When we decided to have a second child, I knew I didn’t want to go through the pain and suffering I experienced during the vaginal birth of my first daughter, but I still wanted a natural delivery. I was aware I might not be able to breastfeed because I had undergone a breast reduction, but I always tried to stay positive and at least give it a try—after all, if I couldn’t, there were formulas available. In the final weeks of pregnancy, experiencing a lot of pain in my leg due to a malformation in my femur, these pains got stronger as the baby dropped and I couldn’t stand waiting for a normal delivery anymore, so I decided to have a C-section at 38 weeks and 4 days.
The baby was fine and according to the last ultrasound, he already weighed over 3,500 grams and measured more than 50 cm. We scheduled the C-section and that day seemed to never end. I arrived at the hospital at 5 p.m., but my little angel was only born at 9:50 p.m., weighing 3,600 grams and measuring 54 cm, with lots of hair, but very thin for his length. He was born healthy and it was overwhelming to see how much he looked like his little sister at birth. I was taken to my room, and that night seemed endless—I couldn’t sleep and missed being able to touch my baby and hold him to my breast as soon as he was born. The nurse asked me to lie on my side so I wouldn’t have back pain later, and I struggled to do it, but it didn’t really make sense to me.
Morning came, my doctor checked in and said I was doing well and that my baby was very healthy, which was a relief. Twelve hours after birth, the nurse came and asked me to get up. I felt dizzy, but I managed and wanted a shower, which I took on my own with no problems. Soon, my baby was brought to me, I put him to the breast, but nothing came out. He was there for about an hour, sucking, and in the end started to cry out of hunger. The nurse took him and gave him Aptamil in a cup, saying he was very hungry because he drank more than usual.
Soon I began to feel an annoying headache that wouldn’t go away; I asked for medicine, took it, and slept for a while. When I woke up and got out of bed, the pain was even worse. It disappeared when I lay down, so the nurse said it could be post-spinal anesthesia headache. I was taken to the operating room for a procedure where they draw blood from my arm and inject it into my spine—supposedly this would relieve the pain.
On the second day, I wasn’t able to breastfeed my baby, I always tried but nothing, and it made me feel frustrated. On the third morning, my doctor checked in and discharged me; I no longer felt the headache, just a little soreness at the incision. We were discharged and went home! I could hug my older daughter again—how I missed her scent!
But as night fell, the headache came back and I once again had to go to the hospital for the same procedure. They put me on IV fluids and I spent almost the whole night there. I could feel my breasts filling with milk, but my baby was at home and I couldn’t breastfeed during that period.
I returned home at dawn and the pain persisted. It was awful and I regretted choosing the C-section—first because my baby could have gained more weight and been stronger at birth, and second because of that terrible pain which haunted me. I would definitely have traded it for the temporary discomfort of a vaginal birth. Because I spent so much time away from my baby in his first days of life, the amount of breast milk was not enough for him, so we had to supplement with formula, and because of the bottle, breastfeeding at the breast often ended with crying, as the bottle made it so much easier to satisfy his hunger. My baby lost a lot of weight in the first 15 days of life, about 350 grams.
Today I think that the best is to wait for the baby’s time, just as I did with my first pregnancy. I thought that inducing labor earlier would solve one kind of pain (leg pain from how he was positioned), but only created new and worse pain—nothing compared to the pain that led me to schedule the C-section. I managed to breastfeed only until 4 months, and even then only with the help of a breast pump, because I would express milk and give it in a bottle. Later I learned about techniques to stimulate milk production, like using a feeding tube to supplement at the breast. But despite all these difficulties and pains, I am grateful to God for the angel He sent me—the missing fragrance that completes our happiness.
See also: Birth Story by Regiane – The Dream Birth
Photo: Personal Collection
