Rescued and Rerun: Vaginally Yours

Two posts in one week? Awww, come on. I am consistently inconsistent. You know this about me, don't act as if you don't. Anyway, this one is easy. See, I was doing more cut and paste from the RSS feeds that Buelahman sent me. Then I read this funny TMI Thursday from lilu and I thought, well, this post fits in perfectly with a Too Much Information theme. And so I am, of course, sharing it with you. Again.

Vaginally Yours from PoliTits by DCup (edited)

If you are squeamish, please move on. If you don't want to read what goes on with the female body when she goes through the pregnancy/birthing process - in graphic detail, please, please move on.

First, my body has carried and vaginally bore three babies, weighing in at 7.6lbs., 8.6 lbs. and 8.7lbs. I stand five foot, three quarters inches, have reasonably nice baby-passing hips and enjoy a wide weight swing of about 40 pounds given the year and the mental state. A baby-making machine. That's established. Moving on.

As with most women who've passed smallish people through their birth canals and beyond, my body bears the structural changes from the pressure and passage. Baby number one was kind enough to be head down to make her entrance into the world. Unfortunately, she was facing my front, which in labor and delivery is a FAIL. Not EPIC, but FAIL. The result is that someone, preferably a medical professional, must reach into your no-longer-private parts and turn the tiny person around. In my case, this procedure was performed without aid of painkillers (because I'm either a masochist or a coward, you decide). That done, the little bundle of joy made us wait another hour or more before she finally came blinking and sputtering into this world.

I still remember the sense of unreality. I pushed and huffed and breathed. Never in my life did I work so hard. I lost count of the number of times MathMan and The Midwife encouraged me to push just "one more time." I eventually lost all my sense of humor and proffered that if anyone said the phrase "one more time" even once more while I struggled to expel that kid, I would have risen up from the bed and killed someone with my bare hands.

Sensing my utter fatigue and heeding my pleas for a quick death (it was too late to beg for painless), the Baby Hoover was hauled out and the hose attachment was stuck to my precious darling's wee, soft noggin. She was literally sucked from my body. After all that - the medical fisting, the frenzied pushing and the apparatus, I was left with a tear the size of the San Andreas fault. I thought my vagina would never recover. Of course it did, but first there were other issues to deal with and lessons to be learned.....

Scatalogical Me
No one ever talks about the first poo after you have a baby. Look, you've just pushed a small person through your vagina. Its next door neighbor has likely taken a beating in the process. And if you've got stitches, you're terrified of busting them. The Midwife gave me a stool softener before I left the hospital, but nothing happened. So we went home to the apartment to await the momentous occasion. Baby sleeping, book in hand, off I went to the bathroom. Nothing. MathMan went out for prune juice which I drank with several shots of vodka. Still nothing. Some friends came over and visited. Small gurglings. Something? Friends leave - thank goodness, as you shall see - and I settle in on the toilet with a new American Baby magazine. I think I'm just going to sit there getting tips on how to be the perfect mother (they never tell you how much vodka will help in the longrun) and three days worth of poo will just quietly evacuate. No muss, no fuss. I gingerly attempt to do my business. Still nothing, but I know I have to go. I'm feeling backed up.

Out of desperation, I ask The Honey for his help. He did his best to stifle his horror and dread. "Just look. What's going on down there? It feels funny."

His eys met mine. Wasn't that sleeping angel in the bassinette enough proof of his love? He peeked and a funny look spread across his face. "There's something there."

"A something what?"

"I don't know, like a little plug?"

"A plug?"

In hindsight, my mistake was not sitting down again. That simple act might have prevented the walls, the sink, the toilet, the floor and us from being splattered with the sickeningly sweet-smelling stuff that erupted from my body. The prunes had done their work.

The Boy Baby - Where Two Become One
Obviously, my body healed and the V snapped back, if you will. My desire for the dark-haired man and a short memory led me to pregnancy number two. More weight, more spider veins. But the birth, now there's a story! This kid was facing the wrong direction, too, so I got more fisting. This time I knew to just close my eyes and think of England. I had a better understanding of the pushing thing and all was going well until The Boy's shoulders got stuck. MathMan tells a good story about the look on the kid's face as his head hung out of me.

This time, the baby was literally wrenched from my body. At one point, I swear that someone propped her foot against my thigh as she stood over me, yanking and tugging on Nate. My reward was another big tear and stitches. This time I knew about the first poo, so that wasn't quite so scary. It didn't take me long, though, to figure out that upon exiting, The Boy must have been hanging on for dear life and as those last final tugs yanked him into the world, he grabbed on and took everything with him. I asked The Midwife about it. "Oh, there wasn't anything separating the in-door and the out-door. We had to put you back together." Well, then.

Baby Number Three- A Photo Finish
Now that you know this, you might be surprised that there is a baby number three. But the need is mightier than the fear and don't you forget it. This baby came out just like the ones in the birthing class videos. I didn't even muss my lipstick. She had the benefit of being the third baby to have passed through that way and it was really quite easy. In fact, I think I just sneezed and there she was, swaddled in a striped blankie, wearing a matching knitted cap on her perfect little head.

After all that, I feared that one could drive a small delivery truck through my birth canal without losing a mirror. As it turns out, that is not the case. In fact, over time, I noticed that certain sexual positions hurt when they didn't before. The Tantric Anansi the Spider with Lemon Drop became especially problematic. That sucked because as sex positions go, it was a favorite. Anyway, I finally went to a doctor a couple of years ago to find out what was going on. Actually, I was there to have an IUD installed so that I wouldn't go through the joys of another pregnancy, but while the doctor was down there plugging in the device, he mentioned that my uterus was drooping and might cause "pain during sex." So there it was - the culprit. My uterus was falling out of my body. After all that, it was trying to escape. I really couldn't blame it.

Sadly, my relief at having an answer about why I could no longer endure a teeth-rattling good pounding was overshadowed by the doctor's unfortunate choice of words.

Drooping is not a word one should use with a vain, forty-something woman, especially when your head is so positioned that it can easily be trapped between her vise-like knees. I understand that in a few days time, the doctor was just fine. And the charges were dropped.