Introduction Post-partum
Real Patient:
It seems rather demanding being a mom, but fun at the same time. It's awesome to be able to tie my own shoes again. After Meagan was born, I was just excited to get back into my old clothes. Even though I did have to have a c-section, it was so worth it, because I have a healthy, wonderful child. For some odd reason I thought that right after I gave birth that all of a sudden all the weight and everything was just going to magically disappear. I didn't realize how much time it would take to breast-feed. My perception was that it was natural. This is something that women have been doing for thousands of years. It was going to be a piece of cake. And it took me four weeks to get it figured out. When I hold my daughter and I’m nursing her and she peeks up at me while she's nursing, it just... It just touches my heart. The first time i heard the baby cry, I felt such overwhelming emotion. Here's my baby, here she is. She's in the world. She's with me now. I looked at my husband and he was crying, tears in his eyes. That was really cute. When she came in and I held her for the first time, she was so beautiful. I couldn't believe that I had such a beautiful little baby girl. She was so tiny and just so fragile and so precious, just a very, most valuable thing in the world at, you know, at that time. It was just this precious little life.
Host:
Welcome back to our pregnancy garden. At this point you are well along in your pregnancy and you've already learned about labor and delivery. Some of you may have even given birth before seeing this module. As you know, your journey isn't over once you've delivered your baby. In fact, it's really just beginning. Today we're going to find out what you can expect after your baby is born.
Real Patient:
Having a baby can be some of the hardest work you'll ever do, but certainly some of the most rewarding. During your last few sessions you've learned about the symptoms that you can expect during each stage of your pregnancy after your baby is born, there will be a batch of new symptoms. Let's take a few minutes to explore what you may experience after the birth of your baby. Physically now, I feel great. I feel full of energy even though I’m not getting any sleep. I feel wonderful to be able to be this baby's mother. I feel like I’m almost back to my regular size and almost back to my regular energy level. What's training me seems to be the fact that little babies don't sleep as long as you'd like for them to sleep. It took me a month, really, after giving birth to get the hang of breast-feeding and the soreness be all gone. The c-section went well. The recovery is quite traumatic. I think your first step after the 4-6 hours, and then they say, "okay, we want to get you up and get you walking." that first step is a killer. I had read about the "baby blues" possibility, but I had no idea that it was really going to hit me. And it did. I mean, I can remember crying all the time. I mean, this was worse than the first trimester. There were periods where it was just a few days where i felt a little out of sync to where there was, felt like almost a month where I was totally overwhelmed with emotions and depressed. For me it only lasted just a couple of days. Maybe just short of a week at the most. I have actually had bad postpartum depression. I am just now getting rid of it. It's taken about four months. Having a baby is the greatest miracle, I think, that has ever happened to me. For me, it's an overwhelming love that I can't explain. It's wonderful. And I just tell him how much I love him. And I look at him and think about the times that we're going to share and the times that we are sharing. I love being a mom. I don't know how else to say it. It's just the most wonderful thing. My husband loves being a dad. He says, "I don't know why we waited." I say, "I don't know why we waited. What were we waiting for?" to look at that little baby and to know that, "I did that," it is the most incredible feeling.