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?

My DD was born early and unexpectedly just before Christmas, and on Christmas Day I unwrapped a Lazy Susan from my (lovely) in-laws. MIL said she knew we sometimes had people round for dinner and thought it would be useful for snacks. I was thrilled. In fact I. actually cried with gratitude over how amazing this Lazy Susan was and how incredibly clever my MIL was to choose such a brilliant present. I was so emotional and happy that I think they were a bit embarrassed.

DD had just turned 13. We have never used that Lazy Susan.

For probably 2 weeks after DD was born, every time there was a knock on the door I was genuinely convinced it would be someone there to tell me I'd had my turn and it was time to pass her on now. I couldn't get my head round the fact I got to keep her!
And YY to hearing babies crying. So many times I stood there freezing my tits off having switched off the shower, listening hard for the crying baby I'd definitely heard. Including when I was on my own in the house.
I also thought I heard the phone ringing all the time. Even better since we've never had a landline!

Outrageous x-post there, your Lazy Susan is hilarious

I spent so much time looking at my son's tiny round face (coupled with sleep deprivation) that normal grown ups faces didn't look right. My DH came home from work one day when DS was tiny and I just remember frowning at DH like I didn't recognise him. I remember asking him why his face looked so horsey

I just remembered how, when DD fell asleep on my chest as the MW was sewing me up, I started singing 'everybody needs a bosom for a pillow' and giggling. I thought I was hilarious. The MW and H were

This thread is so funny (and a bit sad) MrsC made me laugh, and the spin class?! Surely the instructor should have sent you home?

I regularly did the waking in the night and frantically patting the duvet to find dd, she was always in her Moses basket or cot, I did it for months after she was born.

I didn't have any drugs when I had her but still felt spaced out afterwards. I remember having a shower, bleeding all over the place, wondering why the midwife had thought this a good idea and how I was meant to get clean with all the blood coming out of me. Then went back into the room and dp shoved newborn dd at me and went to be sick

I completely forgot that I had given birth to my third baby.

It was so quick, woke up a 7 went to the hospital and he was born at 8.30.

I was sitting all alone in a ward for about 3 hours with him in the cot. It was not until the nurse came in to check on me that I remembered he was there. I remember feeling really guilty that I had not even looked at him.

Pethidine made me sick but it also gave me the feeling of "I can do this". I honestly thought at one point I could've pushed 10 babies in a row out. Like I was invincible.

I had a truly awful delivery, my midwife described it as "brutal" and I'd still do all again tomorrow without a shadow of a doubt. My surreal moment came in marks and Spencer's trying maternity bras on having just left preemie ds at hospital. The lovely measurer lady wiped my tears with one tissue and my breast milk with the other. What a state I was in

When ds was a week old I dreamt that I had actually had twins.. I woke suddenly to see only one and screamed at dh that i had lost the second baby... It took dh 15 mins to calm and convince me that we only had one baby.

It's strange how many people have the "where's the baby?!" panic at night (myself included) - I've love to know if there's any medical / hormonal reason for it.

A family member of mine had the 'baby bed panic' with all of her children too. I remember feeling glad that it wasn't just me! I reckon it's something to do with fatigue, hormones and one of our biggest fears combined.

I went a bit nuts about a week after DS was born and told a consultant that DS would be very bright and would be on the phone with Tony Blair and Kofi Annan solving the middle east peace crisis soon. He thought I was so odd they sent a psychologist to see me, I blubbed and kept hugging him.

A few days after DD was born I was readmitted to hospital with chronic diahorrea, mortifying at the same time my milk came in and I looked like Dolly Parton. A very handsome consultant was sent to me and arrived only to find me tearful, topless with mega boobs, a bit whiffy, in compression socks reading Tatler's Guide to Going Topless! I cringe when I think of it now.

Just remembered when having dc1 they brought a cot in to the labour room and I shouted whispered to Dh 'for God sake why are they bringing someone else with their baby in when I'm giving birth?' Dh was and I said 'can you apologise to them for the mess and will you make them tea' when midwife told me the cot was for my baby I said 'oh' I don't have a baby actually' . Didn't even remotely dawn on me even though I was pushing at the time!

I didn't have any particularly weird moments after birth but weird stuff during DS's birth (my first DC).
He was born unexpectedly at 36 weeks and was born quite quickly. We live in Spain and I am fluent in Spanish but when we got to the hospital (I was 5cm dilated at this stage) I couldn't speak Spanish at all, I couldn't get the words out, couldn't put words together to form a sentence and couldn't understand what people were saying. Well, I did, I understood the individual words but it made no sense.
They put me in a side room on the monitors and I remember listening to the beep beep of the machine and trying to do my hypnobirthing breathing and hearing the beeping slowing and thinking I was doing really well as my heart rate was slowing, then midwives burst in and started shouting at me to push...it was DS's heartbeat dropping dangerously low. Whisked off to delivery urgently and then found myself in a room full of people (still a bit out of it) wondering who they all were. They were a crash team, two midwives and a paed team.
I had NO drugs at all, until an emergency minimal dose epidural right at the end so they could use a ventouse.
My midwife friend said that it's a precipitous birth (and indeed, DD was even faster - only 2 hours from start to finish- although I didn't have the weird language difficulties with her) and the intensity can do weird things to your brain!

