If you missed the previous parts of Sona’s birth story, you can read them here: part one, part two. At this point Sona was just born after a long 36 hour labor. Normally, a birth story would end here. But I had some challenges during the rest of our time in the hospital that, in conjunction with a difficult labor, left me feeling a bit traumatized by my second birthing experience. At this point I have processed everything that happened and feel much better than I did in the early days of my postpartum period. Still, I felt that it was important to share the whole story for anyone who may be in the midst of something similar.

Recovery & breastfeeding “issues”

We were settled in our recovery room around 9pm. Our first night went about as well as we expected! I was nursing Sona on demand so we were up a lot through the night, but we had the adrenaline rush from her birth helping us through. And this time we had the confidence of actually kind of knowing what we were doing! The next morning (July 1st), we called Sage to introduce her to her baby sister over Facetime. Afterwords, my sister came to meet her brand new niece. She was our only hospital visitor due to the current COVID protocols. While she was there, a nurse wheeled in an electric breast pump and told me I was going to need to start pumping after feedings because they were concerned about her last weight check (when she was 12 hours old) with no more explanation than that. When she left, I told Anthony and Frankie that I wasn’t going to start pumping yet. She was less than a day old, latching well, nursing often and had been having plenty of wet/poopy diapers. I just didn’t see any reason for concern. Besides, I was really confused because I knew it was normal for exclusively breastfed babies to lose 7-10% of their body weight in the first few days after birth. I was confused and didn’t know why they would be worried about her weight loss within that first day.

I felt like no one was listening to me

As the day went on, we were seen by the pediatrician and lactation consultant. I told them how I was given 3 bags of fluids during labor and asked if that could have contributed to the weight Sona lost after birth. I told them she had a very large poop right after she was born and asked if that may have skewed the numbers too. I told them I had exclusively breastfed my first baby with no supply issues. I didn’t get much of a response. The next time the nurse came in and saw that I hadn’t pumped yet, she said that they might need to give her formula if I didn’t start.

In conjunction with this, Sona had started cluster feeding around noon that day, with only 10-30 minutes between nursing sessions. (We know, because we were tracking it all). So when exactly was I supposed to be pumping? I knew in my gut that cluster-feeding is normal and what babies do to help bring in the milk supply, which wouldn’t fully come in until 3-5 days after birth. I knew she was getting colostrum because again, she had plenty of wet diapers. She wasn’t acting lethargic or uninterested in nursing. The lactation consultant said her latch was great. Despite the increasing pressure, I just knew in my gut that my baby was doing fine. 

That evening, the nurse came back and said if I didn’t start pumping then hand expressing every 3 hours, they were going to have to give her formula. Sona was still cluster feeding at this point. I trusted that she was giving my breasts all the stimulation they needed to bring in my milk supply and again, I just knew she was okay. But I agreed because I didn’t want to give her formula. Not because choosing to feed or supplement with formula is bad or anything to feel ashamed of - I just truly felt that she didn’t need it. And of course I was worried that introducing formula unnecessarily may interfere with my desire to exclusively breastfeed. 

Then I hit my breaking point

It was midnight. I had agreed to pump and hand express every 3 hours but had only had a chance to do so once before then because Sona was nursing practically non-stop. If Sona wasn’t being held, she was crying and Anthony was so tired that he couldn’t hold her without falling asleep. I obviously couldn’t pump while holding a crying baby so I made the difficult decision to send her to the nursery for a bit. I did not want to do that, I wanted to keep our one day old baby there in the room with us. I never sent Sage to the nursery while we were at the hospital. But I felt like I had no choice. I cried as they wheeled her out and for the 20 minutes I pumped and 20 more minutes I hand expressed after that. After nursing my baby literally all day long, all I came up with were a few drops of colostrum.

This is when a different, kinder nurse happened to walk in and asked how I was doing. I was honest. I cried and told her I wasn’t doing well. I told her I didn’t understand why I was getting all this pressure and talk of increasing the volume of my milk supply when my baby was one day old and my milk isn’t even supposed to be in yet. I felt like no one was listening to me when I brought up valid reasons why her weight loss at 12 hours might have appeared exaggerated. I was frustrated that I sent my baby to the nursery when I didn’t want to just so I could pump. I was angry because I should have been resting and recovering after birth and a marathon day of cluster-feeding instead of sitting alone in the dark trying to squeeze more out of my poor breasts in an effort to get the medical team off my back. 

She explained that they were following some new research that tracked a baby’s weight loss over the first 12, 24 and 36 hours in an effort to prevent babies from losing a percentage of weight that was hard to recover from. She showed me the chart and where Sona’s weight loss fell on it and was very kind and understanding about where I was coming from. She said it was really hard to try to individualize care for things like this but of course, stopped short of disagreeing with anything that the medical team had said to me up to this point.

After a difficult labor, where I had several moments of losing confidence in my body and myself, this situation made me feel like I was plunged right back into that fear and uncertainty again. I had hardly gotten a chance to enjoy and soak in my new baby before this all began. Deep down, I knew what was right for Sona and me but I was being pressured to do otherwise. I was so tired, tired down to my bones. This was not the way I wanted to start my second journey into motherhood. I felt so drained and defeated. My thoughts went to “My body couldn’t get through labor without intervention…what if they are right and I’m not producing enough colostrum to sustain my baby either”? I started to think maybe there was something wrong with me. The rest of that night was a blur of tears and sleep deprivation. 

