@scout59, I could have written this post. I never drank coffee before I had D1, but she made it necessary to get through life.
I had a lot of trouble breastfeeding, and on top of that, D1 cried constantly for about 2 years. I really didn’t want to have another baby, so D2’s arrival into my life turned out to be an unplanned but in retrospect, huge blessing.
I remember thinking, why don’t they give classes on how to, you know, keep your kid alive once you leave this place? The first two weeks were hell on earth, I remember…hysterical crying jags, breastfeeding woes, neighbors trying to convince me not to go back to work. Fortunately, the details are hazy.
My mom says they stayed in the hospital for 2 weeks with each baby!
My D1 was a very easy baby, which gave me the delusion that it would be no problem to go for a second one in fairly quick succession. D2 started crying any time she was conscious starting at 2 weeks, and while she could be consoled, I was the only one who could do it. She instantly sensed when it was dinner time. I finally started wearing her to dinner in a Baby Bjorn carrier with a napkin on her head so I could sit down to eat.
*I remember thinking, why don’t they give classes on how to, you know, keep your kid alive once you leave this place? *
The birthplace where I had planned to have my first, actually had ABC classes ( after baby comes), that I was able to participate in, although I missed the breathing classes because I was on bed rest and she was 10 weeks early.
They didn’t start for three months, but it was a good place to ask questions and get reassurance.
I also went to parents of prematures meetings, because while she did well once she got home from the hospital, she still was delayed, and other people didn’t seem to get that was expected.
Scout59, reading your post that nrdsb4 quoted in post 100 made me think of this column, written by the awesome Anna Quindlen:
http://www.newsweek.com/playing-god-no-sleep-154643
Excerpt:
I always say “the first 3 months takes 3 years,” then it gets better. After the first year, time flies by. Where did it all go?
When I first came home from the hospital, I called a friend who had a child about a year older than mine. I remember her telling me that the first 8 weeks were the hardest. After I hung up with her, I promptly got out the calendar, counted out 8 weeks and said to myself “I’ll never make it.”
Re: “remember not really wanting to leave the hospital.”
Our case was the opposite: We wanted to leave the hospital but the people at the hospital would not let the baby and his mom.
Why did we want to leave the hospital as soon as we could? We very soon noticed that there were well too many nurses-to-be who constantly “practiced” on our precious baby. We are talking about a half of dozen students from a nearby school of nurse who surrounded my baby and kept practicing on him for an hour while the baby kept crying! (There seems to be no supervisor who regulated how much/often they could “do” to the baby! My wife felt she was “bothered” too much, too frequently at night as well.
We promised we would came back to the hospital every day before the doctor somewhat reluctantly agreed to discharge the baby and his mom from the hospital. (Oh…many asked us whether we needed any assistance from social services like free milk, etc. I know they meant well. But, did we look very poor in their eyes? We drove a brand new car, albeit a small inexpensive model, to the hospital so we were definitely not that poor in that no-so-rich neighborhood. – later years, I heard that community hospital actually serves many people in poverty and that neighborhood where the hospital is at is below average in their SES, but we did not know that at that time.)
I didn’t like the hospital when my second was born. It was pretty awful…breastfeeding wasn’t the norm so support was nonexistent. I already knew the hows . but it was tough because baby was jaundiced and they claimed my milk would make it worse. I had to use their hospital breast pump . The nurses were not at all helpful. I was the oddball for choosing to nurse and they made me feel like it. I broke their machine too, but I didn’t feel bad about it.
It was so much better at the hospitals where my 1st and 3rd were born
I couldn’t rest well at the hospital. It seemed there was always some machine or phone or something bleeping or beeping or ringing, or someone coming into my room late at night just to check my blood pressure. They didn’t want to release me because I looked so exhausted but then I pointed out that I wasn’t sleeping well there so they let me go.
24 hr stay with first, high forceps delivery (he was sunny side up and broke my tailbone on the way out with his 9 lb body and HUGE head). Sister born 27 months later (easy peasy delivery…epidurals are Gods gift to women) at 12:53 am on Halloween. Since son was going to trick or treat for the first time, I wanted to be home so they let us go home at 3 pm that day (15 hours, and she hadn’t yet pooped…made us promise to come back if we made it to 24 hrs w/no dirty diaper…she produced, so all was ok). With the last I tried to squeeze an extra day out of it, but when the fire alarms kept going off all night, I decided 24 hrs was plenty. I slept better at home, but looking back I should have probably been more scared than I was. That’s youth for you…
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broke my tailbone on the way out with his 9 lb body and HUGE head).
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Reading this makes me almost glad that S1 was an emergency-C. He had a huge head (by far the biggest in the nursery), he was 9lbs (over a week early)…and he too big for me to deliver.
Sister born 27 months later (easy peasy delivery... ** epidurals ** are Gods gift to women)
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Yup! You don’t get an extra present on Mothers Day for doing it without drugs.
My oldest was born at 10 minutes past midnight on my 30th birthday. He was two weeks early, so he was quite a wonderful birthday surprise!
The next day, the young pediatrician came in and said, “I’m a little concerned about your baby. He smells ‘fruity,’ which means he isn’t getting enough nutrition.” I didn’t know what to do with THAT information, but an older nurse came over after he left and said, “Don’t worry, honey, your baby is fine!” Thank goodness for experienced nurses. She was right, of course.
The next day? When babies would normally be getting just colustrum since most mother’s wouldn’t have their milk in yet?
I remember that my mom kept telling me to stay in the hospital as long as they’d let me, so I ended up staying through 3 “room mates.” They were renovating the hospital so there were no private rooms. The pediatrician came in and talked with me. After he left, the room mate said, “So that’s your boyfriend or your husband?” I said, “No, my pediatrician.” She was shocked and said no pediatrician argued with his patient’s mom like mine. I smiled–yep, my pediatrician, but we got along pretty well. I stayed a total of 3 days with D & was relieved to get home where I could sleep–too much coming and going in the hospital room!
Before my child was born, a very experienced, “near retirement age” nurse predicted the gender of the baby correctly, even though we did not ask her “opinion”.
We had chosen not to know if it’s a girl or boy before he was born, but I think the doctor might have known it in advance.
Somehow the nuse could tell (from the heart beat rate? Is the heart beat rate higher for a baby boy? Not sure.)
Or 50/50 chance.
It seems the nurse said it very confidently: It is a boy. But I do not know whether she really could predict it by just looking at all the data available to her except the ultrasound.
This particular old aged nurse is somewhat too proud of herself - she even criticized how the OB doctor handled the case in front of us (but not in front of the OB doctor and the more experienced “helper” doctor.) Her “issue” seems to be with the more experienced “helper” doctor. She kind of hinted to us that this doctor would choose C-section when it is not absolutely needed as long as the health insurance policy for the patient is good.
BTW, I remember we almost did not need to pay any money (unlike today’s insurance policy) so our health insurance was likely very good - the insurance company went bankrupt one year after our child had been born so the policy might be “too good”.
First grandchild born this summer. I"m still amazed at the things hospitals do that undermine success breastfeeding. At least (at this hospital) they are no longer putting the little bottles of formula on the baby cart, “just in case” and sending home free formula and coupons. I really wish every new mom got her hospital breastfeeding advice from at least one experienced nurse who knew what she was doing regarding this.
Glad drive-through deliveries are gone though, I had two of those–one after 24 hours of hard, pitocin induced labor and a force-ups delivery and neither of those with epidurals. That dr. wouldn’t do epidurals due to “risks”. Baby #3 had an epidural. That was my biggest advice to DIL–ask for it ASAP!