I've decided that this time around I'm going to keep my own blog. I think I was inspired by Andy's characterization of my labor and delivery as "easy"...um, easy for whom? It was easy for Andy -- 3 hours (compared to 11 last time), which left him time to go down to the cafeteria and chow on chicken nuggets while I was being sewn up and manhandled in all sorts of ways that would not be appropriate for me to describe on a family blog.
The REAL story is that childbirth is a horrible, horrible thing. Eve really screwed it up for us women. Andy asked me what a contraction feels like and I referred him to the scene at the end of Braveheart, when Mel Gibson is tied up spread eagle and being disemboweled while he's still alive. That, of course, is completely separate from the actual delivery, which feels about as bad as you can imagine it feeling. Put it this way, in the middle of pushing, I started screaming, "I can't do it! Can you please help me?" to the doctor -- I was hoping she'd whip out a vacuum or forceps or whatever they use to pull the baby out but, being the Yale Health Plan, she said, "No, keep pushing," and left me to my misery.
What about the meds, you ask? Well, I barely got them. The Yale Health Plan tried to trick me into having a natural delivery. I kept asking for relief but they kept putting me off, telling me I wasn't far enough along. Then, when they finally agreed to give it to me, I was almost too far along -- the nurse said, "We might not have time," at which point I think I probably looked like I was going to kill her because the anesthesiologist came in soon after that. Of course, when I finally got the epi, it was time to push, so I was saved from 4, maybe 5 contractions.
So it certainly wasn't "easy." I know it's supposed to be better the second time around, but apart from being faster, I think it was worse. I found out that they had drugged me out on morphine with Paras, which is probably why I don't remember much. Andy is right, though, that the aftermath was much better this time in that I could walk and use the bathroom.
I did have a complication after the delivery, which was that I had a 101-103 degree fever for three days after I got home from the hospital. After running some tests, the doctors told me I had a strep A infection, and not in my throat (though it turned out my delivering doctor had strep throat...I won't go down the road of how I got it). Apparently this was known as "childbed fever" in the 17th and 18th centuries and was the leading cause of maternal death -- the doctors used to do autopsies on the women who had died the day before and would then go and treat other pregnant women and deliver babies, all without changing clothes and washing their hands. Fast forward to 2009: I had the same illness that killed Henry the VIII's third wife. Fortunately, I was being treated by the one doctor at the Yale Health Plan who believes in antibiotics, so I was prescribed about three of them and felt better in another week.
I took the infection -- and the article about breastfeeding that was in April issue of The Atlantic -- as signs from God that I shouldn't put myself through the ordeal of breastfeeding, so I switched to formula...which was the best decision I ever made. Who knew babies could be so much fun when you're not chained to a couch with your boobs hanging out for eight hours a day? I know some people out there really enjoy breastfeeding and I don't mean to denigrate it for those who had a good experience. But I have to say it was a bad experience for me the first time around, so I'm glad to have the freedom to enjoy my maternity leave this time. Plus I'm a control freak so I like knowing how much Sahana is drinking each day.
Speaking of Sahana, let's talk about her. She is very cute, as Andy said, much cuter than Paras was when he was born. She's much calmer, too. It's nice that we know what we're doing this time around, because we were able to structure her feedings from the get-go and she's already able to go from 11pm to 6 am with only one feeding in between. Anyway, here are some photos from Sahana's second week:
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