delivery and aftermath

the story of how i gave birth is pretty non-traumatic: the very next morning after my previous blog post, and after a very big and spicy dinner at dosa pointe (lol - i joked that it was the hugeness/spiciness of it that prompted labour), i started having contractions around 1 a.m. obviously when you're clueless about childbirth you have no idea whether those are contractions or not, so i waited 5 hours before calling the hospital. my problem was that they were too close together from the start (6 minutes apart...then at the end about 2 mins) and in the beginning more annoying than painful. but by 6 a.m they were painful enough, so ok, taxi to the hospital. arrive at 7, just in time for a couple of hours of check-in and shift change, then an epidural...kid was born at 11.20. i am told i only had to push about 10 times, once i got the hang of it. though the pain never really stopped after the epidural - apparently i was too dilated by that time. anyway, here's us post-delivery, before we were moved to our room.

the 3 of us spent the minimal one day in the hospital, then they let us go, as there were no major issues. that was one strange day: i couldn't sleep, was not very sure what i'm supposed to do, obviously we had no visits and only called/texted our parents and a couple other people...and nurses and doctors kept coming in to do their specific rounds: different persons came for 2 weigh-ins, hearing test, jaundice test, birth certification, vaccine info, shaking baby sindrome info, blood taking, pediatric check-up, release forms...i'm sure i'm forgetting a couple of things. nobody came to observe me breastfeeding or to go with me over what i was supposed to do once home. it's true i had taken prenatal classes....but they didn't know that. btw, this is Royal Victoria Hospital, in Montreal, the famous new building at glen site. excelent care otherwise, like in a hotel. i also feel like they would help you IF you asked for help specifically. i'll remember this the next time i give birth, i guess?

what happened next was, my milk didn't come in, my kid slept and didn't eat for 1 day, a nurse from CLSC came to our home and pretty much shamed us into keeping a feeding log lol, the kid had lost more than 10% body weight and they told me to start supplementing...all pretty usual fare, from what i'm realizing now. except my milk continued to not come, and then a bunch of professionals i desperately sought out were spending time trying to find something traumatic in the history of how my pregnancy/delivery, that would justify why i didn't have enough milk. so that was really fun. i mean eating/feeding is the number one thing in keeping a person alive, so how this all happened is still strange to me as i'm trying to make sense of it. two months later, it's hardly better - i try to breastfeed some, pump some, have a heart twinge every time i give my baby a bottle of formula, which is, you know, very often. soon all the lactation professionals will leave us alone...the baby has just graduated to number 1 diapers, so there's that.