Zari's first nursing

This is about 10 minutes after my daughter, my first baby, was born at home. It was a planned unassisted birth. She was born in our bathroom (I was half-kneeling, half-squatting), and then we moved into our bedroom to snuggle and nurse.

Since many people aren't familiar with the typical sights of a newborn, let me clarify a few things:
1) When babies are born, there is often a bit of blood that comes out. That's why you see a little blood on her head and on my chest and chin (from when I picked her up and snuggled her). No, I wasn't beat up or bruised or anything else of the sort., as some people have wondered..it's just normal birth fluids!
2) You can see the vernix on her body--it looks like white cold cream. It protects the baby's skin when they're still inside the amniotic sac. After birth, it absorbs into the skin like lotion.




3) Her head shape is nothing to be alarmed about. Baby's heads often elongate when they are being born. This is normal and is meant to happen to allow babies to be born. The plates of the skull aren't fused, and they move and slide over each other during birth. Within a few hours, and definitely within the first day or so, the head returns to its normal shape.
4) She is still attached to the placenta, which has not been born yet. Towards the end of this video, you get a brief glimpse of the umbilical cord, which is still full and pulsing. We cut the cord about 2 hours after she was born so I could pass her off to my husband and push the placenta out.

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