Monday, July 9, 2012

The Big C

As I’m still recovering from the c-section I had last Monday, I thought I would quickly jot down some of the big differences I’ve noticed since my other three were all born naturally.

  • C-sections hurt. A lot. Now, giving birth in any way is going to be painful and to think otherwise is just silly, but giving birth via surgery equals major recovery. After giving birth vaginally, I would maybe be down for several hours before being able to walk on my own, but with the cesarean, I wasn’t even out of bed at all until well over 24 hours and the pain standing up…holy crap. I was so ready to get out of that bed though that I would have done just about anything when it finally came time. I just wanted to stretch my back and legs so bad!
  • Since mine was also an emergency c-section, I wasn’t awake when Dakota made it into the world. That depresses me some because with each of my other babies I was able to hold them immediately after they were born. I don’t know that not being able to hold her right after birth is going to mean that she and I won’t have a special connection, but I do regret that I wasn’t able to have that initial moment with her.
  • Because you have to be in bed so long after surgery, they put these things on your legs to keep the circulation going (please excuse my ignorance, I have no idea what they’re called!). While at first they were kind of a welcome massage feeling, after wearing them non-stop for a few days, I was almost in a panic to get them off. The extra heat they provided was really unwelcome since I was burning up in the first place. I seriously was so hot that they turned the air all the way down in my room and had to give me a fan for my face. With all that in place, I was still sweating and miserable. Tony was so cold in the room that he needed blankets and a sweatshirt to keep warm and when the kids visited, they also brought sweatshirts! It got so bad that Dakota wasn’t able to maintain a normal body temp and they had to raise the temp in the room just so she wouldn’t be cold! I felt really bad about that. My body temp did eventually regulate, but I always kept that little fan blowing on my face and was rarely under any covers at all.
  • All liquid diet. Gross. The first two meals after my c-section were all liquid and they were equally gross. There was apple juice, orange juice, milk, coffee, plain cream of wheat, vanilla yogurt, etc. So, I guess it was a good thing I wasn’t hungry anyways…and lunch wasn’t any better except there was soup, which I think was the only thing I ate besides the vanilla yogurt.

There aren’t too many huge differences between having a baby one way or the other, but if I could choose, I would definitely go the natural route. Having a c-section was scary (for me) and it has really been a much longer road to recovery than I’m used to.

No comments:

April Fools Pranks

The two little kids made me laugh yesterday morning.  I was upstairs getting things ready for school when I heard them talking about how ...