Another woman utterly failed by our society’s devaluation of women’s reproductive health.
We can’t wait around for male doctors to decide what we need to know.
This is why we need to take control and educate ourselves about our own bodies.
and here’s some comments i saw under the post. why is this a pattern?? why is this a recurring theme?? why is this information not common knowledge? what the fuck are doctors doing??
This is news to me so let’s share it so people will know!
Gross tmi: but i passed a pretty big clot after having my daughter. It was about the size of a baseball. It actually hurt worse because while 15 hours of labor opened my cervix, i passed the clot in 30 minutes. I knew it was a possibility because of my midwife and reading, but everyone Ive told after this (mostly other pregnant women) were shocked that this could happen.
In our culture, it’s much more common to do deep research about what family cars we want to buy than we do about childbirth when we ’re pregnant.
Tmi: I passed a huge clot after birth in the bathroom of my hospital room and called the nurse sobbing because I didn’t know it was normal. She treated me like an idiot, but NO ONE told me it was a possibility. And the pain associated with healing for the first couple of weeks after birth was worse than the labor imo. Again, I had no idea. They didn’t tell me a thing besides “sitz bath regularly and change your pads.” Before discharging me from the hospital.
I was most definitely told about this in school. Fucking hell, 4-6 weeks of bleeding? My periods were/are bad enough, why the hell don’t we get told this?
I didn’t know it could last so long, wtf? Is the bleeding inevitable after birth?
Bleeding is inevitable after birth – your uterine wall is shedding a fuck ton of lining. It can last from three to six weeks (possible longer) and it tapers off.
More TMI – I passed a MASSIVE clot after my fourth birth. At this point I already knew this could happen – it’s normal. What I DIDN’T know, was that I had caused it.
My post birth contractions were so bad after the birth that it felt like full transition labor. And they don’t give you anything for the pain. So I used a hot water bottle, without the nurses knowing, and it caused me to bleed even more. I lost so much blood that by the first time they sat me up to go to the bathroom, I fainted. It took three more tries until I could sit up.
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, the next morning I passed a clot the SIZE OF ANOTHER PLACENTA I KID YOU NOT, and I know what is and is not normal. So I called for the nurse and through the door told her I had passed a huge clot, and her response was – “It’s not big. I know what big is.” She hadn’t even looked. So I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, no. It’s big, I’m telling you.”
So, sounding extremely put upon, she asked me to open the door. I did, and after a long pause she goes, “Okay, yeah, that’s a little big.”
YOU DON’T SAY.
The point I’m trying to get across is that this shit is so common – women not knowing this stuff is so expected, and it keeps getting reinforced. People don’t expect you to know anything, don’t teach you anything, and then make you feel like you’re totally ignorant and a burden for your lack of knowledge when THEY WON’T SHARE.
Fucking learn EVERYTHING you can when it comes to childbirth, girls. It is the single most empowering thing you can do for yourself. And if you missed something, that’s okay. But the more knowledge you arm yourself with, the more in control of your situation you’ll be.
A few post partum tips:
DON’T use a hot water bottle – lol.
ONLY pads – NO tampons. Tampons can cause severe infection, not to mention, you probably don’t want to be shoving anything up there any time soon.
If you’ve had stitches, sitz baths DO help relieve the pain. Another great pain reliever? Dampen some pads and freeze them. Let one thaw slightly and use it on top of another pad. This will help with the pain as well as reduce swelling. Change the pad out as soon as it’s thawed completely. This REALLY helps on the first couple days after giving birth.
If you pass a clot, don’t sweat it. Even the one I passed, which was fucking massive, just required that we keep an eye out to make sure it didn’t happen again. If it does, talk to your doctor.
Take a pain killer half an hour before nursing. Because YES – your uterus is contracting after you give birth, to get back to its original size, and nursing causes much stronger contractions. Taking nursing-safe painkillers won’t prevent the pain, but it will reduce it.
