There's no escape clause to motherhood. Don't believe anyone who tells you there is. They are lying. Even if you adopt your kids out at the ripe young age of twenty four hours, you will still always be their mother. I know mothers who saw their kid for less than 1 week and who then spent a significant part of their adult life looking for them, only to find them and be stuck with them forever. If you are on the other end of the spectrum and your kids are in their late teens and you think you'll be off the hook as soon as they all leave home, there's still no getting out of it. They come home, with washing forever, and they call to ask the most ridiculous questions and they make you pay their bond. And then when they have babies, when they're bored and their husbands are sleeping on a Sunday morning at seven thirty, they bring them over to your place like you didn't just get rid of your own.
So think very carefully before you let the man you love, or even the one you don’t love so much make babies inside your fertile imagination. Babies are real and they cry and they vomit and they scream, a lot, with no good reason - well not one you can figure out after no sleep and a day in your crusted vomit pajamas holding a frantic baby. Motherhood is about endless dealings with bodily waste and unfinished sentences. No one ever told you the truth because the truth is hard to really hear especially while your hormones are busy cheering on your maternal instincts. But it's all a trick. Do not be fooled into thinking it's going to be easy, romantic, sweet, lovely, blissful or manageable. You will NOT cope, you can NOT cope, none of us could or did or will. That's one thing I really want to clear up. NOBODY is coping!
Most of all don’t believe your mother, she's just desperately hoping that grandchildren will make it all OK, make you all OK, it won't. Tell her if she wants babies she should have some of her own and that right now you like to stay asleep, past 4 in the morning and get to sleep before 11.56 at night. You also like to shower before 4 pm and to not smell of baby vomit for seven months solid.
I can go on...but like the fairies at the bottom of the garden, if you believe me, I don’t have to convince you any further and if you don’t, nothing will convince you...anything other than having a baby of your own. But just don’t say nobody told you.
OK, the real truth is that if you are reading this you either have children already, are expecting soon, or you have a really good girlfriend who loves you very much who has children already and she wants you to know the truth, because it's too late for her. Lucky for you, but for the rest of us moms, the best you can do now is manage what's up ahead. Good Luck.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Reality
My big word for all mothers is SURRENDER. Nothing in your life will ever be the same. You will never eat, sleep, work, cook, clean, write, play, sing, pot, sculpt, paint, dance, create, talk, shop, dress, listen to music or make love again the same way so move on. You won't finish a sentence for at least eighteen years (to be calculated from the birth of your last child) and you will probably not chose what to watch on TV for that long either. By the time you do either of those things you will have forgotten what it was that you wanted to say or what it was that you wanted to watch. SURRENDER.
Also you will probably never go to the toilet without being called again, either in person, on the phone, or on Skype, or whatever new technology comes along making the word 'call' obsolete. Your children will be able to holograph themselves right into the toilet so you can attend to their most urgent needs right there in the loo. SURRENDER.
Pregnancy, Labour and Birth are REALITY chapters in themselves, not to be spoken of lightly here, so we'll just move on to homecoming. The first three days may have been manageable with baby sleeping lots and apart from grazed nipples and other charming bodily functions, (fluid pouring out of every orifice, blood, milk and tears), your little bundle of bliss may stay asleep for another four days – its unlikely, but possible. Still a week is all you're going to get at most, so get ready. (Unless of course you have an exceptionally fat bottle fed baby with no digestive issues whatsoever, then you can consider yourself blessed and sleep now, before she turns eleven. When she turns eleven, all hell will break loose, no matter how content and sweet she was as a baby, so enjoy her now, and rest assured that your time will come). For the rest of you, after a week, baby wakes up, after ten days she has her first growth spurt and from that day on, your life(apart from about seven minutes a day when she collapses on your neighbors shoulder) is a living hell. SURRENDER.
If you're breastfeeding, be prepared for the most excruciating pain each time your milk comes in and for a series of very embarrassing moments where you look like your boobs went to the gym without you. At any time you may sprout gallons of milk in public, enough to fill a bath, and your baby will chose that exact time to sleep so solidly that you would have to play really bad Grunge on full blast to wake her. By the time she finally comes round, which could take about forty minutes, (yes you could have made yourself a toasted cheese sandwich and a shot of Brandy if she wasn't using you as a mattress) your milk will have leaked all over your new quilt cover, the one you so carefully chose with your partner before you were married - when you were still in love. It's all over, the marriage, the milk, the quilt cover, get over it. SURRENDER
I am not for one minute proposing that you leave him, or her or it. You are going to need that quilt cover to wipe up the vomit, you are going to need him to, yes hold the baby while you make yourself a toasted cheese sandwich and a shot of brandy, (he never gets its quite right) and you're gonna need that baby to hug you when she's four like no-one else in the world will ever hug you to make it all OK. You just have to get through the next four years, and then about sixteen more and then I promise you, there will be more, but by then, you'd be sick of that quilt cover anyway and hubby will be better at making toasted cheese sandwiches, and even though he's stopped finishing his own sentences, at least he will fill your glass with a good shot of Brandy at the end of the day because by then if he is still around, you should know one thing's for sure, he still loves you, and to that too you will have to SURRENDER.
Also you will probably never go to the toilet without being called again, either in person, on the phone, or on Skype, or whatever new technology comes along making the word 'call' obsolete. Your children will be able to holograph themselves right into the toilet so you can attend to their most urgent needs right there in the loo. SURRENDER.
