GUYS: Are woman looser after baby?

[Fudgie]

I work sometimes in the Maternity ward when there are staffing holes. Most the patients there are mothers and fathers who have just given birth the day before and are there for an extra day or two just for monitoring and help with breast feeding. Some have had C-sections and others gave birth vaginally.

 

All of the men there were all teary-eyed and really doting on their wives. Some seemed a little overwhelmed and nervous but just in awe. I was holding a baby once and the dad told me "I love him; I just can't stop looking at him!" It was actually pretty cute. They ask me all sorts of questions about the baby ("It's okay...right?!?") and how to hold the baby, etc. They talk about seeing the baby born and just being so happy/scared/goosebump-y all at once.

 

The only dads that weren't there were the absent ones...you know, the ones that are out of the picture or maybe were in the picture at some point but weren't really interested in having a kid. They tended not to be married though, vast majority of the time. Usually it was the woman's boyfriend or ex....sounded like it may have been an unplanned pregnancy and he didn't want anything to do with it. That's sort of my take.

 

I think if a man really wants to have a child with a woman, and the pregnancy is planned, desired, etc...I mean, he's not going to be like "WAIT. OMG, what? A BABY COMES OUT OF THERE??" I mean, they know what goes on.

Yes, she's in pain and screams. Yes, it stretches. Yes, the baby is all covered in fluid and some blood and yes, there's an afterbirth as well.

 

Honestly, I think births kind of gory in their own right but I think you have be of a really fragile, naive mind to be traumatized by one...like I could see a kid seeing a birthing video and having a nightmare. A grown man who has been planning to have a child for years and understands the biological process? No.

[Edmund Exley]

Btw my reply was to Edmund not any of the women on here! Not trying to be rude...

 

I will tell you what will be looser after a C section. Your stomach. Enjoy.

[Reflective82]

Definitely a price worth paying to avoid the agony and damage of a normal birth in my opinion!

[Tanzi]

I am NOT damaged Reflective!!!!!!!! Please think before you post.

[Cheetarah]

I don't mind my c section pouch. It's a pretty awesome "battle scar".

 

Really, either which way you go, your body changes in different ways. I promise you that, reflective.

[Seraphim]

Try not to look at it as damage. Personally I don't. My body is just as beautiful after as it was before, it is just different. My husband thinks it is just as beautiful after. My opinion and his opinion are the only ones that matter.

 

Don't even worry about what other people think . It is not like you're going to be showing your whole body to the entire planet anyway.

[Seraphim]

If the changing of one's body is so horrific to someone probably adoption is their better bet. No body changes there.

[Fudgie]

My boyfriend dated a girl once you who told him that she didn't want her body to suffer the ill effects of pregnancy so she wanted to pay for a surrogate mother to carry the baby (her egg and partners sperm too) so she wouldn't have to gain weight, give birth, have pain, etc.

 

He thought it was absolutely ridiculous but honestly, if you felt that strongly, do it. It's your money.

 

But let's be real now, everything in life is a risk. You can't really anticipate what will happen. What if your partner cheats on you and leaves you anyway? What if you did buy that surrogate and had a wonderful child and kept yourself in tip top shape only to have him leave you for another woman?

 

You can't live in fear, Reflective. That's no way to live.

 

You make me think of my grandmother, a beautiful woman, who weighed a lean 110 lb her whole adult life. She was always dressed to the nines, not a hair out of place. My grandfather loved her very much and I feel he was faithful and he also made a lot of money. Real family man. But my grandmother was a nervous, nervous woman.. Paranoid he was going to cheat because her own dad had issues. My grandmother struggled her whole life with these anxieties. She was never really into religion but it provided temporary relief. She spent all day worrying at times and knitting her fingers off. I still have beautiful quilts from her. She knitted not because she enjoyed it but she got so anxious.

