Have a Happy...C-Section

I’ve heard stories about women who choose to have a voluntary c-section, either for aesthetic reasons (so baby’s first picture doesn’t look like a hot pink version of Mr. Conehead) or so the kid will be born on a certain date (because if baby shares a birthday with Great-Aunt Clara, maybe she’ll leave you some of her loot when she dies). I’m pretty sure these stories are lies. I had a necessary c-section, and it sucked pretty hard. I don’t think anyone would ever want to have their baby this way.

I had this whole plan for giving birth to Khan. Hang out at home as long as possible, get to hospital, bravely refuse drugs and pop him out, go home within 48 hours. Oh, yeah.

All of that went down the toilet four days before my due date. I went to my midwife for a routine appointment on Friday morning at 8 a.m. My blood pressure had shot up. Like, way up. Zombie movie arterial spurting-up. So the midwife shipped my cetacean butt off to the hospital right away. The hospital couldn’t get it down either, so they parked me in a room to be induced.

After being induced (which sucks), I went through 14 hours of labor (which sucks). Khan was nearly out when he abruptly turned his head sideways, necessitating an emergency c-section (which really sucks).

Luckily, I’d caved a while back and gotten the epidural, so Dan the epidural man (probably the most beloved employee in the entire hospital) just pumped more drugs into the tube. And here’s the really great thing about c-sections: they give you a ton of drugs so that you can’t feel anything. Kathy Bates could take a sledgehammer to your feet and you would never feel it. Then they give you more drugs that make it so even though you’re having major abdominal surgery, you don’t care. When the doctor held up my naked, howling child for inspection, the first thing I said was, “Wow, his scrotum is huge.” That’s how high I was (and for the record, his scrotum was huge).

So the actual c-section is okay, it’s afterward that sucks. You can’t get out of bed for 24 hours. Everything hurts. Hurts to sit, hurts to stand, hurts to walk. And this is despite the righteous numbers of painkillers the nurses dish out. When you finally head home (4 or so days later), it’s a little better, but it still hurts for weeks. And you still bleed for weeks; the bleeding is due to blood vessels broken when the placenta comes out, not vaginal trauma, so you don’t get out of that. And it hurts to have sex (not that you’ll want to for at least a year). And you have a scar, but that’s actually kind of cool. And you’ll be terribly constipated, you can’t drive for 2 weeks, and you might have a giant numb spot on your abdomen that may or may not go away. And pain in your shoulder blades. I have no idea what that’s about.

And here’s the absolute worst part of my whole experience: for 24 hours after your c-section, you can’t eat.

And when you’re being induced, you can’t eat.

And when you’re in labor, you can’t eat.

Between 7:30 a.m. on Friday morning and 6 p.m. on Sunday, all the nurses could give me was chicken broth, Jell-o and Sprite, and that ended at 5 a.m. Saturday morning. After that all I got was water and ice chips. By Sunday, I would have bitten the head off a live bat if one had flown into the hospital room. At 6 p.m. on Sunday, my brother-in-law brought me a Wendy’s bag and a large Frosty cup. I hope The Scientist never learns how much I loved his brother at that moment.

Now, unless you end up with the same unfortunate set of circumstances (watch your blood pressure, pregnant ladies), you probably won’t have to go almost 3 days without eating. But 24 hours is bad enough.

I know all this sounds really depressing, but Khan was worth every minute of it, even if I was ready to eat him, hamster-style, by Sunday afternoon. And if you have to have a necessary c-section, your kid will be worth it too. Because, well, the alternative is that you both die.

But if you’re thinking a voluntary c-section sounds like a good time, think again. Do you really want your child to grow up knowing his mother’s first observation about him concerned his disproportionately large genitalia?