Pregnancy, Labour and Birth are REALITY chapters in themselves, not to be spoken of lightly here, so we'll just move on to homecoming. The first three days may have been manageable with baby sleeping lots and apart from grazed nipples and other charming bodily functions, (fluid pouring out of every orifice, blood, milk and tears), your little bundle of bliss may stay asleep for another four days – its unlikely, but possible. Still a week is all you're going to get at most, so get ready. (Unless of course you have an exceptionally fat bottle fed baby with no digestive issues whatsoever, then you can consider yourself blessed and sleep now, before she turns eleven. When she turns eleven, all hell will break loose, no matter how content and sweet she was as a baby, so enjoy her now, and rest assured that your time will come). For the rest of you, after a week, baby wakes up, after ten days she has her first growth spurt and from that day on, your life(apart from about seven minutes a day when she collapses on your neighbors shoulder) is a living hell. SURRENDER.
If you're breastfeeding, be prepared for the most excruciating pain each time your milk comes in and for a series of very embarrassing moments where you look like your boobs went to the gym without you. At any time you may sprout gallons of milk in public, enough to fill a bath, and your baby will chose that exact time to sleep so solidly that you would have to play really bad Grunge on full blast to wake her. By the time she finally comes round, which could take about forty minutes, (yes you could have made yourself a toasted cheese sandwich and a shot of Brandy if she wasn't using you as a mattress) your milk will have leaked all over your new quilt cover, the one you so carefully chose with your partner before you were married - when you were still in love. It's all over, the marriage, the milk, the quilt cover, get over it. SURRENDER
I am not for one minute proposing that you leave him, or her or it. You are going to need that quilt cover to wipe up the vomit, you are going to need him to, yes hold the baby while you make yourself a toasted cheese sandwich and a shot of brandy, (he never gets its quite right) and you're gonna need that baby to hug you when she's four like no-one else in the world will ever hug you to make it all OK. You just have to get through the next four years, and then about sixteen more and then I promise you, there will be more, but by then, you'd be sick of that quilt cover anyway and hubby will be better at making toasted cheese sandwiches, and even though he's stopped finishing his own sentences, at least he will fill your glass with a good shot of Brandy at the end of the day because by then if he is still around, you should know one thing's for sure, he still loves you, and to that too you will have to SURRENDER.
Pregnancy, Labour and Birth - sounds like fun doesn't it?
The first book I ever read on childbirth was about magical mothers who squatted in the fields to give birth and then blissfully went back to picking corn. I don't know what planet the author was from or why he bothered to tell me such ridiculous stories, all I know is that if I had a gun in the labour ward with me, I would have used it. I'm sorry, it's a really harsh thing to say and yes it probably isn't true, but you get the point - and that was with my fifth baby.
Pregancy
Pregnancy is a trick. Hormones invade you body and make you believe that you are privy to the best and most precious secret in the world, and that you are completely fulfilling your life's destiny as a woman on this planet. Believe what you will, it's a trick. Biology, G-d, whatever you like to call it, it's designed so that you will be lulled into a false belief in a meaningful fantasy that will enable you to willingly and lovingly host the little undeveloped zygote of your partners loins in your body only to have his little fingers play handball with your kidneys and his little toes play Rollerblade with your liver. Later at night when you're trying to go to sleep he will plonk himself down right on top of your bladder so you feel like you have to go to the loo twelve times but will probably only get up to go four.
Suddenly you find yourself with a digestive tract, something you never knew existed, but here it is, full of acid rising every morning to remind you that you are not alone...and of course there's the nausea and the vomiting and the extra 2 degrees heat – that permanent hot water bottle attached to your belly, and the swollen legs and the veins and all that stuff that no one really talks about, and no it's not like in the movies where you crave a pickle and then you pop out a baby – it's a whole year of your life – ten months not nine, waiting and watching and carrying. You are a delivery truck, doing a long distance delivery which you get to keep forever, well until you get seriously rejected by a revolting teenager with a metal ball bearing through the centre of his tongue.
First pregnancies are probably easier in terms of body symptoms because everything is still yours, but by round two, you are public property, you have been camped in already and are usually more sensitive to everything much sooner. By baby number three, you will have no romantic notions about anything, (frankly you probably just weren't that happy with the first two so you're trying your luck again). Everything softens, ligaments, tendons, muscles, everything. You feel everything much sooner, and much more intensely.
Braxton Hicks contractions - yes, contractions start early on in pregnancy, you just don’t feel them when you're twenty three, but when you are thirty seven, you feel like you're going into labour with each and every contraction. Of course you're not, but neither are you going to deliver this annoying resident in thirty five minutes on the way to soccer practice. It's a myth that labour gets easier, maybe it gets shorter but I can personally vouch for the fact that IT DOES NOT ALWAYS GET EASIER. You should know that. Unless of course G-d is on your side, but we're talking about the rest of us here.
OK, and if it is your first, then darling, it's too late, you've joined the circus, you may as well sit back and enjoy the ride. First pregnancies should be spent shopping. This is the last time you will have to shop on your own or without someone elses agenda tugging at your conscience. Shop for underwear you will need when you're forty, shop for kitchen knives that last more than three years with very sharp edges that could slice your man in two if he just breathed at you in the wrong direction the first time you get your periods again. Yes it may well be a relief that you are not pregnant again, but it also means you are no longer in the privileged mother zone. You are now expected to resume all former duties, no more excuses not to take the dog to the vet or have the car washed or fill out your own script for Vicadin.
We'll get back to knives later.
