Pregnancy's Best Kept Secrets

hitchins

LilacPixie wrote: »

You might not know you are in labour. I didn't.
If they burst your waters its like a crochet hook.
MW's that have been around the block a few times are definatly better, I had one young one tell me i wasn't in labour, her computer told her so but my urge to push said other wise. I was right.
There are worse things that labour pains. Kidney stones.
MW are obsessed with birth plans. I refused to do them which annoyed them no end.

Yeh they "nicked" my DD's head with it! :mad:

Couple of things I weren't expecting (well was, but just not so bad).:o

Bleeding afterwards - horrendous! Felt like throwing a party when I no longer had to wear my Bridgette Jones pants and mega sized pads!

Boobs - Didn't realise your already huge boobs got bigger after and turned into two boulders, excrutiatingly painful boulders too.

Happy times! I shall be prepared when I do it all again early next year!

heretolearn_2

Oh this is all so true but for any 1st timers reading this, not EVERYTHING happens to everyone, and you get to a point in labour when you wouldn't notice if they marched a brass band through the room and gave them all a look, your attention is 100% on what is happening to you.

Poo - I don't THINK I did, but maybe they just didn't tell me. I got the trots when i got to hospital anyway (always get like that when I'm nervous) and though the midwife kept going on about having an enema as it was routine those days, I just thought that was the last thing I needed and refused.

When I first asked for pain relief the midwife trotted back with two paracetamol. I was not impressed! Had gas and air, after another 8 hours asked for pethidine but was told I had to wait for the doctor's rounds at 9am, eventually got a shot and it was great. I even managed to go to sleep for an hour or so. But then when I woke up I was close to delivery and they wouldn't give me any more so I did it on gas and air. Gas and air is good in the early stages (very trippy) but doesn't help much later on. I was sucking that stuff down so much I started puking green puke.

If they want to do an episiotomy, I'd ask why. I think it gets done automatically a lot. My newly qualified midwife was about to do one, when an older experienced midwife popped in and stopped her, as she said it wasn't necessary for me. So maybe the birth was a bit harder (?) but I didn't need stitches or end up with any pleats in my fanny :-) so better in the long run.

They want the babies head to come out slowly so there is quite a weird time when you are pushing the baby out, and the midwife is pushing the baby back in! That was the most painful time for me, a burning sensation, exactly like a Chinese burn on my bits. (By the way, I never forgot the pain, that's codswallop).

Not everyone bonds immediately with the baby. There was a poster earlier who thought the same thing as me, almost word for word, so don't feel guilty if it happens to you. Baby tucked into my arms, I looked down, I thought 'Oh my god! It's a baby! What the hell am I going to do with a baby!' Everyone it happens to just pretends otherwise, as you don't want to look bad, but it really isn't just you.

Boobs leak a lot. Wet patches on the front of your clothes are embarrassing.

I wish I'd known that babies have meconium in them (first poo) and that sometimes they do that poo during delivery. So they come out totally covered in foul green smelly slimy stuff (and it's all over/in your bits too). I thought I'd given birth to an alien. They took him off for a bath before handing him over...

I wish I'd known how stupidly competitive mums are about ridiculous things and not got into it. I'm ashamed to say that I was absurdly proud that he scored 9 on his very first Apgar score at birth and bragged about it to the other mums. Jeeeeeeeeeez. Sorry ladies.

Sami_Bee

heretolearn wrote: »

...

If they want to do an episiotomy, I'd ask why. I think it gets done automatically a lot. My newly qualified midwife was about to do one, when an older experienced midwife popped in and stopped her, as she said it wasn't necessary for me. So maybe the birth was a bit harder (?) but I didn't need stitches or end up with any pleats in my fanny :-) so better in the long run.

They want the babies head to come out slowly so there is quite a weird time when you are pushing the baby out, and the midwife is pushing the baby back in! That was the most painful time for me, a burning sensation, exactly like a Chinese burn on my bits. (By the way, I never forgot the pain, that's codswallop).
...

I wish I'd known that babies have meconium in them (first poo) and that sometimes they do that poo during delivery. So they come out totally covered in foul green smelly slimy stuff (and it's all over/in your bits too). I thought I'd given birth to an alien. They took him off for a bath before handing him over...

I'm not sure when you gave birth but epistiotomies are no longer routine - also NO ONE should ever perform such a procedure without first discussing it with the patient :eek:

Also at no point should a MW be pushing the baby back in during a normal delivery - they shouldn't even be touching the baby, again - :eek: I think you may have had a MW that was applying pressure to your perineum - that is done to help keep it in tact while the head comes out.

