What I wish someone had told me before birth!

[VikingLady]

OK, so I had an emergency c-section last week. I was as prepared as NHS and NCT antenatal classes could make me, but there are a few things I wish I had known that no-one mentioned!

1. Your new baby may not settle on you, but that does not mean there is something wrong with either you or the baby. She smells milk on you and assumes it must be feeding time again. Get someone else to hold her and put her in the crib for you if it is making you upset. I declared my undying love for the mw who told me this. It all made so much more sense. You won't damage her attachment to you by accepting help.

1. It will take a few days to be able to interpret what she wants. Not just because you don't have the experience, but neither does she! How can she know what she wants from you when she has only been out for a day? You are not a failure. Start by assuming she wants skin to skin to calm her down, then move on the feeding/winding.

1. Baby having a complete melt-down to the point of not being able to feed/settle? Hand her to someone who doesn't smell of milk and is not a nervous wreck. You can take her back when she is calm. It might only take a couple of minutes. You are not a failure for this. In most societies your female relatives would do this for you. In hospital, use the mws. They are the closest you have to that.

1. The middle of the night in hospital on your own will terrify you. This does not mean you will not cope when you are outside hospital. You get used to the baby, and she gets used to you and to being a baby (iyswim).

1. Baby will probably scream like you are torturing her when she has her first few nappy changes/clothes changes/baths. This will pass as she gets used to them. Mine is now 8 days old and loves baths. Hated them three days ago.

Anyone else?

It's ok if you don't feel an immediate rush of love, give it time, it will come. I took one look st my son and though "Oh fuck, what the hell have I done?"
Oh and the constant feeding, had no idea!

spartafc thank you thank you thank you, I have never heard the term precipitate labour before. That is what I had, but I didn't know it was a 'thing'. I just thought I was weird.
My MW also didn't believe I was in labour. I remember crying 'I can't cope with this' thinking it was just pains from the induction. Actually I was 4cm dilated and contracting every other minute. Had I known this I might have realised that I was being rather brave, actually.
My advice? In the early days of breastfeeding,I felt like Jordan, my nipples were in agony and I was sweating so much I thought I was going through early menopause. I thought that was going to be the next 6 months. In fact, things settled down nicely after a couple of weeks.
If you live in a house, make sure you have a bed for the baby downstairs and upstairs.
YY to advice that almost every health professional you meet will contradict what the one before has told you.

Also, you are almost certainly stronger and braver than you currently believe you are

Straight after the birth, by all means take the pain killers offered, but bear in mind a common side effect is constipation - lactulose is your friend. Nobody told me about the side effects, and it was worse than giving birth when a week later I first managed to do a number 2 (tmi possibly!)

If you get Mastitus get to the GPs STRAIGHT away. Do not think 'oh I'll leave it till tomorrow as I am sure I will get better'. I did this, which led to a night of hell. A 40C temp, becoming delirious, walking into a door because of deliriousness, over dosing on paracetamol because I could not read the clock and suffering real agony. All while having to feed my DD every 2 hours. I remember just wanting to say to my DH 'please just take her away' :(

But on a plus side the antibiotics did a treat for the fear of pooing after giving birth.

For first baby - if you baby will only sleep on you during the day at first, do not beat yourself up. Get the remote/trashy mag/something to eat & drink and phone near by. AND ENJOY IT. Soon you will have a toddler and you will never sit down again, unless you are doing a puzzel or reading a book for the millionth time. Oh and they will happily have a nap in their cot at some point.

question hijack - if it can take a week for the milk to come in, how does the baby feed, formula until then?

inout no, you produce colostrum instead, in tiny amounts (literally a couple of ml sometimes) but that's all your baby needs as they have a tiny stomach. The more often your baby feeds, the more milk you'll produce - if you start FF then your breasts aren't told to make more milk so you end up offering more formula....and make less milk...and end up in a vicious circle! Remember, if babies needed formula until breast milk production was in full swing then the human race would have finished before it started - formula's a pretty new invention

Feeding might seem constant at first - that's normal! Don't panic and think baby must be starving as it's feeding non-stop.

one more gem- take hard-soled slippers to hospital with you, that you don't mind chucking away afterwards. The cleaners do a great job but there inevitably might be bodily fluids on the bathroom floor! In fact would it be helpful to compile an ultimate hospital bag thread if that hasn't been done?

That the birth is the easy bit - the hard work starts about 3 days in...

Skin on skin is healing for both. A boob cures nearly everything except a dirty nappy. Clocks are not your friend. The more you worry about sleep the less you shall have.

you need a gimble if you don't want to go down the Ebook route.

They're really good - hold your book open.

yyyy soooo true about the smelling milk, and they really really should put it in the antenatal classes. "baby needs changing, baby needs feeding, baby needs sleep" no baby doesn't, she can just smell the stuff!!
I spent a lot of time in the first couple of weeks wondering why the hell my baby wouldn't settle when I cuddled her - felt like such a failure, because she would settle on DH. then someone told me about the milk thing.