Buy disposable underwear for the first few days after birth. They will get VERY dirty. Or use your ratty old pairs that you’re ready to get rid of. Double up on pads – line them all the way up your ass-crack. I am so serious. And wear dark pants.
Pee in the shower. You do NOT want to wipe down there right after birth because ow. Peeing in the shower lets you just rinse afterwards. Especially if you’ve had stitches, peeing in the shower, with the shower-head rinsing AS you go, keeps stinging to a minimum. And fuck everyone else – keep on peeing in the shower until you feel ready to move back to toilet paper. Middle of the night and need to pee? Get your pants off – get in the shower and just go.
This is just a few things, but PLEASE feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions about ANYTHING childbirth/pregnancy/nursing related. I have four incredible kids. I’ve done it all – c-section, vacuume birth, episiotimy, stitches, with an epidural, without an epidural. I’m here.
….I know I keep reblogging this but people keep adding super important information.
I feel like no one tells women this stuff because if a woman was even a little on the fence about having a baby before this would kinda make them run for the damn hills.
…..you are correct, typing.
300% EXTRA SURE I’M NOT HAVING BABIES.
peri bottles, witch hazel or anti-pain anticeptic spray are your friends. Also passing large clots after birth is a WARNING SIGN. Bigger than a half dollar is a sign that you have not passed your entire placenta (this is most common in hospital vaginal births where the mother is not allowed to naturally birth the placenta and instead has it ripped out by the doctor) if there is any placenta left in your uterus you can get extremely ill. This happened to both myself and my mother in law
WOW I didn’t know any of this and I’m terrified of what more I’m unaware of about my own body 😦 Honestly when will we fucking abolish this taboo about the female body…
I had pretty great sex ed in school (lots of contraceptive information, and totally acknowledged that teenagers might have sex) and all of this is news to me.
And, as a 28-year-old person with a uterus, I’m extremely appalled I’m just learning this.
Long, but very important information, even for those who don’t plan to have children, because you will almost certainly know someone who will, and you might be able to to help them. Or at least increase your level of empathy for them.
…HOLY HELL. REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE, SERIOUSLY.
people loooove to make out like pregnancy and childbirth are this beautiful thing that a woman’s body is made to do, and leave out all this incredibly important and scary info.
the healthcare system fails women in so so many ways, especially around sexual and reproductive health, and it needs to stop.
this formatting is making me uncomfortable but I have to tell you something / ask you something that is vital to my career as a student.
I re-read and edited that sentence for an hour, but you’ll probably just glance over it for half a second.
thanks!
– [name]
k
-professor
I have a stock format and structure I use.
Dear Person I am Writing To:
This is an optional sentence introducing who I am and work for, included if the addressee has never corresponded with me before. The second optional sentence reminds the person where we met, if relevant. This sentence states the purpose of the email.
This optional paragraph describes in more detail what’s needed. This sentence discusses relevant information like how soon an answer is needed, what kind of an answer is needed, and any information that the other person might find useful. If there’s a lot of information, it’s a good idea to separate this paragraph into two or three paragraphs to avoid having a Wall of Text.
If a description paragraph was used, close with a restatement of the initial request, in case the addressee ignored the opening paragraph.
This sentence is just a platitude (usually thanking them for their time) because people think I’m standoffish, unreasonably demanding, or cold if it’s not included.
Closing salutation,
Signature.
People always ask me how I can fire off work emails so quickly. Nobody has figured out yet that it’s the same email with the details changed as needed.
This post is going to rushed but I’m still shaking and it’s hard to type but I NEED people to know this
My mom just took my dog to the vet
She(my dog) was(still is?) having a seizure
Last month we took my dog to the vet and they told us she had developed diabetes, they told us it was caused by the food she was eating, purina beneful.
They told us that there have been many many many reports of Beneful has been causing diabetes, seizures, and even death in dogs.
We had no idea
We immediately switched her food and put her on a special diet plan for her diabetes, unfortunately the effects were already permeate.
Today at 11:20 my mom woke me up crying, I helped her carry my dog to the car (while she was still having a seizure) and watched her drive away red faced and still crying.
