Difference between c-section stomach and any other stomach?
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My first C-section was an emergency and second was planned. Two totally different experiences.
But my doc was amazing. It's right that they don't cut through muscle but they have to move it to get the baby out. I said it wrong on my previous post. My doc found that difficult with me. Then, she said that because I so evidently put lots of hard work in those muscles, she put a stitch in to help them stay together properly while healing (which is not something they do automatically).
Recovery can be difficult but being fit prior to and during pregnancy makes all the difference (as well as the birth itself - again emergency vs planned are two different things).0 -
crazyjerseygirl wrote: »crazyjerseygirl wrote: »If you want to laugh about all this: after my 2nd c-section, my OB kindly informed me he used dermabond to glue me back together. GLUE. He said I would have to gently roll away the excess glue myself. I decided I would go to the grave with that glue - I am way too squeamish for any of that - he wanted me to like, TOUCH the incision area?? Somehow it is all gone years later
Ah yes, the glue. It's not so strong as they made it out to be. I had been on bed rest for a month so when the spinal wore off I was like "*kitten* yeah, WALKING!" So I walked the hospital for HOURS hipped up on pain medication.
I popped the glue. Just in one corner but I was freaking the *kitten* out. The doctors just rolled their eyes at me though.
If I wasn't already done with having children, I WOULD BE NOW.
I'm actually contemplating a second. CAN YOU IMAGINE?!?
I'd probably have another section as well. I'll tell em to glue me extra good!
Can I have some extra glue in a to-go container? Thanks!
Lol. They sent me home with so many other supplies (cold packs, mesh undies, etc.) Seems like a dab of glue could be added to the bin.
My first c-section was an unplanned emergency. I was a full grown adult, yet didn't realize that I would STILL need the mesh undies and pads...evidently you still bleed!
Yeah it seems like if you have to deal with an incision site you shouldn't also have to deal with the other recovery issues.0 -
NobodyPutsAmyInTheCorner wrote: »
There you go. That's what I'm currently stuck with. I've still got a long way to go in terms of my stomach but mine has always hung over since having a section 10 years ago. My stomach muscles at the bottom are shot. No feeling there either. So there you go
This is truth. I've had 2 c sec in 2 yrs and have that wonderful flap lol. I was about 135 before kids and had flat stomach. Hate to say but the c sec ruined stomach and nothing has helped so far. Pretty sure a tummy tuck is the only way
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crazyjerseygirl wrote: »crazyjerseygirl wrote: »If you want to laugh about all this: after my 2nd c-section, my OB kindly informed me he used dermabond to glue me back together. GLUE. He said I would have to gently roll away the excess glue myself. I decided I would go to the grave with that glue - I am way too squeamish for any of that - he wanted me to like, TOUCH the incision area?? Somehow it is all gone years later
Ah yes, the glue. It's not so strong as they made it out to be. I had been on bed rest for a month so when the spinal wore off I was like "*kitten* yeah, WALKING!" So I walked the hospital for HOURS hipped up on pain medication.
I popped the glue. Just in one corner but I was freaking the *kitten* out. The doctors just rolled their eyes at me though.
If I wasn't already done with having children, I WOULD BE NOW.
I'm actually contemplating a second. CAN YOU IMAGINE?!?
I'd probably have another section as well. I'll tell em to glue me extra good!
Can I have some extra glue in a to-go container? Thanks!
Lol. They sent me home with so many other supplies (cold packs, mesh undies, etc.) Seems like a dab of glue could be added to the bin.
My first c-section was an unplanned emergency. I was a full grown adult, yet didn't realize that I would STILL need the mesh undies and pads...evidently you still bleed!
Yeah it seems like if you have to deal with an incision site you shouldn't also have to deal with the other recovery issues.
I know, it was so unfair!!0 -
I had a bit of a scar tissue problem, because I ripped out the stitches on one side of my incision... Less than a week after my 'section, I got a pretty epic case of norovirus and had an uncontrollable hard-core abdominal workout. >_< It got better eventually, but for a while the scar (and fat distribution) was a bit uneven. I am pretty active, generally, and the scar tissue eventually broke up/stretched out/relaxed/whatever, and 5 years out, you can only see that the scar is really faded on the "good" side and really dark (and still has stitch/staple marks) on the "bad side."0
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Tell you what the worst thing is for me? The damn itching. It still itches now even after 10 years.
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I'm new to mfp and this caught my attention. I've had three children all by c-section. It was only after the third surgery 11 months ago that I developed a little pooch at the scar. I hate it. My goal is to lose the last 10lbs but more importantly to tone up that area. It's almost lopsided. Does anyone have any suggestions? Does it ever go away?
