Childbirth and recovery: C section versus vaginal birth

My bladder is slowly starting to function again. Hallelujah!

I was catheterized for a week following X's birth. Do you know how it feels to have plastic tubes sticking out of your nether regions for a week, when said nether regions already feel raw and swollen? It is not fun. I went to the doctor earlier this week to have the catheter removed. I was terrified that I would need it reinserted, and spent most of the day yesterday sitting on the toilet and praying for something to come out. I think I'm in the clear now, but I'm still not all the way back to normal.

Other side effects from X's birth:
- 2nd degree tear that needed to be stitched up. Surprisingly, not such a big deal.
- Itchy rash from the neck down. The OB says it is PUPP and prescribed a strong hyrdocortisone cream, which somehow seemed to make it worse, and allergy medicine which she advised not to start taking until my pee problems are resolved.
- Horrible feeling on my left side that the OB says is likely muscle strain from pushing. Mostly gone now, but flares up when I'm really tired.
- General feeling every time I stand up that my insides are swollen and/or about to fall out.

All that aside, I really can't complain too much. Recovery hasn't been easy, but it's been far less painful and inconvenient than my C section recovery. I'm getting around pretty well only eight days after giving birth, while with the C section I was still sleeping on the couch because I was physically unable to get in and out of bed. And I'm well enough to take care of K and to handle his daily routine, which was the point of this whole exercise. (That's right, K, I pushed this enormous baby out of a tiny hole for your benefit. Happy birthday, here is your vaginally delivered brother.)

My conclusion is that vaginal birth is a grab bag -- the side effects and the amount of time they linger is totally unpredictable, with some women winning the lottery and returning to normal within days, others having persistent and painful conditions resulting from childbirth, and most women in between but probably closer to the former. With a C section, you get a predictable, but severe, injury that takes a lot of time, pain, and effort for recovery. I also had permanent changes to my body that I don't think happen with a vaginal birth (stomach pouch). All in all, I would say that with respect to recovery, vaginal birth wins. Compared to K's newborn days, when I remember being kind of miserable, X's newborn days seem so peaceful. I think a big part of that is the difficulty of recovering from major surgery while adjusting to a new baby in the house.

For actual childbirth, though, C sections have it all over vaginal birth. You lie there, doctors remove the baby. No pain (until after, then watch out), no trauma for baby (except the inevitable trauma of leaving the womb). After having done both, I really do not understand why some women prize vaginal birth so highly that feel they "failed" if they ended up with a cesarean. Hours and hours of labor, followed by the extreme physical exertion of pushing, and then the above-mentioned unpredictable side effects plus lots of stress on baby. Honestly? While I did feel proud of myself at the end, and glad that I wouldn't have to go through the weeks of painful C section recovery, my VBAC was not a pleasant experience. Physically, it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

On pushing: In all my reading about labor and delivery, I never came across a good description of pushing. When it came time, my only real reference point was sitcom births where the doctor says, "It's time to push," and the mom gives three loud shrieks and less than a minute later, out comes the baby. So I was terrified when my OB said that as a first-time mom (vaginally speaking), I could expect to push for one to three hours. Three hours of screaming in agony? It turned that the first two hours of pushing the baby down the birth canal were physically demanding, but not painful. The last twenty minutes or so of actually pushing the baby out were when I screamed in agony, just as loudly as any sitcom mom. The actual process of pushing is this: you wait for a contraction, and then you hook your hands under your thighs and pull your legs up and apart while taking a deep breath. While holding the breath, you push as hard and as long as you can, as if you're trying to expel a bowel movement the size of your head. You want a strong and sustained push, at least ten seconds. Then you let go and do it again. You can get three or four pushes out of each contraction. When the baby finally comes out, I cannot describe to you the bizarre sensation of feeling a human person sliding out of your body. That is definitely something you will never experience with a C section.