Birthing Babies Out of the Butt

Apparently the geniuses at the prenatal companies have finally gotten around to adding stool softeners to prenatal vitamins. Of course they would come out with this after I've sworn off ever getting pregnant again. No one told me when I got pregnant that I would have massive, compacted poop when I was pregnant. It got especially worse when traveling in the car, so no trip was complete without spending thirty minutes in the bathroom when we arrived at our destination. I didn't know about Dulcolax or Colace. Instead, I gave myself hemorrhoids from trying to birth poo babies. I had heard faint echoes of constipation after delivery, so I started taking Colace after delivery. I think I cried. Everyone worries about pooping on the table during delivery. I say (now), go for it! It'll help immensely later since it won't be a dire need immediately after you've stretched all of your muscles out in that area, leaving you weak as a kitten in your poo capabilities.

The first time around, my hemorrhoids shrunk down to what is known as a vein tag, meaning the vein had a little bubble in it where it stretched out too far and wouldn't quite shrink back. It wasn't a hemorrhoid because it wasn't filled with blood and had no symptoms. It was just there. (Smaller than a pencil eraser). Then with my second kid, the pencil eraser went to giant ass-pillow status from almost the start of the pregnancy. It didn't bother shrinking, so at my 6 week postpartum checkup with the OB, I asked for a referral to a colorectal surgeon. So then I embarked on that painful journey that is anal surgery. All I can say is yes, I am glad I had it because I was not comfortable having my husband see this thing on my sphincter for the rest of our lives - BUT(T!) -  I don't ever want to go through it again. It takes about 3 weeks to heal and is crazy painful, like needles stabbing your anus every time you go to the bathroom. For three weeks or more. I had saved the Dermoplast spray that they give you in the hospital after delivery, so I basically had numb lady parts for a month.


(Also pooing on the table is not the most disgusting thing to happen during labor. My husband and mother both swear it is the mucus. White globs of mucus (as part of what is known as lochia) can look like pus streaming out. Gross!)

Extra Fluid & Stretch Marks

Another thing that I knew nothing about until it happened was hydramnios. I was eating decently during my second pregnancy because I knew how hard it is to lose the baby weight. I gained within the recommended FDA guidelines yet looked like I was going to give birth to twins. The stretch marks attacked my stomach with a vengeance. WTH?!  My first pregnancy got my boobs, and now I was to not escape without them on my stomach? Ugh. During my last ultrasound, they discovered my amniotic fluid was measuring quite high for unknown reasons. Apparently this stretched my stomach because there was a very comfortable baby in there lounging in a large pool instead of a hot tub. This is also why labor didn’t start early for me after losing mucus plug almost a month prior. The baby’s head simply couldn’t engage my cervix because she was too buoyant. So when they broke my water in the hospital, they had to break it in “stages”.  It felt like someone dumped a gallon pitcher of warm water all over me and it was to the point where it was back flowing over my hips. Then the nurse would change all the pads underneath me and on the sides of me and we’d do it again. It was still gushing out so much that they starting holding towels between my legs to absorb some overflow. It literally took them 15 minutes to break my water. My poor doctor sat on the edge of the bed with her head averted to avoid getting splashed. When they were done I looked like I was only 6 months pregnant. I laugh because I had put a single hospital/doggy type pad under my bed sheets in case my water broke during sleep. I know now that it would have required an entirely new mattress had that happened. Happily they say that only 15% of women experience their water breaking prior to active labor/getting to the hospital.

Leaky Boobs & Pregnancy Sex

Speaking of letdowns, you may be leaking milk already. This can really put a damper on your sex life if your husband gets icked out by his sex boobies turning into milk machines. You are quite possibly going to be the horniest you’ve ever been in your life and giving rise to the machine may be more difficult than in the past. Even if you are not super horny, you will have probably heard that sex can induce labor so you are still going to be trying to give it your all. (I will say that I’ve heard of the mythical husband who is enticed by his wife in the ultra pregnant mode, but alas, I did not catch one of those).

