Magnificent Mamas (Closed Group)

Brittony - I'd be happy to share some of my c-section experience with you, anything to help!

I'll start with a shopping list for you:

Liquid Dial Gold Antibacterial soap
Viva papertowel
Hair Blowdryer (if you don't already have one)
Milk of Magnesia
Gas X
Prune Juice
High Rise underwear (super sexy ones :laugh: )

If your body ends up being anything like mine, your stomach will sorta deflate like a balloon, and it will create a flap that hangs over your incision. It is hard to keep the incision clean and dry because it's skin to skin contact, but you wanna do the best you can, this is where the dial soap comes in. While your staples are still in, you'll wanna lather up your belly right above your incision with the soap and just let it run onto the incision, don't scrub/wash the actual area. Then let water run over it and rinse it all off. When you get out of the shower, you'll want to use your blowdryer to dry your incision. Keeping it dry is very important to it healing, so you'll want to blowdry it maybe 3 times a day. After I blowdried it I took a sheet of the viva papertowel (really soft and doesn't leave fuzzies) and sat it on the incision to soak up any remaining water and to make sure there wasn't any drainage.

The high rise underwear you'll want because you won't want ones that will be resting on your incision or even a little higher. Even the skin right above my incision was a little tender so the higher the underwear the more comfortable it was.

Now for everything else....when you're in the hospital they'll be asking you if you've farted yet, then they'll want a bowel movement. Surgery causes your GI tract to slow down and so do the pain medications that they give you. These 2 things along with the air that gets trapped in there when they do the surgery can cause some major complications. I didn't eat anything for 2 days straight so I never did go #2 at the hospital, but I did the day I got home. Everything was fine for a couple days and then BAM - HOLY painful!! :frown: I was backed up like traffic on the e-way after a semi-rollover. It was sooo extremely painful! First I tried the Gas X cause I thought it was gas, then I tried the milk of mag. I was having really bad diarhea and really bad left sided pain. It ended up that I had a bowel obstruction that was allowing loose stool to pass by it (and it was extremely painful when it did) but it wouldn't budge. I ate only soft foods for 3 days straight, drank a ton of water, took stool softeners, and still nothing. I ended up giving myself an enema :frown: and that finally got things moving. I would have those things on hand just in case, it is better to have them and not need them, than need them and not have them. I would suggest drinking a small glass of warm prune juice just to keep things moving and resorting to the others if you end up having trouble. Try to walk around in the hospital as much as you can and this will get your GI moving again too.

Getting your staples out doesn't exactly hurt, but it isn't exactly pleasant either :ohwell: Make sure you take your pain medication an hour before your appointment to have them taken out, this will help a lot!!

Make sure you tell hubby if there are any specific pictures that you want taken right after Emma is born. For instance, I wanted the picture of Josh on the scale so that youcould see how much he weighed in the picture, and I wanted a picture of them bringing him and showing him to me the first time. Thankfully myhubby just took pictures of everything :laugh: but if there is something specific you want be sure to tell him. Also make sure to tell the nurses just to pat her down and not bathe her if that is what you want, and tell them you want her brought to you in recovery immediately to breastfeed. This will help to form that bond and get her nursing successfully.

It can be a little bit overwhelming laying on that table awake and unable to feel the lower part of your body, but whatever you do don't panic! Otherwise they will knock your *kitten* out real quick. It is a sterile environment and if they think for one second that you're going to start flailing around and contaminating anything, they'll put you out and your recovery time will turn into like 5 hours and that's the first 5 hours of your daughters life that you'll never get back. Take deep breaths and stay calm.

Oh, and the hospital should give you a support band and it does help to hold things in place, especially in the car on the way home. And it doubles as a ghetto belly band lol.

This is all that I can think of right now, hope it helps!!

Ah... I'm so excited for you!!! Don't worry, everything will be fine. Can't wait to hear all about it and see pictures of sweet baby Emma!! Since I probably won't be on again before the 1st, good luck!!! I'll be praying for you!!