WARNING: Pregnancy will lead to some really yucky stuff

If you could see past the Trojan horse that is pregnancy and labor and did any amount of reading on what happens after the OB spotlights fade, you know that tummy deflation and the regroup of body parts is far creepier than anything having to do with carrying or expelling a fetus. Think of your vagina as a dam. When the dam bursts, the reservoir fills but water continues to flow through the broken walls bringing with it, the trees, fish and small boats that washed up along the way. Note, that some of these items are so far "up river" that they won't even make the appearance until weeks after it bursts. If you've gotten lost here; A BUNCH OF JUNK COMES OUT OF YOUR VAGINA AND OTHER WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY FOR A GOOD WHILE AFTER THAT BUNDLE OF JOY MAKES THEIR APPEARANCE!!!

Let’s start from the beginning. You’ve welcomed your sweet, bluish offspring into the world and while you are awestruck and trying to convince yourself that a human just came out of your body, you are forced to push something else out. The placenta! That magical, life sustaining organ that resembles a blood filled jellyfish. It’s worth getting your doctor to let you have a good look at this thing as it, hopefully, is the only time you’ll get to look at one of your organs on the outside of your body while conscious. Take advantage. Check that horror show off your list and let’s move on to the next Discovery Channel experience.

You’ve no doubt heard of lochia. Otherwise known as YUCK! This mass of blood, mucus and uterine tissue will unexpectedly gush out of you from time to time postpartum. The biggest gushes hit when you are nursing or when that girl you never really liked from high school swings by to say hello and check to see if you’ve lost your baby weight. Luckily, the hospital or your midwife will equip you with pads the size of a life jacket. When you first see them you can never imagine actually utilizing their full capacity of Lake Michigan level absorbency, but you will. Cramps are a sweet warning signal that will let you know the flood gates are opening.

While one orifice is free flowing, another is setting up a barricade. The stool softeners they give you in the hospital are not a suggestion and you will need to make sure you are fully stocked when you return home to get you through the next few weeks. This is where Amazon Prime pays for itself in spades. You are saved from having to endure the shifty eyes of the cashier at check out and you can get relief in 48 hours without having to leave the comfort of your donut pillow. If you’re not up for the pills, there’s some great tea, Smooth Move, that really delivers ;)

Next up!! Night sweats. If you’ve never had the pleasure of sweating profusely without any exertion, get ready for the good times. These usually hit a week or so postpartum when your hormones decide to jump ship without a care for the havoc that will be wrecked on your body. Night sweats yield bed wetting level moisture so best to prepare your spouse and the rubber sheets. The hormone rampage doesn’t stop there. Did you enjoy the full mane that pregnancy provided? Along with your sex drive, so goes your hair. This side effect sneaks up on you just when you feel like life is getting back to normal and you’ve planned a girls’ night out. You take a look in the mirror when getting ready and realize that you have a bald spot that will require a Trump level comb over to disguise. 

With the hormone party that hits postpartum, it’s a wonder that schools feel the need to teach kids sex education at all. Your really just need to tell teenage girls that they will lose their hair and their stomachs will look like their great grandmother’s if they get pregnant and tell boys that unprotected sex puts them at risk of not having sex again for at least another year, two if the baby never sleeps.

Written by: Alice

C-Sections: The Aftermath

Even though you are not having a C-section, if someone you know ends up having one, it might be useful to know what to expect in the aftermath. Full disclosure—I had a relatively easy recovery, so you may want to consult some medically trained expert-type people, or at least someone who has had more than one baby, for further details.

Your Blood Pressure: In the minutes immediately following surgery, your blood pressure may plummet. There are medical reasons for this that are perfectly normal and that I am too lazy to Google. You won’t necessarily know that this is happening—what you will feel is an intense, overwhelming desire to close your eyes and sleep. I thought this desire to pass out cold meant I didn’t love my baby and I was going to be a terrible mother. I have the capacity to generate a great deal of self-loathing in a short period of time. Turns out my BP was 80/40, and it remained that way for about an hour. I wish I’d known about the blood pressure drop and saved myself another year of therapy.

The Not Moving: You just had the baby you’ve been dreaming about for 40 weeks, and you can’t get out of bed to pick him up. You’re supposed to be a mother, a bastion of softness and cuddles, but you’re attached to machines and wires and there may be a tube up your hoo-ha to help you pee. This part is demoralizing, but it doesn’t last forever. The machines will recede, you will be walking upright in a few days, and in the meantime, your spouse will get pretty good at changing tiny diapers and scraping meconium off his wedding ring. 

The Gas: Of all the competing types of pain and discomfort in my newly postpartum body, the post-op gas pain was by far the worst. I felt like I had acid pooling in my shoulders and a fire-breathing dragon nestled in my spine. The gas relievers were about as effective as a sling shot in a nuclear war. Thankfully it only lasted about 48 hours. I have never been more excited to fart in public than I was on the second day after surgery.

