-by Crack

I'm not going to write about the pregnancy; it was fine.

I'm not going to write about the labor; it was short and dealable.

I'm not going to write about the delivery; it was nearly ideal.

I'm going to write about the recovery, which no one seems to talk about, ever. (I figure if Fish can get down-and-dirty, why not me? Apologies in advance to Her Majesty, the Queen of England, and any other squeamish readers. Last chance now to go read something funny and witty by someone like Elfpants or Martini...)

Everyone makes a big deal about the discomforts of pregnancy: the morning sickness, backaches, sciatic nerve pain, edema and bloating, and even the long, slow ennui of bed rest. They caricature labor: the first contractions, breaking water, the sweating, the screaming, and endless walking unless you're hooked up to an IV where you're bed ridden and gasping. And they playact the delivery: baby heads popping out, final pushes and funny breathing patterns, the sigh of triumph, the glow of first meeting. But no one said anything about what came afterwards, besides lack of sleep. Let me tell you all: there's a helluva lot more to it than that!

Caveat: All birth experiences are different, and this was mine. Kudos for you if you don't go through any of this, but hopefully my surprises will at least prepare you for some possibilities you may not have expected...

What Was Never Told To Me:

Allergies:

During pregnancy your body goes through a number of obvious changes, but the subtle ones can be even more surprising: hormonally, chemically and so on. One thing no one mentioned to me (until afterwards) is that if you have allergies, you will have a "heightened sensitivity" and may be "more reactive". In my case, I have a latex allergy. I am careful not to blow up balloons or have dentists use latex gloves and such, but a routine visit to the OBGYN's nearly killed me. I walked in and smelled fresh paint. I asked the secretary if it was latex paint.

It's true, they did. Only about six minutes in total. All the while, I had internal alarms going off, and I kept telling each of the nurses and the doctor that I am allergic to latex and don't feel well. I left after my quick pee, weigh-in and fetal heartbeat check, and was coughing on my way to the car, but I figured fresh air would help. As I drove towards the highway, I was coughing harder and it was tough to breathe... I turned the car around, drove back to the parking garage, walked into the office building and went to the suite next door coughing and hacking. A surprised medical secretary looked up, mildly perplexed.

A second secretary got up without a word and ran next door. I went out into the hallway just in time to see the door to my OBGYN's explode open, with nurses, doctors and even the check-in secretary come billowing out. They injected me with an epi-pen to the leg and sat with me on a couch near the elevators until my breathing slowed and the baby began hysterically flailing, not too happy with the artificial adrenaline dump. One nurse escorted me down to the E.R. where I waited for two hours for someone to call my husband.

(Later, I had to assure my mother that if you're going to go into anaphylactic shock, the best place to do it is in the hospital. Ironically, I had to pay the copays for the visit and the E.R., which meant I paid nearly $100 for the honor of nearly being killed by doctors.)

When I went to deliver, I had a latex-free room and a medical bracelet. I packed a silicone bottle and silicone pacifier (just in case), and made a laminated pin for my gown that said my name, that I was latex allergic and that listed my emergency phone numbers. I had to ask each and every person who came into my room if they were carrying latex gloves. (Caught two!) When my nursery was painted, I had to be absent from the house and slept downstairs for a week. I take no chances and warned all my family and friends to do the same. If you have allergies, they made become super-sized!

Nursing:

Far from the magic, chorus-of-angels moment the TV promised me, nursing was far more like the Spanish Inquisition. And no one expects the Spanish Inquisition. It's tough enough to juggle her tiny, squirming body in one arm and position pillows with the other, but there's the struggle between her mouth and my flesh, the instant shock of vacuum latch, the dry-mouth gripping of needing a drink of water right now! and the worn-out pain of tired nipples. It hurt! Nurses checked that my baby had a good latch (no problem there; she was nicknamed "Hickey" for a while) but would act surprised if there was still any "tenderness" while nursing. Tenderness?! There's nothing "tender" about a Hoover-grip on a delicate nerve bundle, and no one mentioned the jaw motions chewing away to pump never-used, engorged ducts into submission! If you had strep throat with swollen glands, wouldn't it be fun to be choked rhythmically for 30 minutes every few hours? NO! And I don't care how many bedroom Olympics you're used to, but no one has messed with your nipples on and off 'round the clock for 48 hours and then asked if you "feel any tenderness" afterwards. Sorry, but I didn't consider that unusual. It was getting to the point that when her mouth would curl to suckle in her sleep, (a beautifully sweet gesture, I assure you), I would inwardly cringe in anticipatory agony, wanting nothing more than to delay the inevitable by feigning sleep or escaping to a far-off foreign country. But I stubbornly refused formula, bottles or pacifiers; I would nurse my child, even if I cried aloud. Jon figured I was nuts.

It only took four months before the pain, the blisters, blebs, blocked ducts and sobbing subsided. I outlasted my doctors, La Leche League leaders and a hired lactation consultant... I asked Jon once if I was being stubborn or stupid. He answered. I yelled at him. Never ask.

Shock:

Well, duh. Any logical person might expect that this ordeal would do a number on the nervous system, but what with everything else you are barraged with, this one obvious fact seems to have been pushed into the back eaves. It wasn't until two days after the birth when I was walking to the bathroom and it hit: my whole body started to shake, and I fell to my knees and burst into tears for no reason whatsoever. I was suddenly, terribly terrified. Jon rushed over to me, but had no idea what to do. I clung to him like a ladder to pull me upwards, and cried. He helped me back to bed where I started shivering – I couldn't get warm enough. People came in and began bundling me up in layers of blankets, wiping off the cold sweat on my face, and I remember my mother saying, "It's shock. It'll pass." I was angry: why had no one mentioned "all-over body shakes" in class?! I'm sure I would have remembered that little bit of trivia, but no one thought much beyond the fear of birth or those first baby-centric days home. I lay there feeling like a 24-hour flu victim, and promised myself I'd tell my friends to expect the expected and damn that stupid book!

