do you think we blackout certain parts of pregnancy/childbirth?

[starbyfar7]

seriously..

with my first.. i remember being so happy during pregnancy. looking back on it, morning sickness was a breeze.. insomnia? i dont think i had it.. labour? pfft. easy peasy rice and cheezy. first few weeks with new baby? easy easy easy, lots of sleep, perfect latching on.

in fact, things were so perfect, that i remember actually telling people that i loved being pregnant and couldnt wait to have another!

fast forward 7 years.

im miserable; this pregnancy has literally knocked me on my behind. and now im wondering if everything REALLY happened like i remember or was the whole ordeal so violent and horrible that i've blacked out in my memory how bad it really was!

example:
at our appt, my midwife asked me if i had an episiotomy with my first and i honestly couldnt remember. i had an all natural drug free labour, but couldnt remember if i was cut or not? i remember having to get stitches after, but i couldnt remember if i tore or was cut! i went back and watched our birth video and sure enough.. i was cut after being offered an episiotomy to help speed things up (wth? i was such a fool to believe that!)

now im wondering.. what other traumatic details have i pushed out of my mind??

[Smokering]

Hard to say. I don't think I did, but then I don't exactly have fond recollections of pregnancy and birth. I occasionally remember random details, like the fact that DD was born with a nuchal hand presentation, but it's not like I'd suppressed the info deliberately - I just hadn't thought about it for awhile.

It's definitely true that people can have vastly different pregnancies from baby 1 and baby 2. This time around I have much less nausea than with DD, but a LOT more fatigue and low blood pressure. It's a different experience, for sure!

Also, it's possible that during the moment you didn't consider the episiotomy to be a big deal. If you're more educated on NCB stuff now, you might consider it more significant than you did during the throes of pushing, you know? So it wouldn't register as a really dramatic event at the time?

I do think that humans have a tendency to forget some of the aches and pains and irritations of ANY circumstance. Go back to Uni after seven years' absence, and you'll probably be thinking "Wow, I'd forgotten how much I hate deadlines/boring professors/people who ask stupid questions in tutorials/not having any money"; go back to a retail job after a hiatus and you'll remember the aggrieving customers and the pain of checking your shifts every week; and so on. I DEFINITELY don't romanticise my first pregnancy, but it's been a while since I experienced the particular sensations associated with heartburn, pelvic girdle pain and so on - so I'm sure I'll have several "Oh yeah, this... this part sucks" moments along the way!

[Chloe'sMama]

Yes from me....

Took 3 years to get pregnant with DD1, so everything was so 'wonderful' and she has always been the perfect child..... with DD2, everything seemed to be so much harder... although, the birth was so much better (homebirth!)

I think it was the anticipation of our first and having waited so long to get her.

[CherryBomb]

I don't think we necessarly block things out, but I think the negatives naturally fade with time.

[MegBoz]

No, not for me. I remember everything with crystal clarity - of course it hasn't been that long. DS was born in July '08.

But I have a very good memory in general. Sometimes TOO GOOD. Ha, like I learned the hard way not to watch anymore birth videos. The negatives are haunting me - even minor things like a MW who is persistently suctioning the nose & mouth of a very happy, content, healthy, breathing newborn (like 5-6X -- she keeps approaching for behind the mama at different sides & going at it. I would have swatted her like a fly.)

[smeep]

I personally believe that, to an extent, our brains to tend to forget or downplay certain negatives of pregnancy, labour, birth and postpartum. I think it's nature's way of helping us continue to reproduce...because if we remembered, in detail, just how BAD some of the bad points are, then we'd probably never get pregnant again.