Labour
Now let's just get some facts straight here about labour. It hurts. Ok, you probably already know that, but what you probably can't begin to imagine is how much and for how long and why. Truth is I have no idea why? It makes no biological sense at all, other than perhaps a way to keep the population down, but parenting is enough to do that I think. Perhaps G-d really is mean and doesn't like women or something, I have no idea why it hurts so much, but it does. Not always, not for all women, not for tall Scandinavian women or women who pick corn for a living, but for the rest of us, it hurts, seriously, for a very long time. It's not just when the baby comes out, (called 'crowning' by fantasy deprived midwives), but it hurts when the uterus contracts as the cervix thins and an opening is created for the baby to come down through. This is a slow and lengthy process and even though it should feel like a strong stretching, it doesn't. It feels like your worst period pain ever, multiplied by a hundred thousand, and did I say, it lasts a ridiculously long time.
There's not much you can do about it – other than USE A SERIOUS CONTRACEPTIVE and get a really BIG TV in your room. It's just what happens. You can't take pain killers because let's face it in the greater scheme of things they are completely useless. You can do the whole hot bath, massage, soft light and music thing, but that will keep you amused for about three minutes and then when the cervix starts to thin again, and all hell breaks loose, you will be the first to shove the scented candle somewhere totally unacceptable for these pages...
The problem is that this process can actually take three days or even three weeks. It's called Pre-Labour, and you probably never heard of it till you called the hospital and told them you were in excruciating pain and you couldn't handle it any more. "How far apart are your contractions dear?" an annoying sister asks. " I don’t know, seven minutes, twenty minutes, twelve minutes, who cares I can't do this anymore" and then she tells you that you are probably in Pre-Labour and that you should to try get some rest and call again when they are three minutes apart and regular. As you throw the phone across the room, keep in mind that you might need it to call social services one day when all this is over and your Valium script runs out.
So what can you do, absolutely nothing and that's the hell of labour. It sucks. Actually I'm wrong; there is something you can do. You can feel the pain. There's this little exercise you can do which does actually work. It's more of a meditation so you really need to be in a space that's quiet where you can concentrate and not be too distracted. Chances are you've spent the last twelve weeks creating that space, so this is the time to go there.
When the contractions come, feel them. Don't label them in the way you normally would. Don’t say to yourself – this is sore, this is painful, this hurts, rather try identify something different, something specific about the exact sensation. Describe it more specifically – you almost have to get right into it, in your body, be fully in the pain. It may be short and sharp or long and crampy or tight or stretchy or thudding or tender. It may move around, flickering or be a dull tightening or a burst of prickling or a throbbing or a pushing or a piercing. Get right into it, feel it and describe it to yourself silently. You should find that this takes you into a place of deep meditation and your resistance to the pain is changed. It won't take the pain away, but it will just change it.
You can do this for as long as you like, and even when true labour begins you can use this exercise to get through as much of it as possible. At some point for me, the pain always broke through my concentration, but that's a personal thing. Some women may use this technique to take them all the way through their labour. At some point you may have to do something serious about the pain, and the options are well known, but not without effect.
I have no judgment about what mothers do, whatever works, say, but you should know that everything has consequences. It's a cause and effect world. Do your research and do it well. The rate of Cesareans is 1:3 with more and more women choosing elective Cesareans every year. What effect this is having on our babies or on our ability to give birth, I have no idea, but removing the primal experience of giving birth from our lives must impact on the way we see ourselves as women and it may even effect the health of our children.
Of my five children, the three who are undeniably the healthiest and strongest are the ones I delivered naturally. The other two, for both of whom I had an epidural, were difficult babies with digestive issues and allergies and are constitutionally weak, though physically strong.
Without an emergency Cesarean, my sister would not have survived the birth of her first, and many women have no choice but to deliver that way, but fully elective Cesareans seem to me to be a whitewash way of dealing with a part of reality we continue to shove under the rug of civilization. Childhood disease, birth, old age and death are parts of our life that we remove ourselves from further and further with each generation. I'm not sure that it's a good thing.
Birth
Its messy business birth, it's raw and primal. It's far removed from our everyday lives and it comes as a great shock to most of us. Even if you're in a squeaky clean hospital bed with your hair up in a pony and your man standing next to you looking tired from a long pregnancy and an even longer pre-labour, its messy business. So is changing nappies and helping the first solid poo out after baby starts solids or moves from breast milk to bottle milk. So is cleaning children's bleeding and infected itchy bites, and pulling out wiggly milk teeth rotting on their last tendon, and scraping food scraps out of a dirty sink and taking out the garbage and
planting trees. It's all messy business.
Things nobody tells you about
STITCHES AND TEARING...a glorious aside
OK, about stitches, no-body even mentioned them did they? Yes, your baby's head may be too big to get through your vagina and either they are going to cut between your vagina and your anus to make room, or you're going to tear...I know, it's charming. If they cut you, it may take longer to heal, apparently tearing is better – more natural and the healing is faster. The theory is that you will only tear as much as is absolutely necessary and where you need to tear, if you get cut, it's estimation, and the cut is often deeper and longer than necessary. Either way it's hell, but you've come this far and this baby has to get out somehow, so whatever your preference, it really doesn't matter at this stage...either way, when you next pee, it's gonna sting like hell.
After you've puffed and pushed and stopped breathing and started pushing and stopped pushing and started breathing and started and stopped and stopped and started , eventually, after about fifteen hours, the head comes out, like a big poo. Then you get to rest for about thirty seconds before pushing out the body. If all goes well, the baby won't have its own cord wrapped around its neck – go figure, I mean talk about intelligent design?
