You’ve heard the birth story - the excitement, the emotion, the joy. But what you haven’t heard about is everything that came after.
No one talks about the postpartum period. In fact, the term “postpartum” has become a slang term for the kind of depression some women face in the weeks and months that follow the birth of their child. But what happens to your new mama body, mind and spirit during this frightening time is mind-boggling and unlike any other experience. It is emotional, uncomfortable, exhausting and confusing - in fact, it is all of these things, all the time, at the same time.
I want to share my postpartum experience with you. I want to walk you through the awkward and challenging details because I wish someone had prepared me for this part. Nine months of pregnancy, five weeks of bed rest and 18 hours of labor were a cake-walk compared to my postpartum experience. If my words can, in some way, help another new mama feel a little less alone or a little more prepared, then this candid explanation will be more than worth it. Be warned, it is a little graphic and quite long.
As you know, from my Birth Story post, I began experiencing problems with high blood pressure around my 35th week of pregnancy. Three months later, almost exactly, I am finally feeling healthy again. I have been to the emergency room twice (should have been three times but I begged my doctor the last time just to call in meds), was readmitted to the hospital once, seen my OB 6 times, been prescribed a total of 16 different drugs from pain medication to antibiotics to topical ointments, and even visited a specialist up in New York twice. The following is a detailed depiction of everything that has transpired in the last 2+ months.
Less than 48 hours after delivering Declan, we were discharged from the hospital. We dressed our tiny boy in an outfit several sizes too large and strapped him into what seemed like a giant car seat. Like all new parents, we had no idea what we were doing when we drove off from the hospital.
The first night was a disaster. Declan couldn’t sleep in his bassinet. He would start to choke because his little wind pipe couldn’t handle him laying flat on his back. It wasn’t until 7 am when I ran upstairs to find the Rock n’ Play that we were able to close our eyes…and that was only for 45 minutes because we had to get up for his first trip to the pediatrician - for which we were 30 minutes late.
Each day, from that moment on, we learned something new about our little guy. The first week was a blur of awkward feedings, cat naps and debilitating exhaustion. On Friday, exactly one week after being discharged, I woke up in the middle of the night with chills and aches all over my body. My temperature was 100.6 (which is pretty high for someone with a normal temperature of 96.8). My mind jumped to the packet of information I received upon leaving the hospital and remembered something about calling the doctor if your fever reached over 100.4. I panicked. We called the doctor.
I was told to drink fluids and take Tylenol and come to the office in the morning.
My doctor did a urine test and concluded I had what looked like the beginning of a urinary tract infection. It didn't feel anything like that to me, but I went home with my antibiotics and was told I would be feeling 100% better in 24 hours.
24 hours later, my fever was as high as 103 and I was certainly not feeling 100%. On Saturday night, around 8:00 pm, we decided to go to the emergency room. Baby Declan stayed at home with my parents who were still in town helping us out and Hubs and I settled in for what would be an incredibly long and uncomfortable night.
In the ER, the doctors did a full work up - everything from a pelvic exam and ultrasounds to a chest X-ray. My white blood cell count was elevated but they couldn’t find the source of the infection.
The ER doctor believed I had endometritis - an inflammation or irritation of the lining of the uterus (the endometrium). It is not the same as endometriosis. My OB disagreed. At 5 am, after 8 hours in a freezing cold exam room at the ER, I was admitted and began a heavy course of three different IV antibiotics (Gentamicin, Clindamycin, and Ampicillin). I spent a total of 2 nights in the hospital and was then sent home feeling much better.
A week later, to the day, I woke up in the middle of the night again with chills and aches. I was also experiencing nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Lovely.
In the morning, we decided to return to the emergency room, this time with the baby in tow as my mother had departed the day prior and my mother-in-law would not be arriving for another 36 hours. I gave a full medical history to the ER doctor and again underwent a series of tests including a pelvic CT scan. No infection could be found and they determined I simply had a poorly timed stomach virus that had come on strong given the particularly fragile state of my immune system. It took me nearly five days to recover.
The following week, I started to experience severe pain associated with nursing. When the baby would latch I would experience about 30 seconds of agony on the nipple, and after he was done eating, I felt searing pains deep in the breast tissue. I did some research online, spoke to our pediatrician and made an emergency trip to my OB’s office. We determined I had a yeast infection in the breast, most likely as a result of the heavy dose of antibiotics I had been on. The pediatrician prescribed an oral medication for Declan as a precaution and I was placed on a two week course of Diflucan (which is typically only prescribed for a few days).
For the next two weeks, the pain became increasingly worse. Eventually, it became so bad I would literally stomp my feet and sob every time I nursed the baby. I dreaded feeding him and felt guilt-ridden and miserable for it. But time after time, I would bear down and accept the agony. I chock it up to “commitment bias”, as my sister says.
By my six week postpartum appointment I had all but resigned myself to the idea that this issue would never be resolved. I truly thought I would just have to go on nursing Declan through the shooting pains, bleeding, cracked open wounds and soreness. My doctor discontinued my use of the Diflucan (which clearly had not done much to help) and instead prescribed a topical ointment. There was still no improvement.
Two days after this appointment, on a Friday night yet again, exhausted and overwrought from several difficult nursing sessions, I took a nap to try and regroup. Less than two hours later, I woke up with a fever and flu-like aches and pains. However, this time, I had a tell-tale tender spot on my left breast that was a sure sign of mastitis. Around 1 am, I called my doctor’s office, and after a great deal of persuading, convinced her to simply call in a prescription for me, to prevent another trip to the Emergency Room with an infant. Hubs ran out in the middle of the night to the 24 hour pharmacy to pick up my medicine.
With my defenses lowered from feeling crummy, nursing just became simply too painful. We decided to move to a pump and bottle feed schedule to give my body a much needed rest and an opportunity to heal.
