Here’s your unsurprising fact of the day: birth is a medical event.
It takes time for the body to heal. Recovery may range from an easy recovery for a birth without complications to a difficult recovery from a C-section (which is a major abdominal surgery). I can only speak to my own recovery which, fortunately, was on the easy end of the spectrum.
Oh, and be warned, while there’s nothing too graphic here, this is, in large part, a post about pain along and around the birth canal[1].
In the first couple days after birth, I was dealing with
- a leg I couldn’t stand on because I had strained it during birth
- copious amounts of blood — enough that I was soaking a super large thick pad every 4 – 6 hours
- slight soreness which made sitting and pooping uncomfortable
- pain when I urinated due to the stitches I had for a small tear in my perineum
- painful “massages” to help shrink my uterus
Over the next couple weeks, there was
- a continuation of general soreness
- more bleeding — quite heavy for about a week, period like for another couple weeks after that, and finally fading a way over another week. (In reality, the decrease wasn’t quite so linear.)
- a huge appetite (and I didn’t even have to spend a long time without food during labor). The second day we were home, we ordered in from Goldberg’s Deli, and I was still hungry after finishing a serving of french toast that has defeated some of my heartier friends.
- low physical endurance. After a few weeks of not even counting, I struggled to get 15,000 steps in a week. I’m up to about 30,000 now, but I still need to rest frequently[2].
That’s just the physical side of recovery. Just as important is the emotional side. It’s normal for new mothers to have some amount of baby blues[3]. After birth, the hormonal makeup inside a woman’s body changes dramatically. The hormones from the placenta are gone, other hormones are kicking in for milk production and recovery, and the normal hormonal activity is just completely out of whack.
I experienced a fair amount of emotional variance after birth, some good and some bad. On the good side was the intense rush of love I felt for my baby whenever I held her (or saw her or heard her or thought about her). There was one moment where I was holding Sylvia and looking at her and it just struck me how precious that moment was and how it and many others like it would soon be gone and forgotten. I started to cry (and I tear up a bit just remembering it).
On the bad side, there were several times I cried in frustration because of some small difficulty taking care of Sylvia (and because of some large frustrations, but those seemed more reasonable). One day I stayed in bed all afternoon I felt like I was nothing more than a milk machine, and not a very good one at that. I think that Jeff was a large part of the reason my blues didn’t turn into depression. He was there to support me and to make sure that I asked for support when I needed it.
At this point, I still tear up fairly easily, especially for anything that has to do with having difficulties with babies (e.g., reading a friend’s birth story or talking to a coworker about breastfeeding difficulties). I also still get intense rushes of joy. But it’s moderating back toward my normal emotional keel. I still experience both the love and the frustration, but they aren’t overwhelming emotions.
I am so grateful for the support that I had during my recovery period. The nurses at Evergreen Health were kind and capable. Jeff has been wonderful. The family and friends who have visited have been a huge help. Without the help of my community, even my easy recovery would have been much more difficult.
[1] No, I’m not just trying to avoid using the word vagina—just after birth, my birth canal didn’t really resemble anything I’d recognize as my vagina.
[2] My step goal until about 6 months into the pregnancy was 80,000 a week.
[3] It’s also fairly common for that to turn into full blown postpartum depression, a serious condition which needs to be treated.