If you are afraid of c section...

Hi everyone, almost exactly a year ago I had my baby girl via c section. I was petrified and feeling robbed of having to labor naturally. I went as far as having external cephalic version to try and move my baby head down, just for her to kick and resume her breech position. I kept thinking about my one and only other surgery experience I had (nothing to do with birth) and recovery being awful-and shudder at a though what a major abdominal c section was going to do to me.

Now a little bit of how it went, first they roll you into OR, the anesthesiologist comes and does a spinal block-from what I heard it’s a pretty big needle-but if you don’t look and try and think about your baby that you are about to meet-it’s a less than a 30 second placement, and then they quickly roll you onto your back because you loose feeling VERY quickly. The curtain comes up, the doctor will-assumably-poke you and ask you if you feel anything-which you won’t-in fact my arms felt a bit numb at that point. And then enter this surreal feeling-you know what’s happening-at this point I was still so scared all I wanted to do was cry hysterically but was holding myself back because all I could think of was-my stomach jiggling from it-which couldn’t help the surgeon much. The nurse that sat near my head was doing her job of trying to keep me distracted by asking me question and keeping my focus away from what was going down in my lower half-I knew she didn’t care if this was my first or about our nursery but I was grateful for distraction. Meanwhile physically my body felt as if I was floating in the pool-I didn’t feel pain or even pressure that many describe-only my body swaying from the motion of what was being done to me. Less than 10min later I heard-that a baby is out and then I held my breath until I heard that sweet baby cry. As soon as I heard that cry I felt my whole body relax (even though I don’t even know if that was possible) and knew everything was going to be ok. I didn’t need nurse to keep me distracted-all my attention was now on my baby that I couldn’t wait to hold. Second half of me being put together felt like it took much longer but it’s probably simply because I couldn’t wait to get out of that OR and hold my baby to my chest.

I had my baby at 11 am, by that evening I asked to get out of bed for a walk-it wasn’t easy and it was painful but I’m glad I did-the sooner you get out of bed and start walking the faster you will heal. I did ask for something for pain-to keep ahead of pain, which I thought it was a prescription strength painkiller but turned out they were giving me some extra strength Tylenol’s, but it did the trick of helping me manage and get out of bed more often.

I would say by the time my daughter was 1 week old (4 days after being discharged from hospital) I was 50% back to normal and didn’t need pain killers, by her 2 week appointment I was at 75% and managing her myself pretty easily, week three 99% with just occasional stab of pain-from turning wrong or standing up too quick.

At first I did feel disappointment of not being able to experience natural birth, but I do believe everything happens for a reason and have I not gotten my c section things could’ve went very different-I might not even be holding my baby right now, who knows?

So anyone who is worried like I was, I hope this reaches you and gives you some sort of peace ☺️

PS another added bonus that didn’t even cross my mind at the time-but after reading an article on 4th degree tears and the pain and suffering women go through trying to recover from that (sometimes for years), I am so grateful to the moon and back that my vajay is the same shape and size from pre birth.