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April 2018 Moms
lindsye
member
UO 1/18
lindsye
member
Anybody have anything today?
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Re: UO 1/18
But. It seems to me that now there is so much focus and emphasis on achieving a certain ideal birth experience, as the term suggests, that it takes away from the focus on what’s best for you and your baby. I mean, the moment I have first seen and held each of my babies has indeed been almost truly magical, but it’s also just the first day in the rest of a life-long relationship with that child. I find it odd that sometimes it seems people spend so much more time worrying about and planning that first day in the parenthood journey than thinking and planning for the rest of it.
Also, the thought of telling my 3 year old to stop doing something because it isn’t living up to my ideal motherhood experience makes me laugh. So absolutely, think about how you’d like that day to go and hope for it, but don’t let emphasis on the experience of it overshadow the concerns about safety of you and your baby first and foremost. And if your birth experience doesn’t go exactly as you’d hoped: well, it’s a nice welcome to the roller coaster ride that is motherhood.
My UO is celebrities and over the top physical changes. The View is on (MIL likes it and we’re at their condo), and Sharon Osborn just looks weird now. Must have had nose and dental work (bare minimum). She was pretty before, creepy now. I’m all for quirky beautiful and looking like yourself. I recognize that it’s a personal choice, but I don’t like plastic surgery to fit what society deems beautiful.
@lindsye I agree. I didn't take the time to write out a birth plan or even discuss much with my doctor with DD. I did my research and went in open minded. I never panicked or got upset when something changed during the delivery because I think I went in this way. I let the doctors clearly know at points where they felt they needed to step in that my goal was a safe delivery for me and baby and they should do what they need to do to make that happen.
I think the positive for me with birth plans is that the focus is gearing back towards the way births were originally meant to happen. Yes, we have so many amazing medical interventions now that increase the odds of a healthy delivery, resulting in a mom and baby both alive and well at the end, but I also feel that nurses and doctors have been doing the procedure for so long, they stopped caring about the mother along the way. Its as if, lets pump her full of everything possible to keep her completely still and let the staff and utensils do the rest. The mom is nothing more than a the vessel thats incubated the baby the past 9/10 months, now its the hospital's prerogative to do the rest. Thats how I see it anyway. For me, a birth plan is the ability to let the delivery take its natural course and if medical intervention is needed, then the hospital can intervene. That is why so many people love doulas, because they are an advocate for the mother when nurses want to do things their way regardless of the mother's wishes.
I have a plan...or at least ideas of how I want things to progress, BUT if it doesn't happen that way, I'm ok with it. I know delivery is just a day or so, a very small time frame in the grand scheme of things, but I also want to look back at that time and be ok with myself in the way I prepared for and handled it.
my UO is kind of very random but I get annoyed when parents call daycare/childcare « school » unless your kid is in official preschool or grade school, it’s not school! Just call it daycare. It doesn’t make it worse or less « learning oriented » or make you a bad parent to put your kids in daycare!!
But, to play devil's advocate, it's possible for the birth experience to have a profound impact on that initial phase of mothering. A traumatic delivery can impair bonding and milk production and all kinds of things. I know women who have been devastated by their birth not going as "planned"- which is partly on moms and society for the belief that there is a "perfect" birth - but there are real things that happen in hospitals that can strip a woman of her feelings of empowerment and choice. I've heard of doctors breaking water or cutting episiotomies without consent (which seems like malpractice, but it happens). So I think doing your research and talking through these things with your provider ahead of time helps you trust your provider and feel empowered when the time comes to make decisions. I personally chose a midwifery model for both of my pregnancies because I like their emphasis on the mom's autonomy and decision-making, whatever that may look like.
I also think that there are real things that could go wrong with your birth experience - ie major medical issues - that could very easily cause or at least make post-partum depression or anxiety more likely.
