(…And Other Things I Never Thought I’d Say.)
Over the weekend I was out celebrating the birthday of my friend Maurya (happy birthday, Maurya!), and we got on the topic of childbirth. I mentioned that, surprisingly enough, my still-recent-enough-to-be-memorable third c-section was actually kind of easy. She told me that I oughta blog about it since, well, you never hear that kind of thing. (And she’s right, seeing as I spent the prior nine months Googling things like “How often do women bleed out on the table during their third c-sections?)
So, here you go. The elusive I Kinda Dug My C-Section story. (And while we’re on the topic of c-sections, can we all agree to forever stop asking a post-op Mom if she’s sad she wasn’t able to deliver “normally?” Because- did she grow the baby for roughly 40 weeks? Is the baby alive and well in this world? Is the mother alive and well in this world? BOOM- NORMALCY.)
I’ll admit it; I hadn’t been stoked about my first c-section. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I wasn’t jiving on the idea of surgery, and I was a little mad at my breech baby for his/her choice of ribcage perch. (Here’s how I dealt with my imminent c-section back in ’09.) And the operation itself was…weird. Walking into a brightly lit (and beyond freezing) O.R. when nothing was actively wrong with me was one of the oddest sensations ever. It almost made me feel like if I turned and walked out onto the street, no one would make me have a baby. (You know, if I could find my clothes.) Prepping for the spinal was mentally terrifying. The surgery itself was like having slight pins and needles all over my body…if my body were submerged in a vat of rubbing alcohol. Recovery was kinda long, pretty painful, and I was alarmed to discover that we were now in charge of a miniature human.
Second c-section (so like, you know it couldn’t have been that awful if I willingly went another round): I knew what was coming and I had a vague idea of what it was like to bring home/care for a child for whom I was legally responsible. That said, I still had the terror concerning the ol’ spinal. And, not gonna lie, it didn’t feel great. (Although by now I was a pro at the whole “arching your back in a Pilates curl” thing. No small feat at nine months pregnant.) But aside from that and the I.V. prep (because seriously, those things are just the worst), the other parts weren’t so crazy bad. By now I knew when to ask for the drugs (often) and that, if I got up and walked around asap, I’d start to feel better asap. (Sure, it would hurt like the bejeebers and I’d be less than pleasant to be around, but the healing process would go a lot easier.)
Just hanging out, having my second child.
And then I was signed up for a third c-section. (Because even when your third baby is not breech, they kinda stop asking about your birth plan.) While the pregnancy was no picnic, I was rather surprised at how a-ok I did for the third surgery. Sure, I could’ve done without the I.V. on my wrist, but I seriously barely felt the Novocaine shots and subsequent spinal. (P.J. might suggest that was due to the fact that I was drooling over my alarmingly attractive anesthesiologist…or it could’ve been chalked up to my friend Hank’s suggestion that, by this point, a c-section was like an oil change to me.) And I actually laughed a few times during the operation. Sure, it could’ve been the intensely intense drugs, but I like to think it was because I knew this was my last c-section AND I was about to get to the good part: meeting my kid. (Here’s something they don’t boast enough about on the brochure: for a plain ol’ scheduled c-section, you are in and out of there ridiculously fast. Even with all the prior scar tissue they had to work through, P.J. was holding our kid- and I was nuzzling in his general direction- in under forty minutes.)
Recovery was downright easy- or at least as easy as recovery from major abdominal surgery while caring for three small children can be. By now I knew the absolute musts: Take your pain pills. Take your gas pills. Take your stool softener pills. DRINK ALL OF THE WATER IN THE WORLD. Get up and move- but then lie right back down and rest, dammit. Take it easy on yourself, physically and mentally. Allow people to baby you. (‘Cause that sure as heck doesn’t happen every day.) Eat, sleep, rinse, repeat.
Except for the baby part.
Don’t be a hero.
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