 

They were married for 70 years. Could you imagine spending that whole time anxious that it all would be torn apart? Obviously it worked out for my grandmother but she was on high alert all the time. How can you really enjoy a marriage or even your own life if you are plagued with thoughts like that? If you happen to gain a pound or two, or age, or etc.... Are you going to worry from then on about it?

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that thinking like that, you lose either way, Reflective. If he's unfaithful, you lose. If he's faithful, you still lose, because you're still worrying and can't ever fully trust. This is a game you can't win so it's time to get out of it.

[Tanzi]

I also think that a lot of the thoughts you have as to why men leave their wives (on this and your other threads), Reflective, are superficial .... that's not love. Most men are in awe of their wives for carrying their babies and giving birth to them - not ready to leave them because they can't please them any more. A couple in love wanting to have a family together is THE most natural thing in the world - without it, life would cease to exist. Putting such a superficial spin on it is rather sad IMHO and I fear you will never be truly happy in life (or find real love) if you constantly worry over superficial things.

 

Some marriages and relationships don't work out and some of those do entail infidelities but that usually means the love has gone and that has nothing to do with how old you are (per your other threads) or how your body may have changed after having a baby.

 

Love is deeper than that - sometimes is just doesn't last ... but sometimes it does. Love is a chance you have to take.

[Reflective82]

I am not saying ALL women are, I am saying it CAN damage it, and I am worried about that.....I think quite a lot of women do have leakage issues and tearing, that is what I don't want. Anyway off topic now...

[Reflective82]

Fudgie- I am definitely not like that! I don't care about stretchmarks, getting saggy boobs etc, really it doesn't matter! I know I worry about superficial things, it does seem to me like a lot of guys ARE superficial though, or ones I seem to like.....but agree, it isn't a healthy way to think. Ah this forum is so helpful for getting out of a negative place!

[Tanzi]

Women can eventually have "leakage issues" even without having babies and the "tear" heals fully. I tore with my first baby. I wasn't even aware that I had torn and I didn't feel being stitched up either. I was pretty numb by then (sorry if that is TMI!) From what I've heard friends go through as regards their C-Sections, I would rather have a few stitches "down there" than the major surgery that cesareans entail. It really is unnecessary to worry over every aspect of life as you will stop yourself from living a normal life. If having babies was such a negative thing - whether it be through "damage" or becoming "loose" and therefore losing your husband - then life would have ceased to exist by now ... at the very least every woman would stop at one child.

[Seraphim]

Reflective, you're choosing to pick up your parent's baggage. Put it down and don't pick it up. That is a choice. And if you expect to find superficial crappy men that's probably what you're going to find. Because you have a set of criteria in your head and then you judge based on that. If you expect to find good men you will have a good set of criteria in your head and maybe you'll start judging based on that.

 

Remember this statement "you are what you think about all day long." And that can apply to almost anything.

 

Either way I think you need a therapist to learn to dispel this pattern of thinking that you have. You are really doing a huge disservice to yourself and to men in general when you have this pattern of thinking.

[Reflective82]

Well, I wouldn't, but it's everyone's choice.

 

If there was no possibility of damage to the muscles then there wouldn't be so many articles like this: link removed

[Batya33]

Well, I wouldn't, but it's everyone's choice.

 

If there was no possibility of damage to the muscles then there wouldn't be so many articles like this: link removed

 

Of course there's a possibility. I've also heard that not having children can increase your risk of certain cancers. And that's not a reason to have children, of course! An acquaintance of mine, married, adopted an infant. When I saw her she looked like she had gained a significant amount of weight and I forgot that she had actually adopted. That is not meant at all to be catty- my guess is that she probably ate more because of the stress of caring for an infant (I lost all my baby weight within 5 months, and another couple of pounds over the next 6 months or so) - so it's not always related to pregnancy or hormones. I had a bizarre post-pregnancy complication that was blamed on the pregnancy but who knows. It's all a risk. This morning at about 6:41a.m. my 4 year old hugged me and said "you are so warm and so soft. I love you Mommy". So were my risks worth it? (And yes of course I wondered, even though I am thin, whether I was flabby LOL and yes I wished it was about a half hour later.....

