Anonymous wrote:17:24 again - the physician who told you to fortify yourself against ppd and get another consult on your anemia... i will temporarily ignore your venom and try to give you some advice i hope helps you through this time...
first, another hematology consult is not a waste. a good friend of mine, a physician, no less, had SIX miscarriages and thought she had had the most thorough work up ever with multiple practices. while in infertility treatments, her Drs realized she had not been tested for the MTHFR gene - a gene that promotes clotting and is well known to cause miscarriages. once it was recognized, she was put on blood thinners and went on to have 2 healthy pregnancies and babies. Like the poster above who found out she had a thallesemia, you, too, may have a GENETIC issue that is causing a low blood count, and depending on your age or what hematology practice you are with, they may not have thought to check you for genetic causes of anemia - perhaps they are looking for nutritional causes or focusing on your pregnancy right now or, if you're a bit older, and this seems to ave come out nowhere, they doubt that its genetic and has been present your whole life. but there are many conditions that "bloom" in pregnancy and post-partum and anemia is certainly one of them.
second, i'm glad you have a plan for your ppd. if you need recommendations on ppd therapists, look into Georgetown's Women and fertility group - they do amazing work with post-partum women. i should know; i was treated by them.
third, your posts raise quite a few red flags - i think you should share this thread with your therapist (i am hoping you are already seeing her/him)... you state you were concerned about dropping your baby, but then locked the balcony door and put a bookshelf in front of it - that indicates to me that it was more than a fear of accidental dropping, but that you had to put barriers in your way b/c you *might* have felt you would purposely drop her - no judgment at all - just a note that your PPd was probably more severe than you recollect.
you also react quite angrily - noting the ppd, you said something like "where were all of you when i was crying in my room?" - well, this is an anonymous forum; you should not count on us for physical immediate support. this is a place to find answers, but perhaps not the best place to find confidantes.
you continue to react angrily to many things - bringing up aresenic in formula and saying how you never want to have a blood transfusion - you sound so conflicted and confused - while "breast is best," formula should probably not be vilified to the degree it often is on this forum (and in your posts); it obviously helped your first child SURVIVE when you did not have enough supply - and it looks like you are a person with supply issues (you talk about needing fenugreek tablets a lot): so one has to ask, if "nature" is best, of we are all "meant" to eat our placentas because all animals do, then why or why didn't you enough breastmilk? what is wrong with you? why should you have to take any kind of supplement? the human body is meant to nourish a child, so if it can't, does that mean that child should be left to starve, or, worse, to die? since i have great supply, should my children survive and yours die? guess what? NO! because we are not only mammals, but humans who were given reason and opposible thumbs and large brains and the capacity to make substitutes to breast milk for those who could not, or do not wish, to nurse their young. and that is wonderful. that is wonderful.
as is how we have advanced as a society where we encourage the donation of our BLOOD to random strangers so that their lives might go on (no other mammalian species is altruistic to this degree). but, note, you are welcome to refuse blood - that is your right; you can even refuse it on admission to the maternity ward when the consent papers come so that your wishes are known for an emergency situation - so, if you are comatose or worse, the physicians can know it was your wish never to receive a blood transfusion. and if you feel so strongly about blood, then i hope you refuse it, so that it can be spared for someone who needs, and wants, and values, it.
and, last, what is found in nature (like eating the placenta) is not always best - many examples above - but what i remember most from my childhood is watching my hamster eat her first little.
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I'm not that brave... I'm talking about drying it up and encapsulating it.