Nothing can erase what has happened, can bring Elliston
back, and take away our pain. My
body just had a baby. Even though
she was not alive in the end, she was alive for 9 months and I delivered
her. Therefore, all of the physical
things after birth, still happened.
I was given some great advice, which I believe totally saved my
sanity.
First, and I will tell this to any pregnant woman who will
listen, Placenta Encapsulation. Go ahead. Call me a hippie.
When Colby and I first met with our doula to “interview” her, we said,
“We see on your website that you do stuff with placentas. We don’t even want to talk about
that. We are NOT into that.” She said ok, and never brought it up
again….until we did. I had heard
stuff about it and continued to hear and read more and more. When we were ready, we talked with her
about it and researched some more.
Here is our doulas website where she gives some info about it.
I came home from the hospital Saturday night and she came
over Sunday morning with my pills.
I took 2 pills, 2 times a day.
I have had no other babies, so I don’t know what postpartum feels
like. I know its different for
everyone and every pregnancy is different. And I also know its potential. I never felt my hormones were off balance at all. I was grieving the loss of our
daughter, in a very real way….but very present. I had energy.
And as terrible a situation, and considering I did just give birth….I
felt good. I encourage you to at
least look into it. I will do this
going forward with all of our children.
Second, a doula. The word doula is Greek for “Woman’s
Servant”. Nice, huh?
We were intending to have a natural, drug free,
delivery. I believed that for me,
having a doula was key to being able to do this. Amanda ended up being greater than I could have ever
imagined. She came to our house a few times before our due date. I emailed her and text her all the time
with questions or just updated on our appointments, ultrasound pics, etc. Obviously, things did not go as
planned…..but she was still such a comfort and help in the hospital with
Elliston’s birth and quite honestly ever since. She has become a dear friend, and will be involved in the
birth of all of our children in the future. Whether we are induced, have a c-section, or decide again
for a natural delivery….she’ll be with us. If you are in the phoenix area, her website is http://www.heavensentdoulas.com/Doula_Services.php
Third, sage pills. Amanda is also a herbalist. As unfortunate as it is, just because I
didn’t have a baby to nurse, didn’t stop my milk from coming in. She brought over some sage pills along
with my placenta pills. She said
sage helps dry up the milk. I have
heard stories of people leaking milk for up to 6 weeks after their
stillbirth. Seriously, its so
cruel. I started taking the sage
pills immediately on Sunday. The
hospital had told me about putting cabbage on “the girls”….but that just
smelled like a gross fart. So that
did not last long. I started
leaking on Tuesday, but that only lasted for about a day, and that was it. If anyone, for any reason, decides to
not breastfeed, please suggest to them sage. It worked for me.
That was one issue that I did not want to deal with, and luckily didn’t
have to that much.
Fourth, and so simple…..open the blinds every morning. Thank you God we live in Arizona where it is pretty much
sunny every single day! At the
advice of “New Friend Jen”, starting our first morning at home, I would get up
and open all the blinds. Even if I
got back in bed, I would open them all.
The sunlight was so healing.
I should be saying “is”. I
still do this every day.
Those are just a few of the helpful tools I have had to
help me these past few weeks. I
cant imagine how different it could have been without them.
GREAT GREAT Advice! I will have to look into the encapsulation thing IF we ever have another! <3 thank you for sharing!
ReplyDelete