To ask what they didn't tell you about pregnancy/child birth?

[PossiblyPattio]

I'm long past the age of being able to have a baby but i'm hoping that a thread to share our experiences could be helpful

I only have one DD and I remember being scared as shit when Lochia happened!! Nobody told me it would happen and I thought I was going to die

For me labour was a million times better than I’d heard or expected - it was quick (lasted less than 3 hours, first baby), pain was manageable and my tear was minor and healed well. But I had no idea about the possible agonies if breastfeeding - I cried for every feed for weeks and would have to bite down on something when he latched. Foolishly I believed the midwife who said he definitely didn’t have tongue tie and that pain was normal and probably because I was fair-skinned (?!). Turned out he had a bad tongue tie, not discovered until 6 months - do get your babies properly checked! Oh and after the first few weeks bf was a lovely experience so don’t let this put you off.

Nobody really warned me how misogynistic society becomes when you have a baby.

The default set up of the man (already likely earning more) staying in work, maybe working late and travelling

The vile undercurrent towards either SAHMs or WOHMs, take your pick, it doesn’t matter, both are clearly evil or lazy

Employment law doesn’t stop women returning to work finding themselves overlooked or disadvantaged and that happens too widely for it to be accidental

Whatever your views on breast milk, there can be an extremely unhealthy misogyny surrounding a woman’s right to breastfeed, or not, both from women and from services which should be helping

I genuinely had a kid then WHAM I realised it was far worse for women than justmy fears of being raped on the way home at night.

Sorry to be a downer. The night sweats and aching joints too

Afterbirth, mine looked like an enormous brain, was not expecting that!
Afterpains after my second, I remember being in the bathroom at 3am convinced I was dying, nobody told me that would happen.
I also had the excruciating tailbone pain in labour, just assumed it was the position of the baby but have had period type pain in my hips / lower back ever since when I didn’t previously

My c-section scar exploded 10 days after giving birth. I told the nurse who came to my house that pints of liquid had come out and soaked every pair of trousers I owned. She said it hadn't happened. I just lay in bed in agony trying to BF my DD and crying. Eventually my sister came and took me to A&E and pints of liquid squirted out of a small hole... it happened for days. Again and again. There was a massive haematoma under the scar and the liquid just kept building up and pouring out. It was completely clear. Like a hot fountain. Nobody ever told me about that. I remember my sister using kitchen roll after kitchen roll to soak it all up. Horrendous.

Oh, yeah! Breastfeeding was awful that first week. Toe-curling pain.

@UnicornAndSparkles

That you can't have a c section for failure to progress without trying everything else - ventouse and forceps - as pushing the baby back up could cause irreparable damage to mum. I preusmed after 2h of pushing I'd be allowed an EMCS, but no such luck.

Absolutely not true.

I pushed for 2 hours and had failure to progress and an EMCS was done straight away.

You absolutely do have a choice. A friend nearly died because she wasn't given the choice but in future, you do.

I was surprised about how little the episiotomy hurt afterwards and that there was only a bit of sting when weeing. Very kindly the midwife gave me a local aenasetic (sp) way before crowning incase I needed episiotomy/ just to give me a break from the pain at the final stage.
The afterpains and aching muscles from pushing were a surprise.
First time I had an emcs, I didn't expect the jelly belly, night sweats, ingrowing toenails and numb belly for months.

No-one told me that after an induced vaginal birth your placenta might not come away and a clipboard would be shoved under your nose to sign and you would be whisked off to theatre to have a spinal block and manual removal.

That you can be temporarily incontinent, to the extent to that stand up in the postnatal ward and pee all over the floor and feel nothing.

That postnatal wards are horrible places to recover. And Bounty will come and take photos of your newborn and then charge you a fortune for prints that you pay for because you’re hormonal and vulnerable.

However- I had no after pains - was on a (oxytocin?) drip after induction. Maybe because they got it all out during the manual removal. I also had hardly any lochia, again it was probably cleaned out of me by surgery.

That when baby arrives your life will be taken over by obsessing about a) sleeping and b) feeding.

Night sweats. I remember sweating loads for weeks after having my boys.

There's a difference between blood loss and a haemmorhage.

You can have two haemmorges after birth.

Breastfeeding for me sometimes has been worse pain than my C-section! Done it for 5 months and wish I had given up ages ago.

And the post-partum hair loss!!! Been pulling clumps out several times a day, it even gets in my baby’s nappy

Coming to terms with perhaps never losing my mum tum and needing a new wardrobe of bigger clothes. Weight gain was never an issue for me prenatally whereas now I can’t shift it. I can’t stop eating though so that doesn’t help!!

That my bladder was numb for about three months afterwards but thankfully I was not incontinent. Left outer thigh was completely numb for a similar amount of time and the midwifes responses was ‘meh.’ Assumed it was related to the epidural but I don’t know why they just can’t tell a first-time mum that this can happen.

Epidural wore off and top-ups had no effect. I didn’t know that in this situation there was nothing else they could do for me. The pure agony and being delirious really put me off having another baby, although I regret that now it’s too late to try for another.

That a large group of medical students came in to watch me in labour and I was so delirious I couldn’t tell them to get out.

