Moms Are Opening Up About The Wild Surprises Of Childbirth That Caught Them Completely Off-Guard

5.

“How quick your first time giving birth can be. Everyone, including the doctors, said, ‘It’s going to take a long time.’ My water broke at 8:26 p.m., and we barely made it to the hospital. I was pushing in the labor waiting room, making primal noises, and by the time I got to a bed, they told me to keep my legs together. I was too far along for an epidural, the nurses wouldn’t make eye contact with me when I was screaming for drugs, my doctor barely made it, and when she got there, she told me to flip onto my back, and that was that. I had my daughter at 10:27 p.m., two hours and one minute after my water broke and contractions started. The nurses called me ‘fast and furious.'”

—bougieknight81

13.

“The way my body is reacting to postpartum hormones (because of breastfeeding, the doctors think) is unreal. I’ve had to get a ton of tests to rule things out, and in the end, doctors are just like, ‘I guess it’s just hormones.’ What?!? So I have to ride out some gross body things until I decide to ween my child, and even then, who knows how long until I regulate? I feel like when doctors don’t know the answer to what is happening with my body, they can now just say, ‘Oh, it’s postpartum.’ Also, everyone tells you about the hormonal crash after delivery. They say the change is like dropping off a cliff. I worked very hard to get my anxiety under control and learn coping mechanisms that work for me over the last 15 years…and guess what? None of that mattered.”

“I have never felt the depression, anxiety, and hopelessness I did for the first seven days after delivery. I am SO LUCKY that it didn’t last longer for me and that I have a fantastic support system, but there was a certain level of me just having to ride it out. I thought I was prepared after talking to other moms, but there was no way they could have prepared me for how I’d feel. Luckily, they prepared me for talking about it! I think that was the game-changer. I knew I had safe people to tell my dark and stormy thoughts to, so I wouldn’t sit with them.

One more thing: You see in movies and shows that women scream when they are pushing. So, I did. By my third push, the nurse said, ‘I want you to stop doing that, hold that energy in, and put it into the push.’ My baby came out with the next contraction/push, and I genuinely think it’s because I redirected that energy.”

—wildflowermama