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LuckyDaemon, I'm going to go against everyone here and say that I wish I took a class on natural childbirth. Not one of the normal birth classes, but one specifically geared to prepare you for a drug-free labour. I wanted a drug free labour, but ended up using gas and an epidural. My husband was really good, but he didn't quite know what to do with himself for a lot of it. If there is a next time I will probably do hypnobabies. I would also really like a birth stories repository, I really enjoy reading them.
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Feb 20, 2011 11:52
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Pluto posted:You know the flipping baby thing brought up a concern I had for a while. Do you HAVE to have a cesarean if the baby is breech? What if you refuse? My mom told me I came feet first and was born vaginally with no problem, so I don't know why it's such a big deal now. In addition to what Phooey and Miss Shell said, it is also getting harder and harder to find OBs who are experienced/willing to deliver a breech baby, as so often now breech babies are delivered by a planned c-section. If you want to attempt a vaginal delivery it may take a bit of work to find an OB with sufficient experience. AlistairCookie posted:So I had an impromptu ultrasound yesterday. Apparently my fundal (is that right?) measurement took a bit of a jump between last week and yesterday and the NP just wanted to take a look around and see. Fluid level is fine, baby is estimated to be a bit on the large side, but totally fine. She said 9 lbs, give or take a bit. Midget was 8.5, so I'm not totally blown out of the water by this or anything. Anyone else have their babies size estimated before birth? How accurate, or not, was it? I'm just curious. Size estimation comes up a lot, and sadly the margin of error is something ridiculous like 20%. Size can be used as a reason for induction/planned c-section. I had an induction for macrosomia* at 38+6 and was quite happy with the way it went, although a lot of women are unhappy with consenting to such heavy interventions when they are based on rather inaccurate information. *Estimated weight was 9 pounds, actual weight was 9 pound 2 ounces.
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Feb 26, 2011 10:40
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Banana Cat posted:Did anyone else have to deal with someone finding out about your pregnancy before you were ready to announce it? Yeah, I wasn't going to tell anyone, not even family, until 15 weeks but an incident at work meant I told work at 9 weeks, and then I felt I had to tell family as its weird having my boss know but not my parents. The trouble I had was once a few people knew I found it really hard to keep my mouth shut. All the excitement kind of burst out of me and it was a physical effort to keep quiet until I had the 12 week scan. Don't worry about your coworker, almost everyone understands the need to keep it quiet and lie if need be until 12 weeks.
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Mar 22, 2011 23:51
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I pump exclusively (four months now) and it is an enormous, time consuming bitch. The midwives at the hospital hardly ever saw EPers, so they weren't any help. The internet was my only resource. If you can afford it, get a double pump and a pumping bra so she can have her hands free. It cuts pumping time in half. If you don't have a dedicated breastmilk freezer, buy/borrow one. It is easier to establish a huge oversupply, stash heaps of breastmilk in the freezer then stop pumping at a few months (if she wants) than it is to try and match supply with the baby and continue pumping for six months or so. You can buy breastmilk bags to go in the freezer that are supposed to attach to the pump, don't do this. I lost who knows how many mils when the bags fell off the pump, just pump into a bottle then pour the milk into the bag and freeze it. Your wife will have to pump every three hours for the first six weeks in order to establish supply. That includes during the night. That means she will not get more than 2.5 hours sleep at a time for six weeks at least. This means that you, dad, will have to do more work than most dads in order for your wife not to go crazy. You will probably have to do most/all of the feeds during the night. Frequency is more important than length of time pumping. Also have her 'cluster feed' every once in a while, that is pumping every hour or hour and a half for a few hours, a few days in a row to imitate a growth spurt. It will increase her supply. A lot of the websites say to pump for 40 mintues a breast, that is stupid long. I pumped 15 minutes a side, but I only had a single pump. If I had a double I would have done 30 a side. Pumping is pretty hard emotionally, not going to lie. It ties you to the house, you end up living in 3 hour blocks. I felt like I spent more time pumping than actually caring for my child and I got all sorts of butthurt if I had to pump and she needed to be fed. Be nice to her and constantly tell her how proud you are of her to still give your child breastmilk. Walk the fine line between encouraging her to keep pumping and not making her feel like a failure if you have to end up supplementing/ she stops at n months. Be on the lookout for plugged ducts and mastisis, they seem to be more prevalent in pumpers. Otherwise, good luck!
