After The Birth: Postpartum Challenges

I thought about if I would write this for days. I don't want the blog to be a place that feels negative; but after much contemplation I decided to tell my story. I think that other women (and their partners) who have a less than perfect postpartum period need to hear that they aren't alone.


I think I will start by saying that my pregnancy was a breeze. I didn't experience any of the first trimester nausea, the hormones actually made me feel good, my hair and skin looked great, I encountered no health complications and I was doing yard work, shopping, etc. up until the day my son was born. Sure, I had some heartburn and once I was the size of a house my back ached but overall I had a wonderful pregnancy. I really enjoyed it and felt a deep connection to my baby before I ever met him.


About a week before my due date I noticed I was leaking a very small amount of watery fluid. I noted the change but being so close to my due date I guessed it was normal. To be safe I called a nurse and was told I was fine and that it was typical of many women. I felt fine and put it out of my mind. Three days before my due date, I was leaking enough fluid to worry me. What if this is amniotic fluid? I dreaded the idea of going to labor and delivery to potentially receive unwelcome news but I hadn't come this far to let something go wrong. Mark and I packed our hospital bags "just in case" and headed to the hospital.


It took no time at all for the fluid to be identified as amniotic fluid. The bag housing my child and the fluid that was his current world had ruptured and was slowly leaking. I was told I would be admitted and induced. I couldn't leave. It was happening now.


I know a lot of women would have been happy and excited at that point; and really I was so ready to meet my son, but I wanted it to happen naturally, I wanted my body to decide when my labor began. I had said from day one that I would not allow pitocin during my birthing process to encourage contractions and here I was, three days away from my the due date being told I needed to do just that. I had already been leaking fluid for days and if I lost enough it could be devastating for my baby. How could I refuse knowing that? Off we went to a delivery room.


As I recounted in my last post, my birth experience was tough. It was long and exhausting and when it was over and my husband and our new baby an I were finally home I felt like I had been to battle and back. There was a lot of crying. Mostly tears of joy and gratitude but also from overwhelm and my hormones being out of whack! I had also fractured my tailbone during birth and sitting and standing up was (and still is) very painful. Throw sleep deprivation and learning how to care for an infant on top of that and I was really stressed. I credit Mark for getting me through those first days at home. He assured me that my hormones would eventually get better and I would feel like myself again. I kept my focus on the baby and allowed myself to process my emotions as they came up. I was coping and feeling better each day but I had a headache that just wouldn't let up. At my one week check-up I was told I was probably experiencing "nurser's neck" from bad positioning while nursing. Over the next few days I worked on perfecting my mechanics but the headache kept getting worse. It traveled from my shoulders up my neck into my head. After about a week and a half with no relief I made a call to the on-call nurse at around midnight. I just couldn't believe this was normal. She asked me to check my blood pressure to rule out postnatal preeclampsia. I drove to Walmart to use the blood pressure cuff but it wasn't working. With my head throbbing I grabbed one off the shelf and spent the forty dollars.


When I got home and checked my pressure it was ridiculously high. Something like 189/110 (normal is 120/80). We put Fox in his car seat and headed to the ER. I had no idea the nightmare I was about to endure.

At the hospital, in the ER,  I was put on an IV drip of magnesium. This was to keep me from having a seizure. They also started me on blood pressure medicine. After several hours my pressure was down a bit but not enough to release me. I was admitted back to labor and delivery.


In labor and delivery the lights were turned low to keep the room dark and I was put back on the magnesium drip and had a nurse in the room for constant monitoring. I wasn't allowed to be alone with the baby in case I seized. We hadn't eaten for hours and it didn't look like I'd be getting any food for awhile. They were going to keep me on the magnesium for 24 hours. My main concern was breast feeding the baby. I was told it was safe but that he might get drowsy from the mag. Of course this made me feel even more upset. The mag was making me feel awful, the way your body feels when you have the flu but worse. The thought of my baby feeling even a little bit that way broke my heart.

Several hours later we were transferred to ICU. Still on the drip, banned from leaving the bed, forced to use a bedpan and barely able to sit up to feed my child, I felt depressed. This wasn't how I wanted to start my new journey as a mother. It wasn't fair. I'd had such a healthy pregnancy...why was my body failing me now? I asked Mark to text my mother and let he know what was happening. When she arrived I broke down sobbing. I felt helpless.


The next day we were moved to the postpartum unit. I was finally off the magnesium and my blood pressure was at a safe number. We spent the next two days in that room while my vitals were monitored every hour. I felt scared and didn't understand how something so life threatening was expected to just correct itself. Would I always be monitoring my blood pressure now? How long before I'm off the medication? What other illnesses does this put me at risk for?

