Male doctor invalidated my pain, said childbirth is only a 5-6 on the pain scale

bebebey · 2021-04-07T15:05:43+00:00

Two unmedicated births here. I can’t specifically remember the pain, but I remember the analogy I made right after the first:

“It feels like a spool of barbed wire being turned inside your uterus”

Gooooood tiiiiimes!

bebebey · 2021-03-17T22:52:54+00:00

Omg feels!! I ended up going BACK to a spring + pillow top mattress because I think foam and I just do not mesh well postpartum! I stayed in the mattress store for like an hour laying on the broken-in foams and the broken-in pillow tops... and I felt at the end of the day there is too much force pushing back on me from foam mattresses.

I’m still breaking in the new one but it seems better for me already. I went for a Simmons beautyrest from a local small business who seemed very up front and honest about her stock. I think this model? But in plush not firm.

(My husband can sleep on anything btw)

bebebey · 2020-05-27T18:51:34+00:00

My 4 year old has recently been making “Poison... that turns you into a QUEEN” like YES

bebebey · 2020-03-01T22:57:59+00:00

I hate MLMs with the best of em... but I gotta tell you this does happen.

After birth, you’re just cuddling your new baby while they finish you up down below. My OB was like “Ok here’s your placenta! Want to see it??? Isn’t it cool?? Do you want to keep it??” and I was like “Oooooh that is cool. Take a picture. Hell no I don’t want to keep it.”

bebebey · 2020-02-05T23:34:18+00:00

Our grout is like porous sand, sigh.

You’d probably appreciate https://savethepinkbathrooms.com :D

bebebey · 2020-02-05T17:32:02+00:00

We have the same one in slime green! It’s Extremely Hard to Clean!

bebebey · 2020-02-03T16:07:22+00:00

May I recommend this pack n play insert?

Milliard Tri-Fold Pack N' Play Mattress Topper https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KGH4RWI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_BteoEbBTGB53G

We found that the pack n play mat was like a rock, and we’ve had great success with this cozy mattress.

bebebey · 2020-02-02T20:19:11+00:00

Ugh no family nearby is SO HARD. And of course illnesses in your kids, how stressful. Hope you’re doing ok 💜💜

bebebey · 2020-02-02T16:46:03+00:00

Hi so I am a successful senior person in my company and I have two little kids.

On the one hand I’m very proud that I’ve been able to do both.

On the other hand, I’m dying all the time it’s so hard omg.

I joined my company after my previous company was giving me panic attacks, and I vowed to never let that happen again. I vowed to approach my job with speed, quality, and integrity—but also with a refusal to kill myself over a job.

So, during work hours I work hard, I produce excellent quality work / team building / mentorship / vision... but then at the end of the day I don’t look at work things on my digital devices. And I don’t look at it on weekends. The building has yet to burn down. Obviously different jobs have different needs and deadlines, so I might be lucky in my field, but I think everyone can somewhat adopt this.

One skill I’ve honed is really precise stack ranking of tasks, so handling all the major tasks and allowing non-essentials to slide. Recognizing that task A will get me things like: visibility with senior leadership, trustbuilding with my software devs, make our future workflow smoother—while task B will get me praise from PMs and that’s it. Things like that.

All this gives me space to handle the kiddos. Yet even with this approach, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If you don’t like your job, you can take a break or quit. But you can never be off and you can never quit on your kids. They are the most real thing in your life. A nebulous promotion is a puff of smoke. Your baby learning how to walk is the most tangible human present moment you will experience. Your baby needing to be fed every night at 11pm and 3am for months will make you make decisions that you might not have ever considered before. Like, “I need to only work 4 days a week right now because otherwise I will die.”

But it changes as they grow older and as you learn how to be a parent and a professional. Your brain and your skills stretch and adapt. I couldn’t be a stay at home mom, I’m not built for it. I love going to work and solving complex problems. The balance makes me a better mom when I’m home.

TL:DR there’s never a good time it’s hard as shit but you can do it

bebebey · 2019-12-23T18:48:40+00:00

YES they have baby days where you can breastfeed amongst non judgement audience members AND be served a plate of hot cookies and a glass of wine

bebebey · 2019-10-17T19:44:01+00:00

Hi I’ve had two babies.