Some women are super sensitive with all the blood flow in the vaginal area, so orgasms can happen frequently. It's best to get it all in while you can, because there is a six week no-sex timeframe after baby comes. If your partner isn't into sex right now or you feel like you don't want him seeing you like a human swallowed a suckling pig whole, then invest in a good vibrator. At least you can get those oxytocin hormones flowing!

Waiting for the Show to Start

Towards the end, it’s a constant lookout for the “bloody show”. It’s this mix of blood and snot that shows up when labor is imminent because your cervix is dilating. So now every time you go to the bathroom you will find yourself analyzing the toilet bowl and the toilet paper to see if the slime has any red. If you find red, you try to see how much, what color, and whether it looks like the Google images of “bloody show”.  You get a bit giddy when you see anything different, only to have the letdown when you see online that it is normal and does not mean you are close to labor. By the time you are looking for the bloody show, you feel like your pregnancy will never end and you are hormonal, so the letdown is quite possibly going to lead to a meltdown. Why isn’t my body doing this correctly? Why does my kid not want to meet me?

You know what else can make your naturally increased secretions have tinges of blood? Sex. Chances are by the time you are looking for the show, you are taking your doctors advice to get that cervix softening by way of the prostaglandins in your man's ejaculate. Your cervix is super sensitive right now though, so any heavy banging on its gates can cause broken capillaries and some bleeding.

Mucusy Goodness

The mucus plug. UGH, it really IS a plug! Like a rubber bathtub plug but for your cervix and just as big. I never saw this with my first daughter and thank goodness for two more years of ignorance because my second pregnancy was a real eye opener. I was very excited because I had a bit of snot-like stuff come out about three weeks before my due date. Everything online said the baby should be coming in a week or so because that was my mucus plug! Yay for baby time. My last pregnancy went over my due date so I was ready to get the show on the road a little earlier this time around. So I waited….and got more snot.

 

A week later I got a full on production of the yellow slime machine. Let’s just say, if the jelly blob of a mucus plug is not big enough to fill up your entire palm, you either didn’t lose it all or you have man hands. It’s both fascinating and disgusting at the same time, so of course you can’t look away. Luckily I lost all of my plug(s) in the toilet or shower but I’ve heard of women having them “drop” into their underwear. I swear if that happened to me I would have thought I was in early labor with the Alien. Oh yes, and I still managed to go over my due date. Apparently this early arrival of the plug versus actual delivery time means that your plug will be trying to regenerate itself. So you constantly have slime coming out and it can be a variety of colors. Lovely. Go to Costco for panti-liners, it's going to be a party down there!

Braxton Hicks is Not the Name of a Singer

Braxton Hicks. What a simplistic name for the guessing game of your life. I live about half an hour away from the hospital and was on my second child, so the doctor was quite concerned I’d make it there in time. (HAHA). I started having regular BH contractions in my 31^st week of pregnancy. By 37 weeks, I was 3-4cm dilated with 70% effacement. By 40 weeks, I was 4-5cm and 80% effaced. People always say, you will KNOW when you are in labor. Well, if you’ve never gone through it before, you really have no idea what to expect. Even having gone through it before, I still managed a false alarm at 37 weeks in my second pregnancy. I was contracting every 2-3 minutes for hours on end and they were theoretically painful. (As in, painful until I knew what pain really was.) Sounds like labor, right? Nope, it was false labor and wasn’t progressing so they gave me a pill and sent me home. Every week I’d go to the OB and she’d say that she didn’t expect me to be back the next visit because I’d have the baby and yet every week I saw her. It became the joke of the office, like "Here I am AGAIN Doc!"

