@CoffeeMonkey
Also found this quite therapeutic & feel it’s important to have more awareness around & understanding of c sections - both for pregnant women as a possibility for planned & emergency sections & also for family & friends for recovery.
Just out of interest, did anyone else feel once they hit the ‘magic 6 week recovery’ mark that it seemed almost like some family & friends forgot you just had major surgery? Eg expecting you to drive long journeys, have full days out, not really asking about your pain/ recovery/ tiredness? Maybe for some women they feel really well recovered after 6 weeks but 10 weeks on I still have some pain & tiredness & just need to be a bit careful not to overdo it, but a lot of my family & friends don’t really seem to think of this.
Not so much during my last section (I've had two) due to Covid and not really being able to go anywhere/do anything (I had my baby over the first lockdown), but definitely during my first.
I found my first section, which was an emergency, to be an absolute bitch to heal. It took me at least 4 weeks to even walk properly and not semi stooped over. I struggled immensely for weeks after. People did forget about this and honestly after the first month no one asked me how I was doing in regards to the section. It was old news by then.
I'll always find the whole c section thing utterly bizarre, though. When you go into any hospital for any operation, you sign the consent forms, you're briefed, have the operation and then you're left alone to recover other than the odd physio session depending on the operation. You're at home for a couple of weeks where you're literally
told to take it easy and at most, move around a little bit very gently. So all these people post op go home and set up camp in bed with the odd potter around the house and perhaps a short walk outside once a day.
When you have a c section you'll have been barely out of the operating theatre for 2 hours before some grumpy midwife is barking at you to get up, and no they will not help you lift/get to your baby. One will tell you to ring the bell to help you to get to the toilet for the first time... yet when you do, another midwife will answer the bell and look at you like you have 3 very entitled heads. You'll be poked and prodded, and judged if you aren't seen to be skipping around the ward. So you lie and pretend you feel fine, to get out of the hell hole you've found yourself in, as long as baby is ok.
You go home, and you remember you've been "told" not to lift anything, yet you
have to. So by day 3 post op, you're lifting the baby multiple times per day. By day 7 post op, you're probably lifting the pram, washing baskets and everything else.
You're guilt tripped for staying home with the baby. You haven't had a single day to actually just lie down and recover. You just have to get on with it. Yet if it was
any other single operation, everyone would be around telling you to rest and put your feet up.
It's really fucking shit. Most people's partners are back at work by week 3 and most of the time, us who have had sections are still in pain, worried about healing, worried about baby in some capacity (feeding, weight gain, the list goes on) and surviving on little to no sleep.
It genuinely is no wonder so many women who have c sections go on to suffer from PND. In no other world would that level of expectation post surgery be seen as acceptable. Yet women, with hormone imbalances post partum and a newborn are
expected to just deal with it.
And, I know I ended up picking an elective section for my second. It might seem utterly baffling as to why, considering my previous remarks. But honestly, my first birth experience was so utterly exhausting and traumatic (hours of labour, got to the pushing stage and then my baby got stuck so had to do the section to get her out in time), I figured I'd at least cut out the first period of sheer upset and exhaustion and just skip to the pain of recovery stage instead.
My elective section was much easier to heal from (I personally feel it was due to my body going through much less stress beforehand) and by week 3 I did genuinely feel "ok". Not amazing, but ok. But this is how I feel a lot of midwives treat
all sections. I got the impression from so many of them that they thought I was lying about how much pain I was in, first time round. Of course, it couldn't have been anything to do with them frequently forgetting to give me pain relief.
I learnt a lot from my first section, and not a lot of it was positive. I went into hospital to have my second with a mindset of 'as long as the baby is ok you lie through your teeth of how you're feeling. You force yourself out of bed and make yourself seen to be walking around, seemingly unscathed. You force yourself to pee enough so they don't need to recatheritise you. It doesn't matter if you're in the toilet on and off the whole night, you do it. You have to do it, because it's only when you return home you'll actually
A) Get a few hours sleep as opposed to none
B) Have someone help you to the bathroom without judging you
C) Have privacy and be able to bond with baby privately rather than having those god awful blue curtains whipped open every single fucking day so they can stare at you like you're an animal on display at a shit zoo
D) Not be woken up at 6.30am by someone wheeling around a fucking trolley asking what you want to eat 8 hours later
Haha, I guess from that awfully long rant you can see that I certainly did suffer from PND twice. But, back to the point- the app would be quite helpful. If there's anything available to reduce worry even about one tiny thing, I'd take it. C sections are hard. Anything to make them easier would be worth it.