At this point, the hard work is over and it's just blood and guts from here on. If placed on high on your belly, baby will find your breasts, but not before staring at you wide eyed and freaked out for a good few minutes. This state only lasts an hour before babe goes into a deep slumber which can last seventeen years or more. This is NOT the time to let anyone take your baby away – to be cleaned, wiped or weighed. Unless there is very sound medical reasons why your baby needs to be interfered with, everything can wait. Upon immediate arrival, (before belly time even) the midwife will take a score of baby's colour, response etc. It's an observational score requiring little intervention.
Afterbirth - sounds obvious right ? Yes there are a few more contractions to get through at this point and if the afterbirth doesn't just come out easily with the tug of the chord, it can be a big problem and you can be whisked away and spoken about like you don't exist for a long time and have all sorts of nasty things done to you to get this damn afterbirth out ! When it's all over, you can take it home and keep it in your freezer for a very long time until you next clean it or forever or you could bury in in the garden for the dog to dig up. Or you could donate it to science and maybe one day your afterbirth will have provided us with cures for diseases we are yet to invent. You probably won't think about it much because by now you should have junior climbing up your belly making his way to your internal milkshake makers.
There's no need to wash the vermix off baby's skin, it's full of good oils and can be gently massaged in. You can gently wipe blood off with a soft cloth or your husband or partners sleeve.
Now you will be moved off the blood bath and onto a clean bed, whether at home, in hospital or in a birth centre. This is called recovery. Enjoy it. Maybe someone will take your temperature or come and check out the baby's grip or something like that, but insist that you keep your baby with you at this time, later when she sleeps, you can pass her on to your partner to wrap her and put her in the bassinet while you get yourself up to go to the loo. It's gonna STING – especially if you has stitches.
You can ask for an alkaline drink, so your urine is less acidic, in fact creating an internal alkaline environment is a really good idea anyway – if you can bear to drink bi-carb of Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) diluted in water throughout your pregnancy, you'll save yourself a lot of heartburn.
There's a culture of disempowerment in the medical model that generally assumes mothers are idiots and trained nurses and doctors know everything. ITS A LIE. Of course there are many parents, mothers included who are idiots and a few doctors and nurses who know lots, but if you know that you are a well informed human being, don’t be afraid to stand your ground in the hospital. Mostly procedure happens because it's just set up to happen and few push up against the system. If you have a particular need, request, issue, concern or an unresolved opinion and are not ready to embrace the expected, you are fully within your rights as a free human being to say NO, or to say NOT YET.
Some examples : Not all parents immunise their children. Not all parents give their child a shot of Vitamin K. Not all babies are given the heel prick tests. Not all jaundiced babies go under lights. Mothers may chose to bath or NOT bath their newborn babies, one, two or three days after birth, some mothers don’t bath their babies for weeks, though many babies love water. You do not need to stay in hospital unless you have a fever, an infection or the baby is not thriving. Many babies lose weight in the first three days. You do not need to breast feed, though it is recommended that you try. Breast size bears no relationship to milk production.
There are low intervention tests done in hospitals that are harmless and worth doing. Some time after the baby is born the pediatrician will come around to check babies' hip rotation and grip instinct. Babies should grip on like little monkeys gripping onto a branch if they feel like they are about to fall. It's quick and most babies don’t mind being woken up for these non invasive checks. Wake a baby up to shoot it up with hepatitis, diphtheria and tetanus...well, your baby might just get back at you by rocking solidly in a corner for the next thirty years of its life.
Immunisation
You are well within your right as a mother to say No to immunisations. If you are undecided and have not done enough research to feel well informed about your decision, tell the staff at the hospital that you will be immunising your baby through your private doctor which you can always do later if you decide to. There is no need to shoot up a newborn baby days after arriving on the planet. Take your time and make informed choices.
TIP: Read past the first few pages of Google, and remember that anti-immunisation bodies are not as well funded or slick as the well oiled pharmaceutical companies and medical sites. Also watch testimonies on biomedical and Pfeiffer sites of parents who are convinced that immunisation directly effected their chilrens behaviour. These testimonies will always be refuted by the medical establishments who are only interested in facts and numbers, but intuitive parents may be interested in real live stories and testimonies.
Pregancy
Pregnancy is a trick. Hormones invade you body and make you believe that you are privy to the best and most precious secret in the world, and that you are completely fulfilling your life's destiny as a woman on this planet. Believe what you will, it's a trick. Biology, G-d, whatever you like to call it, it's designed so that you will be lulled into a false belief in a meaningful fantasy that will enable you to willingly and lovingly host the little undeveloped zygote of your partners loins in your body only to have his little fingers play handball with your kidneys and his little toes play Rollerblade with your liver. Later at night when you're trying to go to sleep he will plonk himself down right on top of your bladder so you feel like you have to go to the loo twelve times but will probably only get up to go four.
Suddenly you find yourself with a digestive tract, something you never knew existed, but here it is, full of acid rising every morning to remind you that you are not alone...and of course there's the nausea and the vomiting and the extra 2 degrees heat – that permanent hot water bottle attached to your belly, and the swollen legs and the veins and all that stuff that no one really talks about, and no it's not like in the movies where you crave a pickle and then you pop out a baby – it's a whole year of your life – ten months not nine, waiting and watching and carrying. You are a delivery truck, doing a long distance delivery which you get to keep forever, well until you get seriously rejected by a revolting teenager with a metal ball bearing through the centre of his tongue.
First pregnancies are probably easier in terms of body symptoms because everything is still yours, but by round two, you are public property, you have been camped in already and are usually more sensitive to everything much sooner. By baby number three, you will have no romantic notions about anything, (frankly you probably just weren't that happy with the first two so you're trying your luck again). Everything softens, ligaments, tendons, muscles, everything. You feel everything much sooner, and much more intensely.
