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?

For some reason it hadn't registered that after the birth I had to deliver the placenta.

So after DD came out, it was all smiles and discovering the sex etc. Then the MW said she needed to deliver the placenta. I was horrified! I couldn't go through all that pain again. I refused to let her (using language I didn't know I knew). Told her I'd deal with it when I got home. Luckily DH was there and told me firmly to let the MW do what she needed and I would just have to do as I was told.

Later, DH suggested we name the baby after the MW. She had done nothing lifesavingly remarkable, nor did she have a very nice name. I think that was DH's emotion's getting the better of him. It took us another 2 weeks to decide on a name.

Not a hallucination moment but I remember feeling a massive rage towards the dairy industry post birth. I was crying tears at the fact these poor cows were being made to get pregnant, give birth and then "breast feed" I vowed to set up a campaign when I was free to get off the settee (was BF'ing around the clock) to end dairy farming. Sixteen years later I still haven't got around to it.

Entonox gave me auditory hallucinations when I was in labour with ds. I thought there was a tv in the room showing Loose Women and asked dh to turn it off as Colleen Nolan was putting I'm in the Mood for Dancing' in my head and "it's p*ing me off because I'm really not!".
Post EMCS I was convinced that they'd swapped ds for another baby.
With both dcs I used to regularly wake in the night convinced I'd not put them back in the crib after feeding and they were under the covers of our bed. I used to wake dh by pulling the quilt off him.

I'm not sure but one or two days pp I think I accidentally fell asleep on the hospital bed with dd1 next to me. I woke up wondering where she was, she was in the crib next to the bed. To this day I have no idea whether I did fall asleep with her next to me and a midwife moved her, or if I had put her there prior to falling asleep.

At home I woke up a few times in a panic thinking I'd fallen asleep feeding and dd1 was in the bed/under the covers somewhere. Even woke dp up once asking where dd was, as always she was safe in the Moses basket right next to me. I think I did this a couple of times with dd2 as well but nowhere near as much.

Chugging on the g&a in labour with dd2 and I kept thinking the midwife was in the room with me so I had to be on my 'best behaviour' (what ever that means when you're in labour) - she wasn't.

I was in a bay with a window on the ward after having dd2 and spent a bit of time looking out of it and watching the world go by the night she was born. I found it very surreal that I was in the throes of labour mere hours ago yet outside of the labour suite, the world was just carrying on as normal.

I'm positive my granddad, who passed away a month before dd2 was born came to see her one night, I remember sort of waking up and seeing a figure that looked like him standing over the Moses basket. I'll never know if I dreamt it or not but I take comfort in the fact that it was him.

The first few weeks after giving birth can be very strange.

We took DS to sainsburys at 4 days old and I remember standing in the shampoo aisle crying because I though my insides were going to fall out of my vagina and wouldn't let go of the pram in case someone stole DS. Poor DP was like .

ha ha post section after dc 1 I was hallucinating fireman sam on the recovery ward and could hear the music and everything (think was the morphine)

omg and after coming home with dc #3 I felt really skinny because obvs the bump had gone a bit and obvs I had the massive boobs so prob that made me think I was thin

and I actually felt I looked great so when visitors PIL came I changed into a tight vest and skinny jeans like as if to show off look how thin I am already.

but I am sure I wasn't i prob still looked 8 months gone. and I bet they were thinking why the fuck is she parading around like that

EMCS after 2 weeks of full contractions 10 minutes apart, and close to 19 hours "proper" labour. I was whisked off to the tertiary hospital after a massive PPH that didn't want to respond to treatment and low oxygen. DD was perfect. Pink and pudgy.

I held a polite conversation with the registrar (who came with me in the ambulance) and the ambulance crew, while patting a cat. The registrar and ambulance crew also patted the cat.
Hint: there was no cat.

Once DD and I were home, I proudly put her in her cot in her own room, walked out of the door, intending to have a shower, and promptly burst into tears. I ended up lining the bathroom sink with many towels and nestling her in it while I showered. She slept in her baby bath on two dining chairs that night, and I made XDP bring me a bassinet the next day.

Yes!! I always said I was on my own little planet after giving birth. So glad to have found like minded people

13 hours after DD1 was born at home DH and I took her to the shops. In hindsight I should have been at home resting but he was desperate to show her off.

He took her into Greggs and I waited outside, in a vest top, still with a bit of a bump. One of my friends spotted me and asked how the pregnancy was going and I cheerfully told her that I'd had the baby at midnight and she was in Greggs with DH. She just looked at me like then out came DH, holding this 5lb 12oz scrap, grinning away. Friend was so freaked out. I nearly fainted soon after that and went home

ChatShitGetBanged I did that too and I waited for visitors to say wow and tell me how I got my figure back quickly, like a celebrity. They didn't.

LOLOLOL watchedfrozen me too

I had a weird hallucination type thing that Mark Sloan from greys anatomy was delivering my baby when I reached the pushing stage and I was embarrassed he was looking at my bits. It was only later that I realised he was fictional and hadn't been present. Felt like I was in a bubble for about two months as well and people would talk to me and I couldn't understand what they were saying even though I recognised the words

The hospital I gave birth in was redoing the front entrance while I was there, hence pneumatic drilling all day directly outside my window, three floors down.

I was in for two nights after a section, and was so sleep deprived that on the second night I began dancing to the beat of the drill at 4am despite the workmen having gone home 11 hours earlier. I was most put out that the MW didn't want to dance with me.

I'd completely forgotten about it until I read this thread!

After DD I kept hearing a slightly sinister version of "Girls and Boys Come Out To Play" going around in my head. Was worried I was going into postpartum psychosis - it took a week or so to go.

