PREGNANCY
When a woman gets pregnant, there are only two reactions – happiness and depression. Happiness comes in when a baby is really needed or demanded by both parties. When we say both parties – we don’t mean the parents of the husband and wife; but by both the husband and the wife. Because they are the only ones who’ll know “it is time” to have kids. No amount of badgering from in laws should force a couple to have kids when they themselves are not ready for it.
Depression sets in when a woman starts to realize what’s in store for her for the next 9 months and the several years to follow after delivery. Especially for women who are not expecting to get pregnant or those who are not prepared to be pregnant yet. It isn’t like you’re buying a pet from the pet store that you can choose the breed and specie of the pet you want.
Having a child calls for totally forgetting one’s self and sacrificing your own agenda for the next several years until the child is old enough to attend school. That would mean that a woman has no personal agenda of her own for the next 4-6 years. And even when the child goes to school, a woman will still not have enough time for herself since she has to monitor and attend to the child through its studies and upbringing in the school atmosphere.
The thought of losing the little amount of freedom can be depressing to a woman although most men and people would think her crazy or strange to be depressed when she’s pregnant. In any marriage, time for one’s self is vital since it gives the woman time to regenerate and recharge fatigued muscles and emotions and get some peace of mind even for just 2-3 hours a day. A newborn baby will take all that away from her whether people around her debate it or not. The pregnancy alone is an experience only a handful of women find sincerely wonderful while most women keep silent about their inner most opinions for fear of being criticized by relatives or in laws and friends.
Those marriage seminars will never discuss pregnancy in detail but generalities. You have sex, you get pregnant, you carry the baby to full term and you deliver normally or by c-section at the end of the 9-month term. Easy, right? No. No one will tell you about the first trimester when all you can do in the morning is throw up because it’s the “craving” period.
On the first trimester, you’ll have cravings. You’ll have morning sickness as well or when you simply throw up at the oddest things like smells food and perfume. Some women become bedridden during the first three months and doctors call it a difficult pregnancy, as if the entire procedure wasn’t difficult enough and family make you feel it’s your fault you have a difficult pregnancy.
On the second trimester, your stomach starts to bulge. Your breasts become painful and hard, sometimes too tender to even wear a bra. The stomach’s skin starts to stretch and marks appear. This can easily be erased after birth if you religiously apply expensive skin lotion to provide for its suppleness or else you get ugly stretch marks after you give birth. On the sixth month, the baby will start kicking from the inside and some women find the experience wonderful or exciting. Most women start visiting a doctor on the second month and this will become a monthly ritual until you give birth. Ultrasound will be performed each time to monitor the baby’s heart rate. You’ll undergo a series of tests to find out if the baby will be deformed or to find out if your body is sustaining enough nutrients to suffice for both you and the baby. In a nutshell – your diet is monitored. Your physical activity becomes limited. If you have a husband who prefers sexy women in bed, forget about having sex even after 2 months after you’ve given birth. It simply isn’t done. Husbands like these should be made to sleep in another room or in his parent’s house since he got you pregnant in the first place then he prefers to have a sexy bed partner.
It is seldom to find a husband who’ll love you and reassure you of his feelings even if you’re deformed and bloating from pregnancy. The rarest find and a treasure to behold is to find a man who’ll find a pregnant woman sexy and appealing and actually have better sex with his wife than before she got pregnant.
For first time mothers – it isn’t harmful for the baby to have sex until the second trimester or until your doctor tells you to stop. It is reassuring for the mother therefore reassures the baby as well. A stressed out pregnant mother is NOT a good pregnancy mood. It isn’t good for the baby as well because the baby will feel it. Sex during pregnancy is better for both partners because it affirms their love for one another. But if the husband just performs sex with her to pass off his urges, it would be better if the couple did not have sex at all unless the pregnant woman starts feeling used.
Making love and having “just” sex is really different from the other. And it is totally unfair for the pregnant woman to be used because it adds to her growing insecurity. Pregnancy will make a woman feel insecure at some point. It isn’t a bad case of vanity but it isn’t also pleasant to watch one’s body bloat and become deformed as each day passes. To add to the insecurity is a husband who can’t even make love properly to his wife during this time or a husband who just totally stops touching her for one reason or another.
