5 Things Medical Professionals Won't Tell You about Having a Cesarean

5 Things Medical Professionals Won’t Tell You about Having a Cesarean©

By Erin Morrison-Fortunato

1. You’re going to be sprawled out naked for the world (ok, a gyno, a resident, a half dozen nurses, a couple of anesthesiologists, a few medical students, and some assorted mystery hospital personnel) to see, laying on what seems to be an impossibly skinny (at least to a woman who is 40 weeks pregnant), T-shaped operating table with your arms outstretched in what I’ve politically incorrectly termed “the Jesus position” and weighted down by an assortment of IVs, monitoring devices, and a sheet that is supposed to keep you from realizing (unsuccessfully, may I add) that they are literally pulling your insides out while you are 100% conscious.

2) At some point during the operation, as the surgeons are cutting on, tugging at, and manipulating your assorted lady parts, you will turn to your husband/partner and say, “What do you see?” Because you are not busy pushing, hyperventilating, and/or dealing with the most excruciating pain of your life, you will have nothing else to ponder than every little thing that could possibly go wrong. So, you will ask your lifeline, your darling partner, the love of your life, “What do you see?” And, he/she will turn to you and comfortingly say, as he/she looks lovingly into your worried eyes, “I just saw all sorts of your guts.” Ok, maybe that was just my husband.

3) After carrying your child for almost 10 months, there is nothing you want more than to get that baby the hell out of your exhausted, swollen, aching body…oh, and to meet the little darling face-to-face. There is nothing as incredibly rewarding and sweet as hearing that first cry, your baby informing you that he/she is officially kicking and breathing outside of your womb. The next best thing to hearing this scream is laying your eyes on your child’s beautiful face for the first time. When you have a Cesarean, however, you will likely be the last person in the room who gets to see the little creature. The doctors will joyously inform you, “Here he/she is! He/she’s a big one!” The nurses will fuss lovingly about your child’s beauty as they clean, weigh and APGAR. Your hubby will leave your side to proudly puff and strut over his offspring. You’ll hear everyone in the room, down to the maintenance crew who are waiting to mop up when your uterus has finally been repaired, cooing over the gloriousness of your baby. Never mind that the one person in the room who is personally responsible for growing this baby inside her body is the last person to see the little sucker.  In fact, there is a very good chance that the first time you see your babe will be on the screen of a digital camera. Yeah, that’s fair.

4) Gas and constipation. Gut twisting, stomach swelling, drop you to your knees gas and constipation. Yes, the nurse will give you stool softeners and simethicone, medications that will supposedly help to get things moving, but I definitely smuggled in serious laxatives for my third Cesarean. Before having my first baby, I had miraculously managed never to go to the bathroom in front of my husband. But, the first time I tentatively ventured into the bathroom after having child number one, I needed my man in a way that I had never needed him before. After twenty minutes of straining and bearing down (much like I imagine I might have done if I hadn’t had the aforementioned Cesarean), I produced nothing.  I had no feeling in my abdomen: completely numb from the belly button to the pubis. Kind of hard to produce a deuce when you have no muscle control. Ahhhh, there is no welcome to parenthood quite like having your husband strap on a pair of surgical gloves and help to extract your bowel movement.  Goodbye romantic mystery! Seriously, there is no dignity left once you’ve had a baby. On the other hand, it is good preparation for the previously unimaginable amounts of bodily fluids and solids with which you will have to deal as a parent.

5. Last, but certainly not least, there’s ‘the shelf’. This is my pet name for the protruding lump of extra skin and chub that sits on my lower abdomen. To give you a mental picture, it appears that, while the skilled surgeons were birthing my children, they were also super gluing a fairly sizeable ball of what appears to be raw pizza dough to my gut. Yes, all mothers have the mom pooch, but when you’ve had a Cesarean (or three) that shelf becomes more and more pronounced.  And, the more weight I lost post birth, the more noticeable the shelf became.  When I asked my OBGYN what I could do to deconstruct the shelf, she replied, “Not much, besides a tummy tuck. When we sew you up down there, it’s kind of like a drawstring that pulls all of that loose skin and fat under into a pouch.”  Awesome!  Who has an extra $10,000 they’d like to loan me so I can call in the plastics team?

BONUS: There is one great thing about having a Cesarean (besides the whole delivering your baby safely into the world part).  When your five-year-old son asks you how he was born, and you’re not quite ready to explain to him the many wonders of the vagina, you can honestly tell him, “The doctor took you directly out of my belly.”

© Erin Morrison-Fortunato