).

[Seraphim]

Me too I would rather have my son than anything. My life is rich beyond comparison with him in it. And I did not know I would almost give my life in giving him his. As I almost died giving birth to him. But I can tell you if I had to do it all over again I would a thousand times over. He is my greatest blessing in all this world. For me nothing compares to him.

[Reflective82]

Oh yes, I definitely want children! If C section wasn't an option, I would do the other way in a heartbeat.....just saying I think that natural birth is not the great thing that some people think, I don't like the sound of it at all.

[Reflective82]

If I didn't want kids, I'd be a hell of a lot less stressed about finding a partner, as I'm 27 now so ideally would like a child at 32 max for the first one. If you don't want kids then the time issue is taken away really....

[Seraphim]

That you want to have children is why I suggest you have to go to therapy to change your way of thinking. If you have a child of either sex it is important for you to have a good impression of men. If you don't have a good impression of man you won't be able to give your son a good sense of self-esteem. And I know people always say they won't say what they think around their children but they do and children find out. So you won't want to give a son a crappy sense of self self-esteem because his mom thinks men are cheaters and pigs and superficial . For a daughter it is equally important you want to give her a good sense of what men are . If she knows what a good man is all about and that the world does have good men in it she has a better chance of finding one.

[Batya33]

If I didn't want kids, I'd be a hell of a lot less stressed about finding a partner, as I'm 27 now so ideally would like a child at 32 max for the first one. If you don't want kids then the time issue is taken away really....

 

Sure, I guess you can have an elective C-section (I had a last minute one -just short of an "emergency" c-section and was disappointed that I couldn't do natural). I don't think in general people think natural child birth is "great" - some do, for sure -but for most women I think the feeling is that if possible it's best for the baby, it avoids major surgery (and possible complications from it) and the recovery is faster. I never thought of it as "great, I can't wait to be in labor and push a baby out" -my entire focus from the second I found out I was pregnant was what was best and safest for my future baby. That is all. I never gave a thought to what my body would be like after - I assumed that since I started out in good shape and had a decent diet/eating habits that I probably would lose all the weight fairly quickly. I never for a second worried about what my husband would think about my body during or after - I was interested in his reactions as my belly got bigger (and my hair glossier, woo hoo!) but never worried. I would not have married him if I would have worried. He was thrilled about the pregnancy (and a litle scared too -we both were!) -and was just as focused on the baby's best interests as I was although he wasn't experiencing the physical symptoms and changes.

 

I do know women who are concerned about their bodies -I am not judging them. I do think at a certain point those concerns do raise red flags about whether the woman is ready to be a parent but that would need to be fairly extreme I would think.

[Fudgie]

Also, about the weight thing, yes, many women gain a few lbs from pregnancy but if they want to lose it, they can.

 

However, I've seen a number of women blather on about "eating for two" and really, all they do is pig out for the whole pregnancy. We women, we're under pressure from society (mostly other women) to be thin and to look good. Pregnancy is really the one time a woman is "allowed" to be fat. That's why some women go insane with the food and gain tons of weight, and blame it on the baby.

 

I know one woman, friend of my my family not my friend, and she blew up 40+ lb during pregnancy. It was ridiculous. She ate like a cow too, doing the whole "Oooo cravings!" nonsense. Everyone was saying how the baby was going to be like 10+ lb. Yeah, what a joke that was... Baby came out and he was healthy but weighed 4 lb. She was just fat but heaven forbid you said anything about her eating habits.

 

Reflective, if you keep close with your doctor and put effort into your body and health, you'll be fine.

 

I do have a hormonal condition that had allowed me to gain a lot of weight. I am very fat. I get really annoyed when people eat like pigs and then can't take the blame when they get big and then can't lose because they still consume like they are eating for octuplets. Pregnancy isn't the issue here. They are.

