Recovering from a C-section is recovering from major surgery.
Major surgery where you go home with a newborn baby to take care of.
Because of this, it is a complicated surgery to recover from. You're sleep-deprived, you have a new load of responsibility, you’re probably emotionally drained, you may be sore from labor, and you can hardly get out of your chair because your whole core has just been weakened.
After my C-section, five months ago, I have known quite a few friends and acquaintances who have needed to deliver their babies by C-sections. I am detailing what I have done for recovery in hopes that it may help someone else!
Early postpartum recovery (1-6 weeks)
Be gentle to your core - Yes the hospital tells you not to lift anything heavier than your baby but they really don’t give you a lot of ideas on what this may look like in your daily routine.
While you’re pregnant your abdominal muscles function differently. After having the baby you need to rehab these muscles to learn how to work properly again after pregnancy. On top of this having a c-section makes it so you can’t activate your core muscles without a lot of pain. This puts your core in a vulnerable place. If you lift something heavy (this includes anything even as light as 8 pounds), your core is not able to brace itself in the proper way and you may injure your abdominal muscles further. Your incision is also healing and needs plenty of weeks without any added load.
Keep in mind that “not lifting anything heavy” is a much broader category of items than you may guess. Such as you should not carry your baby in their car seat because no matter how light the car seat is you are adding extra weight to the weight of your baby.
It can be hard to stick to this rule when you so badly want to get back to normal life or do things for yourself but continue to ask for help until you are fully healed. It will pay off in the end!
Icing your incision. This is something that I didn’t do because I didn’t know about it soon enough but using ice on your incision for 15 minutes four times a day can greatly help with decreasing the inflammation and making you more comfortable.
Take a laxative if you are taking narcotics. Unfortunately, I had a very bad experience with this one. The hospital let me leave without me first having a bowel movement after two days of labor and two days in the hospital. I was put on narcotics for pain which further decreased the movement in my gut. I repeatedly asked what to do for constipation and they gave me some stool softeners which did absolutely nothing. By the third day after having my baby which was five days after labor started I couldn’t even eat due to the fact that I had gas pain from surgery and gas pain from constipation. I was able to resolve this using MiraLAX but had I thought to use something before it got so bad I would have tried to use some more natural alternatives in the beginning. This Dr. Shulze supplement is something I had on hand and should have taken right away had I thought about it.
Eat easy-to-digest foods - Before labor I read the book the first 40 days which talks about the need for your body to focus on recovering and healing as your organs move back to their original place after delivery. Because of this, you should eat easy-to-digest food which gives your body the ability to spend more time healing than digesting. This looks like a lot of broth, cooked vegetables (instead of raw), cooked grains like rice and oatmeal, and eggs.
Avoid foods that cause inflammation. This can be a tricky one when you are unable to prepare food for yourself and people are bringing meals to you (hopefully). While recovering from giving birth and surgery you want to especially avoid sugar, processed foods, gluten, seed oils (like soybean and canola), pasteurized milk, and any other food that causes excess inflammation.
Don’t be afraid to ask family members to prepare specific foods that you need for proper healing. If someone is organizing a meal train for you feel free to suggest recipes and give guidelines of what you are avoiding. People will be happy to help and if you supply them with a recipe that makes their job easier when they don’t have to think up what to make for you!
Take probiotics and give your baby probiotics - You and your baby had antibiotics during surgery so your gut microbiome is going to be wiped out! Normally when a baby is born their microbiome is populated when they pass through the birth canal and swallow fluid. This is how you pass your bacteria onto your baby. Unfortunately in a c-section, this doesn’t happen. Using an infant probiotic will help your baby establish their own gut microbiome. You taking probiotics will ensure you’re building back good bacteria and also providing good bacteria to your baby through your breast milk.
Mid recovery 6-12 weeks
Get used to touching your scar. It can be very emotional to look at or touch your incision so be patient without yourself and take it one step at a time. It is an important step though because these next tips for healing have to do with touching your incision.
Nerve desensitization - In surgery your nerves have been cut and they are beginning to heal back together. Sometimes this can result in different places around your incision feeling, funny, numb, or painful. Never desensitization is when you gently rub different pieces of fabric of different textures on the skin around your incision to help your brain make all your skin feel normal again. The nerves have to stop overreacting and return to responding in an appropriate way.
You can start to do this right away after surgery but I personally took a little while till I was able to touch anything close to my incision.
Scar massage - Scar tissue is a nasty thing. It continues to bind down from your skin to your organs and anything in its path. This can create all sorts of problems and prolonged pain. Doing 10 minutes of massage on your scar can greatly increase healing and help to loosen the binding effect that the incision site may have. Sesame seed oil can also help to lessen the amount of binding the scar does. Apply sesame seed oil one to two times a day.
For specific details on nerve desensitization and scar massage check out the c-section story highlights on the Instagram page Expectant and Empowered. A pelvic floor physical therapist will also be able to work on your scar and show you how to massage it properly. Even though you may not have delivered a baby vaginally, pregnancy and c-sections still affect your pelvic floor and it’s a good idea to see a pelvic floor PT.
Continued recovery...
Be gentle without yourself and don’t overcommit - You may see other moms who had a natural delivery jump right back into normal life and start doing all the things again but please remember, you’re taking care of a newborn AND recovering from surgery at the same time. You may not be in intense pain anymore but your uterus is still healing. It takes 12 months for your nerves to heal after a c-section! So be gentle with yourself. Take as many naps as you can. Normally after major surgery people go home and sleep through the night but not you...you probably haven't slept through the night yet! So do all the catching up on sleep that you can.
Add in breath-focused exercises - Remember how I said your abdominal muscles function differently in pregnancy? Well, you also breathe differently in pregnancy. We tend to breathe through our chest more because there is a baby crowding our belly. You have to be intentional to retrain yourself after you’ve had the baby. C-section mamas also have a higher rate of diastasis recti which is when the abdominal muscles are separated and there is a weak gap in between them. To heal this you have to work on breathing properly and learning how to activate your core in the right way. Good resources I've found for specific exercises that help with this are The belle method on Instagram and Get mom strong.
Although I never in a million years saw myself as having the need for a c-section it has truly been a time of learning and growing in so many things that I would have never known had I not experienced it for myself. I hope my experiences can help others around me.
If you have unexpectedly found yourself to be a c-section mama I want you to know that your body is not broken! You’re not broken just because you weren’t able to give birth to your baby naturally. You’re not broken after surgery. There are ways to heal and improve! Having a baby through surgery is HARD, harder than labor in my opinion (I’m allowed to say that because I’ve been through 46 hours of unmedicated labor).
So mama you are a rockstar! You’re doing amazing. With diligence, you will heal and feel like yourself again!
