My Dream C-section

I better start this by being honest, I never really wanted a natural delivery…  I’ve wanted to write this post for the last 9 months but kept chickening out.  I know there are a lot of women out there who think natural birth is the cat’s meow, but I’m not one of them.  I respect those who feel that way but I just don’t.  Since I can remember I’ve had an all consuming fear of permanent damage to my lady bits from pushing out a baby, specifically loss of bowel control.  I need to be clear that I was never scared of the actual pain (if anything that would be the one reason I would want a natural delivery, to brag that I did it pain med free) just the long term damage.  I feel like infertility took away a lot of my dignity and I just wasn’t ready to lose control of my bodily functions to top it off. 

I wasn’t necessarily planning to do an elective C-section but I definitely rejoiced every time they found another reason why it was medically indicated.   So now that I’ve clued you in to my state of mind pre-C I can go on to tell you that I am SO glad I had one! 

I detailed the C section in my birthstory post, so I won’t go into detail on that except to say it was smooth and baby and I were both healthy.  The recovery part is where it gets good so I’ll start there.

I was a little surprised by how much pain I was in while in post OP, they had to give me a few doses of pain meds and one nice big one of Tor.odol, my favorite anti-inflammatory.  After a short while of warming up and time for the meds to kick in I was doing good.

The C-section was at 7:30 am on Wednesday, I rolled in to snuggle my little man just before 10 am feeling totally refreshed.  There is something to be said for getting a great night’s sleep before delivering!  We made our first attempt at breast feeding as soon as I got to hold him and he latched right on (I had been worried that 2 hours after delivery was too long to wait so it made me really happy to know it wasn’t.)

By 2 pm I was out of bed and walked to the bathroom on my own,  around 6 pm Blue and I went for a walk around the maternity ward.  I think it helped to push myself to be mobile right away.  We kept up with our walks several times a day until we went home and each time they got easier and longer.  We left the hospital at 4 pm Friday. 

Here are just a few post C-section milestones that I think are awesome!

·         3 days post – Last narcotic pain med (stayed on ibuprofen for 1 week)

·         4 days post – First walk around the neighborhood and post pregnancy sushi dinner out with Marek

·         6 days post – First hike

·         7 days post – down 25 lbs and could button my pre-pregnancy jeans over my scar

·         9 days post – Walked a 6k fundraiser walk for MS

·         2 weeks post – Barely remember I had a C-section



The whole family on our first hike, can you see the tiny white hat peaking out of Blue's wrap?

I realize my C-section isn’t exactly standard and I think a big part of why I recovered so fast was due to the fact that I didn’t labor at all before surgery but here are a few things that I think that helped…

·         Positivity!  I was totally OK with the C-section so I didn’t have any depression over not experiencing natural labor.  I know this can’t happen for everyone, but I would say try not to get too attached to your birth plan and focus more on the delivery of a happy healthy baby.

·         I slept the night before!  I took an am.bien that my doctor gave me so I could get a really good night’s sleep and be well rested to enjoy spending time with Marek.

·         I pushed to get mobile right away.  My OB told me the best way to avoid scar tissue build up is good blood flow to the incision site, so I got up and got moving ASAP.

So moral of the story, if you don’t relish the idea of pushing a human out of your lady parts you’re not alone and you don’t have to dread the horrible C-section recovery everyone tells you you’ll have.