I also had frequent and uncontrollable terrifying visions of dropping DD and her skull smashing - especially on the stairs. I made other people DH carry her up and down the stairs instead of me for about two three months

I did have a bit of PND and was very sleep-deprived.

Yy to the voices after emcs, both times I could hear people talking but couldn't understand what they were saying. I kept getting convinced people I knew from the antenatal classes were on the ward too (they weren't). Weirdest thing for me was when I was sitting, exhausted, on the toilet hiding from the baby and I thought 'it's OK because they'll be coming to take her back again in a couple of weeks time'. I honestly thought she was only with us for a bit and was completely relieved to think it was only temporary!

Another weird thing that hit me repeatedly several months into subsequent sleep deprivation was staring at the inserts of our Dr Brown's bottles and thinking they were macca pacca from in the night garden

My oldest son was transferred to the SCBU at another hospital when 24 hours old, blue lights and everything (including a nurse puking due to travel sickness as we sped along, which I thought was hilarious ). Anyway, that was on the Monday night and on the Tuesday night he was allowed out of SCBU and into a parents room, a little room with a single bed, en suite and tea making facilities, where we stayed until the Thursday morning. Although we were only in there for 36 or so hours, it felt like we'd been there for weeks and weeks.

Yes to the phantom crying! In the background for the first week or so. Even in the shower. Think my husband heard it too.

DS was in NICU and DH and I drove twenty miles to attend a family Christmas meal leaving DS in hospital. We also visited three supermarkets looking for last minute Christmas stuff!!! I still looked heavily pregnant and wanted to tell people I had actually had my baby and he was in hospital.

I spent the first few weeks calling my son by our cat's name in my head. I was terrified at some point I was going to accidentally say it out loud and everyone would judge me for not knowing his name

Wow, cathartic thread! 4 years on from my emcs with DS1, I've got over all aspects of the birth trauma apart from the feeling of being completely, utterly insane for about 4-5 days afterwards. I've never before or since (despite 2 further DCs) felt that sense of having absolutely no control whatsoever over my thoughts or my emotions, and that feeling that nothing is completely real, an almost hallucinatory experience.
Vivid memory #1 - second night on the ward, being convinced that my son was called Matthew (he wasn't), and having to remind myself over and over of his real name. Unfortunately, I kept reminding myself his real name was Robert (it wasn't that either). At the time it didn't feel like a strange thing to do.
Vivid memory #2 - first afternoon at home. My DB and DSis-in-law had bought my husband a mildly amusing book about fatherhood. I kept reading bits aloud to everyone, then collapsing into proper hysterics - I mean hysteria in the true definition, laughing so hard I cried and then properly crying afterwards. I remember everyone looking at each other like as I giggle/scream/giggle/screamed myself stupid.

Laughed out loud at the lip smacking cats!
Day after dc2 was born at home I had to take him to gp for a check up. I suddenly saw him in negative, dark purple skin and white hair, and he almost seemed evil . Nearly passed out after that, clearly should not have walked so far so soon after birth. Also had the extreme clarity with my others too.

I got really paranoid after my elcs. I thought the nurses/midwives were trying to hurt me with drugs and so I started pretending I was going to take them but throwing them away as so as their back was turned Then when a midwife offered to hold baby whilst I showered I was paranoid she would hurt her, so I kept peaking in the mirror to see what she was doing!

I think my sanity returned gradually in the following weeks!

I have to say about the everything being bright and colourful and slightly surreal thing - nothing to do with giving birth - years pre DCs - I was in hospital for a couple of weeks when they finally released me (on valium to be fair) I felt like that...eg I lived in a shared house and I was convinced they'd repainted the living room...I remember saying wow - the walls are so bright and white - really looks much cleaner, what a good a job ... and my flatmate being ... (worse the walls were actually a mucky creamy off white...)

This is brilliant!
With my dd I had laboured for 4 days and ended up with every drug going and an emcs. I remember in the later stages of labour shouting at the midwife as she had switched the radio off. She hadn't, it was still on but I couldn't hear it. This went on for hours apparently. I was so tired that I demanded a large black coffee (I hadn't had caffeine for several years whilst trying to conceive or when preg). I then did an exorcist type projectile vomit which I found hilarious. I kept telling the v kind anaesthetist I wanted to kiss him and repeatedly called him an angel. All he had done was do the spinal but for some reason he was my saviour. I also felt like the seasons had changed, there was v deep snow when we took dd home and it felt so so surreal and like I had been in the hospital months. Also even though we hadn't found out the sex I had been convinced the baby was going to be a boy, so much so that I had bought lots of navy blue new born stuff. All the early pictures of dd are in these navy babygros as I couldn't get my head round her being a girl for ages!
With ds I had an elcs but had a pph afterwards, that was weird and I could feel myself floating above the bed, v freaky. When I came round I was convinced they were going to have to unstitch my c section would to drain off the blood.

I had a very strange evening when my son was 5 days old. I had had a c-section and my milk didn't come in until day 5. I was feeling out of sorts anyway and hadn't slept for 5 nights.

It was September 11th 2001 and I was sitting with lots of other new mum's in the maternity unti watching the dreadful news on the tv. I overheard a midwife saying that George Bush would now use nuclear weapons against the perpetrators.

Overnight my son was crying all night and I was very disorientated and was tripping from lack of sleep I believe. I was having all sorts of weird hallucinations about nuclear holocausts and war. It was a awful night and I cried hysterically for most of it. I couldn't believe I had brought my beautiful, tiny son into such an unsettled, troubled world.