Mine is lopsided as well. If the surgeon doesn't close you up perfectly straight, I think you're just screwed.0 -
I don't have kids, but had a surgery much like a c-section (removal of a 5 lb tumor that was my left ovary), so the cut was pretty much the same, just longer a longer surgery. The doc even said once it was just like doing a c-section, just more involved once he was in there.
They did a vertical incision on me. Before the surgery I had been using a rowing machine at home pretty hot and heavy. I wasn't anywhere near my optimal weight, but was in decent shape. After recovery, I hit the rower again pretty hard.
End result is that I had a a stomach before and after the surgery, but it wasn't any larger after the surgery. It got quite a bit smaller, but part of that was just the removal of the problem itself. So, if you're worried and you like to work out, try out a rower. It's a great workout and will strengthen up that area over a reasonable amount of time.0 -
NobodyPutsAmyInTheCorner wrote: »Tell you what the worst thing is for me? The damn itching. It still itches now even after 10 years.
Yes! Weird isn't it0 -
Now I feel guilty about having good healing. People only know I have a scar when I tell them.
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I had a c section 18 months ago. Up until a few months ago I would have agreed that c section stomachs do have a little extra fat... but now, with my calorie deficit and fat loss, I think there is no difference. But that's just my body.0
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PeachyPlum wrote: »
*hork*
I take it all back. If I'm having a kid, I'm doing it the right way - by stealing one out of a jogging stroller at Williams-Sonoma.
I really needed a laugh this afternoon, and this did it! haha0 -
It can take up to two years for the muscle to completely recuperate.0
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I've had 3 c-sections in the span of 3 and half years. I think I had good surgeons because my scar is hardly noticeable - it's been almost 2.5 years since my last one. The scar tissue beneath the skin has gone away and the numbness has gone away too.
I did lose all my pregnancy weight after each one and only gained 25-32 pounds each time so that may have helped. What I do have is that stretched out look even though my stomach is fairly flat. Oh and lots of fine white lines (stretch marks) all across my stretched out looking stomach. So I will never bare my tummy again. Not that I would at my age anymore 0 -
Three C-sections in the vertical position (my first C-section was in 1974, when they did the up and down one). This was taken at age 49 with my youngest son who was in the air force at the time. This was in 2001, so I am a lot older now and my stomach does not look like this anymore, but it was age, not the C-sections. Everyone is different though. Some women with natural deliveries have pooches, some don't, maybe genetics have a lot to do with it all.
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PeachyPlum wrote: »Kind of threadjack, but related...
I'm childless, but I have C-section hips. Meaning that if hubs and I do ever have a sprog, that's going to be its only option for egress.
Based on what @jvs125 said, am I correct in understanding that having strong abdominal muscles in advance of the pregnancy is advantageous for recovery post-surgery? Like, I might want to do some extra core work with that in mind?
How do you know you have csection hips? It's what's on the inside that counts. I have very narrow hips and had 4 children one of whom weighed 9lbs 11 oz naturally.
This. You can have narrow hips but have a wider pelvic opening than someone with wider hips. It's not that simple.
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They rarely do vertical now, even in emergencies. It's reserved for need to get them out right this second type of emergencies.0
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NobodyPutsAmyInTheCorner wrote: »
There you go. That's what I'm currently stuck with. I've still got a long way to go in terms of my stomach but mine has always hung over since having a section 10 years ago. My stomach muscles at the bottom are shot. No feeling there either. So there you go
I've had 3 c-sections, and my pouch is much, much worse than this. It will never go away on its own, I'd need surgery to correct it. There is nerve damage there for me as well - no feeling at all in that area.0 -
I didn't have a c/s but still have the flap. Lucky f-ing me. My skin just is really prone to not being very elastic and carrying a huge child stretched me out. It's just the luck of the draw. And I had a so-called medical professional try and caution me into a c/s because my hips were too wide. Go figure that one. You ladies who went through that, though... I have mad respect for all of you.0
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spatulathumbs wrote: »I didn't have a c/s but still have the flap. Lucky f-ing me. My skin just is really prone to not being very elastic and carrying a huge child stretched me out. It's just the luck of the draw. And I had a so-called medical professional try and caution me into a c/s because my hips were too wide. Go figure that one. You ladies who went through that, though... I have mad respect for all of you.