Stitches:

Sure, I knew it could happen, and it did for me. However, the "minor tearing" and "few stitches" were largely ignored by the doctors (and their advice) when I left the hospital. So when I sat up in bed to nurse and felt explosive pain that brought tears to my eyes, I held off looking until my mother had taken the baby back into her arms. There was blood (not unusual), but it was a lot of blood (which was unusual). I felt raw, sharp and wrong. Frightened, I called the doctor, who told me that I'd be bleeding for a while and not to worry; as a first-time mom, it can be scary, but normal. They recommended the refrigerated witch hazel pads (which stung like a @#$%^&* even though they were supposed to be "soothing"... later I read the label and found no soothing agents like aloe or lidocain, but did find interesting additives like citric acid in the contents. No more pads for me, thanks!) After a week, I chanced a look with a magnifying mirror and nearly passed out: the stitches had torn, and the skin had opened and swollen like fat petals of a flower balloon. I felt sick. My hand shook as it held the mirror. In the doctor's office they pronounced the stitches were gone, either torn or dissolved early. They tsked and said there was nothing they could do now; restitching would be extremely painful and cause massive bleeding, and we could only do pain-management from this point onwards. (This included two sets of pills four times a day, enough topical creams and ointments to fill a cabinet, and eventually injections of lidocaine and steroids directly into the site to promote healing. Blech.) I cursed their not believing me and swore to better trust my instincts from now on. It would be three long months before I could sit or walk normally, and the scar tissue would invariably need reconstructive surgery once healing was complete... at least six months from now.

Toilet training:

There were two problems when needing to use the bathroom: I had to, and I didn't want to. I had the experience of peeing in the hospital – a burning, trembling feeling since uric acid on raw flesh was a particular torture – and the necessary muscles involved were rather exhausted, so bladder control was a distant memory. This combines agony atop frustration and embarrassment. My bowels wouldn't be active until after I left the hospital, most of my food being light and easily converted into baby food before I got to use it; it never occurred to me to ask about it later. The first time my body attempted to pass solids, I crumpled, screaming. I tore, I bled, I cried and kept crying. I swore and screamed and breathed in more panicked gasps than I had during the hardest parts of back labor.^* I thought maybe that was just the case for the first time, but not so. It was like passing splintered wood, shattered glass, sea urchins... Jon kept calling in to see if there was anything he could do. My heart went out to him; it had to be hard listening to the keening, whimpering sounds coming from my throat. When I called the nurses they asked if I was using stool softeners.

This was also related to another unmentionable that deserves its own category:

Hemorrhoids:

Not an uncommon result of pushing so hard you can break your own tissues, it's like a blood blister on an internal vein that happens to be precariously close to the waste-management system. I had no idea what this new, distinct pain was until I had the guts to try Braille-on-the-Butt... something seemed really big and really sensitive where there shouldn't be anything at all. Back to the doctors: yep, an external hemorrhoid. This meant the bubble off of the weakened blood vessel had protruded outside my body and was trapped. In layman's terms this meant excruciating pain. Could they do anything about it? Lance it and cauterize (i.e. burn) it, but they'd prefer to wait, as it may go down on its own; whatever you do, don't touch it! Use witch hazel (no way!) or topical lidocaine (fine). After a week and more crying, the nurse on the phone said, "Push it in." I did. Much better.

In the end (no pun intended), I was in the doctor's office every other week for nearly four months solid with everything from the silver-dollar-sized "skin tab" off of my labia to the raspberry-kernal-sized white blisters known as "blebs" on my bruised areolas. The doctors and nurses were everything from helpful and hopeful to apologetic and dismissive. Contradictory reports and bizarre prescriptions were the norm; I trusted each and every one of them faithfully until about the fourth month where a kindly senior doctor denied me the medicine I had to come in to receive.

I went ballistic.

At checkout I waved down a nurse I knew who asked how I was doing. I stammered that the doctor had patted me on the hand. She didn't understand. Neither did I. The secretary took my file and said to have a nice day. I meandered to my car where I put on my hands-free phone and freaked out to my mother, who became so livid herself that she didn't know how to talk. We both babbled our disbelief. I then called Jon, who recommended I write a letter. I nodded, but not good enough, not soon enough... I called the doctor's office and asked to speak to the office manager, who listened patiently as I said this man's treatment was inexcusable. (I swore if anyone asked me if I was post-partum, I'd flay them. I'm not depressed, dammit, I'm tired, I'm in pain and I'm pissed off!) She asked me what she could do; did she want me to have her talk to him? I didn't care. I wanted to have medical care and I felt I'd been medically dismissed. She suggested I could come in the next day and see someone else. I hesitated and admitted I was so tired of coming into the office, and, frankly, had spent over $300 in copays since the birth (at $20 a shot) and that it was getting costly; I asked that the fee be waived since I had come in today and received no care.

I received three calls that day: one apologetic elderly doctor, same doctor saying he'd researched Raynaud's, and a third confirming he'd conferred with all the others in the practice via the confidential intranet system they shared, and that everyone was stumped. Thanks. I came in anyway (and had to pay the copay later too!) and saw another doctor. She didn't know what to suggest. It didn't matter. Nothing would.

In the end I learned one thing: listen to my self, since I know my body best, then ask the right people for permission to prescribe. I haven't been back to the doctor's since, and almost all the pain is gone.

...just in time for surgery.