Please please PLEASE if you are feeding your pets Purina beneful PLEASE switch their food ASAP
Beneful is poising dogs and I don’t want anyone else to experience what I just did
Also if you could please help me signal boost this so everyone can know
This would explain why my dog has seizures now…fucking hell
Reblog and save lives of dogs
found out purina was the reason my dog winston had been having seizures and puking. please don’t feed your dog purina.
reblog even if you don’t own a dog or even if you’re not “a dog person” because I can’t even imagine how horribly depressed I would be if this happened to my dog
Just click a button when you pull up an article and it will automatically save it to your library
And cite it for you
And you can use it on your mobile devices
And it’s free
Just download it and you won’t have so many urges to kill everyone in sight while writing a research paper
Thank you so much!
Guys, I cannot stress how amazing this program is.
You can use it to highlight, write notes, mark up, etc. What I do is I highlight all the important jazz, use the comments to write notes on the document, and on the side bar, I write an annotated bib for it for future me. It save everything you write on it forever for you and you can put the articles in folders and organize it.
But that’s not the best part, the best part is that you can access your articles ANYWHERE. Literally anywhere. Forgot your laptop and at a public library? No worries! You can go to the Mendeley website and ACCESS ALL YOUR ARTICLES WITH YOUR NOTES ONLINE. You don’t even have to download the program to access it! It is a life saver and I suggest everyone in academia use it!
I’ve been using a similar program (Zotero) but this sounds even better!
Whoa, I didn’t realize that it was so deliberate, I honestly thought it was unconscious
Scary, scary.
Gonna add on to this: From the other side of the bar, I see this crap all the time. Seriously. I work at a high-density bar, and let me tell you, I have anywhere from 10-20 guys every night come up and tell me to, “serve her a stronger drink, I’m trying to get lucky tonight, know what I mean?” usually accompanied with a wink and a gesture at a girl who, in my experience, is going to go from mildly buzzed to definitively hammered if I keep serving her. Now, I like to think I’m a responsible bartender, so I usually tell guys like that to piss off, and, if I can, try to tell the girl’s more sober friends that they need to keep an eye on her. But everyone- just so you know, most of the time, when someone you don’t know is buying you a drink, they’re NOT doing it out of a sense of cordiality, they’re buying you a drink for the sole purpose of making you let your guard down. So:
Tips for getting drinks-
1. ALWAYS GO TO THE BAR TO GET YOUR OWN DRINK, DO NOT LET STRANGERS CARRY YOUR DRINKS. This is an opportune time for dropping something into your cocktail, and you’re none the wiser.
2.IF YOU ORDER SOMETHING NON-ALCOHOLIC, I promise you, the bartender doesn’t give two shits that you’re not drinking cocktails with your friends, and often, totally understands that you don’t want to let your guard down around strangers. Usually, you can just tell the bartender that you’d like something light, and that’s a big clue to us that you’re uncomfortable with whomever you’re standing next to. Again, we see this all the time.
3. If you’re in a position to where you feel uncomfortable not ordering alcohol:
Here’s a list of light liquors, and mixers that won’t get you drunk, and will still look like an actual cocktail:
X-rated + sprite = easy to drink, sweet, and 12% alcoholic content. Not strong at all, usually runs $6-$8, depending on your state.
Amaretto + sour= sweet, not strong, 26%.
Peach Schnapps+ ginger ale= tastes like mellow butterscotch, 24%.
Melon liquor (Midori, in most bars) + soda water = not overly sweet, 21%
Coffee liquor (Kahlua) +soda = not super sweet, 20%.
Hey all you lovely people who have periods, the world is starting to look a little bit brighter now that certain tampon/pad companies have started to allow people to receive small kits and samples of pads, maxi pads, liner, and tampons for free. And I mean 100% free and discreet. You just have to give them your address and name, and bam! You’ve got all the menstrual cycle products you could ever need for no cost. Links below!
Toad's Cave 