[LIVRE] The second life of my son, an ode to maternal love

“The love of a mother for her child knows neither law, pity, nor limit. He could ruthlessly destroy everything in his way. »» Laurence Le Jalu is blatant proof that AGATHA Christie was right. When his son, Théodore, falls and drowns in the family swimming pool, when the doctors say it condemned and then intended to be only a lifeless body, Laurence Le Jalu no longer knows neither law, nor pity, nor limit. A second time, she will give life to Théodore.

A dream house in an idyllic garden in Brazil, an expatriate French family with its three toddlers and a mother, often alone, who devotes herself to raise them: the beginning of the testimony of Laurence Le Jalu, in her book My son’s second lifepublished by City editions last January, has everything of a fairy tale. It only takes a few minutes, one evening, for life to switch. The youngest, a lively, playful and teasing baby baby is found by his mother inert, pale and swollen under the tarpaulin of the swimming pool. “Oh, no, my baby is dead!” I found it in the pool, Théodore is dead! »»

In Brazil, faith is omnipresent

Any mother will read these chilling words with tears in eyes and hearts in crumbs. Laurence the Jalu begins a cardiac massage, desperate. The Samu arrives, his son will make two heart stops. “I want to scream my pain”ten minutes of inattention, a phone call, the mother feels the whole weight of guilt on her shoulders: “Oh, as I feel murderer, a bad mother, oh, as I cursed, this call, I was not there, he heard me call him, he suffered, agonized underwater …” Constantly, she turns the scene, we repeat to her, however. “It’s an accident”. Brazilian help take care of his baby, protect her meager breath of life and Laurence Jalu promises her son that “It will not be the last hug”.

“Madam, on a scale of one to ten, her life expectancy is 0.5. Suffice to say no hope “announce the doctors to him. It is badly knowing the love and determination of a mother. Each passing day is a fight, and a victory. Every day, this courageous mother is fighting to make the defeatist predictions lie: “Theodore is just a rag doll. »» In Brazil, faith is omnipresent; In the hospital, the sisters, the other parents, each repeat to him that “God is good”that her little one will get out of it. When she sees a spark of life, when it is recommended to “Stimulating it excessively”Laurence Le Jalu then lifts a real army around her baby. Physiotherapist, speech therapist, psychomotor therapist, neurologist, pediatrician, all behind this courageous mother, all of them fight so that Théodore can grow and have the most normal and autonomous life as possible.

Miracle of maternal love

He was told that his son would be blind and quadriplegic. Laurence Le Jalu advances on the Tarmac to fly to the return for France with her son’s hand in hers. It’s fragile, it’s chaotic, but it’s the miracle of maternal love: “This vitality, [elle a] well understood that[elle] it transmits it. »» The return to the Paris region is difficult and the rescue soldiers of Théodore, in battle order in Brazil, are missing, in France. The mother finds herself in a mound at “French system, for lack of space in early childhood in neurology”. “I insist, I restart, I leave messages, I have no return, or if, possibly, I manage to join them, may I beg, my despair does not change anything, in which world do we live?” Is there any more humanity? »» All Theodore’s progress is so precarious, the mother cannot lower her guard! “You can’t afford to wait, the earlier you act, the more your brain is likely to recreate connections. »» A new battle to fight for this mother who does not give up. Everything is complicated! Doctors recommend that he entrust his son to the crèche to help him develop in contact with his contemporaries, she must beg the director to accept it. You have to register your big ones to the canteen to be able to go to caregivers with Théodore. Impossible, she is “Home mother”you still have to fight against “The French administration and the stupidity of those who apply it” since “Raising your children is not a status”that it is “A mother at home, at the bottom of the scale”.

Laurence Le Jalu is “A pillar mom”, “An invulnerable mother for [s]is small »she is a mother in what the word says more beautiful. His testimony restores all their dignity to the mothers who fight, in tragic situations or not, to offer their young and the best possible future. His testimony is not that the particular story of the promise made to her baby that “it would not be the last hug”, it is an ode to maternal love that “Knows neither law, pity nor limit”.