After the Birth, It's the After Party

As soon as Daphne is out, I morph back into my chatty, chipper self. (Really -- we have the video to prove it! But I can't show you, because I'm about 75% naked and splay-legged.) J looks up from where she's examining my perineum and says, "Hey, there's the Jo I remember!" I feel so great, in fact, that I keep trying to hand Daphne to Sean so I can move a little, until someone reminds me that we're still attached. "Oh yeah," I say. "The placenta!"

A couple of easy little pushes and it's out. I have a small tear, right at the bottom where I tore with Sophia -- except it's not as bad, not quite a second degree tear. "Maybe a one-and-a-half," says J. The lidocaine syringe looks unappealing, but I don't feel it at all, and J gets in a couple of quick sutures. It was the shoulders that did it, she says. Sean feels the cord to see when it's done pulsing; the midwives clamp it, and he cuts it. Gets it on the first try, which is harder than you'd think.

The hospital hat keeps popping off Daphne's big head. Ellen helps me latch her on, or rather does much of the work since I'm suddenly feeling like a social butterfly and want to chat up everybody in the room. Ellen takes down everyone's guesses on how much Daphne weighs...Sean's guess is the highest, at nine pounds, which I think is ridiculous, but the weight comes back 9 pounds, 10 oz. Daphne's head is 13.5 inches around, but her chest is 15. (No wonder I tore a little.)

I remind everyone I want to eat a little piece of placenta. Hospital lunch has just arrived, and K, eternal good sport, takes the knife and fork from the tray and saws off a thumb-sized piece of a cotyledon. I rinse it in the bathroom sink and pop it under my tongue for a minute, then swallow it whole. For the curious: it tastes like nothing at all.

There are a few bummers about being in the hospital, chief among them the fact that Montgomery (apparently alone among hospitals) requires FIVE heelsticks for blood sugar testing in big babies. That, and the toilet is so high off the ground my feet don't touch the floor. But we end up with a cadre of supportive nurses (I suspect there is a LOT of self-selection going on here), and not once is Daphne removed from our room. Heelsticks are done with her in my arms, and nobody says a thing about taking her to the nursery. Well, except for the hearing test, but I go along and hover right outside the window. In a place that usually has a 48-hour discharge, we're gone after 22 hours. Beautiful.

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A note on placenta eating: I decided that I would eat a little piece right away, and then I took it home and froze little chunks (maybe 10-15) that I've been putting into smoothies every other day. Some people cook it; some have it dried and encapsulated, but I just felt like raw (even raw and frozen) was the way to go. I have to say I've been feeling so good, physically and mentally, and I think the placenta has something to do with that. My milk came in right away, my brain feels fairly clear and even-tempered (and I don't feel anxious or sad or anything), fundus going down really quickly. Thumbs up for placenta eating!

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Also, thumbs up for acupuncture! I don't know if it was second baby or all the needling, but I suspect the latter is what made dilation so very easy. Well, not easy exactly, but certainly not terribly painful or difficult. It was a really cool labor to have; I needed to use all my "tools," if you will, but they were all helpful (as opposed to back labor last time).

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And finally: what was up with the transfer? I think Lilian hit it in the comments when she described it as a "mental lip" -- there were two things going on there. The first was clearly mental: We hit some stuff that triggered traumatic memories from Sophia's birth (pushing too early, pushing with someone holding back a lip), and at that point I started to feel stuck, trapped, unable to cope. On some level I knew there was no way I was getting any kind of epidural or narcotics -- that late in labor? please! -- but I also knew that I just couldn't stay where I was, literally or figuratively. So that's part of what the transfer was about.

The second is a physical issue. After last time and this time (and taking into account the labor patterns of my mother and sisters), I think there's something about my pelvis that makes babies rotate through OP before they come down. With Sophia, we were worried about her heart rate and didn't have the luxury of taking a break from pushing and letting her take her time coming down. But with Daphne, who had a nice heart rate all along, we were able to wait out the pelvic issues. I know my midwives, in the past, have picked up their knitting during a slow pushing stage and just waited until the mom felt the urge; if I had been in a better space mentally, that would have been just the thing, I think. But I clearly wasn't backing down from my "GOT TO GO NOW" idea, so off we went...thereby ensuring at least an hourlong break in the pushing stage. I also think my posture in the car was helpful in getting Daphne past the pubic bone and better rotated in my pelvis; I never would have come up with the position at home, but it was really perfect.