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Mar 27, 2011 12:25
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I'm sorry MarshallX, but your MIL is going to end up with hurt feelings. This time is absolutely, 100% about your wife. For what its worth usually the maternity nurses will forcefully kick out anyone you don't want there, or anyone who is being unhelpful and causing stress to the new mum. Post partum you can also have a strict visiting list in hospital, so you could not put your MIL on that list. The nurses have seen this situation 100 times before and will bar them entry if you ask. Once you come home you are going to have to have some harsh words. Really harsh words, your MIL will end up crying. But again, it isn't about her, it is about your wife and yuor child. The nurses at my hospital actually barged in while my family was visiting and gave me a long lecture (for their benefit) about how I wasn't to have any visitors unless they were to help me, and they were to leave straight after. It worked for the most part. I debated about putting this next part in because its not really the same situation, but anyway... My MIL was similar and also lacked boundaries. Came over, expected to be catered to, cooked for, held the baby the whole time and then left me with a pile of dishes and an overtired newborn. I'm really quite pissed at my husband, even now, that he didn't say anything to her after I asked him to talk to her about appropriate behaviour, repeatedly. Unfair as it is, your wife might get resentful at you if the situation goes pear shaped. Once again this comes down to 'its all about your wife' and you might have to take the fallout and repeatedly face down your MIL in those first few weeks so your wife can get some rest and snuggle time with the baby.
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Apr 2, 2011 06:39
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foxatee posted:I know I read that some women can develop diarrhea towards the end of their pregnancy, but what about nausea? For the past two days I've woken up feeling awful. Is this something I should be concerned about? Shall I email my doctor or just wait until my appointment on Wednesday? I'm 39 weeks along. You can become nauseous because your stomach is getting all smushed up and pushed out of place by the uterus. Someone said in the other thread that 1st tri morning sickness is hormonal, and 3rd tri sickness is mechanical.
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Apr 18, 2011 12:46
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^^^ Congrats! What a cutie. I'll leave the breastfeeding advice to someone else, but I do have vag healing advice! You have to keep the area clean and dry, which is hard with frikkin lochia pouring out of there. You can lay down pantless on your bed on an old towel/a couple of disposable diapers and air everything out. If you are really excited you can set up a fan as well. Otherwise just change your depends/pads very frequently, wash with plain water while showering twice a day, and dry completely after the shower with a fan or hairdryer on cold. I had a 2nd degree episiotomy and I healed up just fine with no problems by doing all the above. I took pain meds for 5 days and after that I didn't need any. At six weeks I got the all clear for sex and all was well.
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Apr 24, 2011 19:35
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vanessa posted:What did you gals do when your breasts started getting bigger? Did they keep growing all through the rest of your pregnancy? I'm at week 7 and my pre-pregnancy bras are starting to get tight (could probably wait a bit before I absolutely need to get some bigger bras) and I don't want to go out and buy a bajillion new bras if my breasts are still going to grow. I only wear my bras once before tossing them in the wash because I walk a lot and get sweaty, but I might be okay with getting a few bras and wearing them two days before washing if I knew that I'd need more bras before too long. Both my cup and band size changed. My band size didn't change until later on in the pregnancy. I was an 8 prepregnancy, went up to a 12 during 3rd tri and am now a 10 5 months post partum.
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May 2, 2011 21:01
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bellybutton posted:PGP I'm sorry, but mine got worse the bigger I got. I had a super sexy brace as well, and ended up just laying down for most of the last trimester due to the pain. I had to quit work. Good news is it went away about three days post birth and hasn't come back.
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May 9, 2011 20:17
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^ She is also growing a placenta. Everyone always forgets the placenta. You are growing a whole new organ! Like a liver! How cool is that? Chicken McNobody posted:Guess I can officially join this thread now--just got back from the doctor and apparently I'm pregnant! I tapered off ADs while pregnant to 'protect my baby'. I then went on to suffer the most severe ante and post natal depression known to man. It was really, really terrible and I said some awful things. Nearly 6 months out and it is controlled but not gone. If I had another child I would keep taking the ADs, breastfeeding be damned. A happy mother is far and away the absolute most important thing for a baby. And for you.
