Birth Tip

Before I went in for my induction, I washed my hair etc. I even tried to give myself a trim down there to keep things presentable. LOL

What I WISH I had done was shave my inner thighs. When you have a catheter or fetal scalp monitor (I had both) they use a very big and sticky tape patch on your inner thigh to hold the wires. When it comes time to take that off it's like getting waxed if you haven't shaved for months! OUCH!

 

Thanks for the tip! I would have never though of that in the list of pains after childbirth, but I cry if I have to take a band aide off my arm! The thigh would suck! :blink:

 

that is good advise!! OUCH!!!

I was so large with the twins that I had to shave "blindly" down there - I was hoping I had not shaved my area into some freaky shape!! but I guess some freaky shape is better than super hairy??!!!

 

I plan on getting in with the hedge trimmers soon. LOL my BFF had twins and was going to do some "lawn care" before her sched. C-Section but her water broke before that and she said that as she lay there naked on the table, the last thing she worried about was her "lawn"

I have another friend that heard that the nurses in L&D hate hairy women because they don't like to have to clean them after birth. I say to heck with that - if you don't like it, don't become an L&D nurse! But this friend is SUCH a vain person she went and had a Brazilian wax before she gave birth.

You know, the last thing I really care about is what people think about my lawn care down there - kwim? I mean, I trim it because it makes ME feel better - but as far as I am concerned, when someone has their face down there to check me, I KNOW they've seen worse so I really don't care!

 

One more birth tip before I forget. Being that this was my 3rd delivery I had an idea of how I wanted things to go and what interventions were going to be needed given it was twins. What I was not prepared for was how often student nurses were sent to tag along since caring for a twin mom is a "learning experience."

Now it was just a pain in the butt to have a new nurse trying to find the babies on the external monitor but I refused to allow both student and nurse to do a cervix check. Hello??? Those are painful and can increase your chance of infection. I don't need an extra set of hands up there learning on me! The senior nurse got pissy with me when I said one check only and said fine then just the student will check you. I was flabbergasted. I guess she thought I would cave in and want an experienced opinion of how far dilated I was but I didn't. I was SOOOOO mad. Maybe it sped up labor but I fumed for at least an hour afterwards. DH went out and gave her the evil eye. It didn't happen again.

So I would suggest asking your OB what the policy is and making it really clear in your birth plan that you don't want additional checks or treatment by students. Just my 2 cents.

 

I had a c-section for the twins, so no medical students in there. For this last pregnancy (VBAC), I had two medical students. Neither one checked dialation. They did do basic things like checking my heart and stuff. One was there for the delivery and I would have made a fuss if she would have stitched me up after my tear. A med student stitched my SIL up and 8 months later she is still having issues. The med student was the one who cleaned me up after delivery and she did a thorough job! I had painful cervical checks when I was only one cm dialated, but when I was 5 and up I could barely feel them.

 

I also delivered in a large teaching hospital, but was only checked by OB's or residents (not interns or nurses). I did have a lot more traffic of nursing stuff checking the babies during my post partum stay compared to my first, but not to the extent it bothered me. I guess that could be a drawback of a teaching hospital and probably something you should discuss with your OB beforehand and/or put in your birth plan.