That episiotomies can go very wrong and sex is still painful years later. My GP apologised to me last year on behalf of the NHS for such a shocking result.

That not all first poos are painful - I was terrified but it was fine.

No hair loss, lochia lasted a few weeks and was like a normal period, no hormonal mood swings either, and I’ve never heard of being smelly either afterwards!

B/f was so terribly hard and I wish I was clued-up about tongue tie. B/f for 6 months and it was a miserable experience for both of us but I felt so much pressure to b/f.

Hardly any of my friends visited at all when I got home - I felt so bereft and lonely at times. Everyone makes it sound like people are queuing outside the door to see you and baby, and your DH needs to be your gatekeeper, but almost no one came

How bad the recovery would be.....episiotomy and third degree tear!

That retained placenta was a thing that could happen.

I had an induction that ended with ventouse delivery, cord snapped, and manual delivery of the placenta. All went well AFAIK. Overheard 2 theatre nurses musing how small the placenta was, more what you would expect for a 27 week baby, not 40.

Haemorrhaged a couple of hours later, given transfusion and told “just one of those things”.

Passed a clot in post natal that looked like raw liver the size of my fist and i had no idea what it was and was terrified. Told a passing midwife and she gave me the same look you’d expect from someone at the bus stop just told the same thing and said “okay” and walked off.

Eventually discharged and had daily postnatal visits for 3 weeks as i had high blood pressure, then pills gave me low blood pressure, then they suspected Eclampsia, then they said i was probably fine and just had to get over birth. I had no milk (never produced any) and felt like a total failure. Walking approx 200 yards to our local park left me pale and exhausted. I just felt “wrong” but had no words to describe it.

3 weeks pp, i collapsed at home with secondary pp haemorrhage, clots as before all the way up the staircase as i desperately tried to get to the cot to put my baby down safely in case i passed out before i could call 999. Blue lit to hospital, 6 unit transfusion and emergency surgery halted because they saw a “mass” and thought it might be cancerous and masked by the pregnancy. Was briefed that i might need a hysterectomy to save my life. I was exhausted, weak with bloodloss, and so hormonal i just sobbed. Dh made it to hospital whilst i was still under GA and was told “ The good news is she’s alive...”

Had to wait 3 days for an MRI & biopsy to confirm it was in fact retained placenta, which had gone necrotic and given me ecoli blood poisoning. By this point all my veins had collapsed so i couldn’t be sent hone with antibiotics to self-inject, i had to have a central line and stay in hospital for 2 weeks away from my baby.

All because no one ever mentioned that placenta could separate and come out in bits, otherwise i would have mentioned what i had heard the nurses say after dd’s birth and saved myself a world of horror.

the massive t shirts you bought to fit over the bump will still fit nicely 7 months after birthing and you’ll still be wearing them regularly

How painful an 'internal examination' would be when checking for dilation. Omg 😭😭

@Chickenfingers

How painful an 'internal examination' would be when checking for dilation. Omg 😭😭

It depends on who is doing it. I had six last labour by five different people. Three of those people were absolutely fine, but two of them seemed to think they were trying to unblock a u-bend or something from the rummaging that went on.

That it's not always straight forward having a baby.

Our first pregnancy ended up in a termination for medical reasons, 18 weeks in. We were all super excited and announced to the world we were pregnant, only to have to then tell everyone that it had Edwards Syndrome (everyone's only ever concerned with Downs, but it's Edwards and Pataus that are worse) and we had decided to terminate was just the worst thing ever. You don't realise what can go wrong with a pregnancy. I was only 26, and it's super rare to have chromosome issues at my age, but not many babies survive to term and if they do, they don't live very long.

And then it's having to explain your decision because you know, no one would ever terminate their baby... But you don't know until you've had to make the decision!! I didn't want to make the baby suffer any more than I had already.

The silver lining was that for my two subsequent pregnancies, I was super looked after and I had extra scans and tests to make sure our babies were healthy. And now I have two beautiful, healthy children.

And i would like to make a special mention about the pelvic floor. No one tells you how fucked that can end up, regardless of how many squeezes and squats you do.

@raspberryk

That at some point shortly after you have given birth, someone will probably stick a finger up your bum, and you won't even care.

And you didn’t question that? That’s not normal.

It's very normal after a vaginal birth. It's to check the anal wall hasn't torn

Both post-labours I was asked for permission and both times I gave it (because I had just pushed a baby out if my vagina and no longer cared if someone stuck a finger up my bum).

The second labour they also stuck a diclofenac suppository up there too for pain relief for the coming stitches and that was very nice too.

the shit after birth. i wanted a round of applause after. it was so painful!

That first labours aren't always long and slow. I ignored early labour thinking I'd have hours and hours to go.. waters broke and 45 minutes later I had a baby.

I also wasn't expecting to bleed for 8 long weeks afterwards.

Nothing will be the same again !

That even if you know everything and think you're prepared - you're not.

That my episiotomy scar would hurt - badly - whenever I got my period for 18 months after the birth of DS.

I didn't believe it when people said I'd do a poo during the birth. I did and it was mildly embarrassing.