I'm another non csectioner who has a big flap. I'm (im)patiently waiting to see how much it decreases. My daughter was not big (7lbs 2oz) but my stomach was crazy big when I was pregnant. Add to that being overweight before pregnancy and not losing weight for almost 7 years afterward. Boo.0 -
spatulathumbs wrote: »I didn't have a c/s but still have the flap. Lucky f-ing me. My skin just is really prone to not being very elastic and carrying a huge child stretched me out. It's just the luck of the draw. And I had a so-called medical professional try and caution me into a c/s because my hips were too wide. Go figure that one. You ladies who went through that, though... I have mad respect for all of you.
I'm another non csectioner who has a big flap. I'm (im)patiently waiting to see how much it decreases. My daughter was not big (7lbs 2oz) but my stomach was crazy big when I was pregnant. Add to that being overweight before pregnancy and not losing weight for almost 7 years afterward. Boo.
Yeah, I know I gained too much with him, but he was over 11 lbs. No GD or anything, just a big ol' baby. I should've taken better care of myself but the first year after he was born I had so many health issues, I was mentally and emotionally just wrung out. It was harder than I thought and I didn't really set myself up to succeed. Which I think a lot of us, maybe, can relate to. And I think mine is exacerbated by some previous surgeries which left scar tissue in the area, so my flap is worse on one side.0 -
spatulathumbs wrote: »spatulathumbs wrote: »I didn't have a c/s but still have the flap. Lucky f-ing me. My skin just is really prone to not being very elastic and carrying a huge child stretched me out. It's just the luck of the draw. And I had a so-called medical professional try and caution me into a c/s because my hips were too wide. Go figure that one. You ladies who went through that, though... I have mad respect for all of you.
I'm another non csectioner who has a big flap. I'm (im)patiently waiting to see how much it decreases. My daughter was not big (7lbs 2oz) but my stomach was crazy big when I was pregnant. Add to that being overweight before pregnancy and not losing weight for almost 7 years afterward. Boo.
Yeah, I know I gained too much with him, but he was over 11 lbs. No GD or anything, just a big ol' baby. I should've taken better care of myself but the first year after he was born I had so many health issues, I was mentally and emotionally just wrung out. It was harder than I thought and I didn't really set myself up to succeed. Which I think a lot of us, maybe, can relate to. And I think mine is exacerbated by some previous surgeries which left scar tissue in the area, so my flap is worse on one side.
I found the same time period super difficult. She was an easy baby and my husband was/is great and supportive but (whisper voice) I'm not a big fan of the baby stage. It seemed like something clicked and got much easier as soon as she hit 2 though.
When I was pregnant our shower stall had sliding doors. Every morning I would try to fit through the opening without hitting the door or frame. It was like a life sized version of Operation. And every morning I would run into it with my giant stomach, which was super sensitive to the touch. Ugh I hated those doors but I laugh about it now.0 -
UNLESS YOU ARE DEFORMED, there is no way to know whether you have to have a C-section due to mechanics (baby getting stuck, whatevs) before you go into labor. C-sections almost never have to do with the anatomy of the mother alone. @#$#@ OB/GYNs need to keep their stupid mouths shut because they're talking out of their rear ends. It's no truer than whether you carry high or wide determining what kind of baby you will have, boy or girl.
Adhesions from C-sections can go through all tissue layers. They can adhere to intestines, causing extreme pain with movement. In the uterus, they can cause permanent infertility. There are treatments for adhesions that lessen the problems between layers (but none can restore fertility very effectively). This involves endoscopic surgery to clean out the scar tissue. It can reoccur unless a special medical-grade silicone spray is used to encourage the layers not to stick again during healing. (Had a friend with a mother with reoccurring adhesions--this was the final solution to get it to repair correctly.)
Vertical cuts of all types don't heal as well or as strongly as horizontal cuts across the body, so extreme emergency C-sections usually cause more damage and more problems down the road.
Just moving around while the C-section is healing does NOT fully prevent adhesions. I have endometrial adhesions that sometimes grow and act up, and it's not linked to my activity levels. It seems to be something you're either prone to or not.
I don't personally have a C-section scar.
There is no way to prevent needing a C-section, but there are ways to reduce its probability. Get pregnant at a healthy weight and gain only 20-30lbs during pregnancy and monitor for diabetes of pregnancy and control it aggressively if you have it. This alone slashes your first C-section probability by about half. It also GREATLY reduces the chances of your undercarriage getting seriously damaged during vaginal birth.
If you're doing fertility treatments, be conservative about the possibility of multiples. Multiples almost always equals prematurity and C-section--it's not ideal for any of you.
Stay in good shape, if you can. (I could for my second--couldn't for my third. What a DIFFERENCE that made as far as ease of labor!) If you're in early labor and get woken up by it and can go back to sleep, from personal experience, this will make later labor much easier. Mother's ability to push, which depends on her physical reserves, can be a factor.