Braxton Hicks contractions - yes, contractions start early on in pregnancy, you just don’t feel them when you're twenty three, but when you are thirty seven, you feel like you're going into labour with each and every contraction. Of course you're not, but neither are you going to deliver this annoying resident in thirty five minutes on the way to soccer practice. It's a myth that labour gets easier, maybe it gets shorter but I can personally vouch for the fact that IT DOES NOT ALWAYS GET EASIER. You should know that. Unless of course G-d is on your side, but we're talking about the rest of us here.
OK, and if it is your first, then darling, it's too late, you've joined the circus, you may as well sit back and enjoy the ride. First pregnancies should be spent shopping. This is the last time you will have to shop on your own or without someone elses agenda tugging at your conscience. Shop for underwear you will need when you're forty, shop for kitchen knives that last more than three years with very sharp edges that could slice your man in two if he just breathed at you in the wrong direction the first time you get your periods again. Yes it may well be a relief that you are not pregnant again, but it also means you are no longer in the privileged mother zone. You are now expected to resume all former duties, no more excuses not to take the dog to the vet or have the car washed or fill out your own script for Vicadin.
We'll get back to knives later.
Labour
Now let's just get some facts straight here about labour. It hurts. Ok, you probably already know that, but what you probably can't begin to imagine is how much and for how long and why. Truth is I have no idea why? It makes no biological sense at all, other than perhaps a way to keep the population down, but parenting is enough to do that I think. Perhaps G-d really is mean and doesn't like women or something, I have no idea why it hurts so much, but it does. Not always, not for all women, not for tall Scandinavian women or women who pick corn for a living, but for the rest of us, it hurts, seriously, for a very long time. It's not just when the baby comes out, (called 'crowning' by fantasy deprived midwives), but it hurts when the uterus contracts as the cervix thins and an opening is created for the baby to come down through. This is a slow and lengthy process and even though it should feel like a strong stretching, it doesn't. It feels like your worst period pain ever, multiplied by a hundred thousand, and did I say, it lasts a ridiculously long time.
There's not much you can do about it – other than USE A SERIOUS CONTRACEPTIVE and get a really BIG TV in your room. It's just what happens. You can't take pain killers because let's face it in the greater scheme of things they are completely useless. You can do the whole hot bath, massage, soft light and music thing, but that will keep you amused for about three minutes and then when the cervix starts to thin again, and all hell breaks loose, you will be the first to shove the scented candle somewhere totally unacceptable for these pages...
The problem is that this process can actually take three days or even three weeks. It's called Pre-Labour, and you probably never heard of it till you called the hospital and told them you were in excruciating pain and you couldn't handle it any more. "How far apart are your contractions dear?" an annoying sister asks. " I don’t know, seven minutes, twenty minutes, twelve minutes, who cares I can't do this anymore" and then she tells you that you are probably in Pre-Labour and that you should to try get some rest and call again when they are three minutes apart and regular. As you throw the phone across the room, keep in mind that you might need it to call social services one day when all this is over and your Valium script runs out.
So what can you do, absolutely nothing and that's the hell of labour. It sucks. Actually I'm wrong; there is something you can do. You can feel the pain. There's this little exercise you can do which does actually work. It's more of a meditation so you really need to be in a space that's quiet where you can concentrate and not be too distracted. Chances are you've spent the last twelve weeks creating that space, so this is the time to go there.
When the contractions come, feel them. Don't label them in the way you normally would. Don’t say to yourself – this is sore, this is painful, this hurts, rather try identify something different, something specific about the exact sensation. Describe it more specifically – you almost have to get right into it, in your body, be fully in the pain. It may be short and sharp or long and crampy or tight or stretchy or thudding or tender. It may move around, flickering or be a dull tightening or a burst of prickling or a throbbing or a pushing or a piercing. Get right into it, feel it and describe it to yourself silently. You should find that this takes you into a place of deep meditation and your resistance to the pain is changed. It won't take the pain away, but it will just change it.
You can do this for as long as you like, and even when true labour begins you can use this exercise to get through as much of it as possible. At some point for me, the pain always broke through my concentration, but that's a personal thing. Some women may use this technique to take them all the way through their labour. At some point you may have to do something serious about the pain, and the options are well known, but not without effect.
I have no judgment about what mothers do, whatever works, say, but you should know that everything has consequences. It's a cause and effect world. Do your research and do it well. The rate of Cesareans is 1:3 with more and more women choosing elective Cesareans every year. What effect this is having on our babies or on our ability to give birth, I have no idea, but removing the primal experience of giving birth from our lives must impact on the way we see ourselves as women and it may even effect the health of our children.
Of my five children, the three who are undeniably the healthiest and strongest are the ones I delivered naturally. The other two, for both of whom I had an epidural, were difficult babies with digestive issues and allergies and are constitutionally weak, though physically strong.
Without an emergency Cesarean, my sister would not have survived the birth of her first, and many women have no choice but to deliver that way, but fully elective Cesareans seem to me to be a whitewash way of dealing with a part of reality we continue to shove under the rug of civilization. Childhood disease, birth, old age and death are parts of our life that we remove ourselves from further and further with each generation. I'm not sure that it's a good thing.
