Childbirth: Personal Experience
What follows is a short recollection of what my wife and I went through around the time of the birth of our first child. It turns out that being prepared can help you a lot, and improve the chances of you and your child ending up happy and healthy. I don’t intend a generally applicable medically-approved advice, rather, just a personal take (“advice to my former self”) which may help you find your own path.
I try to address both the mother and the father (or partner) roles — but keep in mind my perspective for the former is necessarily limited and naive.
Most Importantly
Your psychic health will face quite an onslaught, due to the sheer amount of changes, uncertainty, and increased workload—yet is one of the most important things to preserve. Stress is contagious, both between the partners, and from partners to the child. Reverse this — don’t stress, don’t overthink, accept your own imperfections. Other parents have put up much worse performance than you will, and still things turned out to be fine. A frequent theme is powerlessness, which you can overcome only through acceptance.
You are not alone! Throughout history, childcare used to be more a community thing — when a mother had her first child, she had already been exposed first hand to caring for many of her younger siblings/nephews/co-tribals; and was likely better prepared than a mother in today’s a bit individualised society. Circumvent it — talk to your friends, neighbors, your parents and relatives, read books and internet, contract a midwife or a lactation consulant! Each of those can provide immense amounts of help and assurance.
You are a team — brunt of the work is expected to be done by the mother, in part due to physiological predisposition. Don’t let the absence of mammary glands discourage you from helping wherever you can — change diapers, cook food, lull the baby… or just — be there, provide support, comfort, consolation. You’ll be surprised how useful you can be, if you think creatively and if you just try.
Before the Birth
My wife regularly visited physiotherapist for a few years, with focus on overall movement patterns and breathing. Especially the latter part, including diaphragm activation and various muscle control, proved important during the birth. For me, I’m generally in a good shape thanks to running, calisthenics, and yoga; so even despite the increased load on my back and unorthodox gymnastics I have to pull with the child, I’m coping. Perhaps I should have focused a bit more on exercises like Windshield wipers, Mountain climbers, or Russian twists.
Motivated by my health in general, I’ve been learning to fall asleep quickly for a while already — it is indeed a skill, requiring a strong discipline around screen consumption and mental tranquility, and some research around room temperature, digestion time, etc. The sooner you start, the better. It will pay off once you are back home with the child.
I’ve read about how the birth should be happening — what is a contraction, what is amniotic fluid and what its release means, what is a C-section, what kinds of anesthetics are being applied and when, what is oxytocin, what is bonding… There is a chance that as the father, you will be asked to make some decisions during the birth, because the mother will be sedated/unconscious. In general, trust the doctors, but you better be informed to not mess up or panic.
My wife has read even more, and I think it gave her some additional calm and assurance during the process. However, the primary motivation was to be able to pick the hospital carefully —she picked one that provided a more natural environment, where the birth was driven more by midwifes than by doctors (but they stood by and stepped up when things turned risky). We are not the type who likes the common factory-like approach, so doing this kind of research was a must. In addition, we paid for a more comfortable room — and it was a really good choice, because we spent 28 hours at the hospital until the child was born, and being able to refresh during that time was important.
We packed our things for the hospital stay a month in advance, with some careful planning, into 3 bags. In addition to the 28 hours during the birth, we were confined for 4 more days in the hospital, at the neonatology, until they let us home. We took, among other things, a lot of spare clothing (for both of us!), quite some food and drink (prefer easily digestible with high sugar level), and earplugs and headphones. Particularly useful was my energy gel for long distance running — my wife sucked one a few minutes before the final pushing — and magnesium pills. You’ll be likely leaving your home on short notice, so keep this bag packed and available at all times. In addition to that, understand the conditions/triggers for when you should ride — you want to call to the hospital before coming anyway, but not being confused helps.
During the Birth
This section is much more individual than the previous one. You may have a quickie with no complications, you may spend 24h+ there. Thanks to the lot of equip and prep we did beforehand, we had pretty much only challenge — the pain. My wife was having intense contractions for around 8 hours, and had to be sedated twice during that time. We were making the decision when-and-whether together and with the doctors. The second one (epidural) failed at first, complicating the matters a bit. By the time she was doing the final push, she was almost out of energy and overcome by the pain.
It could have been better — if we managed to get more sleep at the hospital, or if we left later for the hospital (which would have been risky tho!), or if we timed the anesthetics differently. But I don’t have a general learning here, and in the end fairly happy with what we did. It could have been much worse — we did evade any aggressive treatment; and, all in all, the birth was reasonably natural.
My role was pretty much to hold my wife’s hand all the time, breathe with her, and console her. To my wonder, it was pretty important for her— I dared to check my mobile once to distract myself, and she gave me such a yelling that I nearly birthed as well. I was crazy afraid of all the blood and mess — rightly so. But I didn’t faint; the doctors knew in advance I’m not going to cut the navel cord. The worst part, however, was that for a few hours your wife is roaring with pain, and you can’t really do anything, you just sit and watch. I’m quite a case of ADHD plus misophonia — so this was a real stoic’s challenge for me.
