My Recovery

Now that Cassandra has been with us a few weeks,  I thought I would touch a little bit on my own recovery from the birth.

I will say that the recovery from a vaginal birth has been a cake walk compared to my c-section recovery!

In the hospital it was so weird for me to be able to get up and walk around less than an hour after giving birth. Once I was all stitched up, they had me get up and use the bathroom and move to the wheelchair so they could transfer us to our room. Once in our room, they had me up and using the bathroom immediately and I wasn't restricted from doing anything. The funny part? I kept thinking I couldn't move because of the delivery. I was afraid to get up and move around because I expected it to be like my c-section. My butt was sore from sitting in the same position for so long and my Mom was like "so roll over or get up and walk around" and to be honest, the thought never dawned on me to do those things because with Avery I couldn't! 

Of course this time around my pain was in a different spot-with my c-section it was my entire stomach and core area. This time it was my lady parts of course.  I'd say it took a good week or so for things to feel back to normal. It was uncomfortable and slightly painful at times, but Ibuprofen and ice really did help a lot. Sitting was uncomfortable for the first week, but now it's like nothing ever happened.  The only thing that's still not 100% is bowel movements-they are still painful at times even though I'm still taking stool softeners. I'm hoping that gets back to normal soon!

The one scare I had was when I got mastitis a week after having Cassandra.  And the big deal with that was that it made me nervous more than anything. Before the diagnosis, I was paranoid that my fever was because of something related to having the VBAC-I was afraid that it was something with my uterus-an infection or something....so that scared me more than anything. Even with that I wasn't in a lot of pain-it was more the fever that made me feel a little "off" at times.

I still was restricted from driving for two weeks (although I drove a week after having her) and wasn't supposed to lift more weight than the baby-which I did my best to follow. That was hard just because I still pick up Avery a lot. So it was hard telling her that I couldn't pick her up.  I'm also not supposed to take baths because of bacteria, which isn't a big deal to me.  I'll go to my OB at 6wks to get the "all clear" from them so hopefully things will go fine until then!

As for weight loss....I gained a total of 21 lbs (last I knew). As of today, I'm down 17lbs in two and a half weeks. I'm pretty surprised once again at how fast the weight came off. I'm sure it's mostly from breastfeeding and I will say that I've been eating like a pig these days so thankfully I'm burning off those extra calories or else I'd be in big trouble!  We'll see what happens with the weight now-after having Avery, I never got back down as low as I wanted to so we'll see if I get back to where I'd like to be. It was  just a few pounds that I hung onto, but it's still something! 

So those of you considering a VBAC, I highly suggest trying it! I never thought that the recovery would be so different, but it really is! I thought my c-section recovery wasn't bad, but this has been a breeze compared to that!