Don't go into the hospital until your labor is well underway, following the guidelines of your doctor. If you go in very early labor, you'll be more likely to be told that your labor is too long regardless of the stress (or complete lack of stress) on your baby because you're there too long.
If you are being pushed to have a C-section, make sure it's not shift-change C-sections. If your OB/GYN has a practice where whoever attends the birth can go home and be replaced by whoever comes next, you'll be less likely to get a C-section for reasons of the OB's convenience (conscious or unconscious).
Delaying an epidural or other pain killer also show positive effects in reducing C-section frequency.
Having your first kid without a C-section enormously reduces your chances of having a C-section for later kids. But emergencies can happen to anyone. Breech births can happen to anyone, and delivering breech vaginally is dangerous and, in some positions, simply TOO dangerous to do. Rarely but seriously, dystocia can occur with even a normal-sized baby with a woman who has had normal births before. (This is more common with sunny-side-up babies but can happen with the normal face-down position, too.) The baby could also have a birth defect that makes vaginal birth too risky. You can suddenly develop pre-eclampisa without being high risk due to controllable factors. Or the baby could go into serious, sudden distress for unknown reasons. (A "cord around his neck" doesn't cause a baby distress in normal circumstances. The cord moves downward with the placenta during birth, it does NOT get tighter. A knot in the cord, if it is tight, can cause death, but if someone blames a stillbirth on a "cord around the neck", your OB/GYN really has no idea why it happened and is blowing smoke.) Placental abruption, placenta previa, and amnoitic embolism can all require C-sections (and in the third, in all likelihood, you'll die--INSANELY rare and unpredictable), and only previa can usually be seen before labor begins. If the baby's head isn't engaged, which is most likely in women who have either had no kids or a WHOLE lot of kids, the cord can prolapse, and that instantly needs a C-section or the baby can die. I know a woman who had an unmedicated C-section after a very precipitous labor with prolapse. YIKES. She'd had 6 normal vaginal births before.
And you can do everything absolutely WRONG and still have an uneventful vaginal birth. It's all about probability. 0 -
Maybe the vertical/horizontal is simply down to the surgeons preference like a lot of surgeries? My emergency c section was horizontal (UK).
EXTREME emergencies are usually the only ones that are vertical these days. The mom I knew who had to have the C section before the pain killers hit was vertical. She's one of the only ones I know with a vertical C-section these days.
Vertical C-sections greatly increase the chances of uterine rupture (your uterus bursts, and you often bleed to death before you can get help, even if you are in the hospital), so they don't like to do it. Having more than 6 kids also raises the chances of uterine rupture, BTW.
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I had two and my stomach looks normal. I think like anything, everyone is different.0
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This is what they did to me... I was terrified, but honestly, removing the stitches a week or so later did not hurt that much... Well, I gave birth in a very poor place with virtually no medical supplies (forget about analgesics, damn it, there was not much heat there as far as I remember!), but very good doctors and nurses... I am glad they had threads to stitch me up at all!I had a vaginal birth and had a few (not too many) stitches afterward. As the doctor was stitching me up I asked him if I'd have to have them removed later. I can remember him saying "Oh god, no. That would be a terrible thing to do to a new mom!"
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NobodyPutsAmyInTheCorner wrote: »Tell you what the worst thing is for me? The damn itching. It still itches now even after 10 years.
Oh my god the damned itching! Pure hell!! My c-section was three years ago, and they closed me up with Steri-strips. Yeah, f*cking TAPE!!! Let me tell you, seeing those things hanging and falling off is traumatizing. Oh, and I have the "shelf" too
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Steri-strips, really? I had them with my two abdominal surgeries (gallbladder and appendix both outtahere!) but can't imagine it for an incision as long as my c-section scar. Then again, I had staples that were removed about 24 hours later so what do I know?raelynnsmama52512 wrote: »NobodyPutsAmyInTheCorner wrote: »Tell you what the worst thing is for me? The damn itching. It still itches now even after 10 years.
Oh my god the damned itching! Pure hell!! My c-section was three years ago, and they closed me up with Steri-strips. Yeah, f*cking TAPE!!! Let me tell you, seeing those things hanging and falling off is traumatizing. Oh, and I have the "shelf" too
Between the sets of scars for each of those surgeries plus the c-section scar, I look like Frankenstein's monster in the middle. Unfortunately for the people at the beach and the pool, I don't let them stop me from wearing bikinis.
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@MamaBirdBoss Thank you for sharing your insight! If you don't mind me asking, are you a medical professional? You obviously know a lot about all this!0
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