{Live} Everything You Need To Know About Childbirth (Sort Of)
April 15, 2012 in All Posts, Parenting
Mother’s Day is coming up and what better way to celebrate ourselves than to re-live our
horrifyingly excruciatingbeautiful birth stories. We knew that’s just what you wanted to do, so that’s why Tricia of Critters and Crayons, Bridget of Twinisms, and I have come together to bring you the Mother’s Day Childbirth Story Blog Hop.
Where do I even begin? Well, the most natural thing for me is to go the humorous route. Sometimes it’s easiest to deal with pain through laughter.
Everything You Need To Know About Childbirth
Before Giving Birth
- Be Prepared To Change Your Birth Plan. You can plan for your birthing experience as much as you can plan for and predict the next big earthquake here in California. Sure, you can stockpile bottled water and dry goods, and create an emergency plan with an elaborate messaging system, but when the earth starts trembling and all hell is breaking loose, good luck finding your way to your buried crackers, let alone remembering to hide under the sturdy desk you’ve perfectly pushed into a doorway.
- Tend To Your Toes. As one friend put it, you’ll be staring at your feet a very long time, so be nice to yourself and pretty up the view. Another friend advised: wear black socks or flip flops because you will constantly be leaking some type of fluid for days. She was very very right. I used these cute peacock-print gold Havaianas during both deliveries:
At The Hospital
- Real Mothers Use Epidurals, Too. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you can visualize or breathe away your medically-induced contraction pain. And if you failed to listen to my advice about Birth Plans and bring one anyway, don’t be afraid to throw that piece of paper out the window when your baby refuses to come out and you have the pleasure of experiencing mega-contractions induced by a Pitocin dosage meant for a laboring African elephant.
After Giving Birth
- Don’t Even Think of Sleeping. Even if you’re lucky enough to be in a private birthing suite, the nurses, doctors, and housekeeping staff will be in and out of your room every 4 minutes to ask what you want to eat, whether you need to use the restroom, make you get up to use the restroom, dress your bleeding loins if you’re so lucky to have battle wounds, make you fill out form after form, and remind you to walk your battered body down the hall to take the Breastfeeding Class.
My Childbirth Story
If you really want to know, the best way to convey Jane’s childbirth story is this little snippet from the experience:
When the doctor came in, it was the male OB/GYN I fired a year earlier. The first - and ONLY - words he said to me during the delivery were, “Oh, it’s you.”
I will spare you all of the gory, gory details that ensued and move on to Sam’s birth, which is perfectly captured by this exchange:
Grease playing on the delivery room television.
Hubby: “Should we turn it off?”
Me: “No! I love this part!”
In all seriousness, I did find that
- Books don’t prepare you for childbirth.
- Birth plans don’t prepare you for childbirth.
- Your physician doesn’t prepare you for childbirth.
- Your own expectations don’t prepare you for childbirth.
- Nothing prepares you for childbirth.
- The best thing to do is go with the flow and let whatever happens happen.
… and most importantly, make sure your old, angry OB isn’t the one delivering your baby.
Your turn to share…what’s your childbirth story? Link it up below between now and May 13th!
It’s a Mother’s Day Blog Hop! My Childbirth Story…
Happy Mother’s Day!
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Chrissy – who has written 426 posts on The Outlaw Mom® Blog - Creative Living in a Conventional World.
So true that nothing can prepare you! Your stoy about the fired OB GYN made me laugh! I had seen a few OB GYN’s leading up to my son’s birth. All of them were lovely - except one. Just before delivering, I was tired and not really pushing anymore. The midwives said that if I didn’t deliver within the next few minutes, they would need to call in the OB GYN. When they told me that the OB GYN on duty that afternoon was the grumpy mean one that I didn’t like, I needed no more motivation! There was no way he was going to deliver my baby. Suddenly I had lots of energy and my son was born 10 minutes later.
Oh gosh, good on you. I wish I had the willpower to do that when I knew my doctor was going off duty and that old mean one was coming on. He was a horrible man! Well, I guess I have a story to tell now
Thanks for stopping by our bloghop!
Funny about the watching tv part, my husband didn’t know I gave birth already, he was at our private room watching NBA!! The nurse have to “borrow” a diaper from the other baby on the nursery.
So true, nothing prepares us for childbirth!
Oh, that’s funny. Well, there was a time there were no husbands in labor & delivery
Thanks for visiting!
Grease was playing during your delivery? I think I love you.
Ha ha! It was one of my favorites since early childhood. I started watching it when I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about (“25 cent insurance policy” ???) I loved having something familiar and upbeat in the background!
No truer words were ever spoken!
When I was giving birth to my daughter (my second) I spent a good amount of time watching the Braves vs. Mets and texting my mother about the game. Hey, it took my mind off of it!
I made sure to get the drugs the second time around and it was like night and day. It was basically a party - and I couldn’t have been happier! Glad you had a good experience the second time around - I’ll head over to read your story. Thanks for stopping by
[…] Hop “My Childbirth Story”, co-hosted by Tricia from Critters and Crayons, Chrissy from Outlaw Mom, and Bridget from Twinisms. Go check them out! And if you are interested in joining the blog hop, […]
Love this! I hope the new code works for the grab it box- wordpress messes up the code unless we post it in a certain way, too… ugh….totally hear you on the pitocin and epidural! I’m jealous of Lisa’s experience!
Thanks for co-hosting and linking up!
And, I didn’t have a pedicure. That would have been nicer to look at.
Well, I had a mani, pedi, washed and blowed hair, makeup, and a designer hospital gown
The magic of those things wore off by around hour 8 and definitely after being stitched up for the worst you can imagine with no local anesthetic.
I think my story was very different to yours. No induction, no major interventions…and no epidural. The short version is “First mild cramps at 10.30pm, getting a little more intense around 1.30am at which point I wondered if this might be it. Headed into hospital to check it out, and was examined at 4/5am, at which point I was at 6cm. Brought to the labour ward, where contractions intensified, and I felt it got really tough. But baby was born by 7.55am. So it was all over before I really had time to think about it! It was really hard for the last hour or two, but it was amazing!” The long version is here if you’d like to read: http://mama.ie/?p=43
PS - I also wrote a birth plan, but on the night, I never even bothered taking it out of my bag.
Thanks for sharing your story
I really wish I had been able to experience natural contractions and having to go to the hospital and deliver, like you did. That was something I missed out on for both kids. It was more like, okay, we have an appointment, let’s go get this done. And with both, especially my first, they didn’t really want to come out, so it was a long, tortuous process!
I’m heading over to check out your story. (P.S. - the linky is working now if you want to actually link it up).