Surreal moments after just having a baby

[TheOddity]

It can't just be me who had this please say it isn't as I already think I'm a bit nuts.

The next evening after I gave birth, I distinctly remember going to Asda to buy some medication for all my sore parts. I insisted on driving there alone while DH stayed with baby as I basically wanted to escape the baby hell hole for half an hour.

The whole Asda experience was as close as I've ever been to a 'trip'. I remember thinking how no one realised I'd given birth less than 24 hours before. Everyone was still just living their lives, being normal, coping. I felt so weird, I can't describe, it was like a psychedelic dream.

Did anyone else have this surreal feeling? Strange stuff you did immediately post birth?

I woke up in a panic to the baby crying and realised I was actually holding the 3 day old baby aloft, like I was offering her up to the heavens. DH said I just threw the duvet off me, jumped out of bed, reached into the cot, lifted the sleeping baby out and was holding her up high with full outstretched arms, my eyes were open and he thought I was awake. I have no recollection of anything until I heard her cry and hubby being freaked out saying 'what's happened to her !', thinking I had some 6th sense that something had gone wrong with the baby.

summerdreams you've just reminded me: I was at the very end of labour, did I but know it, and the midwife was reassuring me that the baby was fine and that his heart rate was normal. I remember thinking that I really couldn't give a shit about the baby at that point. It was like a solid wall had come down on my ability to care and everybody who was not me could just fuck off.

I feel like I now understand why people cave in under torture - it had been 29 hours of pain by that point and I had officially Had Enough.

It is interesting to hear so many stories about weird or hallucinating experiences after birth. I had hallucinations and very bad feelings a day or so after birth, I felt I couldn't go to sleep otherwise I would die, and when I dozed off I had horrible visions. It was due to not sleeping for a few days of a very long labour and then not being able to sleep on the wards due to other babies crying, it was just one loooong time which never seemed to end.

I did go to the dr, they sent me to see a psychologist who said I could have AD if I chose as I was at risk of PND, but I didn't take them and just carried on and was fine in the end.

I do think of that first month though as a time of surreality and madness though, and when I asked in my NCT group, most of the other women felt similarly that they were having some type of emotional breakdown at that time, a couple were absolutely fine and probably did think the rest of us were mad!

My second birth was very quick and my DD2 was born not breathing. All the staff immediately left the room with her to go to a resuscitation unit, leaving DH and I alone. After a few moments I turned to him and asked "did I just have a baby?".

Again G&A and morphine.

I did the sitting up in bed and furiously patting the duvet looking for DD1 who was in the Moses basket all the time. She never co-slept. I don't remember ever doing it with DD2 who was a cosleeper. Curious.

I remember being so exhausted after a non-productive labour of 48 hours which ended in EMCS that I felt like I had forgotten how to breathe. I kept sort of nodding off and then waking up with a big gasp. The scary thing was I felt like at the next forgotten breath I would probably die, and I was ok with that, as it meant I could finally sleep. Very strange feeling, looking back on it.

When DS2 was a few days old he was asleep in his basket next to me, I was laying on the couch trying to watch a programme.

I was suddenly gripped by a huge wave of panic, my God, I can't remember the last time I felt the baby move

I was distraught until I remembered I was no longer pregnant!

By the time I gave birth I hadn't slept at all for a couple of days. That evening I fell asleep for 3 hours on the ward and when I was woken up I thought I had been transferred to a hospital on the moon. I was absolutely convinced.

Also used to wake in an absolute panic every time I slept thinking that she was somewhere in the bed. Always in her cot...

raffle I had the 'not felt the baby move' panic for days!

This is one of the most reassuring threads I've ever read.

I had pethidine quite a few times during my pregnancy (in hospital with quite bad kidney problems - OMG, the pain). At one point I informed my DH that I couldn't sleep last night because of the little blonde girl scooting up and down the corridor past my door, and the noise of her scooter wheels on the lino. He looked at me with an eyebrow raised and gently pointed out that a) that seemed a little unlikely; and b) I couldn't actually see the door of my room from my bed. Five years on and I do actually have a little blonde girl on a scooter, which is a fitting result.

I remember very clearly the noise of a crying baby when my baby wasn't crying, and the waking up in panic because I thought she'd got lost in the bed. The sleep deprivation nearly destroyed me and left me a paranoid wreck. I wound up with OCD and had horrible intrusive thoughts where I completely panicked that I would throw DD out the window or put her in the oven. I hid those thoughts from everyone because I was sure they'd take her away from me if anyone knew what horrible things I might do. Thank heavens I eventually got help and I know now that it's fairly common and it really, really, doesn't mean I would ever do that - quite the opposite in fact.

