What a difference a week makes
One week ago today I had spent a night in hospital, having been admitted to the Maternity Inpatients ward at Peterborough City Hospital with a light bleed and “tightenings”. Due to my placenta praevia, the medical professionals didn’t want to take any chances. Unfortunately, they weren’t brilliant at communicating much of anything this to me. The ridiculously-lacking-in-bedside-manner-or-empathy-of-any-kind Consultant visited me on Tuesday morning and told me that they would be keeping me a day or two for monitoring and observation. I later learned, on Wednesday evening that, in fact, they were planning to keep me until my scheduled c-section date of 2 December. Funny how they managed to forget to mention this small detail.
My salvation during my 3 1/2 day stay, prior to our sudden delivery of Sam on Thursday night, was my BlackBerry and Twitter. There was a television in my bay, I had a magazine and a book to read but what got me through the highs and the lows; distracted me and entertained me was Twitter. Thanks to Twitter, I was able to have an personal midwife/doula to ask questions of (thank you @birthaffinity), I was able to maintain my Social Media Maven title for BritMums and I was able to distract myself from the boredom of being in hospital and having very few visitors.
Thanks to my WordPress App on my BlackBerry, I was able to use my thumbs to type out, edit and publish 5 blog posts to keep friends, family members, aquaintances and strangers up to date on our status. Again, this proved to be a real life-line as I had so much encouragement and well-wishes that I really felt special. It was rather novel to be the subject of attention in the Blogging World for a short time!
Today, however, was a slightly different story. I know, due to hormones, I’m a bit on edge. Fragile if you will. I’m tired (although thankfully not catatonic), sore, physically beat up and a bit stressed to be honest. I have continued to blog and tweet and share my thoughts, feelings and opinions as I always have done. This morning, however, for the first time I felt the need to turn off Twitter. I wrote a post last night about our choice to NOT breastfeed with Sam. The post itself was well received and the comments were encouraging and positive. No one cursed our choice or made me feel guilty. Until this morning. It wasn’t even the post that a couple of people commented about either!
Ironically, last night after I published my post, my breasts really started to feel sore. My milk was coming in. By bed time they were very painful and throughout the night continued to hurt and leak some. I really had no clue what to do so as with many things these days, I turned to Twitter. I knew that it might be a tricky question and one of those “TMI” tweets but hedged my bets that Twitter could offer up some advice. I received a couple of tweets that really surprised me and succeeded in making me feel bad about not breastfeeding. I felt like I was “wasting” my milk. I didn’t like feeling that way. I shouldn’t have taken those few tweets to heart so much as I also received quite a few other suggestions about what I could try to alleviate the pain and offering commiseration but I was gobsmacked and disappointed. I’m emotional and naive sometimes, I guess. And today I needed to turn away from the salvation that Twitter had become to me.
So today, I put my phone on charge and mostly ignored it. What had been my lifeline with the virtual world and a source of encouragement and support was not important enough for me today. Instead, I focused on my gorgeous baby Sam. I cuddled him and loved him and spent my time and energy on him. I enjoyed having Mark home with me today. We ate poached eggs on toast for breakfast, tidied Sam’s nursery (a job that went by the wayside when I was stuck in hospital) and talked.
We were visited by the community midwives today who weighed Sam and did routine checks on him (he’s getting on perfectly thank you very much) in addition to the dreaded heel prick test (waaaaaaaa Sam). They also removed my stitches and told me that I looked remarkably well thank you very much! We welcomed Ella home from a day at school, had Toad in the Hole for dinner and only had a few bouts of tears from Ella and from me today. Twitter may take a back seat for a few days. Life’s too short to let silly comments bring you down. I’ll continue to post and share our joys but for this week at least, the most important thing is not my Twitter stream.
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Big hugs, you know your love is above any thought less tweets. Though we know those great hormones makes us feel a bit different.
Still so happy for you that Sam came on Thanks giving day and hoping your going to be able to make Ella’s play. What ever at least your see her off in her costume xxx
But have you tried the cabbages in your bra and do we get photos????
Just rise above it, it doesn’t matter what other people think of your choices. I cop it all the time for our decison only to have one child.