In the postpartum unit after being taken off the magnesium. Fox is in the bassinet behind me.

That was weeks ago and I'm still taking medicine to keep my pressure in check and I have to check my numbers every day. Now that I'm past the 6 weeks postpartum period my care is being transferred to a cardiologist because it's no longer considered a pregnancy related issue. Does that change my situation from postnatal preeclampsia to flat out hypertension? Does that change the outlook for my recovery? I hope to get some answers when I see the new doctor next week.


For now I am trying really hard to focus on the positive. The medications I am taking make me dizzy and give me the feeling of being weighed down but they are keeping me from having a seizure or a stroke so I can deal with it.


I tell you this story because it is important to be truthful about our experience of birth and the postpartum period. It is a way we can support one another. Women need to know that it might be hard or overwhelming or even scary if you have a health issue; and our men, our partners, need to know what to expect too. I also tell it because this is a personal blog and this is my life right now. This is what I have to share. Things haven't gone even close to what I had imagined but I am still lucky. My baby is perfect and beautiful and the most wonderful gift I could have ever imagined. Every day my body gets stronger and my thoughts more positive and my heart swells greater with this new love for my little guy.

Home with my little love.

~ Love & Light ~

My Birth Story

Art by Amanda Greavette

On the afternoon of November 15th, a Sunday, Mark and I drove to labor and delivery at the hospital. The hope was that we would be sent right back home, but intuition told me we better pack our overnight bags. I had been leaking watery fluid for a few days by that point and had the fear that it might be amniotic fluid. Everything I read online told me I would definitely know if it was amniotic fluid but that wasn't the case for me.

At labor and delivery a quick test was done and we were told that I indeed had a ruptured water bag and would have to be admitted and induced. My heart sank. This was exactly what I did NOT want to happen. I knew induction meant the use of the synthetic oxytocin hormone called pitocin, and I also knew that in many cases pitocin was the first step in a series of interventions...the exact opposite of the natural birth I desired. To add to my dismay, my doctor wasn't there and I would have to be attended by a doctor I had never met.

Once in the delivery room, we were given permission to attempt getting labor started naturally. This came as a relief and gave me a glimmer of hope. We were provided a breast pump and spent the next 24 hours trying every natural method we could. I managed to dilate from 1cm to 5cm in that time, which is actually pretty amazing progress, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to satisfy the doctor (It was now Monday and my doctor had arrived). She was hoping I would have reached at least 8cm at that point. That is when she said that we needed to start a very small amount of pitocin to try and bring the contractions closer together. The baby wasn't showing any signs of stress, but after so many hours (days) in a leaky bag she was concerned he could get an infection. I had read over and over during my pregnancy that pitocin causes very painful contractions, so I was really upset that it had come to this. I was determined to bring my son into the world without pain medications that could leave us groggy and detached from the experience so I would just have to endure the pitocin pain. Luckily our doula was with us during this time and helped me keep it together. She talked to me between contractions and reminded me that Mark and I were the ones in control and that we had choices. Although things weren't playing out how I had imagined, she was there to remind me that it was okay.

Soon after the pitocin drip was started I could feel the contractions change. I was managing them quite well before, but now they were getting very painful. This went on for several hours but my labor wasn't progressing so my doctor broke my water and said things should really start moving now. She said we should have the baby within the next four hours. This was very exciting and I felt re-energized. But four hours came and went, the pitocin was increased, and then another four hours came and went. I felt like I had been in labor for days.

The doctor increased the pitocin one last time and put me in the SIMS position. I was in terrible pain at this point, the contractions were miserable and the SIMS position was excruciating to be in...but it worked. Within what felt like minutes of being in this position I was ready to push.

I had heard many women say that once they reached the pushing stage they felt relief, that the hard part was the hours of contractions. This wasn't true for me. Pushing was painful and hard work! I mean VERY HARD WORK. And then after maybe 20 minutes, on the evening of November 16th,  our son was ready to be born. The most rewarding part of the experience is that Mark caught the baby. He was the first person to touch Fox and was the first face our baby saw. He brought him up to my chest and I said a prayer that our son was healthy and finally in my arms. What a miracle!

A few minutes after Fox had been earth side, Mark cut the umbilical cord. Our lives were now changed forever. We had become a family.

~ Love & Light ~

Fox Orion

Fox Orion joined us earth side on the evening of November 16th 2015. His father and I think he is the most amazing thing ever. 

I really am excited to blog about our experiences as new parents and everything we are learning along the way, but as anyone who has had a newborn knows, our focus right now is getting sleep when we can and trying to create some type of schedule again. 

I hope you'll keep checking in at the blog and following our little family as we go along. 

~ Love & Light ~