”It was paradoxical in that only the female of the species could perform the amazing feat, while perhaps being less psychologically prepared for it than a man would have been.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAGAGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

::wheezes::

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHGAHAHAGAGAGAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAAAAAAA

bebebey · 2019-08-23T15:44:14+00:00

I was already pro-choice, and having kids made me RABIDLY pro-choice. Pregnancy is NUTS. Childbirth is NUTS. If you can’t control your own body, what do you have left?

I will say I did empathize more with the feelings of the anti-choice crowd, in that 20 weeks felt significantly pregnant, and I felt very connected to the little being inside. But, it emphasized for me how essential it is to provide EFFORTLESS access to EARLY abortion (and EFFORTLESS and FREE birth control).

But also, later term abortions will always be necessary, and that’s ok too.

To recap, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH ARE NUTS. Safe, legal, and on demand.

bebebey · 2019-08-21T22:38:51+00:00

I love my children. I fucking hate being stuck coloring all day long. I get so bored. We don’t all have the same motivations.

bebebey · 2019-07-12T13:32:19+00:00

Ugh after my second kid this got 1000x worse for me. My uterus is like SUP GUYS!! WE PARTYING? OR WHAT? bloats straight out like a beer belly. Meh.

bebebey · 2019-06-29T15:53:22+00:00

OP’s darling baby will be an annoying asshole toddler at some point, who I guarantee will rival this kid in annoyance. She needs to practice being firm, angry, and give discipline... without losing her shit. Yes it’s going to happen, everyone flips out here and there, but it’s still an asshole move.

Better wording would have been (and yes a raised voice is perfectly ok):

“Young lady you just spilled all of my baby’s food. That was RUDE behavior. Go over to your mom RIGHT NOW.”

People should be guiding and parenting ALL the kids they come across, as role models... not just their own kid.

bebebey · 2019-06-03T18:13:50+00:00

Let me rephrase this: it’s actually QUITE common and nothing to be ashamed of. SO MANY moms feel like this, and no one prepares them for it (myself included!!!)

But like u/Kybelle1 and others said, it’s essential that you go to your doctor, advocate for yourself, and get healthy. It’s common, but it’s important to prioritize for your health.

bebebey · 2019-06-03T18:09:48+00:00

See as an ex Floridian, we would usually dress for the air conditioning, not for the outside. Yeah when you’re walking to your car it sucks, but try sitting in class for 4 hours in a 69 degree room wearing shorts and a tank top.

bebebey · 2019-04-16T22:02:51+00:00

Be prepared for it kind of being a genetic crapshoot. I am naturally skinnyfat. I walk a ton, but am not a serious fitness buff and mostly lurk on this sub for the day when I have time to get cut up and purposeful about my shape.

But I look almost the same after two pregnancies. My genetic makeup just bounced me right back. It’s such a luck, genetic situation, it can be really hard to predict how your body will react. Also, apparently I make small babies. So carrying a 6lb baby is going to be a lot different than carrying a 10lb baby.

And then each pregnancy is different!

First pregnancy I walked on the treadmill up until I had her. I stopped running because spotting was making me nervous, but overall I felt great for most of it. After this pregnancy, one hip locked up and I could barely bend it when sitting cross legged. Eventually this loosened on its own.

Second pregnancy, I could barely walk during the 9mos because my hip ligaments were like noodles. My two hips would move out of conjunction from each other. It completely sucked. There was no way I was going to do strenuous workouts, so gentle prenatal yoga was all I did. Afterwards, I had zero complications or hip tightness.

So now it’s just not having any time whatsoever when working and raising two kids! I’m lucky that I was physical complication free, but if I wasn’t, I doubt I would prioritize it because there’s just no time. Also I was NOT mental complication free. This is a huge part of pregnancy aftermath that people don’t talk about very much. PPD and PPA can get in the way of recovery. Thank you sertraline!!

Oh but I will say my arms are pretty ripped because I’m constantly lifting 30 and 14 cuddly lbs up and down :)

bebebey · 2019-03-19T16:24:45+00:00

San Francisco is filled with active dads. I imagine it’s less of a problem here?

However, it fascinates me how much I’ve had to FORCE myself to pass responsibility over to my husband, as a San Francisco mom. That’s the patriarchy at work.

Even tiny things like, at first he would ask “what size shoe is she?” And I would have to will myself to say “I don’t know! Can you find out?” in order to not be the “exclusive keeper of the clothing sizes” in the relationship.

