C-Sections: The Aftermath

Even though you are not having a C-section, if someone you know ends up having one, it might be useful to know what to expect in the aftermath. Full disclosure—I had a relatively easy recovery, so you may want to consult some medically trained expert-type people, or at least someone who has had more than one baby, for further details.

Your Blood Pressure: In the minutes immediately following surgery, your blood pressure may plummet. There are medical reasons for this that are perfectly normal and that I am too lazy to Google. You won’t necessarily know that this is happening—what you will feel is an intense, overwhelming desire to close your eyes and sleep. I thought this desire to pass out cold meant I didn’t love my baby and I was going to be a terrible mother. I have the capacity to generate a great deal of self-loathing in a short period of time. Turns out my BP was 80/40, and it remained that way for about an hour. I wish I’d known about the blood pressure drop and saved myself another year of therapy.

The Not Moving: You just had the baby you’ve been dreaming about for 40 weeks, and you can’t get out of bed to pick him up. You’re supposed to be a mother, a bastion of softness and cuddles, but you’re attached to machines and wires and there may be a tube up your hoo-ha to help you pee. This part is demoralizing, but it doesn’t last forever. The machines will recede, you will be walking upright in a few days, and in the meantime, your spouse will get pretty good at changing tiny diapers and scraping meconium off his wedding ring. 

The Gas: Of all the competing types of pain and discomfort in my newly postpartum body, the post-op gas pain was by far the worst. I felt like I had acid pooling in my shoulders and a fire-breathing dragon nestled in my spine. The gas relievers were about as effective as a sling shot in a nuclear war. Thankfully it only lasted about 48 hours. I have never been more excited to fart in public than I was on the second day after surgery.

Fifty Shades of Pain: In addition to gas pain, there is also the shrinking uterus pain, and the holy-shit-I’ve-been-cut-open pain, as well as a host of miscellaneous pains, like the “my insides have been temporarily removed and then replaced just slightly out of order” pain, or the “a human child tried to push its head through my lady bits but then got stuck in my pelvic bone for sixteen hours” pain. Your pain will be unique, but Hydrocodone is generic, so make sure you demand it at regular intervals and keep taking it at home. Your plan for a natural childbirth is already road-kill on the highway of reality; this is not the time to just say no.

There Will Be Blood: Because I am not especially good at science or basic logic, I briefly thought the one upside to having a C-section would be not dealing with the dreaded “lochia,” which is Latin for “pretty sure you’ll be wearing a maxi pad until your child is in second grade.” Of course I was wrong—the doctors are not considerate enough to scoop out all the blood and goop while you’re open on the table. Your baby may not have exited the old fashioned way, but everything else will.

Your First Post-Op BM: Much like it prepared for labor, your body may spend days or even weeks preparing for its first bowel movement after delivery. Eventually the need will become undeniable, so hand the baby to your spouse, grab a magazine and some Gatorade, and settle in for the long-haul. It could take hours, and you will feel like you are giving birth to a bag of rocks. There will be praying, cursing, and hysterical crying. You will do things that would shock your younger self, and you will never speak of those things to anyone again. When it’s all over, you will experience a wave of euphoria followed by intense exhaustion. Congratulations, it’s a poop.

The Scar: At first, the incision site may resemble something you’ve seen in those chain-emails your mom used to forward about co-eds going to Cancun for spring break and waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a kidney missing. Worry not—like your memory of childbirth, your scar will fade, eventually becoming a thin white line that your future teenager will barely be able to see when you demand she look at it after she calls you the b-word in front of her friends.

Written by: Kathleen

Babies come out where?

Walk into any group of moms of children under age five and say the words “C-section” and you’ll be greeted with the same averted eyes and awkward smirks as the parents whose babies have flat heads because they spent too much time in the Mamaroo while mommy fed her Pinterest habit. Telling a group of semi-strangers you have hemorrhoids is far more acceptable than telling them you had a C-section, even though, statistically speaking, one third of them probably had one, too. C-sections are the third rail of birth stories—the nice moms will express sorrow for your loss, the asshole moms will tell you why your lack of feminist fervor and maternal fortitude means your child will likely grow into an asthmatic sex offender with a severe peanut allergy.

I think the most adamant anti-“sectioners” have this image of a woman at 36-weeks pregnant, a martini in one hand and her epidural in the other, growing impatient that her 45 minutes of labor will make her late for the ballet. Even the more sympathetic naysayers, those who grasp the concept of the emergency C-section, seem to harbor the belief that if you were just empowered enough to ask the right questions and build a proper argument to present to your doctor, you could reverse the course of medical intervention and have a vaginal birth like mother nature intended.

If you are currently pregnant with your first child, you are probably in the sympathetic-naysayer camp. You know that sometimes C-sections are medically necessary, and you know that you yourself will not be having one. Your birth plan may be longer than your doctoral thesis, complete with hyperlinked references and a video clip from The Business of Being Born, or it may be jotted down in pencil on the back of a cocktail napkin, but it probably makes pretty clear your desire to push your baby out the ole’ lady canal. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with a C-section—your sister had one and yes, your nephew has a mild allergy to truffle oil and he gets a little wheezy during ragweed season, but so far he shows no signs of being aroused by corpses—it’s just that you plan to do things naturally, and you’re pretty sure you have an above-average tolerance for pain.

I pretty much felt the same way until my own labor experience, which did not involve theater tickets or arguing briefs before my medical team. I was in early labor for 48 hours and active labor for nine hours before I received an epidural. My contractions were perfect, my baby had been at zero station for weeks, but my cervix wouldn’t budge. It may have obliged us eventually, there is no way to know, but after my water broke there was nothing to keep the umbilical cord afloat, and it slowly began wrapping around my son like a boa constrictor. With every contraction, the snake squeezed tighter, and his heart rate began to indicate distress. My doctor explained the situation to me in a way that fit my particular view on nature and biology: My baby was communicating with my body, telling it that he couldn’t come out that way and it needed to keep the door shut. With his heart rate decelerating rapidly, she presented the surgical option. It was my decision, and I didn’t hesitate. You won’t hesitate when your child’s health is in danger—you won’t in that first moment, and you never will again. When your baby is telling you what he needs, no force on Earth will stop you from giving it to him. There's a voice inside of you that says: “My life is no longer my own. I will do anything for you. I will die for you.” You forget about your birth plan because you know that it was never about you.

Despite my compelling tale of maternal strength and love, you probably still don’t want a C-section, and you are probably pretty sure you would’ve made it a few more hours without the epidural and ultimately had the blissful vaginal delivery of your dreams. I don’t blame you—I still second-guess myself, too. I don’t regret consenting to the C-section, but I do wish I hadn’t needed one, and I am currently working on the argument I will present to my doctor in favor of a VBAC the next time around. Just know that if your labor hits a detour or other unexpected bumps in the road, despite the statistics and the data and the regretful sighs of the other Gymboree moms, you will make the right decision for you and your child in the moment based on the information you have. You are a mom now, and that’s what moms do.

Labored by: Kathleen