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May 12, 2011 13:34
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I've missed 2 periods in all, so I was expecting to be something like nine weeks along, but the urine test was so faint the doc said I'd probably conceived sometime in the last month and just missed the previous period for the hell of it. So I'm trying to keep a lid on it for a while, but if I don't tell somebody I'ma pop 
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Chicken McNobody posted:I've been lurking this thread for a while, I remember your situation We are twins  . I lost my mother months before falling pregnant.
Exelsior fucked around with this message at 18:53 on May 13, 2011 |
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May 12, 2011 15:01
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I will try not to e/n in this thread too much though 
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As to maternity shapewear, don't knock it til you try it. I really liked wearing them. Towards the end everything just gets so droopy and gravity seems to increase x10 so having a good bra and some shapewear just made me feel a bit lighter and more mobile. e: You could also get a huge tube bandage and wear it on your lower belly/under the bump. Exelsior fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Sep 29, 2011 |
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Sep 29, 2011 12:20
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MoCookies posted:I'm confused about the pros/cons of getting antibiotics during labor, with regards to trying to prevent group B strep infection in a newborn. I don't know if I'm GBS+ yet, but I've had a hard time coming across any reputable-looking info on the side-effects. Most everything I've found simply says that GBS infection can be really bad in rare cases, so everybody gets antibiotics, and that's that. Personally, I'm not totally comfortable with the idea of pumping my newborn full of antibiotics, and my midwives are frustratingly neutral on the subject. They did warn me that if I need to be transferred to the hospital for some reason (instead of giving birth in the birth center), then there would be a lot of pressure from the hospital staff to simply have the antibiotics. At the birth center, it's totally my choice. I was GBS+ and had antibiotics during my labour. GBS screening is fairly new, it has only been widespread in the past 5-10 years. Here is the story of a mother who was GBS+ but treated her infection with garlic (useless). The baby died from GBS. http://hurtbyhomebirth.blogspot.com/2011/03/wrens-story-on-1st-anniversary-of-his.html Exelsior fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Oct 5, 2011 |
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Oct 5, 2011 06:43
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MoCookies posted:I'm still in "research mode", attempting to get a balanced view, though I'm not sure the data I'm looking for even exists. What's the cumulative, long-term effect of widespread dosing of women and newborns with antibiotics? I'm worried somewhat generally about the long-term effects of antibiotic use and overuse, but also more specifically about the effects on my baby specifically if one of the first things that happens to his body is getting a big dose of penicillin. Newborn guts getting colonized by the right kinds of bacteria is a really important process, with long-term effects on immune response. So to answer the question from Bodnoirbabe and others, one of the reasons that I am even considering this is that I think categorizing the antibiotic treatment as no-risk oversimplifies the actual situation. One of the studies I've recently found shows that in babies given antibiotics at birth, GBS infection is down as you'd expect, but antibiotic-resistant E. coli infections are up significantly. Infections like that are much harder to treat than GBS, and very dangerous for newborns. I think it's also worth mentioning that some developed countries like the UK don't do routine GBS You would really fit in better over at the mothering.com forums.
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Oct 6, 2011 11:03
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The Young Marge posted:I'm totally down with getting this show on the road, too! Finally hit 37 weeks, so it's just waiting time now. I felt a little silly packing my birthin' bag today, but figured it should probably be done. Worth it. Immediately post partum your stomach is the same size but instead of rock hard, its all saggy and jiggly. Your stomach kind of rolls around and makes you feel ill. Some kind of light binder stops the sick feeling.
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Oct 11, 2011 11:49
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dishonesty posted:Hey guys, got a couple of questions that I'd like your opinions on. You can start a bedtime routing (bath, stories, singing) from day one and a clearly defined night environment vs day environment too. For us night means: dark quiet room. No talking, only humming. No eye contact or laughing. Day means: Lots of noise and light. Games whenever she looks at us. Lots of talking and singing and playing.
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Oct 31, 2011 02:11
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e: thinking about it that was way too bitchy. Mnemosyne, please remember that your mental health throughout your pregnancy and in the newborn days is extremely important. Exelsior fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Dec 21, 2011 |
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Dec 21, 2011 13:01
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