what did you wish you'd known/been told about labour and post-labour (things they don't print in books)

[choufleur]

i wish someone had told me that you can feel the baby go back up sometimes when you're pushing (but it will eventually stay down and come out)

That when people tell you "it's like ahving a poo" they mean it's exactly like that! They don't mean "you push in a similar way" or "it's a similar-ish sensation" they mean exactly. Well you get the idea

That for days afterwards, random people will demand you drop your pants so they can look up your bum, and you will meekly roll over and let them...

But you still don't want to go for a smear 3 months afterwards.

You can determine the difference between first time and fourth time mums as they enter the maternity unit

First time mums to be in hospital as they tend to carry a book prominently - normally 'what to expect...' or some shite from Miriam Stoppard. together with a bag for baby, bag for them and bag for their partner. Huffing and puffing. Baby's bag may well be coloured according to what flavour baby they are having.

Second time mums - one bag, partner, looking frustrated.

Fourth timer - carrier bag from Sainsburys with biscuits, partner being yelled at to just 'park the fucking car and sod the fine'.

LOL Eyeballs that's so true. I remember lying there not giving a damn who was gonna walk in.. they could have pulled in strangers off the street and I'd probably have dropped my pants and said 'Want an eyeful??'

Oh and they don't warn you that the consultants/MWs yell gleefully when they manage to break your waters, like they've just done something really impressive.

Due dates are a way to help the hospital schedule inductions and bear no relation to when your baby will arrive. But you will still hang desperately on to that date and then get upset when it passes.

I wish someone had told me you could mistake it for constipation. That way I might not have got to 8cm dilated before I realised I was actually in labour, not in need of an enema! and missed out on several hours of gas and air.
OTOH if I had realised I was in labour, it might have been psychologically more painful iyswim

dontlookatmeimshy - I was indigestion apparently according to my mum. No-one suggested it could be labour till she started straining for a poo in the lift!

That, the day after your C-section, a MW will breeze into your room and cheerily anounce that it's time for you to have a shower and remove your dressing.

By yourself.

That you will enter that shower quaking with terror. That you will grasp one end of that massive, incredibly sticky plaster with trembling hands, convinced that it will stick to your stitches and rip them out Ping! Ping! Ping! and you'll be skidding around in your own intestines in the bath.

That that, in fact, won't happen and it'll all go OK.

That as the head squeezes out...you get the worst chinese burn in your most sensitive place...and it lasts longer than any chinese burn you'll ever get on your arm!!!

Oh my word my tummy hurts. Thank you ladies for making me laugh so much.

What no one told me is that you can feel the baby having a good old kick about just as they are departing your fanjo. It is a little bit like "and here's one more for good measure mummy".

Also why does no one tell you how hard breast feeding is? In between the silent screaming because it hurts more than having the baby, its the constant drowning in milk. It gets you down when you cant leave the house without a changing bab for you & baby!!

I meant changing bag!
Flipping pregnant brain.

That you might get trapped wind after your C-section. This will be unbelievably painful and you'll immediately brush off the MW's Lactulose suggestion, and whimper, "It's not possibly wind, I know my womb is falling out."

That you might need to be given a suppository to release the trapped wind. This will be adminstered in your cubicle on the ward, probably in the evening when all the other Mums are silently feeding their babies, less than two feet from you behind a flimsy curtain.

That, to calm your nerves (and vainly try to release some tension from your petrified ring), your MW will narrate every stage of the suppository process. "OK, I'm just putting KY-Jelly into your anus now with my finger. Try to relax if you can. Bit more. Now, I'm pushing the suppository against your anus. I'm slipping it inside. I'm going to push it up about six inches with my finger... You're very tense."

That you'll be burning with shame, thinking, "PLEASE shut up."

That you will then hide, mortified, inside your inadequate cubicle until the suppository decides it's poopy time, then try to emerge all casually in front of the other Mums, carrying your make-up bag like you're just off to put some blusher on. You'll ignore the loo on the ward and stagger, cowboy-style, as far as your clenching cheeks can carry you up the corridor, to a loo where nobody knows you're about to have the shit of your life.

That you'll collapse on to the loo and immediately let rip a fart so explosive, it echoes off the walls, and only then will you realise you picked the loo directly opposite the MW's tea-station. And that two of them have just arrived to make tea. And that they will actually STOP TALKING, your fart was so loud.

Now I am crying

rofl beautiful!

Chocolate - I used to scoff at those stories about people thinking they had indigestion and were actually in labour. How could they not realise? Now I know

Pmsl excellent, I don't have any funnies from labour as had 2x C-sections, but when I worked on a post-natal ward I remember answering a bell and finding a poor woman trying to change her baby for the first time. It had done the most evil of meconium poos and both her and the baby were covered with it with literally a small mountain of wipes piled next to her. Well I found it funny anyway lol.

I wish I'd been told exactly why you shouldn't push your poos out (scuse the graphics here!) if you're on iron tablets post birth. Would've saved me 9 months of anal fissure agony. How reassuring it was to have my GP diagnose me, saying 'it's much worse than piles!' .

Oh, Beautiful - you poor, poor thing!!

You've just reminded me of my pooing experiences in the ward...can't quite remember exactly what happened now but in the space of 4 days I managed to completely block the loos not once...not twice...but three times! Each time I'd walk over to the MW station and inform them like the responsible grown-up that I am, that 'someone' had caused a problem with the toilets. Course they'd heard it all before .

That labia swells to 10 times it's size after birth and you'll think it'll never return to normal.

That you'll bleed for 6-8 weeks afterwards, it feels like it'll never stop.

That at the end of the birth and you're being stitched up at after a nasty tear you'll giving up caring when the young midwife says, I'm just going to get another mw to check what I've done.

That you lose all dignity the minute you enter the labour ward.

BEAUTIFUL - I've just nomiated that post in quote of the week. PMSL!

Aww, thanks. I actually forgot the most hideous bit: during the narration, the MW cheerily announced, "Ooh, you've got a pile!"

Beautiful, I am weeping.

That the mw will ask you what your preferences for pain relief are. You will say, well, I'll start with the TENS, then move on to gas and air, and then if I feel like I need it opt for pethedine or an epidural. She will smile and nod as though this is the correct answer, in full knowledge that a few hours later, when the gas and air isn't working any more and you request the next step up, she will be informing you that you're much too far along for the pethedine or the epidural.

Oh, and that they may draw a fine net curtain across the room- this does NOT mean you have gone blind from excessive entenox consumption. If you start shouting at everyone that you have gone blind, help, help, they will be understandably alarmed. When you realise that you have not, in fact, lost your vision, and that it is only a curtain, it would be considerate to let the rest of the people in the room know instead of going into hysterical laughter for 10 minutes whilst refusing to surrender the gas and air.

Mybabysinthegartden - How true! And they look so smug when they tell you its too late!