Does anyone know why this is?

[AnArkIsAFineVessel]

I am pondering something this morning. Friend of mine has just had a baby, she is perfect, gorgeous and not a mark on her. Both my boys spent the first week of their lives looking like they had been in a boxing ring ( though I obviously thought they were perfect and beautiful ha!)
Both my births were fairly standard , second DS was a water birth and did shoot to the bottom of the pool rather rapidly . Or maybe I just have fugly newborns ? :grin:

did she have a c section?

all newborns are fugly (imo)

Was she quite small? My DD was little and looked quite sweet apart from a mark from the forceps on her forehead.
My DS however was considerably larger and had a squashed up face for a few days which made home look like a little bad tempered Winston Churchill!!

My ds looked exactly like John Sergeant after 24 hrs of failed induction and an emcs. My first thought when I saw him was ' oh no, poor thing, what have I done'
I can now say that he is truly handsome, don't really know where he gets it from!

So the way they look when born has little to do how they grow up to be, and if they've been pushed and so on for a bit then they are probably swollen.

It's normal for them to look squashed at first though isn't it?

My DS also looked like he'd gone 10 rounds in a boxing ring. One of the neo-natal nurses (who looked about 60 years old) told me & DH that DS was the most badly moulded baby she'd ever seen

Mine was 8lbs 14/forceps, had two black eyes, a massive forceps burn on one cheek and was puffed up like he was rather overfond of the Powermax plus!

My DD looked like a pink frog in a sleepsuit. She had massive birth trauma round her eyes and really puffed up cheeks. The MW told me it was probably becausebshe came out quickly.

some babies just look more squashed than other, forceps, fast births etc all make a difference, my ds3 had a really squashed nose, it had a line across it in the middle, that made him look like he had 2 noses, he is now 7 and absolutely gorgeous!

ds1 looked like a beetroot for a few days after birth, i thought he was gorgeous i look back and he was a little red ball of fury in the pictures!

none of mine have had funny shaped heads or anything, i think its just luck but they are all things that sort themselves out fairly quickly :)

DS had what looked like a black eye for the first couple of days

Now Ark you do know that the ugliest babies make the most beautiful young people! It's true.

Ha! Well then DS1 will be the MOST beautiful young person ever known to mankind for I am afraid he was utterly awfully fugly for about 4 weeks of his life. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Mr Burns from the Simpsons bless him. I would like to think he has grown out of it though
My friends little girl really is pretty though no marks on her whatsoever , even on the pictures literally minutes after she was born she was a lovely colour too and apparently totally calm, no crying just popped out and looked round. She will be a vile teenager though if she takes after her mum AKA my teenage years partner in crime

Dunno really - my ds was perfect, no marks, puffiness or squished up look. He did have a cone head for a week, but his face was fine. He was small though and no forceps etc. One lady on my mat ward had a baby who was thoroughly battered and had the most horrendous damage from a birth involving every tool known to midwifery. :(

I often wonder how he is now and hope he and mum didn't have too hard a time while he recovered.