What to Expect After a Caesarean.
Physically.
Straight after the surgery, you will need to spend
some time in recovery. This is to enable your vital signs to be
monitored until they stabilise. Once you are ready, you will be
moved up to your room.
Except in extreme circumstances you should be able
to have your baby stay with you during the surgery and in recovery,
if your professional caregivers and the hospital policies in place
support you in these choices. It's worthwhile requesting your baby
stay with you, if you would like it to happen, and even better to
organise this with your professional caregivers beforehand. If staff
are concerned about either your baby, or you, then this may not
be possible. It's also less likely if you have experienced a general
anaesthetic to give birth.
It will take some hours for the effects of the anaesthetic
to wear off. If you received a spinal, or an epidural, you may be
numb from below your breasts down to your toes. Being moved from
the trolley to the bed can be a bit unnerving, as you may feel like
a 'whale' and very unwieldy, until the numbness wears away.
Just snuggle up with your little one, try some skin-to-skin
contact, and have a go at that first real breastfeed, if this is
one of your choices, while you wait for the feeling to return.
You may feel sleepy and really tired. Take this time
to allow yourself to recover from the excitement, or emotional trauma,
of the surgery. You may have lots of visitors appearing later in
the day, so you need to rest while you can. It may be worthwhile
limiting your visitors, during the first few days, to only close
family and friends. You can also ask hospital staff to block phone-calls,
or visitors, if you feel that requesting this yourself may offend.
Your skin, especially on your face, may feel really
itchy during the first few hours. This is a side effect of one of
the spinal narcotic given during the surgery. The feeling will eventually
fade as the drug leaves your system.
Sometimes women get the shakes during the surgery,
and even their teeth can chatter, this shaking may continue during
the surgery and into the recovery phase but will disappear as the
anaesthetic wears off. It occurs because the spinal/epidural anaesthetic
dilates your skin blood vessels and you lose a lot of body heat
- The recovery nurse, or your midwife, should be able to organise
an extra blanket for you, which will help warm you up. Your blood
pressure may drop due to the epidural and, especially if you had
a general anaesthetic, you may feel nauseous upon recovery, again
these are a reaction to the drugs used and these symptoms will fade
very soon.
One other annoying side effect of caesarean birth,
which may occur, is shoulder pain. This is a sharp pain felt beneath
your shoulder blade/s. It is due to air that has entered your abdominal
cavity during the surgery, something that is impossible to avoid.
The air pocket will gradually be absorbed by your body over the
next day, or so, and the pain will disappear.
Some rarer reactions, when an epidural/spinal has
been used, are headaches or a swelling at the site of injection.
If you experience these symptoms, then speak to your caregiver about
why they are happening and how to alleviate the symptoms.
Please realise that it will take you longer to recover
from a caesarean birth than it would from a vaginal birth, generally,
so you need to really take care of yourself. Don't hesitate to ask
for support from the staff, family and friends, especially in those
first few days of caring for your brand new baby
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