Once the child was out came the bonding. Our plan was that my wife will do it, me stepping up only in case she won’t be available. Which is exactly what happened, she had to be treated a bit post the push. I knew what to expect, didn’t panic, and did the job — well, lied on the bed and held the baby. As I was talking to other fathers before, they were telling me that the newborns don’t react to them much in the first days and weeks. Our newborn reacts to me very positively, calming down with me at times faster than with the mother. Whether it comes to the fact that I did the bonding, or whether it’s my general splendor, I cannot say — but I’ll believe in a combination.
Postpartum at the Neonatology
There were two great challenges of this period: overcoming the damage of the birthing, and coming up to terms with our performance.
The damage was primarily a leak of cerebrospinal fluid which my wife had, and which lasted for about a week. It combined a bit with a stiff & sore neck she got during the birth, and resulted in her being barely able to walk, and having a lot of head pain, dizziness, hearing problems. It was unfortunate that the doctors didn’t exactly help us —the nurses at the neonatology mostly ignored it, and were almost passively aggressive to get my wife to fully care of the child, to nurse it, etc. I understand their motivation, but found it a bit rushed.
This, of course, contributed to my wife thinking she’s a bad mother as she couldn’t take care of the child fully, despite the nurses suggesting so. And that, likely, made the symptoms of the leak worse, leading to a vicious cycle. The point I made at the beginning — don’t stress if you don’t think you perform optimally — applies here greatly.
My role was bits and pieces anywhere — I was going home just to sleep, otherwise caring for her and for the child by any means; and providing support. Two things have helped us — we had an external midwife (you never have enough midwives, that should be clear by now) who acted more as a psychotherapist at this stage (and she was darn good at it) and visited us daily at the hospital, and later on we took my wife to a physiotherapist who eliminated the stiff-neck part, conclusively claimed the leak part (until then, all we had from the doctors was “hmm it could be it but no worries here’s some pain killers”).
It could have been better if I spent more time reading about possible post-birth complications, or consulted more with some objective external authorities — all the doctors directly interacting with us were well-intended, but, as said above, were not fully objective due to their direct involvement and singular responsibility.
Lactation is a very tricky thing, it appears. You need cooperation of the child, of the glands, of the mother’s mental and physical state, good fine motor skills etc. It is very natural to suck at it for quite a while. Don’t worry if it doesn’t work at the beginning (or at all) — while it’s a great thing worth all the strife, you can have a completely legit baby partially or completely on artificial nutrition. Your psychic health is more important at this stage. We managed only drops while at the hospital — but we never stopped trying.
Postpartum at Home
Again, keep in mind those words are being very case specific, as every child is unique.
The right time to leave the hospital for home is as early as the doctors are willing to let you, assuming you have a comfortable and ~quiet home (if you don’t, fix that before having a child). We pushed for it, and it turned out well — many of our metrics improved at home.
The challenges continue to be lactation, lulling the child, and our own sleep regime. The lactation is a follow-up to what I said in the previous part — we are making huge improvements, with the help of a lactation consultant. We still combine all options—breasts obviously, breast pumps, artificial nutrition; in this order. We extended our arsenal with a pipette, nipple shield, catheter.
Lulling the child is somehow ok at this stage — as with many other things, it’s a skill you’ll get progressively better at if you observe and focus. I can tell now whether the cause of child’s annoyance is hunger, stomach pain, lack of human touch, need to be rocked; and remediate swiftly. A basic OODA loop. But knowing what is the cause does not always guarantee you’ll be able to get rid of it; so again, a big demands on your patience.
When it comes to sleep regime, I was thinking I’ll set up some regular power napping regime, and stick myself and the child to it. Didn’t work —instead, I’ve just extended the time when I’m trying to sleep (from 2100 to 0900), but I let myself be awaken easily whenever the child or the mother need something. Comes to about 5 times a night, at unpredictable times. What I optimize is the length of those interventions — change diapers faster, diagnose the cause for not sleeping faster, prepare nutrition faster… and sprint back to sleep at the first sign of calm.
Don’t forget to start getting back to normal life again — I actually enjoyed paying some invoices, as it reminded me about life back then. Or write down your thoughts — works for me perfectly.
Conclusion
We are 10 days into the child’s age. Every day has been full of experiences, and very different from the previous ones. In some sense, it’s too early to journal it as things will be very different tomorrow; on the other hand, it’s a valuable fresh snapshot of my thoughts.
It is, as expected, unlike everything I have ever faced before. Difficult yet beautiful. Tiring yet energizing. Surprising yet confirming some of age-old-truths. Unique yet all the same. Contradictory yet consistent.
