During your pregnancy, everyone tells you their horror story of how horrible labor was and is going to be. They go on and on about how painful it is and how you should just go ahead and get the epidural (you should). They feel like they have a green light to share with you everything that happens and give you their two cents of what you should and shouldn't do. However, no one really tells you how you're going to feel afterwards, emotionally speaking. Actually, they don't really prepare you at all for what comes after you've pushed a child out of your body. I'm not one to be shy so here are 5 things that I felt after giving birth to my beautiful daughter.
1. Pain
Yes, I felt pain everywhere. Once the epidural wore off (I got one and highly recommend one) I was in a world of pain. I could barely move. What surprised me the most was how much my arms hurt from pushing. You use all sorts of muscles during labor that you never knew you had, including your arms. It hurt to hold my baby. I knew it would be painful, but I didn't realized that I would cry more after labor than during. Of course they do give you good pain medication afterwards, but lets just be honest it's no epidural.
2. Disconnect
You hear all these stories about when they lay your baby on your chest you'll be flooded with tears and emotions. That really didn't happen for me. I was more concerned with weather I had had back labor, how many stitches I was going to need, making sure my husband could see and touch her, getting pictures, and pushing out the placenta. There wasn't much room for me to feel emotion. I felt like everything was happening around me and not so much to me. It all hit me a couple of hours later; after everyone left and it was just the three of us, me, my husband, and my daughter. That's when it hit me that I actually just had a baby.
3. Failure
I delivered at a baby friendly hospital, which means that they are all about bonding and breastfeeding. Every single doctor's appointment a nurse would come and make sure I was going to breastfeed and explain how they would support me in every way they could. So going in, I was just sure my baby would latch and have this whole breast feeding thing down. I was so WRONG. She wouldn't latch, at all. We ended up having to use a syringe to feed her for the first few days. I remember sitting and spending a hour after hour with the lactation consultant. By the end of it I was in tears because she just wouldn't latch. I felt like such a failure. I had been told my whole pregnancy that breastfeeding was going to be so easy and natural. And for me it just wasn't, so all I could feel was like I had failed my self and my baby
4. Tired
The first thing anyone said to me once I found out I was pregnant was to sleep now while I had the chance. I knew going into this that I was be sleep deprived, but I didn't realized how sleep deprived I would truly be. The first night wasn't too bad because the nurse came in every couple of hours or so. There's this thing the nurses warn you of called "Second Night Syndrome" where they say that the second night is absolutely terrible. Its true, so true. I think I maybe slept 2 hours that night. It was so bad. I pulled all-nighters in college, but nothing can prepare you for this level of sleep deperivaition.
5. Heartbreak
This was something that completely caught me off guard. I had a miscarriage in October of 2015 and gave birth to my daughter in September of 2016. I thought that I would be so happy to finally hold a baby since it had taken us a year to come full circle. I was happy, but I couldn't help but look down at my daughter and realize that every thing I was experiencing I had missed out on with our first baby. I would hold her and cry. I was so torn. I was so happy to finally have a baby in my arms, but there was a part of me that ached for what I had missed having lost our first baby.
Of course, in the end, I felt an overwhelming since of joy. I couldn't believe that I finally had my beautiful baby girl in my arms. I was thrilled that this was my growing family. Having a baby is an overall amazing experience. One that I hope to someday experience all over again.
