• 9 Posts
  • 72 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: October 18th, 2023
  • laughingsquirreltoAsk Lemmy NSFW@lemmynsfw.com•What do pregnancy and childbirth feel like?English
    2·
    11 days ago
    • Hmmm, good question… Everything is a bit saggy, in the first couple of days my body looked like I was 5 months pregnant from all the loose skin, the organs being in different positions and such. I guess the difference after birth is not that stark, as the baby is so close to the body all the time, so you still feel the weight, the movement. And the baby takes up all the focus, so in the first two months, I didn’t focus much on how my body felt, but recently I got a glimpse of how my body felt before the pregnancy, and that somehow shocked me, I was so accustomed to the changed body that I forgot how it felt being without a baby.
    • When a breast gets fuller and fuller, it starts to ache, a bit like a sore muscle. At first it is more like a gentle pull, reminding you to empty this breast. If that’s not possible, it gets fuller and fuller, to a point where it feels like a breast implant is in there, so plump and full. When the lactation reflex starts during feeding, the other full breast will start to drip, which I only notice afterwards, when I see some wet spots on the sheets or feel the wet nipple. Quite strange, when the body does stuff without me noticing it. An empty breast feels saggy and very empty, even though there almost always is still some milk in there. I think that is mainly psychological, as the fear of having no milk left while having a hungry baby makes an empty breast feel VERY empty. In contrast, a plump breast is somehow satisfying, you feel like that breast alone could fill your baby up until the next meal :D
  • laughingsquirreltoAsk Lemmy NSFW@lemmynsfw.com•What do pregnancy and childbirth feel like?English
    2·
    26 days ago

    Haha, yeah, I guess :D what kind of cravings are present in your family?

    I was on no painkillers, I simply forgot to ask for that as the contractions took up all my mental focus… It would have made it a lot more comfortable, but oh well ^^

    C sections are so fascinating, if I would have needed one, I would have loved to have a transparent screen, so that I can see what they are doing. But yeah, I’m glad I didn’t need one.

  • laughingsquirreltoAsk Lemmy NSFW@lemmynsfw.com•What do pregnancy and childbirth feel like?English
    3·
    26 days ago
    • Yes, my partner was present and so damn supportive, I don’t know how it would have been without it! During each contraction massaged a specific spot on my lower back, and that helped so much with the pain. Also, during the final phase he sat behind me and held me, as the midwife instructed him, which gave me stability to push harder. His bladder was so full at that moment because he didn’t want to leave, in case he would miss the birth, so sitting behind me was the worst possible position for him, but he managed to hold it in :D
    • He was so supportive before and after, helped me with all the preparations for the baby, cared for me when I was tired and exhausted, lent me an arm when going up stairs, organising a place to sit on the train, and so on. He took 2 months off work after the birth, and that was the best thing ever! Caring for a baby, even if it’s an easy one as ours, is straining and leaves little time for self care. He made all that easier, by filling up my water bottles (and bringing them to whatever spot I am nursing the baby, because once its latched on, I can’t move anymore, and you get thirsty as hell during nursing! He prepared food for us, emptied the trash, did the dishes, but most of all, it was so good that he built up an intimate relationship with our child from the very first second :)
    • hmm, I think the attraction stayed the same during pregnancy, but since birth my sex drive is zero, and it has been a couple of months. Mentally, the lust is slowly coming back, but physically I don’t feel any desire to get intimate. It just feels so strange, my body is currently used by the baby so much, it doesn’t want to be touched or worse, penetrated. But I recently had a surprisingly positive body experience. One of my partners wanted to play fight, and we did that a couple of days ago, and it was in a way a healing situation. I felt more connected to my body again, I was laughing and using my strength, that just felt really good! Maybe this is a first step into the recovery of my sex drive, who knows :)
    • It’s hard to describe and to remember how the contractions felt. I mostly remember the pain in my lower back, the contraction pain would accumulate there. It was mainly tensions, making everything stiff and hard, and the midwife tells you to breathe out and rotate the lower back, and that helps, but mostly you just wait for the pain to pass, its pretty unbearable. The quality of the pain was also different from contraction to contraction, some had me cry out in pain, others were easier to endure. The intensity built up over time, I was more and more exhausted, and the last minutes had me screaming out loud and swearing, that I would never do this again.
    • I was advised by my midwife to collect some colostrum beforehand, which is a highly nutritious pre-milk the breasts produce during the last weeks of the pregnancy. So in some way, I was lactating alert at that point, but it was only 1-2 ml per day, that I was able to collect. In total, I collected about 20 ml, and that was so helpful, because this could be fed to the baby during the first few days, where the real lactation didn’t yet set in. My baby had an infection in the first days and needed a lot of liquid to fight that infection, so the colostrum was helpful for that. Sadly, the knowledge about colostrum is not yet wide spread. On day 3, finally the lactation set in, and it has been easy from then on. And no, I didn’t yet experience milk release upon hearing a baby cry. But sometimes the other breast releases some milk when the baby is drinking on one side.
    • the nurse told me to not push because some part of my uterus/ cervix was in the way of the baby’s passage, and it would have caused damage to my body to push trough that. And at another instance, the baby’s shoulder was not 100% in a good position, so they moved it, but during that time, I also was told not to push, I guess it would have hurt the both of us.
    • my body thankfully recovered pretty well, the gap between my abdominal muscles is almost closed again, my pelvic floor is strong again, and I’m starting to feel my bladder again (you loose the feeling for the fullness level during birth). My belly is still a bit loose and soft, but that’s okay, it is a soft, comfortable spot for the baby :)
  • laughingsquirreltoAsk Lemmy NSFW@lemmynsfw.com•What do pregnancy and childbirth feel like?English
    9·
    29 days ago

    Are you interested in any particular aspect? My pregnancy was pretty easy-going, I just had periods of low energy, in which I rested a lot, mainly at the beginning and in the last couple of weeks. I enjoyed the remaining time with preparing my home for the baby, having a lot of sex (pregnancy hormones & new poly partner), amd working.

    The birth was such an unusual experience, it really can’t be explained with words that well. The main takeaway for me was, that the body is working off a predefined process, my awareness for my surroundings got more and more reduced, and I was just working with the contractions. They were painful, but manageable, as you get periods of rest between the contractions. The final phase of pressing is a whole other thing, the contractions change, the whole body goes into an almost uncontrollable downward pressing motion, and when the nurse tells you to not push, its almost impossible, the whole body just wants to do it. Getting the head through that small opening was the most demanding thing I have done in my life. I thought at some point, that I cannot do it, I just saw no way forward, I cannot push anymore, I’m exhausted, I already pushed so hard, and the head still didn’t come out. Mind you, my baby is a big baby, for other women, this is not always that much of a struggle, at least that’s what I was told.

    Finally holding the baby made me instantly happy, and I only had the head memory of the pain, my body didn’t feel the pain anymore. That was also the first moment that I truly had the realisation: this is a whole new human being :)

    Feel free to ask anything else that interests you!

  • laughingsquirreltoich_iel@feddit.org•ich_iel
    2·
    1 month ago

    Für mich ist roh und ungewürzt nur der Räuchertofu von Taifun essbar, sobald man den einmal gegessen hat, schmeckt alles andere im Vergleich mies. Taifun hat eh ein paar tolle Sonderkreationen, die ich über veggie-specials bestelle, weil günstig. Am geilsten ist der Graffiti-Tofu, den snacke ich auch gerne roh weg.