[tiredofvampires]

Well, I for one, don't feel I'm in a position to judge another woman's bodily urges and what is really going on for her, in her experience.

 

There were (and still are) many naysayers that post-partum depression is a real disorder. Many who have derided PMS as a real syndrome. Many of these "deniers" being men -- who have never been in the throes of hormonally disrupted bodies and minds. I, myself, used to think my older sister's extreme mood swings with PMS was histrionics until I was humbled and developed PMS years later, myself.

 

It's really an old story for people to blame patients and condemn them for their conditions, without knowing what it's like to live in their bodies, with their physiological triggers. I don't think being judgmental when you have not experienced a particular health issue is informed or compassionate. So anyone who has not been pregnant, or even who has been pregnant and had a different experience, is in no place to evaluate what it's like to be another woman and what their problems are due to.

 

I also don't know why ANYONE who is overweight should "take the blame", and I don't think sympathy is more due one person suffering from obesity than another. Isn't there enough shaming around weight already, whatever the cause?

 

So Fudgie, I think you may want to re-think your attitude towards people who "pig out" and "blow up", because they may have imbalances that are as poorly understood as yours, and just less easily identified by current medical science (and especially if they suddenly developed a weight issue while pregnant, that should suggest pregnancy isn't an "excuse" -- why wouldn't they have been overeating and having such cravings before? Most people don't wait for the strategic opportunity of pregnancy to finally come out of the closet as an over-eater). We are in the Dark Ages about understanding what causes binge, addiction, mood, hormonal, and related disorders. Just as we were in the Dark Ages when women with post-partum depression were told to snap out of it, and told it was an excuse to be a lazy new mother and wife, and that PMS was an excuse to get attention. We, as a medical culture, need to learn from these mistakes, as they should be extremely humbling.

 

As for the OP, you should also think about other kinds of injury that can result from a C-Section. It's a surgery that cuts through nerves, muscles and connective tissue, and any such abdominal surgery can cause scarring not just on the outside of the pelvis, but internally. And months or years later, that can accumulate and start to cause internal pain. I have never had kids, but I had my appendix removed last year, and the incisions healed but now, I'm having mysterious severe/incapacitating pains in the area inside my abdomen, where the surgical tools were inserted. It seems to come more around my periods, and the doctors don't know what could be causing it, but on the table as a diagnosis is post-surgical trauma resulting in adhesions (scar tissue) inside the abdomen, which means scars where the abdominal wall was cut into, didn't heal so well, and stuck to organs. Researching this, I also discovered that women can develop endometriosis after a C-section, another condition of scarring inside the pelvis and severe pain sometimes. Endometriosis is a condition where the cells lining the uterus get displaced into the abdomen and start growing there, bleeding each month just like the inside of the uterus. But since the blood has nowhere to go, it stays in the abdomen, causing inflammation and scarring. Women who haven't had C-sections or pregnancies can have it, but it can be caused by exposing the inside of the abdominal cavity to the contents of the uterine tissue, which occurs in C-sections, as they are cutting open the uterus.

 

So post-surgically, complications can happen down the road.

 

Invasive procedures with injury to tissues come with real risks, both short and long-term, so keeping your body intact is a pretty good idea. C-sections should be reserved for situations where the mother and baby can't get through labor otherwise, as a last resort.

[Fudgie]

Speaking as an obese person, I think it's important for those with weight issues to address why they are that way and if it includes poor eating habits, they need to own up it. I have owned up to mine. It's not that hard. If it's "shaming" to tell fat people to be honest with themselves, well, then I'm a shamer and I'm proud of it.

 

The women I speak of didn't have hormonal imbalances though. The family friend would eat literally a pot of pasta and then wonder why she blew up. Yeah, I'm sorry, but that's not hormones.

 

I guess my point to OP is that many pregnant women get fat because of their own eating and then they try to blame it on pregnancy and say that "well you'll gain a lot of weight if you're pregnant" or that it's somehow normal to turn into a hippo during and after pregnancy.