Stripped membranes didn’t work, sex didn’t work, regular daily/hourly BH contractions didn’t work, walking, stair climbing, lunges, pelvic tilts, sitting on a ball, dancing, nipple stimulation, NOTHING! So every day I was waiting out the BH, timing them out. They’d be close together, then space out, then return. So I was constantly staring at the clock. They can seriously hurt too, so you can be having BH for weeks on end and getting nowhere! I ended up doing the shower test. If I was having BH regularly, I would take a shower. If they slowed or stopped after a shower, they weren't real contractions. This worked every time to help me differentiate. The only time I ended up with false labor is the time they slowed down after the shower but then picked back up, tricking me. Real contractions will not slow down.

So what does real labor feel like? It felt like Braxton hicks, but stronger. (Bang your head now) I was having a hard time breathing through them. I couldn't sit still, I had to walk to keep busy so I didn't just sit there thinking about the painful clenching of my insides. With BH, I would have a few painful ones, then be okay even if they were still going, before they would get painful again. This time I was pacing the floor in front of Triage at the L&D hospital. As soon as I was feeling the "real" ones, I knew it. There was no guessing. So it really is true that you know. They were getting more and more painful.  I was contracting so often and struggling to breathe through them so I ended up flagging down a triage nurse to interview me quicker. (This particular hospital has you first verbally assessed in Triage, where you end up waiting forever before they get you into a back room, to evaluate you further to decide if you are in fact, in labor. Then if you are lucky, you are moved into a labor room hours later.). I told the nurse that I was contracting every 2 minutes. She had just saw me thirty minutes before and they were at 5-6 minutes then. I had walked into the hospital from the doctor's office so I knew I was already 5cm dilated. After telling her all this, I was quickly escorted to a back room. Score! No 3 hour wait for me this time, unlike when I had false labor.

So how did I go into labor exactly? I was past my due date and being evaluated by an OB in the practice that I'd never met before. She was going to be sending me to the hospital for an ultrasound and non-stress test but during the exam asked me if I wanted my membranes stripped again. I said sure and promptly had a BH contraction while her hand was up there. I was literally still on the table and the REAL contractions started. I was having BH every 10-15 minutes at the start of the appointment. By the time she was finishing my paperwork, real (& painful) contractions were happening every 5-6 minutes. By a stroke of luck, she was the on-call doctor that night, so by the time I was comfy in my labor room, she had started her shift and I was able to deliver with her. (she ROCKED).

Boobies & Veins, Oh My!

One thing I was excited about pregnancy for was the cleavage. I’ve been on the smaller side of average my entire life and was ready to experience what it would be like to have a non-permanent boob job, except I ended up getting horrible stretch marks. I thought those were only for the stomach but nope, I didn’t get any on my stomach with my first because my boobs decided to suck them all away. So for the first pregnancy and birth, I couldn’t show the massive boobs off because I had purple streaks all over them, like a sunburst happened around my areolas. They eventually faded but for the second pregnancy, I ended up lopsided. One boob was superstar milk producer while the other was a flunky.  Areolas, the part of the nipple that you generally consider a non-entity, become show stealers. As in they steal the show because they are taking up half of your boobs. Apparently they grow in size and darken.  Pretty peach/ pink will turn into brown/ purple, etc. (They will go back to normal after you stop breastfeeding).  Light skinned women will also have another kind of map on their breasts besides possible stretch marks: veins. If blue and green were street maps, I could have had NYC on my chest.

Veins are not just for chests, oh no. Your legs will quite possibly look like your grandmothers', with spider veins or varicose veins, or both!  Again, pale skinned people, this may be time to wear pants because the sun/tanning is harmful and bottle tans are a no-no in pregnancy. Why can’t you be a sun bunny while pregnant? Well, you can, as long as you understand that you are going to develop a linea nigra that will take forever to fade. The tanner I got, the darker the line got. Then other parts of me started to get darker. My underarms, eyelids, belly button area, crotch area, neck area. Basically your hormones cause any areas with delicate skin to darken. Sun exposure emphasizes this. It took up to a year post-pregnancy for these areas to fade. Combined with stretch marks, I was in mourning over my pristine pre-baby flat stomach.