Friday, July 22, 2011

Child Birth, Breast-feeding and all the other wonders

I think I'm a terrible pregnant woman, when it comes to reading up on pregnancy and child birth and babies I'm just terrible. it's actually none existent. All my friends who are pregnant, or who have just had babies or about to have babies all have hundreds of books and magazines. I just haven't found any that I can actually read I always just stop half way through an article or look at the pics.

My friend gave me a few of her magazines and one of her "Pregnancy and birth" books and I was flipping through them last night. Didn't last long, I find them to scary they freak me out more than anything and the more I read and the more stories I hear, the more I'm trying to figure out another way for my baby to come out because all options sound just awful to me.

I've wanted natural child birth from the beginning because I'm scared of needles and knifes cutting flesh and blood and the thought of somebody cutting me open while I'm awake and then moving my organs around to get to my womb and then pulling out my baby, seems so unnatural and disgusting and I'd probably pass out before they even put the knife to my skin.

The more I learn about child birth the more unnatural that sounds to. First, when my friend had her baby, she heard a woman down the passage screaming like a serial killer was chopping her up bit by bit. She later found out the woman had given birth to a 4kg baby without drugs because the "pain doc" (what they called) was no where to be found. This is the hospital I am going to. Can you imagine pushing out 4kg's without drugs! I think I'd seriously injure every nurse that came close enough to me until they found the f*cking drugs.

Then my mom just told me how another woman just gave birth and she lost so much blood during and after labour she needed a blood transfusion. Just think about it how much blood can you loose out of your va ja ja to need a blood transfusion. Now my mom assured me everything goes back to normal, but now I'm thinking fair enough but how quickly. How long do you walk around stretched for before you go back to normal. This is seriously freaking me out.

Then there's the Cesarean, my friend was in labour for eight hours and then they decided to cut her open, because she had one and was in so much pain she says she forgot about all privacy and didn't care who saw or touched her. She had to have nurses come in and clean her, a different one every time. some hurt her and some spoke to her will looking straight into her. Then there's the oozing puss cut she had to clean everyday, which got infected. All this makes me light headed every time I think about it.

Breast-feeding, I've never been a fan, being a waitress and watching strangers whip out there boob while telling me what they would like to eat kind of killed it for me. I learned that it helps weight loss and to get your stomach back to it's former glory, so now I'm all for it or I was till I read up on it and really thought about it. I read the other day that if he latches on wrong you have to de-attach him from your boob. This sounds so barbaric, you have to stick your finger in his mouth and push against his cheek till he releases his grip. The there is another girl I know, she stopped breast feeding because her baby actually made her nipple explode. I can't even imagine the pain.How is this natural or beautiful, it sounds like cave men and wild animals.

Then I read that it might make your boobs smaller, that I can handle I've always been small and actually miss having almost nothing but then they say "SAGGY." This was in an article promoting the health of breast feeding. Oh yes let's tell new mothers how there perfect boobs are going to sag this will definitely win them over. Lets not forget, because you breast feeding, leaving your baby with your mother will have to wait and going anywhere will have to be planned according to feeding facilities.

Last but not least, the breast pump. You know when you in school and the word sex makes you giggle and feel all uncomfortable. Well this is what this topic does to me. I remember once when I was in primary school we went a farm and we got to milk cows but some of the cows were connected to these huge pumping machines, with tubes and strange sucking noises happening. Someone asked the farmer doesn't it hurt and he said that's what the nipple cream is for and showed us this huge ass 10 litre tub of pink cream with flies in it. This is where my head goes every time somebody brings up this topic with me. To make it worse my friend isn't using her pump so to save money she offered hers to me, in front of my mother so there's no way around it. I don't care if I have been friends with her for over 10 years or we sterilize it and that she only used it once or twice, it milked her and now it has to milk me.

Some moron suggested raising my baby green to me the other day, I was a bit confused. Apparently disposable nappies take 300 years to disappear. So they want me to use those old fashioned, white toweling ones. These you need a separate bucket for to soak and wash and disinfect and then re-use. I don't care if disposables never disappear there is no chance in hell that is ever going to happen. So they said they running out of the ingredient that makes it absorbent, well as long as there's enough for the next 2-3 years that's cool  and if they run out after that I'll definitely never be having another child.

Overall reading those magazines and books have just made me wonder how is the world over populated, because the whole thing is just awful, painful, gross and barbaric. Yes I love my baby but holy shit I don't love the ones I don't have yet and wouldn't go through all of this again.

3 comments:

  1. It will be all worth it in the end, promise you. Just a note on the breast feeding and the whole changing issue. I breast fed my son for 10 months. I too am a small breast woman, loved my big pregnancy/breast feeding breasts to bits! I didn't want to stop breast feeding because I too dreaded the sagging, decreasing results that everyone talks about at baby showers etc... I had to stop, however, as I had to get back to work. To my surprise my breasts reshaped almost as firm AND little bigger than what I started with before falling pregnant!!! Not sure if that was just lady luck smiling down on me or if it's a small breasted women thing or because I only breast fed one child (maybe the whole sagging happens when you have more than 1 child very close to each other?). Not certain. I loved breast feeding too, it was a great way to bond with my son and it definitely shaped up my tummy very quickly and ended up loosing all that pregnancy weight within those 10 months. It's definitely worth feeling like a cow. ;)

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  2. Hi on the C-sec note. I had one (had planned natural birth but it didn't happen) and I think the Doctor that does it makes a huge difference. My cut was never pussy and after 6 weeks I barely even noticed it. After 6 months I was doing full sit ups again. Yes you do lose a bit of dignity with people cleaning you up but you will lose a bit of dignity no matter which option you end up with. Dont worry about the diapers. Yes the will outlast you but the chemicals used in washing the nappies, the angry mom doing all the washing and the danger of nappy buckets with a toddler out weigh the harm. Take it from me I am a Greenie I even work in conservation and I still used disposable diapers. Good luck with all the planning and listen to yourself you know best when it comes to your baby. I loved Sister Lillian when I was pregnant but would quite happily have shot her about 3 weeks after my son was born.

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  3. Oh and one other thing. The ingredient in nappies that makes them absorbent is silica which is made from sand. If we are running out of sand the world has much bigger problems then a lack of nappies. Going to Durban next week I will let you know about the sand situation:0 Point is dont believe everything you hear and greenies tend to use a lot of scare tactics that when you research them you find out that like the above they are patently not true. You can even get green disposables now which contain exactly the same ingredients they just have hard paper instead of plastic outers.

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