Would I do it again? Well, I'd do this birth again the same way, since it clearly worked out so well. If there's ever a next time. it might be prudent to plan to go in, either to a hospital with midwives or birth center, but stay at home as long as possible and be prepared for an oops-baby at home. (And by "prepared" I mean have a midwife and a doula there!)

On the other hand, I might try for that homebirth again...

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Last of all, I want to say how absolutely wonderful everyone involved in the birth was. I can't recommend my midwives and doula highly enough. No matter where you're birthing, a doula (okay, Ellen in particular!) is so, so wonderful...Sean can tell you more about that in his guest post.

Comments

[Dreams and False Alarms]

Thanks for putting all of this up so quickly! It sounds like you feel much better about the way things turned out than you did last time (only going from memory here...). Now you've got me curious aobut the plancenta eating...

[Alexis]

Really you are way too clear headed to have figured this all out (must be the placenta) - but I'm so glad you commented on the whole transfer thing because I was wondering was it really "necessary". Apparently, yes - a change of scenery was definitely what you needed. BTW, I'm a long time reader, who rarely comments but what the heck, we're in a new era now, right?

[Beth]

Congrats on the lovely Daphne! Here is a dumb question for your guest blogger: how do you drain a birth pool? Just curious.

[Lilian]

ooooh, a guest post! That will be awesome! Getting his "outside perspective" on this whole story will be truly enlightening and I'm sure great to hear.

Now... squeamish vegetarian me (OK, I do eat [well cooked/baked/fried] fish on occasion) feels grossed out by the thought of eating/drinking the placenta, but I'm sure it must be extremely nutritious...

You know, there's this whole thing with a second, bigger, easier to birth baby that makes us just feel great. I, for one was doing so well that I got the OK from another pediatrician (not ours) to FLY to my brother-in-law's wedding in Texas when Linton was SIX DAYS OLD (from Hartford CT to Dallas with a connecting flight in Chicago)! I felt great, except for the engorgement, but then Kelvin emptied me really well there (I was going to be separated from him for 2 days, *that* would have been a problem engorgement wise).

Anyway... I was very happy and clear headed the second time around, which felt great, given how hard everything was with Kelvin (jaundice, not latching on, having to pump for a whole month before he figured out the whole breastfeeding thing). Sigh.

I guess it's the easier time with the second that makes us want to have more babies (at least I think that's the case with me).

[Joanna Leery Polyp]

Um, in my experience the birth pool is drained by either your (truly amazing) mother-in-law or your sister, somehow. I think my mother-in-law ended up bailing it with a bucket at some point because our Python valve (a thing for draining aquariums) wasn't doing its thing.

[Jennifer]

You absolutely rock, lady. Don't you just love that rush after a good birth? It's nature's way of tricking us into having more, I guess. Thank you for sharing yourself with us, and for making even difficult things so damn funny.

[Lilian]

"Credit Where Credit is Due"

So... thanks for citing me in the post, but really, you were the one who wrote in the previous post, saying that Ellen was telling them about your previous story and then you wrote: "A mental anterior lip, if you will." So, I was just repeating what I'd read ;-)

Anyway, if you're not already aware of it, my friend Lucy, who has been reading and commenting here, had her baby on Sunday and she just posted the birth story. I think you'd love to check it out! Here's the link: http://babybeez.blogspot.com/2009/01/birth-story.html (I can't embed the in html in this blog... hmmm not nice ;-). She deserves some pats in the back, my brave first-timer friend.

[Sarah]

Congrats again! What a nice story - fascinating that you had to physically leave the house to get to a new mental place for the birth. Good luck!

[Robin]

Wow, wow, and wow. You go, mama! Great story and well told.

[Carrie Kirby]

Congratulations on your beautiful daughter.

I, too, have had two out of two posterior babies, and my doula also suggested that it may be the way I'm built. I went swimming a lot in the final two weeks before the second birth, always sat "properly" and rarely reclined, and yet, bam, another sunny-side-up baby. With both of them, the pushing was difficult -- 3 hours the first time, and over an hour the second time (even though the whole labor only lasted 6 hours).

[Jo]

Carrie, that's interesting. It's funny, with Daphne she was OA until she started to move down -- clearly, a pelvis thing going on.

I think the whole optimal fetal positioning thing is overall a good one, but I believe that bones are going to trump positioning every time!

[ozma]

Congratulations!!!!!

Welcome Daphne!!! (Awesome name, by the way...love that name.)

Thanks for sharing this. I was one of those (unwilling) high tech people and cool with that but you make me see why people strive so hard for the groovy more natural options.

[Jody]

Thanks for sharing all this, Jo. And congratulations again!