Birth
Its messy business birth, it's raw and primal. It's far removed from our everyday lives and it comes as a great shock to most of us. Even if you're in a squeaky clean hospital bed with your hair up in a pony and your man standing next to you looking tired from a long pregnancy and an even longer pre-labour, its messy business. So is changing nappies and helping the first solid poo out after baby starts solids or moves from breast milk to bottle milk. So is cleaning children's bleeding and infected itchy bites, and pulling out wiggly milk teeth rotting on their last tendon, and scraping food scraps out of a dirty sink and taking out the garbage and
planting trees. It's all messy business.
Things nobody tells you about
STITCHES AND TEARING...a glorious aside
OK, about stitches, no-body even mentioned them did they? Yes, your baby's head may be too big to get through your vagina and either they are going to cut between your vagina and your anus to make room, or you're going to tear...I know, it's charming. If they cut you, it may take longer to heal, apparently tearing is better – more natural and the healing is faster. The theory is that you will only tear as much as is absolutely necessary and where you need to tear, if you get cut, it's estimation, and the cut is often deeper and longer than necessary. Either way it's hell, but you've come this far and this baby has to get out somehow, so whatever your preference, it really doesn't matter at this stage...either way, when you next pee, it's gonna sting like hell.
After you've puffed and pushed and stopped breathing and started pushing and stopped pushing and started breathing and started and stopped and stopped and started , eventually, after about fifteen hours, the head comes out, like a big poo. Then you get to rest for about thirty seconds before pushing out the body. If all goes well, the baby won't have its own cord wrapped around its neck – go figure, I mean talk about intelligent design?
At this point, the hard work is over and it's just blood and guts from here on. If placed on high on your belly, baby will find your breasts, but not before staring at you wide eyed and freaked out for a good few minutes. This state only lasts an hour before babe goes into a deep slumber which can last seventeen years or more. This is NOT the time to let anyone take your baby away – to be cleaned, wiped or weighed. Unless there is very sound medical reasons why your baby needs to be interfered with, everything can wait. Upon immediate arrival, (before belly time even) the midwife will take a score of baby's colour, response etc. It's an observational score requiring little intervention.
Afterbirth - sounds obvious right ? Yes there are a few more contractions to get through at this point and if the afterbirth doesn't just come out easily with the tug of the chord, it can be a big problem and you can be whisked away and spoken about like you don't exist for a long time and have all sorts of nasty things done to you to get this damn afterbirth out ! When it's all over, you can take it home and keep it in your freezer for a very long time until you next clean it or forever or you could bury in in the garden for the dog to dig up. Or you could donate it to science and maybe one day your afterbirth will have provided us with cures for diseases we are yet to invent. You probably won't think about it much because by now you should have junior climbing up your belly making his way to your internal milkshake makers.
There's no need to wash the vermix off baby's skin, it's full of good oils and can be gently massaged in. You can gently wipe blood off with a soft cloth or your husband or partners sleeve.
Now you will be moved off the blood bath and onto a clean bed, whether at home, in hospital or in a birth centre. This is called recovery. Enjoy it. Maybe someone will take your temperature or come and check out the baby's grip or something like that, but insist that you keep your baby with you at this time, later when she sleeps, you can pass her on to your partner to wrap her and put her in the bassinet while you get yourself up to go to the loo. It's gonna STING – especially if you has stitches.
You can ask for an alkaline drink, so your urine is less acidic, in fact creating an internal alkaline environment is a really good idea anyway – if you can bear to drink bi-carb of Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) diluted in water throughout your pregnancy, you'll save yourself a lot of heartburn.
There's a culture of disempowerment in the medical model that generally assumes mothers are idiots and trained nurses and doctors know everything. ITS A LIE. Of course there are many parents, mothers included who are idiots and a few doctors and nurses who know lots, but if you know that you are a well informed human being, don’t be afraid to stand your ground in the hospital. Mostly procedure happens because it's just set up to happen and few push up against the system. If you have a particular need, request, issue, concern or an unresolved opinion and are not ready to embrace the expected, you are fully within your rights as a free human being to say NO, or to say NOT YET.
Some examples : Not all parents immunise their children. Not all parents give their child a shot of Vitamin K. Not all babies are given the heel prick tests. Not all jaundiced babies go under lights. Mothers may chose to bath or NOT bath their newborn babies, one, two or three days after birth, some mothers don’t bath their babies for weeks, though many babies love water. You do not need to stay in hospital unless you have a fever, an infection or the baby is not thriving. Many babies lose weight in the first three days. You do not need to breast feed, though it is recommended that you try. Breast size bears no relationship to milk production.
There are low intervention tests done in hospitals that are harmless and worth doing. Some time after the baby is born the pediatrician will come around to check babies' hip rotation and grip instinct. Babies should grip on like little monkeys gripping onto a branch if they feel like they are about to fall. It's quick and most babies don’t mind being woken up for these non invasive checks. Wake a baby up to shoot it up with hepatitis, diphtheria and tetanus...well, your baby might just get back at you by rocking solidly in a corner for the next thirty years of its life.
Immunisation
You are well within your right as a mother to say No to immunisations. If you are undecided and have not done enough research to feel well informed about your decision, tell the staff at the hospital that you will be immunising your baby through your private doctor which you can always do later if you decide to. There is no need to shoot up a newborn baby days after arriving on the planet. Take your time and make informed choices.
TIP: Read past the first few pages of Google, and remember that anti-immunisation bodies are not as well funded or slick as the well oiled pharmaceutical companies and medical sites. Also watch testimonies on biomedical and Pfeiffer sites of parents who are convinced that immunisation directly effected their chilrens behaviour. These testimonies will always be refuted by the medical establishments who are only interested in facts and numbers, but intuitive parents may be interested in real live stories and testimonies.
