"WHAT?!?!" Those Things Nobody Warns You About....

[Past_VNE]

What have you learned about pregnancy/birth that you NEVER heard mentioned, but thought to yourself, "Wow, that would have been nice to be warned about."

Example 1: Gristastic's (and many others) leaking urine surprise.

Example 2: Everyone tells you their story and then SWEARS your preg/birth will be exactly like it.

Your turn.

[mum2tori]

Not exactly pregnancy/birth but...

Would have been nice if someone had mentioned that after the first week the baby's skin will peel like a snake.



Talk about scare a couple of newbie parents with the great mottling newborn. :LOL :LOL

I'll have to think about the others. I know the list was long the first time. :LOL :LOL

[Trishy]

My 2 big ones are that you can throw up while in labor and that you poop when you are pushing.

[plantmommy]

The extra hair. I mean, not the kind on your head, but everywhere else. I thank the goddess that the hair on my face is so fair it's hardly visible, but those 3" hairs on the areola, although there aren't many of them, are still not a nice thing!

It's like "HUNH?! Where did that come from, and when did it show up?"

The drastic changes in sex drive, going up or down, or alternating. The pluses and minuses. (Like, vaginal moisture or dryness, prenatal and postpartum.)

[Soontobe3]

the pooping during the birth process would have been nice to know! (it makes sense, but a forwarning would have been nice)


the gooey vaginal discharge that little girls have in the week after birth ( I freaked out!!)

[mum2tori]

Tag MOLES!!! : :

Ugh would have been nice to know that those are normal from the hormones. Especially on my neck... and my breasts. Used one on the areola with DD to know if she was latched on properly. :LOL :LOL

[Peony]

Varicose veins where they shouldn't be! I went to the bathroom one day, and freaked out : my scream brought DH running in!

[Artisan]

It would have been nice to know that some women have BFing pain, even if they're doing everything right.

[Piglet68]

Well, this isn't quite the same thing but it brought back this memory...

Okay, first of all I'm adopted, so I'd never heard stories about my birth, or anybody else's for that matter, only what I'd seen in biology class...

So I'm watching this TV show, and this woman gets impregnated by an alien posing as a human (okay, that part isn't pertinent, just that she's pregnant, lol). She's very pregnant, and standing in the shopping aisle of the grocery store, when all of a sudden the camera focuses on the lower half of her body. There's this big "SPLOOSH" and it looks like someone dumped a bucket of water out from between her legs (she's wearing a dress). It goes on the floor, splashes her legs, etc...and she says "oh, my water broke, better get to the hospital".

I was horrified. I ran to my mother: "what's this about water breaking?!!"..she explains to me that it's part of the labour/birth process (for what little she knows about it). I was like "geez, what if that happens in public??!! how embarassing???" (okay, keep in mind I was about 15 years old).

I mean, I was seriously traumatized by this and all I could say over and over again was "they never tell you this stuff!! it's a big plot to make us all get pregnant and THEN deal with it! when I get pregnant, I am not leaving the house for the last MONTH in case my water breaks in public!!".

And while I know that sometimes it's just a long trickle, to this day I fear having my water break in public. :LOL

[IdentityCrisisMama]

Puking and pooping.


I heard and old midwives saying while I was pregnant, "The baby isn't coming until you smell the poop" or something like that. I really wanted to be prepared for that and I wanted DH to know about it. So, I asked my MW and she said it was really, really uncommon
I had lots of poop, which even through the pain and an emergency transfer and 4 hours of pushing, I was still embarrassed about.

And the vomiting completely exhausted me ~ I went about every 30 minutes for over 8 hours. I will plan another HB but I'm having prescription anti-nausea drugs available at home.

Yea, I would have liked to be prepared for those things.

[IdentityCrisisMama]

Piglet, I love the name Sasha!

[Caroline248]

How about just pain in general...I was young with my first and I guess noone wanted to scare me. Everyone said childbirth isn't that bad and not as painful as the books and movies make it out to be....well, I was terrorfied that I was dying when I was in labor..I was having all this PAIN!!!! My next labor wasn't as bad, I think becasue I knew what to expect....

Caroline

[shannon0218]

Ummmm, so how does one prevent the pooping???? Perhaps an enema as soon as labour begins????

[SharonAnne]

I think they used to do that. An enema, I mean. My mom said she had one with me, but my brother, four years later, came too fast for ANYTHING

[Threefold]

The skin tags.
Meconium poop in a newborn (It's easier to get warm tar off the bottom of your shoe).
The fact that your belly button never skrinks back to it's former size.
The fact that after years of breastfeeding your breasts can actually end up smaller than they were originally (not a happy prospect for a barely "B" cup).

But it's all worth it!

[linnea]

My "Wish I Knew"s are all post-birth... I wish someone had told me about some of the minor but extremely irritating complications of giving birth. The two that still plague me are a seperated pubic bone (Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction) and... well, this one is gross, and there's no delicate way to put it. Anal fissure. Augh.

:

[AmandasMom]

The most embarrassing thing for me was having to have nurses change my pad and the pad on my bed because I bled so heavily after. After I was able to stand (had CS), i would overflow the pad and bled on the floor and down my leg and gawd it is so humiliating to have someone clean me and the mess i made up. I even made DH look away.

[Persephone]

So uh, how common is vomitng during labor? I read a lot of birth stories, and I've only heard it mentioned a couple of times. I really hate puking, and would really rather not do that in labor. (or ever!)

[Graceoc]

Afterpains!!!!! I had this wonderful, all-natural waterbirth with virtually no-pain and then about DIED from the afterpains. I couldn't even nurse because everytime she would nurse the pain was UNBEARABLE and I would just break down in tears. This lasted for almost 2 days (until I got some STRONG meds!) I would have given birth 10x's over rather then deal with the afterpains.

[tug]

persephone - i think the puking is pretty common. and the poo. ugh to both of them. i sort of knew but had sort of blocked it out. yeah yeah, all natural but gosh, couldn't it be a little less icky!! and that is after all of the leaking water, hairy body, skin tags, mucous plug, and other pregnancy gore.

i wish someone had warned me about the "clean up" after birth. once the placenta came out there was some major housecleaning by the OB (the purpose is to prevent constant bleeding for weeks, i think). that was painful and entirely unexpected (the placenta came out with a sploosh and i thought i was done).

and nobody warned me about how my heart would totally melt and my world completely change from the minute i held my little one in my arms for the first time. but that was a good "what!?!" after all the ick, something so so fabulous.