After Birth: 10 Things You Don't Know

Giving birth is really very very amazing. It's crazy intense, really wild, and can be painful. I say can be painful because I have read a lot of birth stories where women say that they did not experience pain. One minute you have a baby inside of you and the next minute you are holding your newborn. Birth changes your life, body, and relationships. It makes you realize how strong you are and what you are capable of handling. It is also very emotional and can leave you either broken or empowered. It can also bring healing. And the biggest thing about birth is that it brings you a child, which is sort of terrifying because you are now in charge of this little persons life.

Birth is truly amazing. There are many things that women are told about birth, mainly how it works and that it is really painful. The after birth part is less discussed. Most women don't know what happens until they experience it for themselves. I have decided to share what I have learned from my after birth experiences. Also I have only had vaginal births so some of these points might not apply for a Cesarean birth.

1. You find it hard to breathe. Literally it is hard to breathe. Every time I would stand up to walk around after giving birth I found myself gasping for more breath and apparently this is normal. As the uterus grows it slowly squishes the lungs more and more. You get used to it and it feels normal. But after birth there is this large emptiness in your belly area and your lungs sort of get lost and you have a harder time breathing. It takes a day or two for your lungs to figure it out and everything goes back to normal. It was really weird to experience this though.

2.You are very very sore. You'd think this would be a no-brainer but for some reason I didn't realize it until after I gave birth. The perineum area is just so so sore. It hurts to sit down and to stand up. The first time I had an episiotomy so I assumed that it was the cause of the soreness. My second birth I didn't even tear and still I was extremely sore. Actually it was the only thing I could think about. Thankfully there are things that help like sitz baths (a bath up to the hips that you sit in to promote healing and cleansing of the perineum area, you can add healing or soothing herbs to the water too) and witch hazel pads (pads made with the witch hazel plant that acts as an astringent and soothes the perineal area) which feel amazing!

3.Peeing can be really difficult. After all of that pushing and straining to get your baby out your body forgets how to pee. It's hard to find which muscles control peeing and it can take a while of sitting on the toilet until you finally figure it out. With my first birth I asked for the nurse to use a catheter to get the urine out. I tried and tried to pee and just could not do it and felt pretty terrible. In that case I hadn't peed over the course of many hours while being connected to an iv so I had 2 liters of pee in me. It was an oversight of the staff for sure, my bladder could have burst because it was completely full while I was pushing. So if you are going to give birth in a hospital make sure to assign someone with you on pee duty, to remind you to go pee or to remind the nurses to use a catheter to empty your bladder. With my second birth I also just couldn't pee. My midwife tried putting peppermint oil in the toilet because the smell of it helps you pee (pack a bottle with you, it has helped many a woman). Then my other midwife suggested to sit backwards on the toilet whilst blowing bubbles into water through a straw. It sounds ridiculous I know, but I think the idea is to get you relaxed enough to let your muscles do what they need to do. When your laughing at how ridiculous you look, you won't be holding your pee in. Another thing that helped me a lot was to use a perineum bottle with warm water and spray it on your perineum. This one worked really well for me.

4. It's kind of terrifying to poop again. It really was! After going through the intensity of birth, the desire to have any more pain down there is at its lowest. Everything is so sore and your muscles are so used up that you simply are afraid of pooping. Taking a stool softener helps a lot, a lot. Something like naturalax or different natural stool softener is a godsend. You can look for them at Whole Foods, New Seasons Market or Chucks Produce here in Vancouver, or just take a look at what your local drug store has. In the hospital you are given stool softeners, but you might want to have a bottle of them at home.

5. You bleed for a long time. This is also something that you would expect but for some reason forget. It only makes sense that your uterus takes a bit of time to clean itself out after giving birth. The upside is that you get wear pads the size of folded dining napkins and wear underwear that resemble white sheer tights with the legs cut off. Things to look forward too!

6.Giving birth to the placenta is daunting after giving birth to your baby, but it really does not hurt. It has no bones and it comes out relatively easy with one push. Still it makes you a bit nervous to yet again, push another thing out of there.

7.Your boobs leak A LOT. When your milk comes in, your boobs leak like crazy. At times they might even spray out! Stock up on (nursing pads) because you are definitely going to need them. It takes a couple of weeks I think, for you boobs to figure out how much milk to make and when, but until then they are just trying to provide as much milk possible to keep your baby alive. You do not want to be caught without nursing pads or you might have a slightly wet and embarrassing situation on your hands, or should I say on your shirt.

