What They Don't Tell You About Giving Birth the "Other Way"

I'm walking around and scratching like I got a mad case of crabs.

Rewind? If we must.

"You can stop pushing, Stinky T. It doesn't look like baby's coming out this way so we'll have to prep you for a C-section. Do you have any questions for me?"

Reading my pregnancy and baby books in the past 9 months I had always skimmed over the C-section chapter, just like the multiple babies chapter. Just like all the stuff that would never apply to me. How was I to know that I would end up getting sliced open while strapped down to the operating table crucifixion-style while hollering and complaining about the horribleness of the procedure?

They cut you open below the bikini line but I find it odd that they neglected to "clean" the area up a little before starting. Now I'm not a hairy person to begin with, but everyone's got something down there and to have a healing scar cluttered up with stragglers of the pubes seems a little... half assed. I also yelled more on that table than I did the entire time I was trying to push that baby out, actually, the pushing itself wasn't half bad. There's no pain from the surgery but you feel everything. The cutting, separating, pushing, tugging, all of that nastiness. I couldn't handle it, I was glad they knocked me out as soon as they pulled the baby out.

Afterwards I was told that surgery tends to turn the digestive system off temporarily and until I passed gas I would have to be on a clear liquid diet. I shrugged OK, like whatever, right? Dinner time. They delivered my tray. I devoured that apple juice, ate up my chicken broth and pushed the jello at Mr. Stinky and... that's it?! Oh hell no! I worked extra hard to get things churning again and let me tell you, I was farting like a champ and back on solids by breakfast time.

Why a C-section? Turns out some arch in my pelvic passageway is a little too high. It became the roadblock that prevented Stinkerbug's slide to freedom. During my marathon 4 hours of pushing I had a multitude of nurses, doctors and obstetricians visit me and invasively shove fingers into tight spaces to check on the progress of birth. Mr. Stinky and I joked that everyone but him was getting any action that day, he was wondering if the postman would drop by as well to join in on the gang probing.

The recovery process is just as fun. I was bedridden for much of the time afterwards in the hospital while they pumped all kinds of IVs and drips into me on one side. In the nether end I was hooked up to a lovely catheter. I was so bloated from all the liquids I looked like the Marshmallow Man. It was kind of like Show and Tell too, when I received visitors. "Look, I made this bag of pee all by myself! Wanna see?" All women bleed copiously after giving birth, whether vaginally or by C-section. Since I was stuck in bed I had to ask the nurses on a regular basis to change my underpads. So yes, I was also swimming around in my own sauce which resulted in a lovely and itchful diaper rash on my ass.

Once I was out of bed I was loaded up on painkillers. You never realize how much you use your stomach and ab muscles until they've been cut wide open. Every little move I made was extremely painful; if I sat for more than a few minutes I got out of my chair or bed bent at a right angle and would have to slowly straighten myself out. Mobility was quite the issue for many days afterwards. The afterpains hit me extra hard because as my uterus contracted and shrunk guess where I felt it the most? That's right, that nicely stapled smile on my belly.

So I walk around with my hand over the incision for support - it does help - and it looks like I'm a chronic masturbater too. Now that the scar is healing it's itchy as hell, along with the folds of wobbly skin that's working hard to shrink back to it's original tautness (ha!) and I'm holding and scratching and rubbing and having to explain to everyone around why exactly it is I've got my hand(s) down my pants.