Did anyone else find post C-section pain relief woefully inadequate?
I had an emergency caesarean 6 weeks ago and now the dust has started to settle I am starting to feel really bloody angry about the “pain relief” (I feel like it’s a joke even calling it that) I was offered in the first few days.
Paracetamol and ibuprofen. Fucking headache tablets. In the first 3 days I’d describe them as “taking the edge off slightly”. Very slightly. Laying down I was mostly OK, but any attempt at movement caused excruciating agony.
My baby then got taken to the NICU and I couldn’t even go and see her for 18 hours because even just trying to get out of bed and into a wheelchair was unbearable agony. Eventually (after 18 hours and a couple of failed attempts) I made a mammoth effort to push through the pain because I really wanted to see her, and I finally managed to get into a wheelchair and see her (no joke, it took nearly 30 minutes just to stand up and sit in the wheelchair).
I gave birth to my first baby vaginally with just gas and air, and I would describe the pain of trying to get out of bed in the first 2 days after my c-section as being worse than the worst pain I felt during that vaginal birth. Every centimetre I moved felt as though I was being cut open again.
The (slight) effect of the paracetamol and ibuprofen wore off after 4 hours but you can only have it 4 times in every 24 hours, which left long gaps where I didn’t have any pain relief at all.
At some point on the second day I was offered oramorph, but only when I was lying on my back crying from the pain and begging for more pain relief - no one suggested it earlier when I was crying out in pain trying and failing to get out of bed to see my sick baby. But anyway, the oramorph did precisely jack shit anyway, didn’t even take the edge off. The paracetamol was more effective (I have since googled it and apparently I’m far from being the only person who is unaffected by oramorph). When I told the midwives the oramorph wasn’t affecting me they didn’t offer any alternatives, just kept offering more oramorph and telling me it’s supposed to be stronger than paracetamol (well that’s by the by if it doesn’t affect me, isn’t it...)
On top of that, the uterine contractions, stinging from those bloody blood thinning injections, plus twinges from the bloody cannula in my hand only made the already unbearable pain from the wound harder to deal with.
Meanwhile I had the NICU nurse keep on at me that I needed to express milk every 3 hours if I didn’t want my milk to dry up (which I really didn’t want it to as I REALLY wanted to breastfeed) but I was simply in too much pain to do it for the first 42 hours. Thankfully I was able to start on the third day and it didn’t affect my supply, but I could have done without that grief, and actual proper pain relief would have removed that problem.
At the time I didn’t know other painkillers existed, but now I’ve done some reading and spoken to other people and found out there are loads of other options, so I don’t understand why they couldn’t offer me them when what I was getting clearly wasn’t enough.
All I keep reading about is women who say they weren’t in any pain at all and were skipping around Tesco’s after 2 days.
But is there anyone else out there who thinks the pain relief was inadequate?
I’ve heard (conflicting) accounts that they can’t give stronger painkillers to breastfeeding mothers, but that would have been by the by given that, without them, I was unable to visit my baby to breastfeed her OR even express colostrum for her anyway, so if that was their reasoning then it was counterproductive.