Labor & Delivery, Part V

***Potentially gross photo alert below.  If you aren't digestively stable, don't scroll down!***

Hurray, I had given birth to my little baby Jackson!  But the fun doesn't stop there.  You know the old saying about a woman's work never being done?  While there are arguable feminist issues to be made with that statement, it seems true when it comes to Labor and Delivery...and even more so in the time following when there is suddenly a child who needs constant care and attention.

So, after I got to hold my crying little purple octopus, Jackson was conveyed to a special table with purple lights and had all sorts of poking, prodding, measuring, and cleaning perpetrated on him by the staff.  As far as he was concerned, he had been abducted by perverted aliens (or was being recruited by the military).

Andrew and Sabrina got to go over to the table then and ogle the cute little thing I had made while I was stuck on the Transformer bed still.  This gave the staff time to inject something into my IV without asking me or any of that informed consent "nonsense" that hospitals are supposed to employ.  I noticed and asked as coherently as I could what was being put into my bloodstream and was informed that I had just been dosed with pitocin.

Apparently the staff was impatient?  I don't know why they didn't ask me or at least tell me (or my husband, or my doula, or...) beforehand that this was something they might do.  Since pitocin helps stimulate uterine contractions (which, I'm fairly certain, were still doing just fine at that point), I can only assume they were doing it to expedite delivery of the placenta.

Before this whole experience, I had wondered how aggravating it would be to be stuck waiting for the placenta to come out, and now...I have no idea what the standard duration post-baby-delivery would be.  (Is it sufficiently obvious that I'm irritated by being drugged with pitocin?  Okay, good.)  Suffice it to say that I did not have to wait very long, and I barely felt anything when the placenta and cord were born.

I say "born" because I was surprised to find myself somewhat emotionally attached to these inanimate organs.  As part of my attempts to assuage my

 desire not to waste anything, we had already

 planned to donate the cord blood, which was done by a needle being inserted into the umbilical cord and draining the awesome, stem-cell-rich blood into containers.

Because the placenta was so large, we had well more than the standard quantity available for donation and were later thanked in person by a representative from the cord blood bank.  In fact, the placenta was so big that the nursing staff all crowded around to gaze at it.  Though with a nearly 10lb child, it was hardly surprising that his source of nourishment should scale up so much above the norm as well.

The size of it was something of a blessing for me, too, as it meant that much more of my 50lbs (about 22.6kg) gained during pregnancy was already gone!  But...emotionally, however, I felt a strong sense of guilt about the placenta itself going to waste.  For a long time afterward, and occasionally even now, 16 months after the fact, I felt as though I had had another life in that placenta that had just been treated like so much garbage, just another piece of "hazardous waste" for the hospital to handle.  My guess would be that if I were from a very primitive culture and had just endured labor and delivery on my own, I probably would have been pleased to find a nice big hunk of nourishing food made available until I was recuperated.

But in this day and age, and living in the United States, I'd feel like some kind of pervert for making a meal out of my own placenta though if I look for a reason, a valid and incontrovertible reason, I cannot see what problems there would be other than: how do I cook this? and How does one season a placenta?

Alas, however, the placental delivery was not the end of the journey.  I needed stitches.  Andrew had returned to my side for the final part of my additional organ ejection and was now enjoying his new son some more.  (Note my leg in the background as Andrew held his son for the first time--also the first time he ever held a baby!)

Shana was calm and focused, carefully sewing my perineal tear before I got too much more sensation back in the area.  I cannot remember if she used any anesthetic, though I know it hurt somewhat.  Andrew was curious but I forbade him to watch her sewing my flesh because the expressions on his face were making me feel uneasy.  More than ever, I was vowing to be better at doing my Kegel exercises if ever I should find myself impregnated again.

As for Jackson, life wasn't a great deal better.  He was naked.  His cord had been cut and clamped.  His limbs were no longer cozily squished into a very small container and (if I had a guess), he probably had some serious "pins and needles" going on in them.  Because his color at birth was something akin to what you would expect to see on a choking victim, he failed one of the points on the APGAR test, but otherwise he passed with flying colors.

Our pediatrician, Dr. Judy Banks, had come into the room.  (Why not?  It was a party, right?  Never mind the naked woman spread-eagle with the needle and thread hanging out her privates.)  She gave a very thorough examination of Jackson's abilities to make sure there was nothing of concern.  I was somewhat busy at the time, so most of what I have to go on are the photos that Sabrina the Fabulous Doula had taken.

And Labor and Delivery was done.  The postpartum period was beginning, and I was very shortly given the opportunity to nurse my very own child for the first time ever.  Stay tuned next week for some postpartum fun!