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@flamingred: Oh God, I still don't know what half of that means :P (I'm really confused at what the membrane stripping is - it sounds painful!)
Well, I'm not pregnant or a mother but I keep learning new things all the time - my bff informed me that at your first appt they do an internal exam and I guess that continues through the pregnancy? Bleh :(
Oh the worst is the tearing! I guess I thought that only happened in extreme cases. I didn't realize it was so common! I'm such a wheeny when it comes to pain that I can't imagine how I'm going to deal with being pregnant/giving birth :(
oh! and a fb friend had her status as 'baby dropped today' and I'm not real sure what that is either? that they moved or something?
I'm no pg, but I have looked after many newborn cousins and omg the poop was insane!
How disgusting the placenta is. It is a bloody, fleshy mass and is huge! I also didn't know how mch you bled afterwards- You make up for the 9 months of no periods.
i did NOT look at the placenta but OMG it felt awesome when it came out! LMAO!!! I was like AHHHHHHH relief!
I had third degree tears. If I can live through it, anyone can! =)
"baby dropping" means the baby drops to the pelvis is in position to exit your uterus!!
and yes. your vagina is public property. everyone looks at it, pokes, at it, talks to it, ect..
@flamingred: gosh, that just pushed back kids another 5 years!
I guess the tearing really bothers me - cows having 120lb calves rarely ever tore (sorry for yet another cow reference) and it makes me feel like doctors are rushing women when they aren't quite stretched enough or having them push from the wrong position. Do they do anything to help prevent it? I know we used to use lube and try to help 'stretch' the cow and even in serious cases that required the vet, he would have us do that as well. Maybe it's because a cow isn't going to be kept in as sterile an environment as a women that those type of tears are going to be very, very, prone to germs and fecal matter.
i wonder if membrane stripping is an american thing because ive never heard of it in australia - none of my friends/family have had it done
I knew about all this stuff so far. I asked my sister once about the placenta. She's really good at explaining anything baby. She said after you deliver it, the doctor has to use both hands to pick it up and move it. That was really all I needed to know.
The 3rd degree tearing also sounds totally terrifying.
@hisgoosiegirl: the farm analogy is an interesting one...it's sort of the basis for the Bradley Method of child birthing. long story short- Dr Bradley grew up on a farm and witnessed lots of animals giving birth seemingly without pain. he became an OB years later and was shocked to see women in so much pain. he incorporates methods from animals as well as "husband" coaching to help with labor. it's definitely an interesting concept!!
@mwitter80: lol, that's one thing I do know about. When I was younger and saw one for the first time - it was just so strange the way the cotyledons look like they are growing on the placenta. Uck. And just in case you wanted to vomit - any vet will tell you that the worst smell ever is a retained placenta/metritis. When the afterbirth doesn't come out on its own and is in a 101F uterus for a couple days, it smells absolutely awful like nothing you can even imagine.
@ustechie: I might have to read up on that, it sounds intriguing! Physiologically, cows actually have it worse - while both are 9-month pregnancies, women have ~8lb baby which is what, 5% of her bodyweight? Cows have ~100-110lb calves that are 10% of their bodyweight. And same as humans, the shoulders are the most difficult part. I guess I was just very surprised to learn how common tearing is. For us, that would have meant we rushed the delivery before she was ready.
Now if the tongue is blue and floppy, we'll rush, but it shouldn't be 'expected'. I guess it was more common to see very, very tiny splits, but they aren't what I would call tears, not sure how to describe them - just the very outer layer of skin might 'split' but not even enough for it to actually bleed - just look like a very small vertical scrape.
And by no means does cow birth look painless - you can tell the girls are hurting but it doesn't seem quite as bad as what women go through!
am i the only one giggling/thinking wow over people comparing cows giving birth to people and pain thresholds/stats - if a man did that i would be (verbally) tearing him a new one
:)
@flamingred: So far I know what you listed.. and did most of which before I had DS.
@hisgoosiegirl: You've totally got the right idea about why tearing in women is so common.... even us turning to be on all fours (like a cow) reduces our risk of tearing b/c the baby doesn't have to manuveur under and UP to get past the pubic bone... AND squatting gets us almost 2 more cm in opening.... along with un-coached pushing (or not pushing when you're not in contraction)
I read the Bradley method for when I was pregnant with DS and it really helped! I didn't get a vaginal birth but it did help with the labor..... and just a note on Dr. Bradleys awesomeness... he's delivered a 13lb baby to a momma, unmedicated, and NO TEARING ;)
I was 36 before I had even heard of a damn mucous plug? My BFF whose a nurse told me her plug came out before her water broke. Seriously W-T-F? My cousin put me on to that Braxton Hicks thing. The only Braxton I knew up until that point was Toni.
I witnessed by first and only live birth with my BFF almost 4 years ago. Ummm... lets just say as "beautiful" as it is to witness the act of a child being delivered....the rest of the process it is pretty nasty and bloody.
And babies poop out this tar-like, honey textured like substance for their first few bowl movements. Urghhhh. There is SOOO much you will never know about pregnancy until you been through it. Reading books is one thing, RL experience is a whole other level.
@bklynbridetobe: lol.... my "favorite" part about the first poop is that is just goes on and on and on... it's like "are they ever going to finish?!"
@bklynbridetobe: Those first few poops would be the meconium. Another babies/pregnancy term for you! :)
ETA: So far I've known what everything in this thread is. Apparently my baby rabies have led to learning!
I didn't know about the mucous plug until Heather Armstrong (dooce.com) wrote about it. I want to un-know it until I'm pregnant.
