How to Make Recovery Easier After a Caesarean Section or C-Section Delivery

How to Make Recovery Easier after a Caesarean Section or C-Section Surgery

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Sleep!

1. 
    
   Hospital Room

   Check your insurance if you have a scheduled C-section or you've just had one. Find out how long you can stay in the hospital after surgery, and stay as long as you can. You might think you'll feel better at home in your own bed with no interruptions from hospital staff, but honestly, any inconveniences you experience in the hospital are negligible compared to those you'll face at home when you're trying to recuperate from surgery AND take care of a newborn.

2. 
    
   I could get to like baths

   Take advantage of your time in the hospital. Bond with your baby and learn from the nurses. Watch them swaddle, bathe, change, clean, etc., etc., the baby and learn how to take the baby's temperature. Ask as many questions as you can think of - they are experts. Keep the baby with you in your room as much as you can - questions pop up all the time when you are learning to take total care of another life!

3. 
    
   Nurse

   Ask a relative to stay at your house with you after you leave the hospital --- if your significant other can't stay home for a week or so. If this plan won't work (and if you can afford it) ask for names of a baby nurse from your pediatrician, the nurses in the maternity ward, your Lamaze instructor, your baby and childcare instructor, and other new parents. Depending on how you're feeling, a part-time college student might be enough to help you get by --- you need someone who can help take care of the baby so you can rest and recuperate.

4. 
    
   Colourful Mobile

   Take care of yourself. It's important that you have help in those first few weeks because you are recuperating from surgery AND from pregnancy. If you're nursing, your body is also adjusting to nursing...and so are you! And...you have a newborn! You can nurse/feed and hold the baby, but let your helper help you -- and sleep when you can! Of course, follow all your doctor's orders to the letter, and if anything seems not right, CALL YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY. The better rested you are, the sooner you will feel better, and the sooner you will be able to take care of your new little son or daughter. Enjoy the baby!

Tips & Warnings

• Take care of yourself - sleep when you can!
• Remember the mantra "This too shall pass" --- It will and soon you'll be out and about with the baby and back to your normal self.
• ALWAYS FOLLOW THE ADVICE AND INSTRUCTIONS OF YOUR DOCTOR.
• As always, if you have questions and/or something doesn't seem right with you after you get home, call the doctor immediately. If you're worried, go
• right back to the hospital's emergency room. When it comes to your health,
• it is always better to be safe than sorry.