PostPartum Life (Part 1)

Disclaimer: this very vulnerable post will reflect my experience only. I am not a counselor, therapist, or doctor. Please seek help if you feel overwhelmed at any point with your own pregnancy, postpartum recovery, or mental health in general. 

This is the third blog entry on the #MomLife series. That does not mean this will be the last time I write about it, since, well, being a parent is kind of a life-long gig! As I write this our baby is past the 8 week mark and continues to grow healthily, for which I am grateful every day. This mark is important for two reasons: babies get their first immunization at 2 months, and also c-section recovery usually takes up to 8 weeks.  If you follow me on IG, you might have seen a couple posts about postpartum life, both physical struggles and mental struggles. This first post (Part 1) will cover the physical portion of my postpartum recovery and current postpartum life.

My baby was delivered by c-section after a long and very painful labour. Unfortunately in my case, pain management was very inefficient and I was in a lot of pain throughout. At the beginning it was tolerable, they started by providing me with morphine shots on my thigh, and as I progressed and dilated more and had stronger contractions they switched to using fentanyl via IV. In my own experience, I did not find the fentanyl to be strong enough to help me cope with the pain; I expressed this to the nurses and they gave me as much as they were allowed to, so I was maxing out on what I could be given. Due to the COVID, laughing gas (nitrous oxide) was no longer being given to labouring moms, so that option was not there for me  Just to give you some idea of how unpredictable the progress of labour is, it took me the same amount of hours (3) to dilate from 3cm to 6 cm as it took me to go from 6cm to 9 cm, but then I was stuck at 9cm for FIVE hours. If you aren’t familiar with what this means, a woman has to dilate to 10cm before being able to push baby out, and the more dilated you are (closer to delivery) the more painful and regular the contractions. Because I maxed out on the fentanyl and also because it wasn’t really doing enough for me, I was in the most excrutiating pain and I was very miserable. We tried an epidural, twice, and twice it failed. At one point I was told I was too far to even get the epidural, then my doctors argued about it and then they did try it but ended up failing. I remember clearly when my OBGYN came to check on me the 2nd time, I BEGGED him to please give me a c-section.  I literally said :”Please give me a c-section, or kill me. I cannot do this any longer”. You can see on my pictures a couple lines on my forehead; these are from the IV on my hand. When I had a contraction I would lay my head on my hand and I guess I pushed on it so much for so long it left those indentations…

See those 3 marks? that’s from the pushing on my hand!!

So I finally was approved for the c-section (which I had wanted all along btw) and within an hour I was in the OR getting tied down and cleaned up for show time. I will never forget the feeling of the spinal tab working: total bliss. I didn’t even feel the needle, just magic spreading in my body and taking the pain away. Less than an hour later baby was already out and cleaned and in daddy’s arms. I did not feel a thing, it was awesome! I knew a c-section was the right fit for me, and I had done a lot of reading on what to expect, the risks, and the recovery process. I also spoke with a lot of moms who had c-sections, so I was very well aware of the range of challenges I would face as I recovered. But like those moms told me, I have now to tell on to future moms who undergo a c-section: my journey only applies to me, yours will be unique, too. That means, don’t expect to experience the identical path of recovery as someone else, and definitely don’t compare your recovery to others, as it may lead you to become frustrated, to push yourself too hard, or to feel like you’re somehow a bad momma.

Doctors say it takes 6-8 weeks to recover from a c-section, and I knew from speaking to my mom friends that this range they give us is kept wide for good reason. Some of my friends were able to go grocery shopping within a couple of days, while others couldn’t even roll out of bed for 2 weeks. It really depends on your body, how the surgery went, and how active you were able to remain through pregnancy. In my case, I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I remember the first 2 weeks I definitely needed help getting out of bed– I could do it myself it was just suuuper painful. I was able to go on a 40minute walk 3-4 days after the c-section, so it became obvious that some activities were easier than others. I was lucky that my partner was physically at home for about 1.5 weeks after baby was born so he could help me a lot, but once he was back at work I had to fend on my own for another 4 weeks. It’s shitty because that first month is the absolute hardest in every way: physically, mentally, emotionally.

One day after, so happy I survived it

Everyone tells you “you just had major surgery, of course it will take time!”, but you don’t really understand what that means until you actually undergo it. I personally never had had any “major” surgery. I had a couple procedures done that required full anethesia, but nothing involving the same extent of work as a c-section. I watched a lot of instructional videos to sort of learn what the doctors would be doing, and its pretty cool but it still difficult to understand how that feels until it happens to you. When they cut you open to get baby out, modern medicine allows doctors to remove baby via a fairly small incision on your lower abdomen, and if you decide you’re brave enough to watch a c section video you will see what I mean! A HUMAN comes out of that long but narrow incision!!!! They have to cut through layers of skin, fat, nerves, and muscles to get to your uterus, then they take out a baby and your placenta and then stitch ya back close. DAAAAAAMN!!! So afterwards, both your nerve endings and your muscles are like WTF. Once you’re out of surgery and the spinal tab wears off, you immediately can tell just how wrecked you truly are. They tell you to try to avoid using your core muscles, and you quickly find out just how used we are to relying on those muscles for almost every movement of our upper body. It is very eye-opening, and also hard to not use muscles you did not realize you used on a daily basis and mostly on autopilot. But don’t worry, you get creative very fast with the use of your arms! Your legs also take a bit to fully wake up and you also learn how to move your legs while isolating your lower core and your obliques.

