5 days postpartum! 🤯 Of course i still look 4-5 months preg..

5 days postpartum! 🤯

Of course i still look 4-5 months pregnant (as my almost 5yr old keeps mentioning 🙄 lol) but the fact that a week ago there was a full grown baby in there is outrageous.

To be fair the emotional bounce back is cuz it’s my third baby. If you haven’t tried going for 3 i highly recommend skipping 1 and 2 and just doing the third. Much much easier to just know what you’re doing and not tear and all that (lol).

Flippant jokes aside I was high key terrified going into this labor. My 2nd’s shoulder getting stuck and subsequent drs suggesting I get a cesarean gave me pause. Should I have just listened? Was switching to a Dr who agreed with me to try vaginal delivery life-threateningly dumb? Luckily I was able to find enough research to say that a vaginal delivery after a shoulder dystocia is generally OK but that research also suggested early induction to avoid a large baby. My doctor saw no need for induction, in fact she quickly shut me down when I brought it up (and since i know how much inductions suck, many resulting in cesarean anyway, decided to just go with her program). Having said that, armed with my google degree and watching my due date come and go was soul-crushingly scary.

When I finally went into active labor naturally at 40 weeks 4 days, I still couldn’t calm that voice in my head. “You’re gonna die…” All week little signs kept popping up convincing me these were my last days on earth. The funeral episode of Ted Lasso, randomly seeing skull stickers all over the neighborhood, sad death-themed songs wafting through restaurants and coffee shops …kinda like a bad mushroom trip only I was sober and the universe was trying to tell me to get my affairs in order. I almost wrote my kids a goodbye letter. I didn’t. Felt too dark, even for me.

When active labor hit Friday eve my daughter point blank said “if this doesn’t go well are you going to live in the stars?” Gutted. After wanting labor to start for so long suddenly I wanted it to stop…My kids need me. I can’t die, maybe I’ll just get a cesarean? Pushing is where the shoulder gets stuck and everyone dies, right?

I showed up to the hospital at 5cm in excruciating pain, got an epidural at 6cms and felt… high. In a good way. We waited. My heart rate was low so they gave me ephedrine which is basically speed. My doula and I talked for hours about who knows what. Nev fake-slept. (He admitted later he was nervous too) I was shaking the entire time. Coulda been the drugs but deep down I knew it was the fear of pushing. Seven hours of this nervous pre-death shake-talking and it was time…

Everyone gathered around. Lots of extra nurses. I held my legs w my arms, pressed my 7 stone scepter point into my thumb and pushed as hard as I could (toward an early death no doubt). FIRST PUSH. I felt the head. Ok well that was fast. But the head was never my concern. Next contraction I pushed again. SECOND PUSH. I knew part of the baby was out of me but was terrified to look. The nurses all started to tell me to hold my breath the next push and I began to tell them I didn’t want to break bl00d vessels in my face (god I’m annoying lol) and the doctor suddenly just said “No she doesn’t need to push again” and my heart sank. The baby was stuck. I knew it.

But wait no! Then she said LOOK! And I looked down and THERE HE WAS. Totally out. Two pushes. I started laughing. Sobbing? It’s a blur but I was alive and he was alive and…wait TWO PUSHES? That was it!?

I’m still totally shocked. In the best most alive way ever.

So yep. Here I am. With the audacity to complain about my lil postpartum belly. Ridiculous. Moral of the story is…trust your instinct? But that can’t be right bc my instinct was that I was gonna die. Trust your body? Your doctor? (Well your doctor after the other doctor you didn’t trust?)

Haha 🤷🏻‍♀️, all I know is I feel SO lucky. And happy. And shocked it doesn’t hurt to p3e.

But no more babies.

(Don’t quote me on that 😇)