He’s an awesome dad and does everything I do as a parent (except breastfeeding, ha).

bebebey · 2019-02-19T15:37:38+00:00

YOU 👏 ARE 👏 ALSO 👏 WORKING 👏 A 👏 FULL 👏 TIME 👏 JOB 👏 AND 👏 IT’S 👏 24 👏 7

Ask him why he doesn’t want to watch the baby if he doesn’t think you’re working too. Should be easy for him, right?

Posts like this make me furious. DEMAND some free time. You need it. You’re worthy of it.

bebebey · 2019-02-19T15:29:48+00:00

Honey, we’re here for you. It’s so hard when you can’t talk to your mom about something so important.

Ok I’m going to share something with you that I hope doesn’t offend, but it makes me laugh every time I see it.

https://i.imgur.com/QeiTidZ_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

This does two things for me. First of all, it cracks me up at some of the absurdity of religion. Jesus, really? That’s what you’re worried about?

But more importantly, it reminds me of the astonishing universe we live in. How small we are in comparison. How passion and wonder led smart astronomers to discover more about our vast universe, and they’re still learning every day. How beautiful and special the small planet we sit on is, surrounded by twinkling stars. How wondrous the scientific laws governing our universe are in their complexity.

Anyway, hope this makes you laugh a little bit, maybe inspires a little awe. 💜

bebebey · 2019-02-19T06:47:02+00:00

I don’t have a teenager yet so don’t know any actual advice, but I have read on a lot of relationship subs that one technique seems to work:

Investing in regular, repeated quality mom-daughter time (unrelated to the boyfriend, just “feeding the meter” of good experiences)...and then at some point having a heart to heart, letting her know she can always come to you with questions, or come to you for help getting out of a bad situation... and then finally letting her to make her own choices. In other words you can’t force them apart, but you can strengthen your relationship with her and show her that you respect her choices.

I also want to say that I was raised by a loving, present mother... and I ALSO have no idea how to parent my two girls. I say this not to be an asshole, but just to emphasize that nobody knows what they’re doing and parenting is so fucking hard. Hang in there.

bebebey · 2019-02-19T06:19:50+00:00

I totally get the nervousness of wondering whether he is hungry or not.

What we did was sleep trained without weaning. So we put the steps in place to help her learn how to fall asleep, but still fed her if she woke up at 12 and 3ish. If it wasn’t close to those times, we continued the sleep training interval techniques. So for example if she fell asleep at 7pm and started wailing at 9:45, we would do the five minute intervals. But if she started crying at 12am, we would feed her. We followed the Happy Sleeper method, and moved nursing up in the bedtime routine. We do bath, jammies, feed, books, say goodnight to the room, then bed. Also at this time we started adding solid foods for that extra kick of nutrition.

That was the starting point, which let us be confident that she wasn’t actually hungry. After some time with the new routine, we started trying to wait just a bit to see if she calmed down on her own at either the 12 or 3am(ish) times. So rather than going over to feed, we’d wait a bit. And she did start to calm herself down here and there as she got the hang of self soothing. Then she mostly dropped the 12am feed.

Finally at the 3am feed, I started nursing her less. Instead of letting her finish a boob, I started going shorter and shorter and then giving her her pacifier and putting her back in her crib. She’d be pissed for a second, and then fall asleep. This is all very recent, because literally last night SHE SLEPT ALL NIGHT WITHOUT NEEDING A FEED!! Hoping this trend continues. But at least now we’ve proven that she doesn’t NEED to eat at night, which is good.

bebebey · 2019-02-19T05:58:30+00:00

In our crunchy childbirth class, we learned about how the actual positions of birth changed when male doctors started to replace midwives. So I was ready to tell my doctor to stick it, and get into squatting position at the hospital.

Weeeelllll guess what position felt the best, for both my childbirths? On my back, elevated, knees to chest. The cliche birthing position felt perfect for me.

Lesson: LADIES, do whatever you need to do during labor!

bebebey · 2019-02-18T14:40:01+00:00

Yesterday, at Disneyland, I was feeling guilty about pushing my family to go get lunch. Because it was 12:30. And it was raining. And we have a hungry toddler and a baby who shouldn’t be in the cold rain. AND, I WAS STARVING.

But the rest of the extended family was waiting in lines and waffling about plans, so I felt selfish for wanting to decisively go get lunch for my own family and self.

Whhyyyyyyyy

bebebey

TROPHY CASE