Towards the end of the second trimester and the start of the last trimester, it will be difficult to stand up straight. There will be difficulty in just about everything a woman needs to do like simply bending or sitting. Breathing becomes labored and she will always be short of breath. Her limbs become bloated because of the accumulated liquid in the body. Her hands and feet grow twice their normal size and sometimes, dark patches of skin appear around the neck, armpits and panty lines. By this time, she will hardly even see her feet since her stomach is now bulging drastically. The kicking becomes more frequent and there will be trouble controlling your urination processes. You tend to run to the toilet more often than usual. Standing up for a long period of time becomes difficult and a simple car ride becomes traumatic for a pregnant woman. Because it rattles her body, it rattles the baby. Back pains will start to bother her. Her stomach’s skin will be so stretched that vein lines begin to show up. These are either green or blue vein lines from the breasts to the stomach wall. Sleeping will also become difficult because you cannot lie on your back unless you want to cut your breathing while you’re sleeping. You have to lie on one side with a high pillow on your head and a pillow between your legs as well since your thighs can’t meet anymore.
When “the day” comes for you to deliver – if you’re going to deliver normally, you’ll suffer contractions and spasms every 5 minutes to about 2 minute intervals until your hip bones expand. The nurses and doctors will monitor your bone expansion from hourly to every 30 minutes to 10-minute intervals depending on how fast you hip bones expand to give way for the baby. Some women have labor pains and contractions from 4 hours to 24 hours. If this is your first baby, it will take a long time for your bones to expand. Some women average to 12 –18 hours before their bones expand. And all these hours – you’ll be suffering from excruciating pain every 2-5 minutes. You won’t be allowed to take water during this time. And where will your husband be during these hours? Probably computing how much he’ll have to pay for given the amount of time you’re spending at the delivery room.
It is no longer a practice in hospitals to let the husband join in the delivery unless the couple is certified Lamaze graduates. This is because most men faint the minute the baby comes out and some times, the hospital bill doubles since the husband hit his head on a trolley or on the floor on his way down. So much for their participation in the delivery room. But this policy of not making these men see first hand how a woman suffers delivering his baby is totally unfair and sexist. They were there when the baby was being made and they did have a good time making the baby. So why should they be absent when the pain and the suffering comes in? It isn’t exclusively a woman’s role to suffer while they have all the fun and they don’t even see first hand the delivery of what they helped make.
After a baby is delivered, the mother usually suffers from post-partum syndrome. Some psychiatrists attend to newly delivered mothers because women who just gave birth usually feel bad and depressed because of the hardship of the procedure. And after nine months of carrying a child in her belly, she deserves a break. But this never happens. The minute she regains full consciousness, the baby is brought to her for her to breast feed and give the baby the first milk which according to studies helps promote the immune system of the baby. Not much break from that. And it will never stop from this point onwards. Every time that baby cries, she will have to drop everything she is doing and breast feed the baby. Newborn babies only cry when they are wet or hungry. And they require feeding almost 8-10 times a day round the clock.
Normal delivery ensures a mother of being up on her feet within 2 days. Some hospitals make women walk from the delivery room to their wards right after they are cleaned up and fully conscious. So much for “caring” for the mother.
If a mother delivers by c-section or caesarian section, the stitches start hurting after the second day and she will be unable to move around too much for 2 weeks. If she has to move, she has to be assisted and that means everything from brushing her teeth to going to the bathroom or toilet, sitting up, lying down, standing up or just simply try to walk around. She is directed not to be too mobile for two weeks because of the stitches. The stitches might be healed on the surface skin but on the inside, it would take a month to 3 months for the inner muscles to heal up. Cold temperatures will cause the wound to throb and the normal functions of the muscles are stopped so the stomach has a harder time reverting back to their normal size. This is why some women who had a c-section tend to have sagging stomach skin over their bikini lines.
No comments:
Post a Comment