My birthing story.....

"The baby does momentarily distract you from what you have gone through. It almost feels like yes, it was worth the unnecessary intervention. But that’s just transient. Don’t ever believe anyone who says, ‘When you hold the baby, you will forget everything.’ Because every woman remembers everything about her pregnancy and delivery (although there are flashes of amnesia), and recounts it whenever she is sharing with another woman who had gone through the same, perhaps, worse. Your birth story can very often, scar you for life. Talking about it, sharing it, even documenting it can help you come to terms with it. Sometimes this can take months, sometimes years.

This part of Lalita Iyer’s book “I’m pregnant, not terminally ill, you idiot!” got me thinking. We really should be sharing our stories especially the ones we don’t want to….. So here I go…..

Pregnancy

-          Ate for two and put on oodles of weight, and had to walk up and down my hall way in the middle of the night farting and burping away all the gas.

-          Used to wake up several times in the night, sweating or screaming.  Thanks to the nightmares I had – being fully pregnant in the middle of the train track and petrified of the engine coming towards me; clouds loudly abusing me when I walked to my office complex; going for a trip with my friends and seeing ghosts who tell me they will take my baby away the day I give birth….

-          It felt nice to strut around with a belly without being conscious about having a paunch and being asked ‘Are you pregnant?’ when I actually wasn’t.

-          The 3D scan in my second trimester totally creeped me out. Imagine being scared of your own baby, especially when the doctor said, ‘Baby is smiling and waving and saying hi to Papa!’

-          The end of second and the beginning of third trimester saw a surge in my libido. Got desperate enough to see a bald, potbellied, jerk in the bank and was imagining being in bed with him! And, of course ended up in bed with a frightened husband instead.

-          A month before the baby was due, the nesting instinct took over, and I cleared up two shelves in my wardrobe and stocked it up with nappies, cotton jablas, onesies, wrapping clothes, diapers, wet wipes….

Birthing

-          I was desperate to have a normal delivery and did not even want an epidural. My mother who had four deliveries without any pain killer shots, told me it is the best thing to do, and I believed her and felt inspired in her presence.

-          As luck would have it, my water broke 4 weeks ahead of time and had to be rushed to the hospital. The sonography showed the baby having a cord around his neck and that warranted a C-section. And I was petrified of epidural (heard stories of back issues, paralysis, neck pains) and went for a GA. The baby was born and didn’t breathe for 12 seconds and had to be given oxygen for 45 minutes to revive him.

-          I was up the second day because it was boring to lie down and take rest all the time. I wanted to read the paper and check emails and respond to sms’es, and walk to the nursery to see all the babies and walk to the pantry down the corridor to see what was cooking. 

-          Having the baby in my room every two hours to feed him felt like I was handling a new gadget without the instruction manual.

-          I chose to have a C-section for the second baby, because, he went beyond due date, my back pain started getting really intense and I wanted him out.

-          When I was sleeping like a log after the surgery, the nurse put the baby to my breast without even waking me up and I was pissed at her and the baby for spoiling it all.

-          I was discharged in 3 days, and the baby cried all night and never slept. The older one went to school and came back fully charged in 3 hours to spend his whole day with me. I was at wit’s end on the third day and actually went back to the hospital for 3 more days so someone could take care of the crying baby while I slept. And finally returned home when I found a night nurse, I even cribbed and cried that I should not have had a second baby.

Breast feeding

-          I died of the pain of engorgement after both the deliveries. I actually had nurses helping me pump it all out, because I was tired of doing it.

-          I fed my older one for 18 months and exclusively for 6 months. After 18 months, I had a bad winter allergy cough which refused to go even after medication for 2 months, at this stage I had to stop breast feeding since the doctor put me on steroids.

-          I fed my younger one for 1.5 months. He was a winter baby and nobody told me I needed to moisturize my nipples, and they cracked like crazy. Every feed time I was in acute pain, pumping didn’t work, engorgement hurt, and I used to cry when I fed. My older one once told me ‘If this new baby is making you hurt so much, why don’t you go and leave him in the hospital?’

-          Then one morning the baby spat up some milk and I saw blood in it, I was traumatized and we got him tested and a complete checkup revealed that my nipple was oozing blood with my milk (Yuck…….. I know that is disgusting!)

-          With that I ended the saga of the breast feeding in 1.5 months and it was a blessing in disguise. I spent more quality time with the older one and they bonded better with bottle feeding being the highlight of the day for the older one.

So there, now start sharing yours…………