baby growth

May 8, 2009

Pain Management

A brief conversation with an ex-coursemate let to this particular topic. When I got married, my colleague who has a beautiful 2 year old girl told me that women are capable of forgetting the pain of childbirth.

From the videos I've seen of actual childbirth (okay, maybe I've seen one... okay fine maybe it's just a still photo... okay FINE.. It was a picture from a pregnancy book... sheesh) I don't think that that sort of pain is easily forgettable.


Scientifically, the body releases a hormone which can help the mother 'forget' the pain of childbirth. It is probably a survival instinct - since you can't be taking care of your baby when you're in all that pain - that doubles as matter of convenience; how else do you explain siblings?

Being the skeptic that I am, it wasn't until my second day at the delivery centre that I experienced this phenomenon and became a believer. After a Caesarean section, you will be asked, within 6 hours from your operation, to stand up and walk around... slowly, of course... but you MUST walk in order to speed up the recuperation process.

When my husband was around in the morning, I had a hard time getting up and bearing the pain, even with the painkillers in my system. One scary thing that resulted from this was that my IV fluid tube was partially filled with blood, exerted from my body due to the stress I was in from trying to get up. Twice, and the second time was after I rested enough for all the blood to flow back into my system.

Later, my husband went home to pick up my breakfast and ... the nurse decided to push my baby into the room for me to breastfeed. Whoa... one soldier is missing and I'm practically down, sergeant. Whatchu want me to do? You want me to WHAT?! You gotta be kidding me...

But you know what? I swear, from the bottom of my heart, that the moment I saw my newborn, I was moving like a choo choo train all over the place. The pain was suddenly bearable, in fact I didn't even notice if I was in pain apart from the moment I had to lift myself from a sleeping position to a sitting position or off my bed (which were supposedly when the pain hits the hardest).

Then, I was seriously all over the place. The pain, I'm told, is not as bad as childbirth but if it works as a temporary relief whereby the presence or absence of your baby becomes the determining factor, I think that being able to forget the pain of childbirth is a plausible occurence.




2 comments:

Unknown said...

You are a trooper. I'm a mother of 2 and I think c-sec is harder than a vaginal birth. (I didn't dare to go for c-sec) It's true that you will forget the child birth pain after seeing your baby.

Mama Sing said...

On the day I had my wounds checked by my doctor-surgeon he told me that one of his patients who had a C-sec for her first child, opted for a V-birth on her second. He said she swore that she will never opt for V-birth again. Whereas my mother and the sitter of my daughter now says that V-birth is better since there are less 'loose ends' to fix up after and you can lose weight faster. So, I guess, to each its own? =)thanks for your comment.