Post Partem, Part I

Since a few people have complained that the last few posts weren't gross enough...let's talk about postpartum issues.

Everyone tosses around the phrase "postpartum depression", but you rarely get the joy of hearing about the other stuff.  Perhaps because it's considered impolite?  Pardon me while I go off in a corner and laugh.  You know what's impolite?  Not telling the truth about the facts of life to those who are yet to experience some of them.

People have babies around just at the time they are least capable of handling them.  Consider the following:  Women spend months on end in discomfort, gaining weight and feeling exhausted, losing sleep and then, when pregnancy comes to a halt, there's labor and delivery and/or a C-section.  It's a grueling, painful, scarring, traumatic, and gory event.  When all that work is done, suddenly there's a cranky, crying little weasel of a thing demanding food about every two hours around the clock--for months on end!  And what's more, if the child accidentally oversleeps that two hour period (as long as 4 hours between feedings), the doctors say to wake them and feed them!  This little weasel also wants to be kept free from its own excrement, yet it insists on continually soiling itself.

And through all that, somehow Mom and Dad have to figure out how to care for themselves.  Mom is expected to try and remember to continue to nourish herself and get sufficient rest, and Dad is expected not to go insane while Mom is greatly incapacitated--and has comparatively paltry recourse for calming the child due to a lack of mammaries.

And Mom is sore.  Maybe she tore.  Maybe she was cut.  Maybe she had a large surgical incision made through her abdominal wall and has a belly full of stitches.  Walking is painful.  Sitting is painful.  Perhaps just moving at all is painful.  But that is secondary to the child because even more painful is listening to the sound of a crying baby.

And what's more:  the blood just never seems to stop flowing.  During pregnancy, Mom's blood supply increases by nearly half again what she had.  Well, she doesn't get to keep it all.  Sure, some goes with the baby, and some leaves at the birth, and some more leaves with the placenta and cord.  But there's more.  Lots more.  And it wants to come out as soon as possible.

Some wonderful people along the way designed some very long, hygienic, disposable pads for postpartum bleeding.  They are too small.  In order to be useful, they need to be chained so that one goes in front and overlaps somewhat a second that goes further toward the back.  If you are a particularly large woman, it's conceivable that you might need three at a time.  I'm not kidding.  At 5'8" (1.73m), I'm hardly what you'd call petite, but I'm not fat either, and to cover the span of gore, I needed this doubling.  Later, after 4 days or so, I was able to start substituting Poise and Serenity incontinence pads, which hold more fluid than the traditional feminine hygiene options.

And then there's the groin pain.  The hospital offered me pain killers.  I was allowed a strong dose of naproxen sodium (Aleve), and while it helped, it was more of a numbing than anything.  Same with the canister of pain-relief foam and the tube of hydrocortisone cream they gave me.  I was continually aware of the pain.  Thankfully, the hospital staff were also innovative.

Part of the pain in the groin is from swelling.  Anyone who knows much about first aid knows that ice helps to reduce swelling.  But who wants to put ice on their feminine delicacies?  Well, I did, though obviously doing so was tricky with all the red tsunami issues in the region.  The nurses did something very smart:  they took a disposable newborn diaper (which is, of course, absorbent and somewhat designed to prevent leaks) and found one end of the crotch region which was open like a pocket.  Ice was crammed into said pocket, and the diaper was introduced to my nethers.  Relief!

Now, another consideration.  We civilized folk understand that having blood all around is something of a health hazard.  And we aren't keen on handwashing a bunch of the stuff out after all that other work.  What does one wear?

While still at the hospital for recovery, I wore the Hospital Gown of Impossible Modesty again.  But obviously that wasn't going to hold my pads to the area of interest, nor was a newborn diaper going to fit around my thighs and hips.  Some genius whom I could kiss a thousand times over created some totally awesome underwear.  This underwear is purely a mesh of gentle elastic material.  It's lightweight and net-like, and super stretchy.  It's just strong enough to hold things together but sympathetic enough not to remind a new mom of her injuries.  I took home as many pairs as I could acquire and even managed to send them through the wash a few times and reuse them before finally donating them to a mom planning a home birth.  Part of me was tempted never to wear any other kind of underwear again...until I stopped needing pads.  Turns out the comfort level was dramatically reduced when mesh meets tender flesh.