However, I think the phenomenon of depression/anxiety over the way your birth experience went can also be the result of having unreasonable expectations about the process or placing undue emphasis on the process itself and not the end result, and that seems to me a real problem. At the end of the day, if you have a healthy mama and a healthy baby but had to have an induction with pitocin, for instance, and that causes you depression or anxiety postpartum because your expectations of the experience weren’t met, then I think it’s an indication of too much focus on the process itself and not the end goal/result.
I think the obsession with birth plans came about from the belief that you have no control over what happens to you and doctors will ignore any and all requests you may have. If your OB is worth their salt, they will listen to you and have a discussion about your needs and preferences. If you get the feeling that your experience will be otherwise, it’s not too late to make a switch.
Eta maybe I should save this for fffc tomorrow, but when I found out I was high risk and likely not able to deliver at my small hospital again I honestly cried! Not just because of my awesome doc but because they send all new moms home with a “family dinner” of frozen lasagna, garlic bread, veggies and brownies. That Lasagna was the best meal I ever had!
Just to clarify, my “it’s not too late to switch” comment referred to right now — obviously in the throes of labor you won’t be switching OBs!
Obv my case is extreme but i share it bc being flexible was truly the only way i got through my experience without being let down by it afterwards. I still had some choices. Not many bc of the circumstances but some.
<a href="http://www.thebump.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Parenting Tips"><img src="http://global.thebump.com/tickers/tt1d99dc" alt=" Pregnancy Ticker" border="0" /></a>
Now, my answer to that dilemma isn't to obsess about the "experience", but rather to research the hell out of the delivery process, the options, the OB, and the delivery hospital/center. Yes, it is just one small blip in parenthood, but a shitty hospital with a bad attitude can directly affect my daily physical being for the rest of my life. To me, it is an essential part of the experience to understand what is happening to intervene and advocate of behalf of myself if things start happening that I don't consent to.
So I guess what I am saying to @lindsye 's point, is that if it helps women to put together a plan and an itinerary to reach that level of advocacy and awareness, that is only to the benefit to the mother and the baby. And I guess I really don't see how that is negative.
My point was that if you truly believe, prior to labor, that your OB is going to treat you like a vessel with no autonomy...then it’s time to switch who you are seeing. Nobody should be treated like that, and any good OB wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Let me start out by saying that I think it is your prerogative - and indeed your job - to read and research and make an informed decision about what you think is best and safest for yourself and your baby, so I’m definitely not saying that you shouldn’t make informed medical decisions.
My point was about the phenomenon of women obsessing over having a certain birth experience; though it sounds similar to birth plan, to me the two are entirely different. Doing the research and preparation to make a birth plan focuses on the safety and welfare of you and your baby; I applaud this, and trust me, I too research the hell out of everything. In contrast, fixating on a particular birth experience to me loses its connection to concern about the safety and welfare of you and your baby and romanticizes the birthing process, in some cases leading to postpartum depression and anxiety if you do not have the birthing experience that you want - ie, you need to be induced with pitocin. As I said to @mountainsmama, I know women who experience postpartum anxiety or depression because of this, even though the Mom and the baby are both safe and healthy, just because the experience didn’t meet expectations. That, to me, is a problem.
My point about it being just one day was not that that means it’s therefore a throwaway and doesn’t matter; rather, it’s that if the birth experience doesn’t go exactly the way you want - note: not a doctor performing an unauthorized medical procedure, but having to have an intervention that doesn’t fall into line with the idealized notion you have in your head of the way it should go - it’s just day one in your relationship with your child: you have a lifetime of experiences to go with that kid.
BUT I came here to say an UO about birth experiences: I LOVE hearing birth stories, I could read them or listen to them all day. I love how every birth is different and I find it so interesting all the different ways/experiences people have and how something happening during birth could traumatize someone and the next person would barely mention it as a big deal. Everyone is SO different, I love that.
I think a birth plan is good to have, and it's also good to have whoever is with you in the delivery room knowing generally what you would or wouldn't like to have done but to know sometimes stuff you don't want to happen is going to happen for the safety of you and your baby.