Otherwise I have some cousins and friends who are WAY too open about this stuff. Hearing pregnancy stories is the best birth control!
@eloping: am i the only one giggling/thinking wow over people comparing cows giving birth to people and pain thresholds/stats - if a man did that i would be (verbally) tearing him a new one
I'm cracking up over there to. I knew of the Bradley Method and plan on using it, but had no idea of the bovine connection either LOL. I swear ever single day on the bee is an adventure.
@hisgoosiegirl:it was just so strange the way the cotyledons look like they are growing on the placenta.
God as my witness, I will NEVER google the word cotyledons... NEVER. EVER. It sounds so damn gross. I just don't want to know. **runs out of thread**
@hisgoosiegirl: I find the comparison to cows really intriguing too... and it also does make me think we're doing it all wrong. Definitely lying on your back with your feet up in the air was not the way we were naturally meant to birth, which I'm sure has something to do with it. Also, if you have an epidural then you can't always naturally feel the urge to push, so you just end up pushing when the doctor tells you to. All interesting things to consider.
I had never heard that some (many?) people poop during labor, which I really really hope doesn't happen to me .
@Ms. Martian: I heard about the mucus plug the same way you did, and I also immediately wanted to unlearn it.
Definitely lying on your back with your feet up in the air was not the way we were naturally meant to birth
im forever screaming "why are you lying down!" at tv shows that do this - my friend stood up during her labor, she was leaning on a bean bag that was on the hospital bed - part of her birthing plan was not to be lying down
cotyledons
im afraid to google this
i did it. i google cotyledons. it wasn't bad. lots of plant photos. once i saw a drawing (not real photo) of it on a placenta, i close the window. just in case you wanted to still google it anyway.
i thing i wished i was warned about when being a birthing partner is not all babies come out looking pink - my friends baby had a hue of blue and it totally freaked me out. i whisphered something to the nurse to make sure the baby was ok (she was) but yeah, a bit of warning would have been great
Not a first time mom but things have changed since I had a baby years ago. And this is not labor related but... My friend said once that another friend had no idea what tummy time was.... I was like neither do I...lol. When my 13yo was a baby you just put them on their bellies X amount of hours...it didn't have a cute name! I was like WTF is that when you put them on their bellies and she was like well yeah...duh...pretty much making it sound like the phrase has been around forever. SMH Do we need to give everything a cutesy name?
Oh my gosh, I have just laughed so hard reading this thread!!! Some of you are absolutely hilarious! I'm looking at you bklynbridetobe and eloping!
Fortunately, I knew just about all of the stuff listed above, courtesy of being 32 and having a lot of friends who have had babies! Good thing too as DH and I are in the TTC process now...
I'd heard of the Bradley method but didn't know exactly what it was. I'm definitely going to have to look into that a bit more when we finally get our BFP. hisgoosiegirl has a really good point on the tearing front and I am all about doing anything I can to eliminate that!
I don't actually have a baby but I did have a m/c last year and one of the things that surprised me the most was how quickly symptoms start! I had no idea I would be peeing so often at 4 weeks pregnant - it's like the size of the head of a pin - how on earth could it make you need to pee so frequently?! I always thought most pregnancy symptoms (other than MS) set in towards the latter half of pregnancy - wrong!
Oh, I hope there are more responses, this thread has been highly entertaining and I may have to bookmark it for DH to read when he comes home. He will probably be traumatised and want to put our TTC plans on hold indefinitely! :-)
When one of my horses gave birth she tore terribly. Like a foot long tear. This does not make my own future kid making less scary, fwiw.
I still don't know what membrane stripping is, but it sounds scary.
@MissIntent: well horses are also pregnant for like 11 months so that's gotta be different, right? ;) I've always heard that horses tend to have really difficult births - and will NOT progress if people are around.
Ha, it's really bad that I was shocked that women uhm, do #2 when they give birth because it's happened to pretty much every single cow I've ever seen give birth. Derrrkadeeerrrr. And yes! I was thinking, gosh how hard would it be for a cow to give birth lying on her back? You're totally working against gravity and collapsing the pelvis down.
After reading some of these comments I think I want to deliver doggy-style. Lol. Heck, we try to keep the cow standing for as long as possible, because she has a better angle to deliver and if we can get the head out, it helps to drain fluid from the lungs more easily.
And I'm really, really not trying to be offensive with the cows/women thing but it's fascinating to me the similarities. Even calves have the meconium stool too. And actually, a sign of calves being born late is they will have a yellow tinge to their coat. It's from them passing some of the meconium in utero - usually due to stress.
If you ever want to feel how strong contractions are (without giving birth) try maneuvering a calf in the birth canal. I'd seen my dad or the vet due it so many times I thought I'd do it once when it was just a foot folded backwards. Oh.My.God. She would contract and it was literally like my arm was in a vice. I was panting and sweating after getting the damn foot forward. My forearm hurt afterward like I'd been lifting weights all day.
Yeah, google doesn't do cotyledons justice. I think it's showing human ones, which are quite a bit smaller. They just weird me out.
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okay spin off from another thread that I hijacked:
What else did you NOT know about pregnancy before you had a baby? I feel like this thread will be really helpful to some people who had never even thought about giving birth, and who were as dumb as I was about pregnancy. I literally didn't know shit, I contemplated being childless, and then BOOOM I was (happily!) pregnant.
I had not idea about losing your mucous plug, or that you could get your membranes stripped. I didn't know that milk came in three days after you gave birth, or that sometimes if your water breaks IT DOESN'T STOP. I didn't realize how HARD breastfeeding was, and I had no idea how much breastfed newborns pooped.
Who else?