After Labor

Once you are done with labor, they move you into a much smaller room for the next couple of nights. The nurses were awesome and they came in every couple of hours to check on you. What they don’ t tell you is that you have to wear these sweet and super heinous sexy mesh panties that look like panty-hose and come up over your belly button and almost down to your mid-thigh with a super huge pad that acts as a diaper because your na-na bleeds for the next 4-6 weeks. NOBODY TOLD ME THAT!! So with the super attractive nursing bra, these mesh panties/diapers on, you are just one attractive lady. My husband informed me if I looked like this 10 months ago we wouldn't be in this situation. Har har har, Keller. They also didn't tell me that over the next couple of days, the nurses and doctors have to come by to push down on your stomach to push out the fluids/blood. And it is NOT a pleasant feeling.

If I have one suggestion, it’s that you send your baby back to the nursery at night. When we went on our hospital tour, they told us that they didn't like for parents to send their children back to the nursery and they wanted the child to stay with them at all times. Well, thank goodness for our nurse, who at 4:00 am the following morning, suggested that we let her take him to the nursery and bring him out for feedings. I had heard that this was the thing to do but was also nervous because I didn't want to get judged. It was the best decision we made because that was the longest sleep that I had gotten and was going to get for the next couple of nights after leaving the hospital.

The lactation specialist:

What they don’t tell you? That the lactation specialist makes you feel like a failure. Now, this was just my experience. Many of you may have had different ones. I was nursing M when the lactation specialist came in and she immediately started “correcting” me and telling me what I was doing wrong. I had been doing this for two days thus far and all the nurses had been telling me what a great job I was doing so it really annoyed me. When I told her I had been getting the same “gulping” noises (that says he is getting the proper amount of milk) she was getting whenever I was nursing the “wrong” way she chose not to believe it. This not only made me SUPER annoyed but she also made me feel like a total failure which in turn made me feel like I was starving my child. And then after she stole my confidence, she just left! She didn't tell me to re-latch to try it again, she just said, “okay, got it?” and left!

Apart from the lactation specialist, everyone was super helpful. The next few days that you’re in there you will have the doctors that come by to push down on your stomach and check on you, the nurses that help you and the baby, and then the other nurses that come in to check your vitals. I lucked out in having great nurses that would try to schedule the check-ins all at one time so they weren't disturbing us all different times which allowed us to sleep more.