8. Your body is really foreign for a while. It's amazing to me how natural birth is. Your pregnant and then your not, but you are completely whole, still you, nothing is missing. However, your body will be different. Your stomach hangs and wobbles for a while, all of that skin that stretched out does not spring back like a rubber band. It'll take time and some exercise to put it back where it was before. That great linea nigra that you had also does not disappear immediately. It takes a couple months to go away completely. You might also have diastasis recti, where your ab muscles have separated down middle because of your pregnant belly. It usually fixes itself and there are exercises you can do to help it close. You should not do regular ab exercises until it is closed or you could drive it further apart. Some cases are really bad and might need surgery to close it. Last but not least, your boobs get huge and swollen with milk. It could be really uncomfortable, but you can use things to relieve the pain. Cabbage leaves for instance help relieve swelling. You can buy cooling pads that can be used cold for engorgement or warm to relive mastitis or plugged ducts. I bought those and they worked really well.

9. Your baby might be a little bruised from birth. This one surprised me. Your baby's journey through the birth canal can cause bruising on his or her body. Teddy had two bruises, one on his head and another on his chest or shoulder, I can't remember, from how he came out. It was weird and unexpected.

10.Your baby might have enlarged genitals. This one is a bit bizarre but true. Your baby still has a lot of your hormones going through his or her system which can cause swelling of the genitals or the breasts. Sometimes girl babies have a little period and both sexes can have milk leak out of their breasts. It's really weird but normal and goes away by itself. For boys it may take up to a year to go away if it is a hydrocele (a fluid filled sac around the testes). It's normal, but you can always check with a pediatrician for peace of mind.

So there you go, 10 things that you may not have known that happen after giving birth. I hope this was insightful and I hope many women can agree with me on these points. I could have missed a few things that may have not happened to me. And of course I have never had a cesarean and do not know what comes after having one of those. Thanks for reading, xo, Yana.

Theodore Naaman: A Birth Story

Hi everyone, I just had a baby. He's so new and it's still so fresh. It has been an easy transition into having two kids instead of just one. Jude has taken to his brother very well and coos at him "oh, its a baby, so sweet".  Naaman and I really adore him, and it feels like he has definitely made our family feel more complete. I want to remember as much as I can from this birth, so I will share it with you and it will be permanently written down for me to revisit. I'll warn you now, this might be long, I've never been one for shortening things.

I have never felt braxton-hicks contractions when I was pregnant with Jude, but this time around I had felt them a lot, a lot. So much so that I started to tune them out. It didn't seem like I was going to go into labor anytime soon because I had been having regular braxton-hicks for five days leading up to the birth. They'd even last a while and came in a pattern, but kept stopping. This wasn't that big of a deal because a Christmas Eve or Christmas birthday would really suck, and the 26th was already taken up with my mom's and brother's birthdays. If the baby wanted to stay in longer, I felt I could try to not get excited (or annoyed) over the braxton-hicks that kept coming.

Christmas morning we had our own little family Christmas (pancakes by Naaman and presents!!!) and then headed to Naaman's mother's house for his family's Christmas celebration.  I had had rushes at night and ended up staying up really early into the morning. It wasn't my best decision because it made me so tired. (From reading a lot of birth stories I decided to refer to my contractions as "rushes" or "surges" because I did wanted to keep this birth as positive as possible. Just the word contraction has so much pain and negativity associated with it, I did not want to use it too much.) We got there at almost two in the afternoon and settled into the day. I kept having rushes but thought nothing of it except "I hope don't go into labor and the baby is born on the 26th". I started having to focus more on the rushes during a game of Bezzerwizzer, needing to stand and sway through them. Still I didn't think that this was labor. I started timing them around 6:30 pm and they were one minute long coming every 6 or 7 minutes.

Then soon after, I lost my mucus plug. TMI I know, but hey this is a birth story, not every part of it is beautiful. (I actually don't think any of it is beautiful). I told Naaman and we sort of giggled and thought "well if this is it, then let it come". By the time we opened presents all I wanted to do was go home. If this was labor I needed to rest and anyway the rushes were getting stronger and needed a lot of my attention and I was getting overwhelmed by Jude and all of the noise of the celebration. Jude had managed to make his eyes really swollen from rubbing his face on the carpet and just cried and cried. It was just time to go home and rest. We left around 9:30 pm.

As soon as we got home Naaman and I started cleaning. My rushes were very manageable but very consistent. If this was it I wanted to come home to a semi-clean apartment. We got into bed and tried to sleep. I woke up around 3 in the morning and lay in bed and listened to my body. I noticed that I was rocking my body back and forth in order to focus on the sensation of the rushes. I got up and had a date with mr.john. My body decided it was time for a quick clean, and apparently this happens to a lot of women when they go into labor. After a bit of that, I woke Naaman up and lay with him in bed. He listened to how I was going through rushes and decided to get up and start getting ready to leave. I was still in denial.