Pleasingly I also went from being a hardhearted cynical wretch to being a much more hopeful person. In the early days of cluster feeding I remember being stuck on the sofa watching the news when DH came home. He found me sitting there with tears rolling down my face. I was watching a news story about baby turtles being saved from an oil spill in Mexico and was sobbing "they rescued them" gulping sobs "humanity is sooooooo beautifuuuuuuul".

I've really enjoyed reading this thread and have laughed out loud a few times! I think the poster trying to rip the monkey's face off is my favourite .

I Just wanted to post to say that if anyone is reading this who's pregnant or planning to conceive please don't let the thread worry you. I'm sure most people don't have these experiences, remember only people that have had these experiences will come on to post on a thread like this, people won't comment that they haven't had hallucinations etc.

I had three c sections so obviously lots of drugs. With dd1 I was in labour for 24 hrs first and had every drug going, including pethidine and I didn't have any weird experiences on any of them. So pleaae don't worry, not everyone has them. And if you do, remember this thread and know that you're not going insane, you're probably sleep deprived and hormonal!

I am reading all these accounts of auditory hallucinating babies crying.

For days after I brought DD home from hospital, I could another baby crying, often when DD was fast asleep on my lap. I thought that the reason no-one else could hear it was because motherhood had given me super sensitive hearing.

None of my neighbours had babies. And I never saw anyone with a young baby visiting, but until this thread, I never doubted that it was a real baby I kept hearing. It was all in my sleep-deprived head, wasn't it?

I had a 48 hours labour with my daughter, then she spent the first night screaming, so I went 3 full nights without sleep. She was born in St thomas's Hospital in London and the post-natal ward has a lovely view of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament, and I was lucky enough to get a bed right by the window.

So, there I was waiting for my husband to arrive in the morning (he'd been sent home at 2am after I was moved to the ward) it was about 7am and the middle of winter, so still dark. I suddenly spotted canoes going down the Thames, loads of them. Then I saw ninjas climb out and swarm up the sides of the Houses of Parliament. I couldn't understand why nobody else was concerned about this. I was most agitated.

I'm expecting my first (only 8weeks so a long way to go yet), on the contrary to being concerned I'm looking forward to this! Sounds like it'll give my DH a right laugh and I think pethadine should be on my drugs of choice list (for the labour of course).

Yes for a fair while

at the ninjas climbing up the Houses of Parliament. What a sight!

Left hospital after 2 days- 10pm at night hubby says he is starving and so was I and as no food indoors sat opposite hospital in Pizza Hut car park with two day old in back eating pepperoni pizza. Very surreal.

This thread is 5% funny and 95% horrifying. I don't think it is the drugs that do this to women...I think it is the trauma.

My surreal moments were being left with my newborn DD 3 hours post general anaesthetic with no idea where I was or what was going on and the first face I saw 6 hours later being the fecking bounty woman.

lacontessadiplump thankyou so much I thought it was a reaction to the anaesthetic but nice to know im not alone. My line of thinking was they dont get it my sons in the nicu he'll be fine its me no one realises is about to die. I even told the dr who woke me and said "its a boy and he's born at 7.45pm " I replyed with "I dont care please help me im dieing" felt terrible afterwards as my son in a bad way that night . I also heard babies crying for a few week once he was home and also thought he was in the bed with me many times or thought he had been taken out the moses basket but I think that more sleep deprivation and them dreadfull night sweats.

summerdreams I suspect it happens to a lot of people and that they don't let themselves think about it because it's too much of a shameful thing to think. I've never said it to anyone in RL, for instance.

Thank you so much for this thread! My DD came 6 weeks early and it was such a shock I remember feeling really odd and detached from reality at times.

The sleep deprivation was AWFUL in the beginning as well. The weirdest time was once when I had had a nap leaving DD downstairs with my DH. She woke up to be fed and so he brought her to me. I was so tired that I didn't recognise him but I did recognise that DD was my baby, I think I thought he was a doctor or something (we had a 2 week stay in hospital after the birth so maybe I was a bit institutionalised!)

She slowly led me back to the bed with a worried look on her face. Luckily I was fine again after a breast feed. *

The midwife breast fed you?

summerdreams don't worry. I was wondering whether and how I could give DC1 away, possibly on eBay, after the first horrendous 2 weeks of expressing around the clock.

Just thinking about the sheer tiredness that comes with a newborn, I had times - lots of them - when I simply couldn't speak due to absolute exhaustion, the words just wouldn't come and if they did they came out all wrong.

It's so reassuring to know that I'm no more crazy than so many others! I also had the weird hallucinating thing going on for WEEKS after having DS1. Kept waking up thinking he was under the dirty laundry in the laundry basket

I think the craziest thing I did was after DS2 was born. Two days PP I had to drive DS1 to daycare as DH can't drive. As I was then really near my office, I decided to take DS2 in to show my colleagues. I remember being confused as to why it was so freaking hot in the office, as I was sweating buckets. it wasn't hot at all. Drove back home and nearly collapsed with exhaustion. Idiot.