 

My point is that it's not normal. And OP shouldn't let the words of people who screwed themselves over influence her.

[tiredofvampires]

Well, I think it's an interesting psychology that shows up in various situations that if you've had a problem yourself, dis-identifying with others who have suffered similarly creates a feeling of being more in control. A "fat" person showing such contempt and scorn for other "fat" people and using put-down language shows a strong need to reject some aspect of what you identify with, and don't want to identify with, so you have to delegitimize someone else's reasons. It's easy to lay claim to the right to put down other heavy people because you're a heavy person, yourself, but in fact it's no better than someone who is slim doing so. But this is far off topic, so I'll just leave it there. Just felt it was important to interject that, as something to take into consideration when trying to evaluate other people's health conditions and circumstances.

 

I'm sure pregnant women who put on excessive weight can and do "blame" their pregnancies for a process that is going on, over and above the pregnancy. People blame a lot of things for the poor choices they're making for their health, so as to avoid taking responsibility, and I don't deny that dynamic exists. But I have to question the nature of that, and what the intricacies of the processes themselves are. Things like cravings for pasta and sweets -- carbs -- is often put down to a lack of will, and people who binge on carbs will be the first ones to tell you they're ashamed of their behavior (which then leads to the denial and rationalizations you're scorning, so how does more shaming do anything but throw gasoline on the fire that exists), but the fact of the matter is that science is finding out that carbs have the same effect on the brain as heroin. And this IS very much a question of hormones. Hormones, neurotransmitters, catecholamines, etc., which all work together in a very complex fashion. I not suggesting that people with such cravings have zero choice in the matter, but to over-simply people's bodies and biochemical imbalances down to behavioral ineptitude is a real oversight, and it continues a painful stigma.

 

We really don't know what's going on in the brains of women who have a nice figure, get pregnant, gain tons of weight, and then "let themselves go". But I don't think an outsider with very little information can say it's due to this or not due to that. You'd have to do a series of hundreds of sophisticated blood tests and brain function scans on an individual, and repeat that in other subjects to be able to fairly make such a hypothesis, let alone draw that kind of conclusion.

 

I guess I err on the side of the theory that no one wants to develop a problem with self-control, appetite, and inability to stop eating, looking and feeling bad about their bodies, so something must be going on there. Good for all the women who don't develop those problems with their pregnancies, who are for whatever reason less susceptible, but that does not explain the process going on for the women who do.

[Batya33]

I know one woman, friend of my my family not my friend, and she blew up 40+ lb during pregnancy. It was ridiculous. She ate like a cow too, doing the whole "Oooo cravings!" nonsense. Everyone was saying how the baby was going to be like 10+ lb. Yeah, what a joke that was... Baby came out and he was healthy but weighed 4 lb. She was just fat but heaven forbid you said anything about her eating habits.

 

Reflective, if you keep close with your doctor and put effort into your body and health, you'll be fine.

 

.

 

I found this fairly judgmental Fudgie. I gained under 40lbs while I was pregnant -but not much under -and gave into my cravings -which were basically for red meat, potatoes and dairy (and I think I had a sweet tooth for ice cream especially). I didn't watch and I didn't pig out either. I just ate what I wanted when I wanted it, and made sure I got the proper nutrients and drank tons of water. I fully intended to lose it all ASAP after pregnancy and I knew based on my history -eating right/regular working out (I did not work out for about 8 months) that I could do it. And I accomplished my goal, more than. But, according to you I let myself "blow up" because I gained almost 40 pounds. My doctor didn't think so and my doctors after thought I did a good job of losing the weight too. Be careful about labeling pregnant women in that way just because you think that 40 pounds or so is too much -leave it to the doctor (especially if the woman starts out at a lower weight)

Fortunately no one said anything about my eating habits or weight gain other than complimenting me on how I looked which was sweet.