I kept telling him that I didn't want to call the midwives in case this was false labor or it took so long that we ended up wasting their time and ours. With Jude I had gone to the hospital too early and I did not want to do that again. Soon enough, I had to moan through rushes and hold on to Naaman to get through them. We called our midwife Chelsea and she said to come in to the Alma birth center. At one point Jude heard me moan through a rush and said that I sounded like a lawn mower. Naaman and I had a good laugh at that.

We dropped off Jude at my parents' house and took the 35 minute drive to the birth center in Porltland, and were greeted by Chelsea, Cassandra and Cory the midwife on call for our original midwife Melissa.  We settled into our room. It was very calm and relaxing, candles everywhere, fire in the fireplace. tub full of warm water, and the blinds drawn closed. So completely different from being admitted into a hospital. My rushes kept coming and I had to rock, breathe, moan through and hold on to Naaman to get through them. Not once did I get a cervical check of any kind. Chelsea said that I was definitely in active labor and that a cervical check wasn't necessary to make sure. I labored on the couch, chair, desk chair, standing, and on the birthing ball.

It was amazing to me that when I was having a rush it would take my complete attention. Then as soon as it was over, I was completely normal again and even laughing about really bad jokes and sayings from Friends.
Getting into the tub was amazing, it was like a big giant warm hug all around me. I got in and stayed in for the rest of the birth. I really have no idea as to how long I was in the tub until my water broke. My rushes were getting insanely intense and I started to have self-doubt feelings and even cried after several of the rushes. Naaman held on to me during a rush and I all but fell asleep in between them. I started to feel a tingling in my birth canal and thought that my water might break soon. I was in the middle of a rush and my water broke. It was such an insane feeling. It literally felt like how a cannon explodes, immediately and powerfully. Right after that I had to push. There was nothing I could do to stop it. The feeling had taken over my body, I had not control over it at all. It was so powerful!


There was such a huge pressure in my butt I had to put pressure back onto it in order to feel like I wasn't going to completely rip apart. Each time I'd have a rush all I could do was push into the sensation and vocalize my attempt. That is the part that really surprised me. I was not expecting to be loud at all, but I just could not be quiet. I yelled and screamed and grunted (I thought I sounded like a baboon) and kept saying over and over "I'm sorry". It was all very embarrassing to me, but my midwives were not phased out at all and just kept telling me I was doing great and that I didn't have to be sorry for anything. At one point I swore, said that I didn't want to have this baby anymore, asked for anything to make it stop and of course the only thing I could do was finish the job.


I carefully was helped into a squat position and held on tight to my midwives and Naaman. I kept thanking everyone for being there to help me and even kissed one of my midwives on the head! The ring of fire was ridiculously intense but I managed to not push to hard so that everything stretched properly and I ended up not tearing at all. The baby's head felt so huge and it just stung.  With another two rushes I pushed out his head and did not care to touch it at all. Another two rushes and his body shot out of me. My midwives realized he had the umbilical cord around his neck once and had to unwrap it first and then made me hold him. I was very relived to be done and felt so ridiculously sore that I didn't even think about holding him right away. He was covered in a lot of vernix and it was surprising. I think it was about eight contractions from my water breaking to baby being born. How long it took timewise, I don't know but he was born at 11:09 am. They made me get out of the tub immediately to help his breathing, and we moved onto the bed. I delivered the placenta there and Naaman cut the cord once it stopped pulsating. It was such a relief to be done, but all I could think about was how sore I was! We got to see  the placenta which was really cool. Cassandra said it was very healthy. This was probably why it took so long for it to break and why it broke with a bang.

The baby was not a cone head. He came out more straight on with the full circumference of his head, which made pushing him out more difficult. Probably what made me need to vocalize my pushing efforts so much.

I checked to see and found out it was a boy! We had another son! And I had the natural water birth I wanted, albeit a much louder one that I had anticipated. It was still very crazy to process and I was still flying on some level of denial. It was so so intense that Naaman and I started wondering whether we were going to have our desired four children or not. I don't know if I could do that again, and Naaman didn't know if he could watch me go through that again. Overall I'm really glad that I did it this way and I know that it technically makes me "Bad-Ass"! Maybe I just need another two years of healing and processing before we try for a third child. But for now we have Theodore Naaman, 7lbs 1 oz, 19 or so inches long. He didn't want to stretch out all the way. He looks so much like Naaman it's cute. I am thrilled and ecstatic to have him added to our family, even if he was born on the 26th, I guess I can find some sort of humor in that.


We had excellent food while at the birth center.They have a stack of menus from restaurants in the area from which we ordered our food. Our postpartum doulas would go and pick it up for us. It was so so much better than hospital food, which really is a bunch of crap. Looking back now, it was a great experience, wildly intense but great. xo Yana.