I've had 2 sections, one an emergency after a long labour and failed forceps, the second more of an elective although it was the middle of the night and I was in labour.
For me, labour was 1000x more painful than recovery from either section, I have laboured in my back with both though. With my second, I had no pain relief whatsoever once the spinal wore off and it stung for a bit but nothing too bad. Got up in the postnatal ward, wandered about for a bit, went for a wee, looked at the childbirth related paintings. Got discharged the next day and we did around a 150 mile round trip to pick ds up from my in-laws and then to show my dm our dd as she can't drive. By day 2 went out for lunch and was dancing at Messy Church with our 3 year old that evening.
2 weeks in, I was walking the 3 mile round trip to collect ds from preschool pushing the pram.
For comparison purposes, the failed forceps bruising hurt more than the section recovery the first time and the second time, the mess they made of the cannula which they insisted on leaving in until just before discharge due to low iron levels hurt way more than the second time.
Dd is now 3 months old and most of my scar has faded to the point that you need to be really close to me to see it.
I think I'm probably on the extreme end of the recovery scale but most of my friends who have had sections have been up and about off pain meds pretty quickly too.
As for the actual section itself, they got dh to get ready first whilst we were chatting about stuff. He came in for the spinal (and held my shoulders). Once it worked, they helped me lie down, checked that I was numb and just chatted about random stuff. They dropped the curtain just before she came out and we got to watch which was weird but also absolutely amazing. They untangled her from her massive cord, let it pulse on my legs for a bit, cut it and then put her in a bassinet to pass to the midwife. The midwife rubbed her down quickly next to me, whilst the anesthetist pretty much ripped my gown off (I wasn't sure if I wanted skin to skin before hand) and then she was put on my bare chest wearing just a hat. They put a blanket over both of us and moved the screen thing down a bit further so there was plenty of room. Everything went pretty fast after that. Dd stayed there until we were done in surgery before being put back in the bassinet so I could be moved to the bed and then it was just off to recovery to wait for a postnatal bed. They did all dd's checks, vit K and measurements in recovery.