November 2016, Jessica, journalist and blogger is about to give birth to her first child. The young woman, aged 30, goes to the hospital where she is followed in Monaco. She arrives at 22h, to leave immediately before finally returning in the middle of the night. During the day, he is given an epidural and is advised to walk the halls to start the delivery more quickly.

"At the moment when I am being hung up, I am supposed to be anesthetized, but I feel everything"

A delivery that does not go as planned from the beginning: "I was given products to speed it up when I did not want to," she says. The hours pass, the delivery takes place more or less well.

She gives birth to a beautiful little boy of 3.6kg. But the happiness is short-lived: she then hears the midwife tell him that she will be "stitched". Jessica suddenly learns that she has just had an episiotomy without anyone asking for her consent.

"It was a surprise, at the moment when I was being hung up, I was supposed to be anesthetized, but I felt absolutely everything." The midwife responds that the pain is "in his head" and continues to make him undergo a nightmare by taking three times to make him the stitches.

Why did she have an episiotomy? "I do not know, they did not tell me anything." Thinking back, Jessica suspects the medical staff of wanting to "ship" her delivery .

"I think they wanted to go fast"

"The day I gave birth, all the rooms were taken, there was a lot of deliveries, they were overwhelmed and they did not have enough places for the mothers, I think they wanted to go fast. from one room to another and I think it was to save them time. "

The next morning, Jessica complains to the midwife of pain and tells her that she can not even set foot on the ground:

I suffered martyrdom.

Once again, the midwife tells her that it is "normal" since she had an episiotomy. His word is questioned again and not taken into account. After three days of suffering, she is finally examined. Result: the young woman suffers from edema .

"I left the hospital, forgetting my things"

When she goes home, no one tells her how to take care of her scar . The following months, she is so traumatized that she does not want to do the post-delivery visit scheduled 8 weeks later. "I was so disgusted with this experience, I did not even want to go back in. I needed to digest all that before, even leaving the hospital, forgetting business."

I experienced this act in a very violent way. It was a real trauma.

An episode still painful, which has left only physical scars: "It's been 4 months since I gave birth and I'm just starting to cry when I think because for me it was violent to discover what that they had made me and had to bear the pain without being listened to. "

I can almost tell myself that I'm not sure I'll make a second child one day, when we left for.

Fortunately, the young mother was able to count on the strong support of her companion, also shocked by the way she was treated. Because the episiotomy can also question the life of a couple: "The first time we wanted to have a relationship after giving birth, I was afraid of suffering."

Know that you have the right to say "no"

What does Jessica say the most about the medical profession? Not to have been informed, but especially, that the medical profession did not ask him his agreement to practice the episiotomy.

"During the birth preparation classes, the midwife had approached the subject without really going into the details and especially, without telling us what could be the consequences of this act.On my side I had inquired by looking a little bit on the Internet, to find out what it was, if we could refuse, if we had to accept, I did not know that the question of consent had to be asked. When I first learned it, I really felt that I was mistaken for a fool and mutilated me when I did not ask for anything. "

Today, Jessica talks about her experience around her: "I talk to my friends who have not yet had children to warn them. They are also told that they have had the same experience and that women really need to know about this and know that you have the right to say no, that you do not want it, and that you has the right to refuse, we must insist that we should be asked not to be surprised.
We are not guinea pigs, bits of meat or passing bodies, there are people behind. "