u/IndependenceCalm8753

(TW Eating disorder discussion)

I feel like all I ever saw during pregnancy was how Gestational Diabetes ended up being a good thing for people, like it fixed their habits or made them more intentional about eating and healthier in the long term, but for me it feels like it totally ruined my eating habits instead.

I have a long history of bulimia (non purging type - I used to use excessive exercise, restriction and unhealthy fasting) but I was in a really good place with my recovery pre-pregnancy. I had some warning signs of things creeping back in following the GDM diagnosis, the encouragement to move after meals to manage blood sugars was a big trigger for me and I slipped into being a bit obsessive about that in particular. I also over restricted carbs because I have a hard time restricting without doing it to the extreme. I mentioned this to my care team at the time who seemed to only care that my numbers were in range no matter how they got there, which kind of just made it even worse.

A big part of my recovery from my ED was implementing intuitive eating. Basically the opposite of what you are told to do with GDM. Pre-pregnancy I was eating intuitively and generally very balanced but now postpartum I have swung so far the other way it actually scares me a bit. I cannot stop thinking about carbs and chocolate. I don’t want to fall into restricting behaviours again but I’m not managing to eat them intuitively either, so I’m eating so much chocolate every day and I feel awful about it, but I still keep reaching for more. I have found myself exercising to ‘undo’ it too, not for fun. I have pushed myself further than I should be at 3 weeks postpartum which has slowed down my c section recovery. I just feel a bit out of control with food really.

Has anybody else found the same? I am trying to apply the years of therapy I have been through before this but I’m also exhausted in general so it’s not happening right now. I plan need to reach out for more help, but I am just frustrated to be in this position again after a lot of hard work undoing these habits only for GDM to bring them all back 😭

I have a 3 week old. In the day she feeds every 2-3 hours and probably more tbh. In those times she’ll almost always feed from both sides even when she’s a little sleepy after the first side.

At night wakes though she refuses the second breast. I feed on one side then change her to rouse her but it doesn’t really rouse her it just makes her wide awake and then when I try and give her the second breast she refuses it. It’s not like she’s too sleepy, like I said she’s wide awake from her nappy change just staring at me and won’t open her mouth to latch. She also then takes ages to fall asleep though, she just kind of stares at me until I fully rock her to sleep.

Does this just mean she’s full? Does it matter if she doesn’t drink from both sides? I will say she sleeps in 1-2 hours stretches rather than 2-3 so I feel like she is getting hungrier earlier from not having a full feed but I also can’t exactly force my nipple into her closed mouth if she doesn’t want it 🥲 I was also waking up engorged last week but now in the night my breasts feel quite soft so I’m worried this has impacted my supply?

Did anyone else have this?

I haemorrhaged pretty bad during my c section and because of this plus the fact I have had a c section before my risk factors meant I had to have a six week course of blood thinning injections every day instead of the standard 10 days.

Has anyone else had this? I’m 3 weeks into the 6 weeks and even though I’m halfway there the thought of doing the next 3 weeks is killing me 😭 I know they are important but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered about stopping early. I’m active every day because I have a toddler anyway. But I know that’s probably a bad idea so I won’t do it. I just have such a huge needle phobia and it makes me feel so sick and panicky doing them every day.

So I thought the newborn stage was meant to be sleepy potato time where there’s no point in a schedule and no need to rock your baby to sleep because they’ll be drifting in and out of sleep for the first few months anyway.

But I cannot relate. My 3 week old is awake like… all the time. Unless we are actively rocking her to sleep and using a dummy or the boob and even then it takes ages to get her to sleep. If we don’t get her to sleep in the day she is massively overtired by the evening and won’t feed or be consoled at all.

I wish I could commit to sitting on the sofa all day and resting with her but I also have an older autistic child who is very loud and it gets kind of chaotic in here at times, so maybe that’s the reason she can’t sleep?! I don’t know. I thought newborns were only meant to be awake for like 30-60 minutes at a time but she is awake ALL the time unless we are actively getting her to sleep. I will say my first was an awful sleeper, still kind of is lol, so maybe I just make low sleep needs babies 🫣

Is anybody else’s newborn like this? Should I just surrender to her being awake and deal with the grouchy overtired baby later?!