The hospital staff gave me certain requirements before I could leave.  Immediately after I was done with the octopus and pony show, I met my first requirement:  peeing.  Owing to the extra hydration from the saline drip, I more than made quota there.  They also kept asking me if I had any gas.  Apparently you can't leave the hospital until you are farting properly.  Let me tell you, it's very strange to be regularly asked by strangers if you are passing wind.

One benefit that I experienced (and I'm not sure how common this is) was that I didn't have to have a bowel movement until 4 days postpartum, and it was relatively easy since I had stayed well hydrated.  Andrew and I drank an entire 24 pack of bottled water during our vacation at the hotel--er, I mean, our stay at the hospital.

Showering was tough, but I was not allowed to take a bath, nor did I want one given that I absolutely did not want to try getting back to a standing position afterward.  For the postpartum mom, I suggest disrobing (and rerobing) while in the bathtub.  I did not realize how keen gravity was to help me make a mess and ended up smearing blood on the floor in a vain attempt to clean up my drippings before more exited my person.  At least it wasn't my floor, so it was somebody else's problem in the end.

The Aristocrats.

Okay, just kidding, but seriously, the whole experience was full of all sorts of nastification.  Still, there were bright spots.  I was up and walking around immediately after giving birth.  I was able to take pictures of Jackson napping on Andrew for the first time, just a couple hours afterward.

My mother-in-law (MIL) and then, shortly thereafter, my own mother traversed their separate drives (each in excess of 2 hours) and gladly snuggled with their new grandson.  My mom had already been made a grandmother twice over via my sister's reproductive habits.  My MIL had not, as Andrew was an only child, and she dubbed herself Nana.

Nana and I had not had a great deal of time to get to know one another in the less than a year's time we had known one another, but she soon got more than her fair share of time with her only daughter-in-law as she stayed the next 10 days to help us adjust to our own new roles as Mama and Dada.

Next up, a review of nursing and postpartum doulas, and (I promise) an end to the postpartum grotesquerie.  We'll start a new kind soon enough.

Labor & Delivery, Part I

I was more than ready to give birth, so Andrew and I set about being proactive in instigating labor.  We were doubly motivated:  not only were we (mentally) through with the whole pregnancy thing and waiting, but the new year was looming.  If we wanted to be able to claim our little bundle of joy on our taxes, we were going to have to get crackin'!

My due date arrived, and Andrew took off work for the December holidays and a pre-babymoon spent at home.  I finally stopped going to work as well after having astonished my coworkers that I was still working up until my expected launch time.

...And my due date went past.  We knew it was most common for a first pregnancy to go 10 days past due, but that was cutting things awfully close as I was due on December 20.

So, tired as I was, and in pain and discomfort as I was, we started walking as often as possible.  In all, I had gained 50lbs with my pregnancy, and my joints and feet were really unhappy about that.

I started to worry about whether or not I would survive childbirth.  Odds are much better these days than in bygone times, when women had some ridiculous death rate in childbirth of around 25% or so.  (Feel free to check that statistic; it's unverified by me as of yet.)  Just in case something tragic occurred, I wanted Jackson to know his Mommy and to have something that was just for him from me.

Thus, I wrote "A Letter to my Unborn Son."  Rereading it now, it was terribly written, to be honest, so I won't reproduce it here except for the closing:

"Thank you for making me a mother.  And thank you, in advance, for doing your chores as you were told and for respecting your parents, as I'm sure you will, or you'll be grounded until you're 40, young man."

Well, that didn't instigate labor.  Then Andrew, my darling Quality Engineer husband, had a great idea:  He pointed out that goals are best achieved when they are written down and made specific.

So, I wrote down my goals, which mainly stated that I hoped to have a safe labor and delivery, that Jackson would be born healthy, and that I would pretty please start having contractions as soon as possible.  As in now.

That was at 9 days past due.  This kid was going to owe me late fees!

On the 10th day past my due date, we did more walking.  And more walking.  And more walking.  We then tried spicy food.  It seemed less crazy than the old "drive down a bumpy road" idea.  Our cajun food was annoyingly bland but sent us rushing home to fight for the bathroom.

Still not in labor, we tried the often suggested approach by many of the informed people in our cadre of medical prenatal caregivers:  sex.

There are scientific reasons for which sex is suggested as a method of inducing labor.  But when one partner is shaped like an inverted camel, humping becomes less fun and more like solving a Rubik's Cube.

