finally told me I was only at… zero centimeters. I thought they were joking. But at least now I knew what contractions felt like—I understood, I’d experienced it. My labor was about to begin.
After 12 hours, I stopped feeling the effects of the epidural! It took 45 minutes for everyone, the medical team and myself, to figure out that I had accidentally unplugged the cable by turning over. They put it back. This period of stress caused oxygenation issues for my baby’s brain. We were monitored every hour for 3 hours, with PH tests included. They mentioned a C-section at first, but I refused. Then, they came back to it during the second hour, and I agreed. However, there was one last chance to deliver my baby vaginally. So, at the third hour, around 8 PM, when the whole department rushed into my room—one midwife and an extern by my side—we went from two people to eleven in the room, and I panicked. I had to give birth in less than 30 minutes because my baby had been stuck in my pelvis for too long. A C-section was no longer possible. To help me, they brought in forceps. I saw them, I panicked, I freaked out, I heard, I felt my flesh and insides tearing apart. It had been 30 hours of pain, hunger, and exhaustion. I had no more strength or will to face the biggest effort a woman can make. Suddenly, the act of giving birth felt like the act of dying… black hole… My brain and memories went into pause mode. The film resumed when I was told to push. An exercise I hadn’t learned during the 4 pathetic birthing classes I attended. I blamed myself for not being better prepared. I breathed, I screamed, I begged, and, of course, I pushed.
I lost control again when it wasn’t the midwife nor the resident, but the chief doctor at Cochin who had arrived in an emergency to deliver me, stormed out of the room, screaming in the hallway after the absent anesthesiologists. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t there. And I couldn’t understand why the doctor was panicking… black hole… I didn’t hear or understand anything anymore.
My son was born on the 20th, at 8:38 PM, and I still don’t know how. The labor lasted 30 hours, the delivery 30 minutes.
My little one was born after swallowing some amniotic fluid. When they placed this tiny purple bundle on me, I realized he wasn’t breathing. They took him away to tend to him. The anesthesia kicked back in at that moment, and in the blink of an eye, I forgot everything that had just happened, including the fact that I had just had a baby, my baby. Half an hour later, they came to get my partner, who had stayed by my side, terrified by the prospect of bad news. But our child was fine, he was very cute, and he recognized his dad from the first touch of skin. After almost two hours, it was my turn. They finally brought me my baby, but it was me who wasn’t feeling well. I felt this enormous weight on my shoulders—the responsibility that suddenly fell on me. I immediately asked for him to be taken away. I threw up. I wasn’t ready to take on this role that I had so eagerly awaited. But he was there, and he needed me. It shook me, I wasn’t expecting that at all.
I spent a long time thinking that by dying, I wouldn’t be giving life to my child—worse, I thought I would kill him and leave my partner in a double grief. I had minimized the birth. Women have been giving birth for millennia (without epidurals, no less), so why couldn’t I? My partner also struggled with the experience; we still talk about it today. He thought he was going to lose us both. He also thought, even if he didn’t lose me physically, if the child didn’t survive, it would kill me—mentally and emotionally.
All the people present during my delivery came to visit me the next day and every day after. The three midwives who had taken turns in the delivery room to meet my son. The two midwives who had welcomed me in pre-labor as well. The resident who came to apologize for a lack of explanations. The extern, it was her very first day as a maternity intern, who came to cry with me after her shift on the 21st in the morning. This 23-year-old woman moved and touched me deeply (Claire-Aimée, if you’re reading this, hearts with fingers). The chief doctor also came to explain the sequence of events and to offer me a meeting with the maternity psychologist.
I saw this woman every day. After the torrent of tears in the first two mornings, came the time for awareness and trust: "Here, you’ll do what we tell you to do, but once you're home, you’ll do what you want, but most importantly, what you can. And that’s how you’ll become the best parents for him." Even when a child is wanted, the whole experience can be shocking. I felt so useless, I kept thinking I wouldn’t be able to do anything. The first week, I couldn’t even give him a bath, it was very hard for me. I couldn’t breastfeed, even though I really wanted to. Nothing went as I had imagined. Especially since my partner was handling everything so well—this same partner who didn’t want kids just months before. He left me speechless. So I kept repeating the words of the psychologist to reassure myself. Words that still resonate 16 months later, which makes me say today that there should be no hesitation in consulting whenever you feel overwhelmed by parenthood.
The role of parents
And then, after this tsunami of emotions, we learn. We become the best mom there is, the best mom he could have, because after all, he won't have another one. And today, I feel on top of the world. As for my partner, he's been an amazing dad from day one. God knows how much fatherhood shook him, he never imagined for a second how big of a role it would play in his head and heart. He's a top-notch dad.
The advice
Never admit defeat, patience is a virtue. This holds true for my overall experience, both with procreation and motherhood, and discovering a whole new version of myself. There are so many wonderful things in today’s medicine, the healthcare system we all have access to in this country is remarkable. But not only that! There are also so-called alternative medicines: acupuncture, which I practiced before, during, and after, kobido, massages of all kinds — the key is to do what feels good to feel good.
I'd also like to add a little something about the return home. When you come back the first week, having visitors every day is not the best idea. We had told everyone to leave us in our bubble during those first days to find our bearings. Fortunately, I briefed them all before the birth, to give them a heads-up and avoid stepping on anyone's toes, because depending on the generation, my request was quite blunt, even misunderstood. We’ve paid so little attention to the mothers of the past that these same mothers repeat their postpartum patterns without considering the wishes of today's moms. I had anticipated not wanting to receive anyone, and that's exactly what happened. It allowed me to pick my moments — between the excitement of introducing my little one and the emotional exhaustion, not to mention the logistics. My body was still in shambles, we had to cook to welcome people with hospitality, and worse, I had to even shower!
One of my partner's friends offered to just come over, cook for us, and leave right after. I didn't accept, and I regretted it. From my point of view, it would have been the best thing to offer, and since then, I try to do the same for my friends.
<3
Thank you, Kenza, for reaching out to me on Instagram after a post by Johanna Tordjman during the 2020 lockdown, for wanting to meet me — the regular girl on social media — and for making me share my story for all the moms.
Speaking to all the mamas instead of a psychiatrist!"
