Recovery from a Cesarean Birth can be hard alongside caring for your newborn baby.

Through caring for mums who have undergone a cesarean birth, I have developed my top 5 tips that can make recovery gentler and more effective:

1. Make sure you have plenty of pillows to help prop you up in bed. An A-shape pillow can be really useful

2. Don’t push your body to do anything that feels painful. Listen to your body. Gentle exercise can start to return when you feel ready, but try to avoid any strenuous exercise for the first 6 weeks (longer if your body is telling you that you aren’t ready). Get help with household chores if you can and don’t do anything that can wait until you feel stronger.

3. Often, the hardest part in the first week is getting from horizontal to sitting up, so you could ask your partner to lever you up, with your arms around their shoulders and neck; Or you can attach a rope/strong scarf to the bottom of the bed and use that to pull yourself up.

4. Have plenty of skin-to-skin time with your baby/babies. This will help with bonding, support you to establish breastfeeding (if that is what you have chosen to do) and gives your baby exposure to your microbiome, so they can give themselves a boost to their immune system.

5. Keep an eye on your scar (or ask your partner to look for you); if it looks like it is weeping, or if it is hot or red, this can be a sign of infection.

Please seek medical attention if you are at all worried.

We always talk through cesarean birth during our classes, what to expect if you are planning one or an unplanned one happens, and how to have a healthy recovery afterwards.

Helen

Antenatal Academy