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C-section recovery

[00:00:00] My yesterday video talked about the fifth myth, which was C-sections are harder to recover from than vaginal birth, and here's why I wanna talk about it. So, Um, emphatically and frequently, I think millions of women enter into birth with this notion that it has to be vaginal unless something dreadful happens, in which case it could be a cesarean section. 

And then when the cesarean section occurs, they are left feeling as though they've gotten this really, like secondary. It wasn't great. It wasn't what I wanted. It was terrible and even. They enter into it with a lot of fear because there's so much misconception and disinformation surrounding cesarean sections, meaning C-sections are surgery, and that means there are risks for sure. 

We cannot underplay them. We have to be very clear that people can have a risk of bleeding, of infection, and of damage to the surrounding organs, which are the three complications that we quote before every, every. Those are all true, but [00:01:00] what is untrue is the likelihood of all of those, meaning the implication when we say, you know, you could bleed, you could have an infection, you could have damage to surrounding organs. 

It sounds so scary cuz it makes women think that that's likely to happen. But the truth is it's not so likely to happen. It can happen. I've had it happen almost every week. Women will have complications, but they'll also have complications from vaginal. And that's not necessarily discussed enough. The good news is that whether there are complications to vaginal births or C-sections, the vast majority of the time you and your baby are gonna be okay, especially when you're with a team that are handling it well. 

That said, if you go into labor with this notion that a C-section is gonna be the worst thing on earth, and you're so fearful of it, You're gonna be let astray because you really might need it, and I don't want any of you to enter into it for your sake or your doctor's sake or your baby's sake with fear. 

Now, as far as the recovery specifically, , your recovery from a C-section will very much depend on a few factors. One of which is did you labor first and then have a C-section? Because that will make your recovery [00:02:00] harder because you've gone through a lot of fluid changes and the length of labor will make you exhausted, and then if you end up needing a C-section, , you tend to just have a harder time recovering. 

But the truth is that if you had a long labor and a vaginal birth, you'd also have a hard time recovering. So if you have a scheduled C-section, your recovery might be actually much easier, which is not to say all of you should go schedule the C-sections. That's not the point. The point is, That. If someone says to me, I really wanna have vaginal birth because I know it's an easier recovery, my response is not, oh, that's not true, because I wanna scare you out of a vaginal delivery. 

It's that I wanna be equitable about all of it because I know that a vaginal birth can be a great recovery or challenging. In my case, mine was very challenging. I pushed for three hours and I had a catheter in my bladder for 48 hours because I was so swollen that I couldn't pee afterwards. Whereas for me, my two scheduled C-sections were far easier to recover from. 

Is that always the case? No. Some women have a far easier vaginal birth than [00:03:00] a C-section. You get my point. What do I always say? Nothing is ever only, everything is always and vaginal. Great and sometimes not great. C-sections great and sometimes not great, so do not enter into a potential birth, assuming that if you have a C-section, it's always gonna be worse. 

Assuming that if you have vaginal birth, it's always gonna be easier. Assuming that one is better than the other, each one has different end points. That will be excellent and other end points. That or less good. You have to look at it as an overall experience, just like life. I always say labor is like a paradigm for life. 

Individual things in your life might have sucked, but if your overall experience is pretty good, that's the best thing you can count on. Okay. I hope that makes sense as to why I'm saying it is a myth to say that C-sections are harder.