Plenty of women find themselves unable to recover from childbirth because their births, instead of following the birth plan, were very, very different. One of the kindest things my mid-wife told me to do after my out-of-body experience, which was nothing compared to what some women go through, was to have a good cry. I think I got around to it about two weeks after my daughter was born. Mine was a case of cry and release following a bad moment in an otherwise perfect, if painfully intense birth.

Plenty of women, on the other hand, have had worse experiences and for them, cry and release isn’t part of their healing. They need something bigger. Many have rallied to support more and better childbirth education to prevent bad births in the first place.

Naomi Wolf is one public example. She has said, among other things, that insurance companies have more to say in what happens in delivery rooms than women do and the result is an increase in the number of c-sections, etc. Being kept on a constant monitor and in bed, doesn’t help the birth process but it does keep you safe from accidents, further insurance claims or lawsuits. It is not trivial in the slightest.

Not all women end up with a c-section because they’ve been given medical instructions that contradict how a woman’s body works when it prepares to give birth. Not all women who plan to go without an epidural can do that either. Labor pains can cause involuntary clenching which, in turn, causes labor to stop progressing. And still more women need intervention to keep them and their babies safe.

True, sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between what happened by necessity and what happened for the convenience of others. What it important is that you find out what happened during your birth by talking to the person who attended the delivery. You may cry and release, you may get active in birth education activism. Whatever your path, remember that you must deal with it so that it doesn’t become a barrier to your recovery and your relationship with your baby.

It wasn’t very long ago that a good birth was defined by just one outcome: both mother and child survived it.

Post from: Babylune

Imagine becoming a mother at 67. Well, the oldest new mother is now that age, reported the Scotsman.

• The unnamed Spanish women gave birth to twins in a Barcelona hospital on Saturday, after undergoing fertilisation in Latin America.It is the woman’s first birth and she is expected to spend a few days in the Sant Pau hospital recovering.

  A spokesman for the hospital, which specialises in high-risk births, said that both the mother and her babies were doing well, the article said.

In 2005, the holder of the oldest new mother record was just 66.

You know, just last week a 41 year-old friend of mine told me that I didn’t have to rush the decision of whether or not to have more children. I am 34.

“You have time on your side, not like me,” she said.

Well, guess what? We all have a lot more time on our side now. You just have to be willing to have eggs either harvested or donated, daily pelvic ultrasounds, hormone injections and a host of other invasive procedures that are riskier to the health of mother and babies the older the mother is.

But, life can be very long or very short and all of us are at the mercy of fate every day of our lives. What can we do but wish this new family well and pass along the advice that sitzbaths and chilled witch hazel is a very good treatment for post partum hemorroids?

Post from: Babylune

If you’re in the middle of one of the many fantastic post partum mysteries of the human body, click on The Long List of Discomforts. Within the posts are links to posts that deal with common problems in the first days after giving birth.

You can also go to The First Six Weeks Category Archive to get an overview of what to expect in the first phase of new motherhood.
If you’re pregnant and need to know what to expect immediately after birth, read the post Quick & Dirty Advice for those About to Pop so you know exactly what to have on hand. The good news is that you can leave most of the stuff on other “to pack” lists at home. You don’t need a hairdryer in the post partum period.

When you’re ready to post your birth story online, I would love to read it. And, if you’re surrounded by well-meaning relatives who don’t quite know how to help you (i.e. they’re getting in the way), send me an email and I will send them my warmest congratulations and links to entries on How to Help and More Advice on How to Help a new mother.

If you have any questions or concerns about your recovery and can’t sit down long enough to do the research yourself, let me know and I’ll post the answers I find here.

Good luck, congratulations and take good care of both the baby and yourself.

Love,

Kate

Post from: Babylune