Aurélie, 27 months and 17 days pregnant

Aurélie is a ray of sunshine. She is 30 years old, also goes by the handle Love Eat Smile on Instagram, and is the mother of Joy, born in the summer of 2020. She shares her experience of motherhood with us, which sparked a deep desire in her to help women.

3 AND A HALF MONTHS

I got pregnant in the fall of 2019, and honestly, I had been trying since the summer of that same year. Trying was a source of stress nonetheless. I started crying while on vacation in California, for instance, because I had just gotten my period. I began to question things, I thought about fertility issues, about my body not wanting to, whereas Dimitri (my boyfriend) was optimistic about it. I found out I was pregnant on the day of a photoshoot... for period panties!

9 MONTHS AND TWO DAYS

Joy decided to arrive 2 days past her due date. She was due on July 5, 2020, and she arrived on the 7th. I had a "lockdown and company" pregnancy, so it was quite a unique experience. While it was, of course, a moment of immense joy, it was also a transition into a different life, that of a mother, which was quite brutal for me. I put incredible pressure on myself and one thing is certain: I was poorly supported, if not entirely unsupported.

15 MONTHS

To be perfectly honest, I am just starting to recover from my childbirth.

I am starting to think about myself again as a woman. I know my pregnancy is over on a physical level because visually, I don’t look like the woman who was pregnant. But it’s much more complex than that. I am still carrying my child, I am still breastfeeding her, she is in my head every single moment, I don't think about myself. It is a real effort and a task to start thinking about oneself again. And, in fact, it is essential.

What’s more, I’m a highly sensitive person, so everything is intense and amplified. The worries, the questions, the ups, and the downs. To refocus on my post-pregnancy, on this postpartum period, it’s simple: I thought I would never regain my strength. Even just a little bit of strength. And yet, I hadn’t anticipated it: I am a yoga teacher; I thought I had better control over my body. I wasn’t prepared…

On a psychological level, I felt a huge lack of self-confidence. We should implement real follow-up care, establish visits to see how this new mother is doing. I find it crazy that a hospital cannot participate in the well-being of the woman who gives birth. To get services, you have to pay, be connected, go to the private sector. And even then. Moreover, I believe we should take care of all mothers, not just those who had a difficult birth or premature babies. Without meaning any malice, I think we should pay as much attention to a mom of a preemie as to a mom in general. In any case, it is violent both psychologically and physically.

After 15 months, I took steps to help myself unlock physical ailments because I have had pain in my body since my delivery. Thanks to an osteopath specialized in somatic psychoanalysis, I understood that I needed to close some doors and open others in order to accept things and get better. It’s one of my new priorities.

After a year and a half.