I spent the weekend on antibiotics and Tylenol. Hubs picked up my slack in a major way, doing the lion’s share of the feedings and trying to let me sleep as much as possible. By Sunday morning, my fever had broken and I was starting to feel better. However, by the late afternoon I was feeling “off” again and was running a low grade temperature. That’s when I noticed it. A bizarre and painful irritation…down there…
At this point, I had absolutely no idea what was going on with my body.
Simultaneously, we discovered that our little boy had both a rather obvious upper-lip tie as well as a posterior tongue tie. It turns out, these conditions were adding to the overall difficulty we were having nursing. This handicap coupled with his general nursing laziness (he mostly likes to snuggle rather than work to get his food…good thing we aren’t hunter gatherers) meant we had quite an uphill battle to make nursing successful. A great deal of the damage that had been done to my breasts were actually a result of the lip and tongue ties and thus allowed bacteria to enter through the wounds causing the mastitis.
First thing Monday morning, with just hours to spare before our plane left to take us home for Thanksgiving, I arrived at my OB’s office. In the back of my mind, I was concerned they were going to think I was a hypochondriac because of the number of times they had seen me since the baby was born.
However, upon closer examination of the aforementioned irritation, my doctor simply could not keep a neutral face. She did not know what this was. In fact, she called in other doctors to offer an opinion as well. The one who had seen me just six days earlier, confirmed nothing of the sort had been present at my last visit. They took cultures and ran tests - all of which came back inconclusive.
I was feeling exposed, embarrassed and downright uncomfortable (emotionally and physically). I called my parents and they quickly made arrangements for me to see a Harvard trained specialist in Westchester NY.
Over the course of my visit home for Thanksgiving, I saw the specialist twice. I gave him an exhaustive medical history (not unlike the one provided here) and he performed an examination and ran several cultures. Though he couldn’t offer me an explanation for why I was suffering so much during this postpartum phase, he did provide a way forward, limiting the number of medicines I was taking and encouraging me to rest.
I spent an extra week up in New Jersey while Hubs traveled back down to Tennessee. I’m not sure rest was something I was able to achieve, but I did start to feel better. I completed two courses each of antibiotics and antiviral medication. Weeks later, I am finally feeling healthy.
I share all of these graphic details with you to let you know that things get really really hard after you have a baby, but no matter what you are facing you are not alone in your suffering.
So what glimmers of positivity can we take away from my experience?
First, whenever I started to wallow in the misfortune of my circumstances, I remembered to praise God that it was I who was suffering and not my sweet little boy.
Next, I humbled myself before my loved ones and asked them for help…a lot of it. Each and every time I asked, these special people stepped up in a big, big way -- especially Hubs, who did more to help me through this difficult time than I can even comprehend at this juncture.
Finally, I broke down and cried a lot; but it was in those deeply honest moments that I knew what it meant to be completely dependent on God. My strength had all but left me and I was completely at his mercy. I have never felt more reliant on Him than I have the last two months, and for that, I am so, so grateful.
So to all you new mamas out there: No matter what you are facing - and I’m certain it is not the same as what I went through but that for you it is equally trying and traumatic - take some solace that you have sisters who are suffering alongside you. Reach out to other new moms and seek advice from veterans. Pray…a lot. And know that this too shall pass.
I will leave you with a few pieces of scripture and some commentary that my beautiful sisters in law (the same two who coached me through labor and delivery) shared with me via email one night when I was at the end of my rope and reached out to them in utter desperation.
“In the moments when you feel like the world is falling apart for you, or Dex, or you both, remember that you have a good God who is looking after you tenderly and lovingly. It reminds me of what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12, with regard to the "thorn in his flesh" that he pleaded with God to take away from him. ... "But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.””
“Every new mother has things go wrong, and I literally don't know a single mother who hasn't a) totally lost it for days to weeks (months even) at a time; b) wondered if it wouldn't be better if her child had never been born; and c) struggled with the temptation to hurt her child.
So in the way that you are feeling, you are 100% not alone. You are joined, at the very least, by the three of us and everyone we know :)
Recently, I was feeling really defeated about my parenting and was encouraged by Romans 12:11-12, particularly verse 12. (By the way, lest you be deceived about my Bible reading habits and let that drive you into discouragement about your own, know that it was probably the first time I'd picked up mine in 4 months. Seriously - and I feel like I am doing well postpartum. So.. there's that.)
But anyway, those verses say, "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." So obviously verse 11 talks about what I want to be like, right? I want to be zealous, fervent, eager to serve. But I'm not, and I don't know how to do that. Well, verse 12 tells me how to start. First, rejoice in hope…At the very, very least, I can always rejoice that there is hope. There is hope for {my kids} to love God yet. There is hope for me to parent them well. There is hope that even if the very worst happens, one day, every tear will be wiped away, and everything will be made new. Because God has not abandoned us, there is always, always hope. Amen, right? So we can rejoice in that alone when nothing else seems worth rejoicing in. This is guaranteed to pass, and it is guaranteed that God is using this to conform us to his image. And then the next part, to be patient in tribulation. If I can rejoice in hope, I can be patient through tribulation, right? I can just rest, just get through the day without fretting. God is in control, and he is trustworthy. I just have to be faithful and do the best I can with what I know. And how does all of that happen? The next part - be constant in prayer. And usually that prayer is a metaphorical falling down and just crying at the feet of Jesus. That's okay. Whatever we're doing, let's do it in God's throne room, where we are always welcome. So if we are breaking down, that's great, and we can approach his throne with confidence. He is pleased when we do that. And there is no reason to cry all by ourselves when the God of the universe has literally given us his Spirit to dwell in us and called him our Comforter.”