My 2nd pooped on the way out, The first photo looks lovely until you spot the green smear on my chest :rotfl: no whipping him away for a bath here! Edgar was put straight onto my chest for immediate skin to skin

heretolearn_2

It was a while ago, yes, just over 20 years, so I'm sure things have changed a lot.

as for the pushing the baby back in, well, it wasn't quite like that, but she doing something that felt like it and told us she was 'slowing the delivery of the head'. I can remember yelling at my OH 'make her stop! make her stop! because it was so painful.

Glad mine wasn't the only poopy baby. Ick.

LilacPixie

my 1st pooped in the waters. lovely.

Neither of mine screamed or made a sound on delivery, they just looked around.

I honestly cannot remember pain.

DON79

My first - I had pethidine and could not feel a thing at all when pushing so much so that I had no idea when to push... not ideal. And it made me really sleepy so I wouldn't personally recommend it.

Second one - very painful but very quick thankfully. I was standing beside the bed as I was in too much pain to climb onto it and I do distinctly remember the baby's head coming out really quickly as it gave the midwife a little fright lol...

Also I am so much determined not to be lying down when giving birth - it has got to be the worst position really as it just makes everything take so much longer! Let gravity help is my motto

overall, I preferred the second labour to the first though despite the pain

Jinx

I didnt realise you could be sick all day, every day for the whole pregnancy or that losing weight as a result of this meant they would want to monitor you 3 times a week!! I also didnt realise the size of the hook when they break your waters or how hot the fluid is... And the bleeding, had a bath after having DD and stood up and had to wash my legs again.... hadnt expected it to start straight away (not sure when I expected it to start tho lol):( And staff checking sanitary pads is a mortification all of its own just when you think all embarassment is done with! LOL

Old biddies thinking I was drunk on a Monday morning 8am after throwing up following bus ride to work was a real highlight... :mad:

On the up side Diamorphine (given to first time mothers only I believe) is fabulous and returning to normal after a rubbish pregnancy is AMAZING :j:j:j And taking your baby home makes it (almost) all worthwhile

Hannah_10

No one prepared me for the amount of blood afterwards. I went for a bath and the water was so red it looked like the whole bath was blood. Not a pleasant experience.

Jinx

Hannah_10 wrote: »

No one prepared me for the amount of blood afterwards. I went for a bath and the water was so red it looked like the whole bath was blood. Not a pleasant experience.

I dont remember reading anything even alluding to this happening before I had my baby.... now wonder we dont know what to expect....agree re the blood and others who have posted re liver like clots.... scary stuff especially when you dont expect it!!

Hannah_10

I was on the antenatal ward the other day. There was an expectant first time mum there who was honestly petrified. As her partner had brought her in someone had been making a lot of noise in labour and her partner had said to her "that's what you've got coming to you". Another one I heard when I was expecting my first child was "it's like being torn in half". I was so scared of it feeling like being torn in half that I was actually hindering the birth when it came by being too tense and unable to relax.

If you're a first time mum and you're nervous at all then someone somewhere is going to take great delight in torturing you and the more afraid you are then the more tense you are and that is not helpful to you. These people who take a disgusting pleasure in scaring new mums need to realise they are harming her and potentially her baby in making the birth uneccesarily difficult and therefore uneccesarily dangerous. What small pleasure they derive in "winding up" the poor girl, or how casually they will later disregard those comments (I assure you she wont) does not make them Ok. (Speaking in general, not to anyone here.)

The truth is yes it hurts, it hurts a lot, but it does not hurt so much you can not do it and there are lots of pain relief options open to you at all stages throughout the process. A young new mum does not need to be frightened more than she will be naturally, she needs to be reassured that of the millions of women in the world who have been where she is now, the vast majority have either gone back and done it again or would do so. Only-children are not the most common kind! In China where only-children are the only sort you're meant to have women actually risk thier lives to have a second- if birth was as bad as they tell you then no one would be so stupid as to do that! Other women have double figure numbers of children through choice, again, it's not as terrible as all that.

I wish someone had taken me to one side and given me a little reassurance with my first instead of chastising me for getting accidentally pregnant while still young and making sure I was as scared as I could possibly ever be in order to satisfy thier own selfish need to see me regret it. I have regretted it for 11 years, but not for that reason, I have regretted that I now have permenant scar tissue right where you wouldn't want it, snaking all the way up the inside of me. I have that because b*st*rds like the girl I mets' partner were sure to see to it that I could not relax at all. Fear caused me to be scarred for life and fear caused me to not be able to appretiate the birth of my daughter at all when I should have been able to, which meant bonding with her was harder and she was disadvantaged by this too.

For me the biggest kept secret of pregnancy was that birth wasn't anything like being torn in half. I'm up for having another 3 or 4 kids if my health allows actually, it was really really painful, but not like being torn in half, and probably not like the scare stories you're worried about. Tell them to f*ck off, I wish I had.