Mothers of Many / Judy

Yesterday Kristen and Nathan stopped by on their way home from the hospital with baby Luke (why didn't I think to get a picture with my new camera? It's a learning curve). Anyway, Kristen was telling me about how this recovery so far is much better than the last one. She said it was probably because her doctor knew about delivering babies of women who had lots of children. Evidently it's a whole different ball park. The doctor told her the fifth delivery is significantly different from the first four in several aspects, including how painful the after-pains are. You know, those abdominal pains you get when you're breastfeeding because the uterus is contracting. And after the fifth baby each succeeding delivery recovery is that much harder, although the deliveries themselves may get easier. So this doctor really knows what she's doing because she's had more experience than most with mothers of many and also she's done a lot of research about it. Kristen said one thing that she did differently was that after the birth, they kept in her epidural while giving her two more IV bags of pitocin. So the very worst pain was covered by the epidural. 

The bottom line, mothers, is that if you have several children, it's evidently very important that your doctor knows about how to care for you afterwards, because not all doctors do. Think about it, most mothers have only 1-3 children so most doctors will have mostly that experience. But having 5 or more needs different care. So ask before committing to a particular doctor.