The next day

I managed to get a little bit of sleep and by the next morning her weight loss had stabilized to the point where they were comfortable discharging us with instructions to bring her to the pediatrician for a weight check the following day. The lactation consultant came to check on us and after observing Sona nurse again she said “Oh no, I wouldn’t give this baby formula.” and something to the effect of how formula can really “mess things up” for a breastfed baby given this early? Which was a bit irritating after all the pressure I was given the day before. 

Before we were discharged, another nurse came to survey our experience with the hospital and record any feedback we had. Thankfully, it happened to be a L&D nurse who was present for Sona’s birth and familiar with what we had been through. She said absolutely, when a mother is given a lot of IV fluids during a long labor like mine, the baby is born bloated with that extra fluid. She was not aware that the recovery side of the hospital was following this new research and sounded genuinely surprised that they were concerned with her weight only 12 hours after her birth. She was the first person who really made me feel listened to and her kindness was really like a lifeline to me in that moment. 

While she was still in the room, the midwife who delivered Sona came back to check on me and I had such a lovely conversation with her as well. I thanked her for helping me have such a beautiful birth experience after how hard everything up to that point had been. She said it was a real honor to be there for my birth. I was so grateful for the support those women gave me right before we left the hospital and started our new life as a family of four. 

Leaving the hospital

We were discharged around noon on July 2nd - a day and a half after Sona’s birth. When all was said and done, she lost 8% of her body weight while we were at the hospital, which is well within the normal range for a breastfed newborn. At her weight check the next day on July 3rd, she had regained all but 1.5 ounces of her birth weight. Over the next seven days, she gained almost an entire pound and I was having some mild oversupply issues just like I had with Sage. My gut feeling that everything was normal and Sona was alright the entire time was validated. But all I could think about was, “what if this had happened to me as a first time mom”? I had 21 months of experience and knowledge from nursing our first baby and I was still shaken. If I was a new mom, this situation could have potentially derailed breastfeeding for us altogether. That’s why I wanted to write out this part of our story to share with other expecting parents. 

I’m not sure that what happened to us is all that common. It is new research the hospital I delivered at was following. Sona may have been an outlier in that she did have a drastic decrease in weight the first 12 hours but it was not a symptom of a larger feeding issue. I know the intent is to give babies the best start possible. But in my experience, not enough information was given and the policy as a whole did not seem very breastfeeding-friendly or conscious of what is biologically normal for breastfeeding mothers and their babies during the first hours and days after birth.

Processing a traumatic birth

This is part of why it’s taken me so long to write my birth story out. Sona’s delivery was like a shining moment sandwiched between two really, really hard 36-ish hour periods. I’m aware that my birth story might not sound traumatic to others. There were a few heart rate concerns during labor, plus the growing infection risk of a prolonged rupture of membranes, though neither of our lives were ever in imminent danger. But her birth and what came after felt traumatizing to me and that’s the only thing that matters when determining if a birth was traumatic or not.

Between my first and second pregnancies, I became a bit of a natural birth “nerd”. I was and still am fascinated by the process of physiological labor and birth. Natural birth education preaches quite hard against the “cascade of (unnecessary) interventions” so when intervention became necessary for me, I felt a little lost. 

I grieved the straightforward, unmedicated birth experience I had hoped for but didn’t pan out. I questioned why my labor stalled in the first place and blamed myself, thinking maybe I could have done something differently. I was fixating on the what-ifs. I was so angry about not being listened to and having to deal with the “manufactured drama” around my baby’s weight.

I felt a strange dissonance in believing that I could trust my body to birth and nourish my baby to then having to wrap my head around interventions when things went off course and then being pressured to ignore my own intuition about what was best for my baby. That bled over into the early days after bringing Sona home in the form of anxiety and intrusive thoughts. I think because I felt so out of control during labor, my brain was constantly worrying about something bad happening to her. It was scary and I had never experienced anxiety that intense before.

It took me several weeks with guidance from my postpartum doula to process everything that had happened before I could begin to see the positive in her birth story. And a few more weeks after that before I felt ready to start writing it down. But with getting it all down on paper has come a release. Soon after I started writing, the intrusive thoughts started to lessen and then go away.

Now that I’ve experienced both, I really believe that some births require an epidural and some don’t. It really is as simple as that! I prepared for both births as best as I could but ultimately, labor can be unpredictable and there are some things that are simply out of our control. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that a part of me had unwittingly tied the full beauty of this rite of passage as something exclusive to natural birth. Now I understand there is profound meaning to be found in all kinds of birth outcomes and experiences. 

Processing and finally, making peace with my birth story has made me want to share it for others who may have or will experience something similar. I want other parents to know that a healthy baby is what we hope for most of all, but also what happens to you and how you feel about your birth matters too.

If it’s at all possible for you, I highly recommend hiring a postpartum doula. I booked a remote package with Madison from Rooted Motherhood Doula and really benefited from her support around nutrition, birth processing, breastfeeding and more in the first six weeks after Sona’s birth. She provided a listening ear, delicious recipes, targeted journal prompts, advice and resources for any challenges I was experiencing. If it’s not in your budget to have personalized postpartum care, I really recommend finding a few postpartum-specific doulas on social media and diving into their wonderful free resources, podcasts, books, etc.

A final note: After being depressed during my pregnancy, I was worried about developing postpartum depression. But honestly, I have felt so much better in the months since Sona was born - even with having to emotionally sort through a difficult birth experience. I attribute this to having a solid support system around me and allowing myself to really slow down and surrender to the beautiful chaos of the newborn stage. Our fourth trimester went by so fast and I knew there was really nothing more important for me to be doing than resting, healing, and bonding with our new daughter.