Fifty Shades of Pain: In addition to gas pain, there is also the shrinking uterus pain, and the holy-shit-I’ve-been-cut-open pain, as well as a host of miscellaneous pains, like the “my insides have been temporarily removed and then replaced just slightly out of order” pain, or the “a human child tried to push its head through my lady bits but then got stuck in my pelvic bone for sixteen hours” pain. Your pain will be unique, but Hydrocodone is generic, so make sure you demand it at regular intervals and keep taking it at home. Your plan for a natural childbirth is already road-kill on the highway of reality; this is not the time to just say no.

There Will Be Blood: Because I am not especially good at science or basic logic, I briefly thought the one upside to having a C-section would be not dealing with the dreaded “lochia,” which is Latin for “pretty sure you’ll be wearing a maxi pad until your child is in second grade.” Of course I was wrong—the doctors are not considerate enough to scoop out all the blood and goop while you’re open on the table. Your baby may not have exited the old fashioned way, but everything else will.

Your First Post-Op BM: Much like it prepared for labor, your body may spend days or even weeks preparing for its first bowel movement after delivery. Eventually the need will become undeniable, so hand the baby to your spouse, grab a magazine and some Gatorade, and settle in for the long-haul. It could take hours, and you will feel like you are giving birth to a bag of rocks. There will be praying, cursing, and hysterical crying. You will do things that would shock your younger self, and you will never speak of those things to anyone again. When it’s all over, you will experience a wave of euphoria followed by intense exhaustion. Congratulations, it’s a poop.

The Scar: At first, the incision site may resemble something you’ve seen in those chain-emails your mom used to forward about co-eds going to Cancun for spring break and waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a kidney missing. Worry not—like your memory of childbirth, your scar will fade, eventually becoming a thin white line that your future teenager will barely be able to see when you demand she look at it after she calls you the b-word in front of her friends.

Written by: Kathleen

Born in the Wild

The decision to go “natural”, aka drug free, was an easy one for me and involved very little political ideals or hemp products. My mother had all three of us at home, so I felt secure in the knowledge that my DNA would allow me to channel my inner wild animal and pop a baby out a la carte! That said, I will admit that while I had publicly made up my mind, I was privately giving myself permission to scream “uncle” mid-contraction.

I went into labor 10 days before my due date. I am not really clear on the rules around how long people say they labored. Do you claim the time the doctor says labor technically started, the moment when you actually realized you were in labor, or the time when you start to feel like your body is splitting in half? For me: Doctor’s Time: 5 hours; My Time: 2 hours; Body Splitting Time: 30 minutes.

My water broke while I was at work. Since I was 10 days early and it was just a little trickle, I figured that this was the stage in pregnancy when you start peeing yourself. I was feeling a bit off all day so I had planned to leave a little early anyway. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to call my doctor and check in in case it wasn’t just pee. They had me come in to the office and discovered that I had in fact broken my water. They immediately moved forward with normal protocol telling me that I needed to check into the hospital and get hooked up to pitocin. I explained that I was not using pitocin or an epidural. My doctor warned me that it could be up to 24 hours for me to deliver if I didn’t use pitocin. I told her I had nowhere to be and that wasn’t a problem for me. One thing you have to prepare yourself for if you opt for a drug-free delivery is that the hospital is full of pushers. Around every corner there is a nurse saying, “just try a little, it will make you feel better.” I chose to treat the nursing staff like drug dealers and would yell out “drug free is the way to be!” It scared them enough to back off and was super amusing for me. Once my husband got to the hospital, the nurse had us walk the halls with an enormous towel, because if the rest of my water broke by the vending machine I would be ever-so worried that someone might slip. When we hiked back to the room and sat on the bed for some quick monitor action, the rest of my waters came out. For those of you who haven’t experienced your waters breaking on your own, I liken it to the lack of control my grandmother must feel when she soaks her Depends while playing bridge. It flows right out of you and you can’t do anything to stop it or slow it down. Once that wonderful, buoyant universe was depleted, I felt nothing but baby! That’s when the painful contractions started. Since pain is gauged due to the dramatic tendencies of the person, I’ll just say it hurt a 7, with 10 being the pain I felt when Sonny Bono died. I tried to focus on the purpose of the pain and the fact that in 6-10 years that purpose will do my dishes. Once the baby was out, the release of pressure was a huge relief. Your body is so pumped with natural adrenaline that acute pain isn’t really present. Your body is wound up really tightly. My legs had tremors for an hour after delivery. The recovery from a drug free birth is relatively quick and the percentage of women that get tears, etc, is lower because your body can feel what is happening and properly prepare—aka stretch. There is no missing out on the days of aftermath or the next 20 years of exhaustion no matter how your little one came into the world. Pick the path that is right for you and reserve the right to change your mind. Also know that the only thing that is 100% certain about childbirth is that nothing will go exactly as you planned. In the words of one maladjusted ice princess, “Let It Go, Let It Go!”

 Suggested Natural Birth Playlist

“I’m Coming Out” Pink

“Burning Ring of Fire” Johnny Cash

“Push It” Salt-N-Peppa

“Hit Me Baby One More Time” Britney Spears

“Come As You Are” Nirvana

“Sunday Bloody Sunday” U2

“My Humps” Black Eyed Peas

“Drop It Like It’s Hot” Snoop Dogg

“Who’s Gonna Raise these Babies” Shovels and Rope

 Written by: Alice