Breastfeeeding and Settling
Breastfeeding
Make sure you don’t leave the hospital without getting some good advice from the lactation specialist on feeding techniques. It's not as simple as it looks. A mother in the street that just plonks her baby on her boob is probably nursing a five or six month old baby. Her milk has settled, her breasts have settled and her baby is probably not going to do much damage.
You need to know that when the baby attaches for the first time, it's important to get her position right so that her mouth is fully open with the bottom lip curled out and rounded, and that she's sucking the area around the nipple, not the nipple itself. The nipple needs to be quite far back in her mouth so pressure is placed on the surrounding area which draws the milk from deep within the ducts. It stings like a million bee's. When the milk lets down, it's like you are being stung by a ,million little pins, kind of like pins and needles, except much more prickly. This goes on for a long time, every time you feed, but after a few months it settles.
Don't let baby suck all day and all night especially for the first few days. You want to preserve your nipples. Dry them well. She's just getting colostrum anyway and there's no need for her to suckle all day – a few minutes on each side is enough. When your milk comes in, she will want to feel longer, especially if she's a boy! Then she's just gonna want to suck and suck forever. At some point he'll exchange your breast for your food, later for your wallet and finally for a cute blond in the street. Meantime, here's something you should all know.
Settling
It's worth reading Tracy Hogg's book Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. One thing that really stuck with me was this concept of NOT LETTING YOUR BABY FEED TO SLEEP – tempting as it may be. What you want to create is a cycle of feed, play(or nappy change, or bath, or dress for infants who are not awake for very long) and sleep. Babies should learn to sleep without having to feed to sleep. Of course two day old infants are not so interested in your rule book and that's fine, but by week two, you want to get yourself and your baby into a routine where their wiring is set to know that food does not lead to sleep.
Here's another crucial bit of information , and I can't remember where I heard it, but it's GOLD !
THREE YAWNS AND YOU'RE OUT !
Babies get tired very quickly, and most of the time mothers miss it and by the time baby is frantic, they suspect baby is hungry so they feed an exhausted baby who then has trouble digesting and can't get to sleep because of a sore tummy and mother gets frantic and baby is screaming and dad comes in with roses and mum gets out that kitchen knife and cuts off the heads and sticks the thorns in water and no-one lives happily ever after.
Babies, like the humans they are, yawn when they are tired.
1. First yawn - get ready, make sure clothes are clean and dry, and bed is ready.
2. Second yawn – take baby from loving arms of wired relatives and tell them the party is over – if they like they can put on a load of washing for you or go make you a cup of tea.
3. Third yawn – wrap babe tight, take to quiet room with nothing but a white sheet draped over the side of the cot (a stimulation free environment) and put baby down to sleep.
That's it. No fuss. DON'T MISS THE OPPORTUNITY.
Baby will start moving in a jerky way when she starts to get tired, don’t be an airhead and miss it – watch for the yawns. Whatever you do – DON'T FEED NOW.
Most mothers underestimate the amount of time newborn babies stay awake for between feeding and sleeping. It's usually not long. You have about twenty minutes to burp, change bath and dress a baby between the time she's fed and the time she will start to get tired. It's easy to miss.
Motherhood is by far the most difficult job you will ever do in your life. The stress of meeting the demands of another human being on their schedule not yours along with the expectation that you are supposed to know what to do along with the constant changes that take place in your and your baby's and your partners lives lead to one seriously difficult day. By the end of it, be happy if you managed to feed the baby and feed yourself and that's it, that's all you have to do for now.
You DO NOT need to entertain, have friends over, answer the phone, talk to your neighbor, wash the dishes or wash your clothes. you don't even have to wash yourself. You just have to feed yourself and your baby and sleep, that's it.
Women who live in supported communities can stay in bed for up to a month after they've had a baby and everything gets taken care of by their extended families. These women have a lower incidence of Post Natal Depression. They do not wash their hair in that month, and they do not leave the house. They don't cook, clean or shop. They just sleep, eat and feed. Try it. Get your partner to be your secretary and screen your calls. There comes a time in every woman's life when she has to learn to say NO. This is that time.
Leave your message bank on and decide with whom you want to speak and when. Call back. No-one cares, and if they do don't pursue the relationship, sounds like it's an exhausting one and not one a new mother has time for. New mothers are giving so much of their energy out, they can't afford friendships and relationships that demand anything from them, this is the time for friends to give and sometimes giving means leaving you alone, giving you time and space and food.
I remember when my second baby was born, my husband screened all my calls and all my visits. The birth was a home birth and it was pretty traumatic, and ten days later I got the Chicken Pox, so I was pretty sick. He told friends they could only come over if they brought food and that they could only stay for ten minutes. Of course no one stayed for ten minutes, but no-one stayed for hours either and they all brought a meal which was very much appreciated.
It's important for new moms to be able to give themselves time to adjust out of public view. It's hard. Give yourself what you would give your best friend or your sister. Throw your manners out the window and for four weeks of your life just look after yourself, say YES to any offers and NO to any demands.
After four weeks you will have a better understanding of the absolute roller coaster ride you've just embarked on and even though it will continue to freak you out for the next twenty years, at least you's baby will be attaching when she feeds and you'll be dressed and showered before four o'clock in the afternoon. Now you can start having friends over and putting that stroller to good use. Keep in mind though that sleep time is still very short - not really long enough to walk, meet order and drink a coffee, and not long enough to drive, park, get to the department store and try anything on. Buy all the bra's you're going to need in four different sizes for the next eight to twelve months before you have your baby.