That 'where's the baby?!' Thing must be done sort of atavistic reflex. Happens to men too - make colleague really suffered from it, also thought he was going mad!

'Male' not 'make'

Rather unfortunately the lovely and chatty Doctor told me how much he had bunked off at school, so I accused the poor man of fraud and pretending to be a doctor whilst he was preparing me for surgery. I demanded to see his medical cents (!)

In surgery, after some epic panic pre surgery, I noticed an earring in the doctors ear and accused him of being an anarchist and would drop me off the operating table. It took some time to persuade me he just had an an earring and he wouldn't drop me.

The registrar who had been thrown out of my labour room for obscure practice arrived to tell me I needed a blood transfusion. Cue hysterical screaming he was determined to kill me

My dd was born by cs in the ME. It is practise to remove the baby from the mother at birth, wash it and it stays in the nursery. I refused all this and was warned by the hospital Mw My baby might then be stolen.

2nd night at hospital, private room, woke up in the night to see traditionally dressed couple lifting my baby girl out of the bed where I was co sleeping. I became hysterical, so did the baby, nurse arrived in fury, and the couple scarpered. Apparently they had the wrong room (!)

The surgeon lifted dd out of me and I said " oh, that's not my baby, my baby has red hair (!)

Plus when he was cautherising the wound, I said " what's all that bloody smoke? Are you having a fag down there?"

In all my years on MN I've never been so relieved to find a thread. When DS1 was three or four days old I was hallucinating there were three of him all crying and hungry, but rather than going to him/them I just told him to stop. I don't think I fed him that night. The next day he wouldn't feed at all but I kept trying to get drips of milk into his mouth. Irrationally, I didn't want to bother the midwife who should have visited us that day but never turned up. At teatime DS fell unconscious and was admitted to hospital having lost 20% of his (low) birthweight. He nearly died and it was only DP being more together than I was that saved him.

Why don't the fucking NCT tell you about this stuff?

When I had my emcs with dc5 I was hallucinating (from the morphine I think) for the first 4 days. I kept forgetting what people told me. I kept crying because I didn't know where DH had gone or when he was coming back, even though he'd told me. I was convinced I was in prison instead of in hospital and I thought the bed was moving. I was paranoid that DH would forget to put the bins out so I reminded him multiple times. It was really scary but without the morphine the pain was unbearable.

baby 1...had allergic reaction to epidural, thought i was going to die, panic stations with doctors midwives running around everywhere, my iv was empty so shouted at my DM 'thats ok let me get an air embolism', then asked someone to get the phone when it was actually the monitor beeping, midwife humoured me by saying she was getting it and i shouted at her 'you cant fool me ...its not a phone!'...got quite agitated, eventuallly had baby after nearly three day labour, had an episiotomy, when stitched told to use gas and air and said 'dont need it' and chatted non stop with junior doctor about what he was up to over the week end..baby 2. quick labour, walked to bath with midwife and ran away from her to vomit in shower cubicle?? baby 3. was ready to push and baby wouldnt come out so said to midwife 'thats it ive had enough now and ive decided i dont want another baby' tried to get off bed to go home (ended up having emcs due to transverse baby)...each time ive felt like ive been in a movie watching myself in it!

When DD was born , she was the fifth one , and it had had the potential to go horribly downhill . Luckily , we'd got away with it , but after DH had gone once we'd been taken up to the ward, the lovely midwife basically told me I was knackered , and said we'll watch DD tonight , put me to sleep with an Indian head massage , and tucked me up in a side room . Of course , halfway through the night , I woke up, to find myself in a dark room , having carried on bleeding and no baby . For a surreal moment , I managed to convince myself that I'd died . Then I found the call button !

I remember waking up after 3 days on a morphine pump thing followed by an emergency section witha general anaesthetic having just given birth at 33+5... I could hear my ex saying he's ok and he's beautifull he's got dark hair I was tryna pull the oxygen mask off my face and tryna tell them I was bleeding and I think im dieing I dont care about the bloody baby im gonna die. I really thought I was dieing and im not sure why it took hours for me to realise what had actually happend. I dont think anyone could quite believe I was saying I dont care how thenbaby is really bad

I am finding this thread such a relief... DCs are 6 and 4 now but until reading this I had always thought I was very very mentally abnormal for having had many such experiences. I would have been so reassured if I'd heard back then how common it was [MNHQ please move this thread to MN Classics!!]

My most surreal: after DS was born, there was a friendly and gentle muezzin inside the bedroom lampshade calling me to prayer in the most beautifully articulated Arabic. I'm not a Muslim and don't live within earshot of a mosque, so I really don't know where that came from..