Post-Birth Experience: Day 5

Baby K chilling in a warm incubator in the Special Care Nursery at Box Hill Hospital

Written on August 24, 2024

It’s Day 5 of post-birth and I have been feeling all the FEELS.

I’ve been meaning to sit down to type out my birth experience but this past week has been hectic, overwhelming, and everything but ordinary.

I’ve experienced shock, trauma, baby blues, intense mama love, and everything in between.

I collapsed on the ground after my first shower after birth.

I lost over a litre of blood.

My baby lost 7.4% of his weight after 48 hours (which was within the normal range for baby weight loss of under 10%) so they discharged us. But then when the midwife visited us at home, baby ended up losing about 12% since birth so that was a big no-no and we were quickly re-admitted back the hospital.

Out of the 5 days after birth, we got to spend one night at home and the rest at the hospital.

I’m currently at the hospital at the moment.

Sitting in the special care nursery area where my baby is happily sleeping in a glass box/incubator to keep him warm and cozy.

I’m sitting in a sunny lounge chair ready to type my thoughts out.

It’s funny cause my fingers feel a bit numb and typing feels weird.

But I’ll try to write out as much as I can before my next feed!

Which is happening anytime soon (whenever baby wakes up) or before 11:00am.

It’s currently 10:30am at the moment so we get half an hour of content/writing from me. :)

Hmmmm, what else am I feeling?

My vagina feels completely damaged from the birth.

I was lucky to only get a first degree tear and didn’t need stitches.

But I also didn’t mention how I gave birth.

It was standing up, two steps away from the toilet.

Thank you to gravity and my urge to want to poo. Lol.

I have told my birth story SO MANY times to so many people who have checked up on me or people in my life I want to share it with throughout this week but each day, the birth story gets more details and has slight adjustments to it.

It was all a blur… labour that is.

Contractions are no joke.

Like HOLY CANNOLI.

I wanted a water birth.

That didn’t happen. Lol.

I shouted out to get me an epidural and that didn’t happen either.

Note: My goal was to avoid getting the epidural but I was happy to use it if I couldn’t take the pain anymore.

And yeah, I couldn’t take the pain for HOURS before birth but I don’t think anyone understood me.

Apparently I looked like I was dealing with contractions really well.

So well that people didn’t think it would take only 20 minutes of being admitted to the birth suite to push out my baby.

Hahahaha.

The more people I talk to, the more I learn about labour and birth experience.

Something I learned that EVERY PREGNANCY, LABOUR, AND BIRTH EXPERIENCE is unique so when you read that labour may take up to 10-12 hours, yours might take 24 hours.

Psst, mine took about 23 hours by the way.

I learned the difference between “early labour” and “active labour” - like whattttt!

Most of my labouring was done at home.

I was happy with that as that was probably the most comfortable place for me to labour.

I don’t remember if I screamed a lot but if I did then that would have been a fun experience for my neighbours to hear some blood curling screams.

I don’t remember how Slam felt in those moments as well.

Did he think I was doing well? I kept yelling at him to massage me when I was in pain.

I kept telling him to, “Please help me.”

I ended up puking a few times throughout the labour process as well.

I felt like a drunk person who couldn’t control my vomit and at one point, completely latched onto the toilet and focused on puking out everything that made me feel uncomfortable.

I showered.

I bathed.

I felt strangely relaxed in the bath even though it was painful.

But because I felt so relaxed and also the need to poo, I felt like baby was ready to pop out then!!!

I felt constipated for a lot of the labouring process.

And I knew that “needing to poo” feeling was a sign that baby was about to enter the world so before I could actually release anything… I remember wanting to go to the hospital ASAP.

That was probably around 12am.

Okay so I hear a baby like crying like no tomorrow.

It might be my baby.

I’m going to go check out who it is and continue to write this another day. :)

But for now.

Hmm, I feel cold and I think it is time to breastfeed!

—

Okay, I have returned and nope… that wasn’t my baby crying. Lol.

Mine is fast asleep in his little incubator.

He’s been sleeping soundly since 7am or so!

We have to wake him up for a feed by 11am so I have just moved over his area to be near him.

Oh wow, I hear him making sounds… he might be trying to wake up on his own now.

I’ll continue to write more about my birth experience later on.

Enjoy this mini write-up for now. :)

xoxo, knd.