In the following 8 weeks, I had to be the most patient I have ever had to be with my body, almost more so than in pregnancy. The thing with c section recovery is that if you overdo it, you truly will cause a lot more damage than is worth it. You will increase your bleeding (vaginal bleeding which is normal), you could pull your stitches, and it hurts like sh*******. I could tell right away if I overdid it because of the pain I would feel, the toll it would take the following day, and the bleeding increasing. The more you rest, the faster you recover. But this is also a catch 22 scenario: you need to rest to get better and to produce milk, but you also have limited help at home so you have to do a lot around the house. Unless you are lucky enough to have a family member stay with you, a partner who can afford not to work, or a nanny/helper, you still have to do A LOT. Every little action takes a toll on your body at this stage: picking up baby from his crib, changing a diaper, breastfeeding, burping him, going to the bathroom, getting up/off the bed/couch/chair. Every movement is a challenge, but what option do you have? This all is made worse by the pandemic and in our case, it meant we did not have anyone else enter our home and my own mom was not able to come help me because the borders are closed down. So it sucks. Not only is it physically difficult and painful, it also affects your mindset.

While it hurt a lot to bend over, to pick up the laundry basket, to sit in the toilet, to put on my leggings…nothing hurt more than not being able to hold my son like I wanted to. This is the one thing I wish I was more mentally prepared for, so that is why I want to emphasize it here. Yes I obviously could hold my baby, and I had to in order to breastfeed, but his own weight (which at the beginning was only 7ish pounds) on my abdomen as I held him was SO painful. He also kicks and wiggles a lot when he feeds, so his tiny legs kicking my stomach were also very painful. Breastfeeding on its own was painful for a while (more on that later), and my back was on fire, so damn painful, from holding him. I’m talking about almost agonizing pain, almost as strong as labour. Many days I would sit there crying WITH the baby. I would cry while I breastfed him, I had pain on my abdomen, my back, and my breasts. When you are in that much pain, you start to resent the activity itself, and that broke my heart. So you’re now on this contradicting battle, you WANT to hold your baby cus you love him/her so much, but you’re also dreading every feed or diaper change because you know how exhausted you will be. Oh and then you have the sleep deprivation…

One of those nights where I had to feed him every 2 hours, I think I was getting 3 hours of sleep over a 24 hrs period…

They say sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture for a reason, because it works. It will break you like few things will break you. I did my master’s in Mech Eng while working and volunteering and living away from all of my family…and the amount of exhaustion I experience then is nothing compared to motherhood. The first month, I remember being so tired I wanted to puke and faint at the same time, I would cry for hours in frustration, I would feel my anger and impatience peak like never before. When you’re tired, you are less functional of course but you also lose a lot of the resiliency you would normally be able to have. You snap at your partner, your dogs, inanimate objects, yourself. Your baby will likely be up a lot and need to eat a lot and cry a lot. And the sound of an inconsolable baby at 3 am is its own torture. I don’t know why but its both devastating as a parent (cus you want baby to be happy and ok) and frustrating (because sometimes there is nothing you can do about it).  With time, you and baby will develop a pattern and things will be manageable, but it does take time and it is entirely unpredictable. How your baby feeds and sleeps is similar to the entire recovery process, it is very unique to you and it is dangerous to keep comparing yourself to others. Most days you feel like you’re just surviving from one feeding to the next, and it’s like you have nothing else in your life but baby duties, and that is super draining. You will likely forget to take care of yourself, which is why having support around you is so important. I would tell my husband to remind me to wash my face, brush my teeth, and shower.

Now we are past the first month so things are a lot better than they were. We have a semblance of a routine, though we still have days where baby simply is super fussy and we are just miserable all day. We have had to take turns staying up with him, we have had to go on hour-long drives in the middle of the night just to get him to calm down, we have had to call for help so that we can do things like take a nap, eat, or shower. We have seen baby cluster feed for hours at a time, and also stay awake for multiple hours which means we can’t leave his side for long. Your house will be messy, your laundry bin will overflow, you will run out of food and you will be swearing at each other when one of you drinks the last of the coffee pot. That’s just parenthood for now, but we are still madly in love with our little bean. I am still taking my antidepressant, a prenatal vitamin, and an iron supplement (my iron was so low after c section I almost needed a transfusion!), and I also take tylenol and advil for pain. I am still very tired, but I know it will be ok. I’m very slowly building up my strength, and this past week was the first time I was able to start holding baby for longer stretches of time (more than 5 min) without the excruciating pain! I was so happy that I actually cried!!!

This is after I cleared my tears, happiness tears. I felt like I could finally hold him and not suffer

So there you have it, that’s what it has been like for me and I know there is still a lot of exhaustion and sacrifice ahead, but at least I got the best partner to learn with. My next entry will cover the emotional side of this all, so stay tuned and as always leave me a comment or question if there is anything specific you’d like me to write about!!