C section must haves?

[Anonymous]

Well, I'll be a dissenting voice and say don't take the drugs just because they are pushing them. For whatever reason, the opiods just made me feel shitty, interfered with my sleep, and didn't help much with the pain. For me, the prescription strength motrin is the bomb. For my subsequent C-sections, I actually had my husband sneak in motrin, becuase the hospital won't give it to you until the doctor clears it -- and sometimes they can't find the doctor for many hours. Everyone's body is different, but many people don't do great with opiods. My sisters have said the same thing, so maybe there's a genetic componant.

You may also want to have your partner sneak in cortisone cream -- I had an allergic reaction to the tape they used over the incision, and getting cortisone cream from the nurses took an act of congress or something.

Connected to the opiod issue -- the poop problem is real and can't really be overstated. With one of mine, I couldn't poop for a week, despite all the colace and stuff. My suggestion is to start with the laxatives the week before the C-section. Plan on eating apples, kale, raisin bran, etc. -- people bring you cheesy crap like lasagna and it's really the worst. Order a big Sweet Green salad instead. Take the colace, take miralax, take everything that exists on God's green earth to get that poop out.

If you have a snoogle pillow for pregnancy, I found that really helpful for sleeping and nursing. Rolling over from your back to your side is painful.

I also liked the "my brest friend" pillow for nursing. I would often use the boppy under that for extra support.

Steal as many of those stretch mesh underwear from the hpspital as you possible can. They are the only thing that is comfortable over a c-section scar. If you have high rise stretch pants from maternity, keep them out -- they will be perfect. If not, get something like the studio wide leg pants from athleta -- it has a soft waist that you can just pull up. Anything that hits at the scar -- like low rise bikini underwear -- is awful.

I had a book about preparing for a C-section I got from amazon that had an exercise recovery routine in the back -- it started with things like just breathing exercises and standing straight like yoga style, things like that. I think most of it was pretty intuitive about rebuilding your core slowly, but you could look for that if you feel like you want some guidance. I didn't use it my second time around -- just did what I thought I could, when I thought I could.

This makes it sound bad, but it's really not (except the poop part)! Especially with a planned C -- the recovery was SO much easier than my traumatic vaginal birth.

[Anonymous]

Halo bassinet and stool softeners.