I exaggerate, you probably only need them in three sizes.
Make sure you don’t leave the hospital without getting some good advice from the lactation specialist on feeding techniques. It's not as simple as it looks. A mother in the street that just plonks her baby on her boob is probably nursing a five or six month old baby. Her milk has settled, her breasts have settled and her baby is probably not going to do much damage.
You need to know that when the baby attaches for the first time, it's important to get her position right so that her mouth is fully open with the bottom lip curled out and rounded, and that she's sucking the area around the nipple, not the nipple itself. The nipple needs to be quite far back in her mouth so pressure is placed on the surrounding area which draws the milk from deep within the ducts. It stings like a million bee's. When the milk lets down, it's like you are being stung by a ,million little pins, kind of like pins and needles, except much more prickly. This goes on for a long time, every time you feed, but after a few months it settles.
Don't let baby suck all day and all night especially for the first few days. You want to preserve your nipples. Dry them well. She's just getting colostrum anyway and there's no need for her to suckle all day – a few minutes on each side is enough. When your milk comes in, she will want to feel longer, especially if she's a boy! Then she's just gonna want to suck and suck forever. At some point he'll exchange your breast for your food, later for your wallet and finally for a cute blond in the street. Meantime, here's something you should all know.
Settling
It's worth reading Tracy Hogg's book Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. One thing that really stuck with me was this concept of NOT LETTING YOUR BABY FEED TO SLEEP – tempting as it may be. What you want to create is a cycle of feed, play(or nappy change, or bath, or dress for infants who are not awake for very long) and sleep. Babies should learn to sleep without having to feed to sleep. Of course two day old infants are not so interested in your rule book and that's fine, but by week two, you want to get yourself and your baby into a routine where their wiring is set to know that food does not lead to sleep.
Here's another crucial bit of information , and I can't remember where I heard it, but it's GOLD !
THREE YAWNS AND YOU'RE OUT !
Babies get tired very quickly, and most of the time mothers miss it and by the time baby is frantic, they suspect baby is hungry so they feed an exhausted baby who then has trouble digesting and can't get to sleep because of a sore tummy and mother gets frantic and baby is screaming and dad comes in with roses and mum gets out that kitchen knife and cuts off the heads and sticks the thorns in water and no-one lives happily ever after.
Babies, like the humans they are, yawn when they are tired.
1. First yawn - get ready, make sure clothes are clean and dry, and bed is ready.
2. Second yawn – take baby from loving arms of wired relatives and tell them the party is over – if they like they can put on a load of washing for you or go make you a cup of tea.
3. Third yawn – wrap babe tight, take to quiet room with nothing but a white sheet draped over the side of the cot (a stimulation free environment) and put baby down to sleep.
That's it. No fuss. DON'T MISS THE OPPORTUNITY.
Baby will start moving in a jerky way when she starts to get tired, don’t be an airhead and miss it – watch for the yawns. Whatever you do – DON'T FEED NOW.
Most mothers underestimate the amount of time newborn babies stay awake for between feeding and sleeping. It's usually not long. You have about twenty minutes to burp, change bath and dress a baby between the time she's fed and the time she will start to get tired. It's easy to miss.
Motherhood is by far the most difficult job you will ever do in your life. The stress of meeting the demands of another human being on their schedule not yours along with the expectation that you are supposed to know what to do along with the constant changes that take place in your and your baby's and your partners lives lead to one seriously difficult day. By the end of it, be happy if you managed to feed the baby and feed yourself and that's it, that's all you have to do for now.
You DO NOT need to entertain, have friends over, answer the phone, talk to your neighbor, wash the dishes or wash your clothes. you don't even have to wash yourself. You just have to feed yourself and your baby and sleep, that's it.
Women who live in supported communities can stay in bed for up to a month after they've had a baby and everything gets taken care of by their extended families. These women have a lower incidence of Post Natal Depression. They do not wash their hair in that month, and they do not leave the house. They don't cook, clean or shop. They just sleep, eat and feed. Try it. Get your partner to be your secretary and screen your calls. There comes a time in every woman's life when she has to learn to say NO. This is that time.
Leave your message bank on and decide with whom you want to speak and when. Call back. No-one cares, and if they do don't pursue the relationship, sounds like it's an exhausting one and not one a new mother has time for. New mothers are giving so much of their energy out, they can't afford friendships and relationships that demand anything from them, this is the time for friends to give and sometimes giving means leaving you alone, giving you time and space and food.
I remember when my second baby was born, my husband screened all my calls and all my visits. The birth was a home birth and it was pretty traumatic, and ten days later I got the Chicken Pox, so I was pretty sick. He told friends they could only come over if they brought food and that they could only stay for ten minutes. Of course no one stayed for ten minutes, but no-one stayed for hours either and they all brought a meal which was very much appreciated.
It's important for new moms to be able to give themselves time to adjust out of public view. It's hard. Give yourself what you would give your best friend or your sister. Throw your manners out the window and for four weeks of your life just look after yourself, say YES to any offers and NO to any demands.
After four weeks you will have a better understanding of the absolute roller coaster ride you've just embarked on and even though it will continue to freak you out for the next twenty years, at least you's baby will be attaching when she feeds and you'll be dressed and showered before four o'clock in the afternoon. Now you can start having friends over and putting that stroller to good use. Keep in mind though that sleep time is still very short - not really long enough to walk, meet order and drink a coffee, and not long enough to drive, park, get to the department store and try anything on. Buy all the bra's you're going to need in four different sizes for the next eight to twelve months before you have your baby.
I exaggerate, you probably only need them in three sizes.
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