The science:  The cervix is the enemy that must be conquered.  Jackson showed some prescience in utero because any time I said the word cervix, he would find some way to hit it painfully as a way to indicate to me that he knew what it was:  the way out.  In order for the gestated little squirt to achieve escape velocity, the cervix has to soften and stretch open.  Conveniently, human male semen has some ingredients, known as prostaglandins, that facilitate this ripening process.  The same sort of chemical mechanism is used in artificially stimulating labor, only it's way less fun that way and greatly increases the pain of labor.  Sex would be simpler and gentler.

So, what the heck, right?  Well, we did our part and managed to enjoy each other--which we did not get a chance to do again for another 6 weeks afterward.

But still no labor.  My sister called and woke us from our post-coital snooze to nag me about hatching her nephew.  "Hurry it up, already!"

Tired and ready to give in to defeat for the day, Andrew and I ventured out into the world to rent some movies and buy some Publix deli sandwiches.  (Something about Publix deli...there were almost always swell-bellied pre-mamas hanging around there.)

Watching the old movie, Blown Away, with Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones, I ate my turkey sandwich and felt surprised that Andrew had never seen the film before.

Then I felt something that wasn't surprise.  This was not a Braxton Hicks contraction, ohhhhh no, sir.  This was the real deal.  I was finally in labor!

And the cause?  Maybe it was just time at long last, or maybe it was just a 24 hour delay from my goal writing, but Andrew likes to say that all we needed to instigate labor was a dose of Tommy Lee Jones!

ToBP

Toward the end of the pregnancy, moms-in-waiting are encouraged to make more frequent visits to the OB/GYN or midwife.  During one such visit, the midwife I saw indicated that she wrote in my file that I was suffering from ToBP.

ToBP (or TBP) is a very common condition and nothing too serious--or at least, nothing anyone else takes seriously.  It's an acronym for Tired of Being Pregnant.

And she was right.  I was very tired of being pregnant.  I was also just very tired.  And sore.  And constantly having heartburn.  People kept telling me I would have relief once the baby "dropped".  Not so.  He was so large that it was almost indistinguishable when he did hang a little lower inside my belly.  And he kept kicking me.  Hard.

It's not unusual, therefore, for women to start feeling a little resentful of their wee one.  I began asking the little dear to hurry up and come on out, as I was sure he was sufficiently done cooking in the oven.

About a week before my due date, I wrote a diatribe denouncing all the "evils" of pregnancy that a woman experiences, even when things go perfectly well.  For example, the worse a woman's morning sickness, the better, they say.   (I kept track on a calendar of every time my nausea turned productive.  Jackson was VERY healthy.)

My conclusions then were somewhat superficial, though I still support them more than a year since:

1. Women deserve to be thanked for enduring an entire pregnancy, regardless of whether or not they were good parents afterward
2. The only reasons women willingly get impregnated subsequent to the first time are either induced by alcohol or the result of some form of amnesia, possibly both
3. The first child was probably the result of alcohol or amnesia, too

Sure, there are couples out there who naively seek to deliberately create their own temporary opaque human aquariums.  These people are also usually the ones who have a difficult time conceiving.  Coincidence?  I think not.  These types remind me of the beer called Celebration, put out by Sierra Nevada.

The back story:  A completely awesome group of people gathers each Saturday night at a house in Tampa.  One night, while I was a regular attendee, an unsuspecting member of our group purchased a 6-pack of Celebration.  He took a sip of his bottle and pronounced it foul and undrinkable.  Of the 10 or so of us there that night, nearly every one proceeded to then attempt to try a taste of something so putrid it needed to be experienced first hand.  A final assessment of Celebration deemed the flavor reminiscent of beer that had been regurgitated and strained through dirty pantyhose before being rebottled.  

"Oh, it's terrible!" 

"Let me try!"

Now, I'm not essaying to tell people not to have children.  Far from it!  But it's not all roses and sunshine.  For a year and a half, I never once slept a full night through.  For the first 6 months of Jackson's life, I spent a great deal of time wearing clothing covered in spit up, since he had reflux issues.  Conception, pregnancy, birth, and infancy are not for the delicate of manners.  They are gross.  Period.

And then...well, I have historically been a typical Floridian, feeling chill at 72F.  I used to keep my thermostat set to about 80F or 82F in the summer, and was quite fine with it.  However, the last month of my pregnancy was spent burning hot.  In December.  With the air conditioning running.  Poor Andrew, my darling husband, suffered manfully while I pushed the thermostat down to 62F at night, kicking off the blankets because it was sooo hot.

We were ready for Jackson to find the light at the end of the tunnel and venture forth into a brave new world.