Day 7 Postpartum

I know what all of you fourth-wave feminists are thinking: "I already know how kids are going to affect my lifetime earning ability and chances of tenure. What are they going to do to my body?"

Well, here's what's happening so far with mine-


Weight on Delivery Day: 176 (8 lbs of which were my daughter)

Weight Today: 162

Bust: 42

Waist: 31

Hips: 40

Body Fat %: 21.5

Prepregnancy Size: 2

Size Today: 10





I removed it to take these pictures, but I've been using a Belly Bandit wrap about 22 hours a day - much needed lumbar and abdominal support. The Fatherbeast says it feels like body armor.

Giving birth is, y'know, hard and stuff. My labor was not quite precipitous, but it was very fast - less than four hours from soup-to-nuts. Active labor started at 3 pm, we arrived at Labor and Delivery at 6 pm, and by 6:48 we were parents. Three days early at that. Ours is a young lady in a hurry.

The care we received at Arcadia Methodist was top-notch and I would recommend it to anyone in the area. For a number of reasons, I'm very thankful to have chosen a hospital delivery instead of a home birth attended by a midwife.

Nova's birth was completely natural, and the birth team supported us in this. No drugs, no cutting. However, because she came so fast I did incur several small tears and am still unable to sit comfortably. Ouch. Two nights in the hospital with all of the accoutrement necessary to contain the horrorshow carnage, learn to nurse, and let somebody else change my sheets at hourly intervals was a godsend. I would have been miserable at home.

Several things happened outside of our birth plan that I was 100% ok with. For starters, I became dehydrated. I hadn't planned on an IV, as I'd anticipated moving around. But so dried out, immobilized and nauseous was I that when the nice lady came with a big bag of fluid they could run right into my arm, why, I was delighted.

I had envisioned laboring in a variety of positions, and delivering from something a little more gravity-friendly than The Evil Lithotomy Position. But when the time came to figure things out because this baby was coming and I was no longer competent to walk or talk, guess which position I naturally assumed?

I had also intended to push ad libitium, instead of being coached by the nurses to hold my breath and push like hell on their count of ten. However, though the urge to push came as expected, the act of pushing was (for me) surprisingly non-intuitive. Amid the sensory overload, it was difficult to tell which muscles to recruit. I found that holding my breath and focusing on external cues really did help. (I was also amused to hear western health care professionals use hippie woo-woo external cues such as "project your energy downward")

Finally, when my water broke, it was found that there was copious, old meconium present in the fluid. I'm not strictly sure if it was necessary for her to spend 4 hours under observation in the NICU. However, if in doing so she avoided respiratory problems later I am glad of this. Meconium in the fluid would have motivated a midwife to send me to a hospital anyway.

And it's true what they say: you forget the pain very quickly.

36 weeks, 3 days

Today I visited Arcadia Methodist Hospital, where I plan to deliver The Bean, aka Little Miss Beanface, aka Professor Von Beanington, aka Nova.

I wish I could say I had good pictures to show you. The ultrasound process is always fascinating, but the "snapshots" our doc sent us home with are... not unintelligible. Just un-cute. Good news though - she weighs 6 lbs, 2 oz as of today. Big Bean!

I had always figured that I would deliver at home. But the more I learn about potential complications to the process, the happier I am to be delivering in a hospital. Yes, I understand that many complications are iatrogenic, and that interventions may cascade.

But I am also aware that sometimes doing things "naturally" doesn't always mean you come away with a baby that is healthy. "Naturally" doesn't always mean that you come away with a baby, for that matter.

Given how vividly I can imagine things going south (as a biologist, it is kind of my job) I realize I will probably be more comfortable in a clinical setting with the machine that goes "ping!" than I would be in a birthing center with candles. Because I know that in a hospital setting, even if my labor goes HORRIBLY AWRY and (god forbid) they cut me open needlessly, chances are Nova will be fine. In a birthing center or at home, however, if something goes wrong I'd have to get myself to a hospital somehow, and who knows how long that would take? I have read the outcomes for home births and with competent midwifery transfers don't happen all too often. But the possibility that something might go wrong without ready emergency care makes me more uptight than the sterile bustling of a hospital. Sterility is reassuring.

Which doesn't mean that I'm totally impressed with the way business-as-usual progresses in my hospital. My birth plan will include provisions that are strictly contrary to some of their policies. For example, I will be taking fluids by mouth, not intravenously. I also plan to snack during labor if I become famished. Because it's LABOR. I do not plan to be a jerk about it - rather, I plan to sneak protein shakes in my bag. And those stirrups? I don't anticipate needing those. But thanks.

We did visit the NICU briefly on our tour. Behind the double plated window there was the tiniest little dude - he must have been 4 lbs or so, bright red, 12 inches long. In an incubator, being tended to by a nurse in blue gloves. Amazing to see.

I'm excited!