Off topic: for any woman who has given birth

[alissaroot]

I've only had one child, and he's only just turned two. My biggest concern was pain management, second concern was embarrassing stuff like pooping while pushing or having total strangers viewing my private parts. Third was breastfeeding, which turned out to be the most difficult and painful of all. Most of the advice I read on baby websites sounded like platitudes and just made me feel frustrated. I was so horrified at the thought of the pain I asked for a c-section but my doctor said no.




i'm including the details anyway, skip the next paragraph if you do not want to know what happened.



Turns out, I overdosed on Tums and ended up being hypercalcaemic, so with the epidural, I never felt any pain. I never felt a single contraction because with the epidural and I kept blacking out because of my hypercalcaemia. I barely remember giving birth at all, and I slept through my entire labor (I was induced 4 days after my due date). I had to be transferred to another hospital to have dialysis for a few days, and it wasn't until after the second dialysis session that my memory becomes really clear. I met my son when he was three days old. My local hospital thought I was a drug addict and wouldn't release him to me until it got cleared up that it was calcium overdose. It was the worst experience of my life, but I'm grateful my doctor figured out what was wrong with me. The nurses were total b*tches because they blamed my blackouts on drugs, and I do remember the comments they made about my mothering. Only one nurse seemed to understand something was really wrong with me, and called me later at home to check on me and told me she had held my son up to me when I blacked out while trying to breastfeed. I'm so glad she did that, so my sweet angel baby could get that.

It turns out that dialysis is also a way to quit smoking. I didn't smoke for about six months after having dialysis clean all the calcium and nicotine out of my blood, and never felt any withdrawal symptoms like when I've gone cold turkey or used nicotine supplements, which made me happy because of breastfeeding.

We're both fine now, though. I'll probably never have another child, but being a mom is the greatest thing I've ever done in my entire life, even though the birth part was horrible. My doctor later asked my permission to write a paper on my case. It's kinda funny that I've only had two health problems ever, and now I've shared them both on this forum. Actually, the calcium overdose is related to my hiatal hernia, since I used tums during my pregnancy instead of taking any kind of pills, for fear that it would hurt the baby. The OTC tums ended up being the worst thing I could've chosen to control my hiatal hernia/pregnancy heartburn.