It doesn’t matter at all, you make the decision that is best for you and your family, you are answerable only to yourself and to your family.
I haven’t been on twitter much today but am sorry to hear you didn’t receive 100% support there. The whole BF vs FF topic is so emotive and I, like you, find it really frustrating that it receives so much attention when what we should really be focusing on is supporting each other.
Enjoy your break from twitter and have some wonderful cuddles with the kids instead. I’ll see you when you’re back xx
Everyone has an opinion these days and in my opinion….Sam is a worthy twitter distraction! What a cutie x
Cold cabbage in your bra (honestly, it’s magic stuff) and a warm flannel over your boobs in the bath will release that horrible full up feeling. Forget the comments, forget everything. You have just made a person y’know! Enjoy being a mummy for a bit, we’ll all be here waiting for you when you get back
x
Enjoy you’re break honey and take in every single moment of your gorgeous Sam. They grow so fast it’s scary!!
Looking forward to seeing the all singing, all dancing Cafebebe we know and love back soon x x
There is a lot of pressure put on women to breastfeed but it’s not always right for everyone. Despite having had 3 children, I have only breastfed once and that’s my youngest. I know it’s easier said than done but ignore the negative comments. You do what is right for you and your family!! Xxx
And he really is gorgeous – concentrate on giving your family lots of cuddles – you have done an amazing job (you are possibly mad doing NaBloPoMo when having a baby though
!!)
I was a breastfeeder but I hated the whole bottle palaver and I felt I was often judged for that – people saying they would sleep better etc so I guess it works both ways. You need to do what works for you.
Oh missus, sorry to hear that you have been on the recieving end of some negative tweets
That’s the ruddy problem with twitter it’s all too easy to send out what you think without sitting back and thinking ‘oh hang on a moment that sounds rather harsh doesn’t it?’
It’s good to hear that Sam is getting on so well, how’s Ella doing?
As for painful boobies it’s just super dooper strength pain killers and try not to knock those bad boys on things! Owie!
I hope it doesn’t sound too condescending but you are bound to feel hormonal and emotional at the moment. Cripes just think of all that you have been through in the past week – worry, stress, mini-rage, un-certainty, over-whelming love and ongoing pain!
You are doing a marvellous job and the fact fact that you have managed to post at all amazes me! You really are Wonder Woman xxx
chin up poppet x
I often log off from the Internet as I think too much engagement at times is not neccessarily a good thing at times. You have so much going on in the real world, and your gorgeous news baby, i think it makes sense to spend the majority of your time there. I know you might feel you have to be online and might get twitchy fingers from not tweeting (I know you too well, karin), but when you’re hormonal and tired it can become an added stress. So enjoy spending time with that new gorgeous boy of yours. The rest of us will still be here when you’re ready. Doctors orders!
Yours Dr Scribble.
Congrats again (and glad to have been of help!). Enjoy your beautiful children, keep trusting your instincts and enjoy your mini break from twitter. Pleased your birth experience / hospital stay was more positive than you perhaps anticipated! Xx
I’m so sorry to hear that you received those unsupportive messages on Twitter. I will never understand people who seem to see themselves as breastfeeding missionaries whose role it is to convert the world to do things their way and no other. And I say that as someone who breastfed for seven months. I think the world would be a better place and motherhood would be so much easier if people would learn to respect the parenting choices of others.
You are totally right to turn off twitter for a while and step away from those comments. Enjoy this time with Sam.
Oh – on the soreness side of things – when I was weaning I found ibuprofen essential for relieving discomfort. And I used to express a bare minimum for comfort each morning. But I’m not sure that would work as well when your milk has just come in. Hope you feel better soon!
I hate that people think it’s ok to judge and condemn someone else’s decision. This is your body, your baby and your boobies to do with what the hell you want! Sod them!
You’ve just created another human being, that is far more important than the silly judgement of some pixels.
Oh and as for the tears? A week after having The Boy I stood in the hall and sobbed because hubby had put my grey cardigan in the washing machine when I had wanted to wear it. It was, and remains, the most ridiculous thing for me to cry over. You can’t beat that level of ridiculousness so don’t worry about a few tears; they remind you you’re alive and have emotions!