But to get really tied to a certain birth experience and be really upset that things out of your control happened, that had to happen so that you and your baby would be ok, that's not good.
That being said, she can shove her condescending BS up her butt. I had prodromal labor for weeks, AND I had a 3 day labor. It's not mutually exclusive, and quite frankly not even leading scientific experts on the field can definitively tell you what the trigger point for "real labor" is.
Also, I REALLY hate it when women have that kind of attitude about other people experiencing a harder labor than they do. Good freaking job, having the stupid good luck that your body went through labor in clear cut stages, did it quickly, and things went smoothly. You might as well congratulate yourself on how awesome and smart you are that you decided to be born rich, or white, or without genetic predisposition to cancer.
You may also dilate some in the weeks prior to labor but that doesn’t mean you’re actually in labor - your body/cervix is just preparing for birth. It is also possible (even likely) that you’ll notice practice contractions in the weeks before labor - you can feel them and they may be uncomfortable, but they are not regular, timeable and painful. The key is regular, timeable contractions (that are painful) that are strong enough to change your cervix once they begin - and once they start, should continue to dilate your cervix.
I am a planner, so I was ready to tell you that you can pry my birth plan from my cold dead fingers
I actually brought my birth plan with me the first time, and I had an amazing nurse who actually asked for it. Since things went sideways on step one, I ruefully told her that it probably didn't apply to me anymore. And bless this Angel in human form, she told me "maybe, but I want to see what you wanted to happen, so I can at least make sure some of it does happen". I could have kissed her.
I think @lindsye makes a really good point. I have a couple close friends who were very committed to their ideal birth experiences, made specific plans, and said they were willing to be flexible on their plans if medical interventions were deemed necessary. Neither one had especially traumatic births, but they were ultimately very disappointed that they couldn't have non-medicated births and it seemed to affect them for a while after their babies were born. They had their babies before I did, and I think hearing their experiences helped me realize that birth plans weren't for me. I attended a birth class and learned about the process and different interventions. I decided what my nice to haves would be for my labor and communicated those to the staff who was attending me when I was in labor. I was very happy with my birth experience and I think not having to many expectations worked well for me. That's not to say that birth plans are a bad thing, I have a couple other close friends who were very committed to their ideal birth experiences, made specific plans, and their labors did follow the plans they had in mind. That's great too! I think every mother to be needs to decide what's right for them, but it's a real shame when a mother spends mental energy rethinking, questioning, and ultimately feeling disappointed about their birth experience (barring some really terrible experience, not consented to interventions, etc.).
not saying it’s impossible to go med free but I’ve heard so many girls say “I have a high pain tolerance” it’s going to be ok. I think it’s way more than pain tolerance at that point. It’s mostly how long the whole
thing is and what external factors are going to be thrown at you. It would be really hard to have enough energy to push if you have 30h of hard core contractions without rest vs 2-3h. Labor for FTM is such a foreign concept that nothing can really prepare you for that an open mind is the way to go.
And just for the record, I certainly am not opposed to women wanting to have an unmedicated birth (or really any other kind of birth, so long as it doesn’t endanger the mother or the child), and I totally get that things not working out the way you’d hoped comes with disappointment. With my third child, I really wanted to go into labor on my own and was very disappointed when that didn’t happen - the entire day of my scheduled induction, I was incredibly grumpy and frustrated. But it didn’t make one bit of difference to me once I met my baby. So it’s really just a question of degree; we all want what we want and that is (of course) completely understandable and fine.
I was one that had a long early phase, I had two days of contractions that didn't change my cervix much. My contractions were 5 to 15 minutes apart during that time I had little sleep. It's so demeaning and offensive to be told I was not in labor.
Her confusion is that she thinks that she thinks labor is only one phase.
Every pregnancy is so different though and I am 100 percent prepared to go in there to deliver a baby and have them tell me "nope, c-section is best" like okay! Whatever needs to be done!
As for after the birth, the drs know what they are doing and im not going to tell them not to do their job because of something i read online.
Idk to each their own, but just help me get the baby out.