# Black Eyes after Birthing?



## oofda (Nov 20, 2008)

An acquaintance of mine just had her first baby in a hospital. I haven't heard the birth story from her, but just heard that she ended up with two black eyes after the birth from pushing so hard!

Anyone had this? My guess is that she was directed to "purple push" and popped the blood vessels. I don't think this would have happened if they let her wait until she had the urge to push and let the baby come down naturally.

Any experience with this? With my babies, I only felt that face busting pushing feeling (that might lead to black eyes) when they were telling me to "push!push!push!" but never when I just let my body lead. Could this possibly happen if you are just pushing "with" your body?


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## Care Lee (Feb 12, 2009)

nak

ive heard of this happening, but i didn't have the experience of pushing that hard...i let my body move my babies down and out and ionly aid the pushing a couple times at the end. however, i didnt push when mw said i could. i waited till the baby was almost out. i cant really imagine pushing so hard to burst my eye blood vessels. ouch.


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## luv-my-boys (Dec 8, 2008)

actually yes it can happen...blood vessels popping while pushing. It can also happen when you vomit or sneeze really hard. I was a nurse in an eye clinic and we would occassionally have a new mom in with that happen. Luckily its not serious, just cosmetically unappealing. It can happen even if you allow your body to push on its own. It has to do with the pressure and the blood vessels, some people are more prone to it than others. I suffered from hyperemesis during my pg and I broke blood vessels iall over my entire face..im became much sympathetic after that.


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## Say (Feb 19, 2009)

I had, not black eyes, but bruised puffy eyes. My husband joked that they were black, but I looked more like a bug had bitten my eyelids and they had gotten red and swollen. I had a sore and hoarse throat too (my midwives warned me I was exhaling too hard with sounds but I kept forgetting to try not to do it). I was pushing for two hours, and I pushed so hard at the end that I lifted my entire body off my bed. I've read about a lot of pushing experiences here, and mine wasn't quite as natural. My daughter was posterior and my body began violent, completely out of control pushing when I was in transition, and then when it was time to push, the urge faded somewhat. I _had_ to lay partly on my back to cope with the pain which probably didn't help. My midwife didn't quite coach me, she just said 'let's try a few pushes' and I kept pushing from there. I kept trying to push three times during contractions - I guess it was a magic number for me.

This was my first. Pushing was very, very, very hard work. I hope next time it goes a little easier. I didn't want many mom and baby photos for the first two or three days because of my eyes! That was a bummer in retrospect.

(Edit: My daughter came out posterior and then did a complete 180 in the birth canal before the rest of her body emerged. Her cord was around her neck once and then under one armpit and over one shoulder so she was trapped in weird position. She also never extended her head properly. I'm not a professional mw, but I think all these things made pushing her out more difficult. I'm always curious about the pushing experiences of other women with posterior babies, especially if anyone else experienced almost violent pushing while in transition. My body was pushing so hard that I was throwing up at the end of each push.)


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## SaraC (Jan 11, 2002)

I get this when I throw up and I look like I have two black eyes. It did happen with DD#1 I think simply b/c I pushed for a very long time at home before I transported. Plus I vomited a lot during her labor. It usually goes away in a few days for me. I am very fair skinned so I wonder if that has anything to do with it?


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