I have a high pain tolerance. At least I thought I did.
In college I went to a tattoo parlor with friends to get my conch pierced. The big burly man who was going to pierce my ear told me the conch is one of the most painful piercings you can get because it cuts through multiple layers of cartilage. He tried to talk me out of it. He said he'd seen "pretty little things" like me faint from the pain. I took his condescending concern as a challenge and told him to pierce me anyway. I braced myself for the searing pain. Pop. Pop. Pop. He punched through three layers of cartilage, pausing before each punch to assess my reaction. I didn't flinch. I felt the heat that comes with any piercing and the pressure as the needle pushed through each layer, but you know what I didn't feel? Pain.
I've gotten my fair share of shots over the years. I always brace myself for the pain to follow when the nurse says "this may hurt", but I never feel more than a tingle or sting. Maybe this stems from the fact that I got a lot of shots in the butt when I was little because I got strep frequently so I've become desensitized to whatever pain response I'm supposed to have.
I was worried about a lot of things regarding child birth - when I would go into labor, how breastfeeding would go, when the swelling would go down, when the first bowel movement would be, how I would function on little sleep and so on. But you know what I wasn't worried about? Pain. Even after being warned about pain management in recovery I thought how bad can it be?
When I was wheeled into the operating room the morning of March 31st the first person I encountered was the anesthesiologist. He prepped my back for the spinal. He said, "this is going to hurt." I felt the equivalent of a pin prick. "I'm ready," I said. He laughed. It was already done. Soon a warmth moved down my abdomen and filled my legs all the way down to my toes and then I couldn't feel a thing.
A few minutes after one of my daughters was placed on my chest I started to feel a tenseness in my right shoulder. I tried rotating it to work out the tension but that just made it worse. A sharp jab of pain ripped through my shoulder and upper back causing me to pull my shoulder up toward my ear. What was that? I reached for Alex with my free hand. "I think I have pain in my shoulder," I said. He turned to the anesthesiologist. "Um, she's having some pain?" The anesthesiologist told us it was gas pain from the anesthesia. Some women experience it after birth but the pain should dissipate as the feeling in the lower half of my body came back.
Ok, no big deal. He said it will go away.
But it didn't go away. The feeling intensified over the next couple of hours. The nurse gave me some pain meds to take the edge off. My mind was preoccupied with nursing and visiting with family and learning how to take care of these two tiny humans and for a while I forgot the pain was there.
By evening the first night the feeling in my legs was starting to come back but I still couldn't move them and I couldn't feel anything in my abdomen. My parents left to sleep at our house. We didn't board the dogs so someone needed to be home with them. Alex was attempting to sleep on the couch in my room. He had moved the bassinets over to the left side of the bed so I could see the girls. We were both terrified they would stop breathing if one of us couldn't see them. Violet was fussy. I couldn't get up to pick her up so I laid with my right arm awkwardly extended over the left side of the bed so I could gently rock her bassinet back and forth. I hugged myself with my left arm and massaged the pain in my shoulder for hours.
Very early the next morning feeling had mostly returned in my legs, just a lingering numbness remained. Two nurses helped me maneuver my way out of bed and shuffle to the bathroom. That was the first time I registered pain around my incision. Once in the bathroom one of the nurses removed my catheter. I had heard that would hurt. I was relieved when I felt nothing. She told me I needed to go to the bathroom twice in the next six hours and then they could remove my IV. She turned on the faucet in the bathroom to stimulate a response. I sat there for probably five minutes before I started swaying, losing my balance with nothing to support my back and not feeling fully in control of my legs. I said I would try again later.
I tried two more times. Nothing happened either time. This was particularly frustrating because getting out of bed was a production requiring multiple people's assistance because the gas pain in my shoulder was so bad that putting any amount of pressure on my hands to try and sit up sent searing pain through my entire back and my legs were so swollen that bending them to sit and stand was painful. It was a tight skin kind of painful, like it was stretched the furthest it could possibly stretch and if you poked my leg with a needle I would pop. I had to rely on other people to pull me into a sitting position and swing my legs to the side and then hoist me up onto my feet by hooking their arms under my armpits. I could tell my bladder was full but I couldn't feel anything to be able to release the urine. I was starting to get very uncomfortable and my nurses were growing more and more concerned.
A few hours later two nurses came in to straight cath me since I had passed my deadline to use the facilities on my own. One of them said, "this may hurt." I was not mentally or emotionally prepared for the pain that followed. She couldn't find the urethra. Tears streaming down my face I screamed the loudest I've possibly ever screamed. The other nurse tried. More pain, more tears. I choked on my screams. No more sound came out. I couldn't breathe. Alex was holding my hand with white knuckles, the color completely drained from his face. They gave me a minute to regroup while they found a labor and delivery nurse. It only took her a few seconds to get the catheter in. Third time's the charm. The nurses all apologized what seemed like a million times for my pain and discomfort. Once my bladder was drained I was much more comfortable but I was exhausted. They let me sleep for a bit.
Showering was also a particularly painful highlight. It was very difficult to stand completely upright. I had to hunch slightly to keep the incision pain at bay. It was almost as if standing completely straight stretched the incision in some way. The skin around the incision was so tight, but also completely numb. It felt cold to the touch and when I stood straight I swear I could feel my heartbeat in the incision line. It probably took me 30 minutes to shower and by the end of it I was thoroughly exhausted and crying from the pain both at the incision site and in my shoulder.
I thought I had a high pain tolerance, but nothing prepared me for this. The pain after birth was unlike anything I've ever felt before. Hot and cold. Sharp and dull. Searing, tearing, throbbing, the kind of pain that just doesn't take a break. In my back, in my shoulder, in my stomach, in my legs. One morning I had a headache too, like there weren't enough body parts already throbbing.
It took a week before just breathing didn't hurt, two weeks before getting up and down multiple times in a few hours didn't bring me to tears, three weeks before I could stand for more than 5 minutes at a time and a month before I could sleep on my side.
For some reason we tell ourselves that a c-section is no big deal. But it is a big deal. It's major surgery. Muscles are cut and have to figure out how to fuse back together again. People look at me and say "You look great!" Maybe they assume I feel great too. Appearances can be deceiving. I still have numbness surrounding the incision and a dull constant pain on my right side where I can feel scar tissue under my skin. It's been 10 weeks. Women have told me I may never feel the way I did pre-birth again. It's possible I tried to do too much in weeks 4-7 when I had a false sense of feeling healed. When you have two babies you don't have much of a choice. You have to care for them. There were times I picked them both up at the same time or carried both car seats at the same time. I can't regret those things because I was being a mom the best way I could in that moment.
There is a song that plays on KLove a lot called "Thankful for the Scars". The words of the chorus are:
So I'm thankful for the scars
Because without them I wouldn't know your heart
And I know they'll always tell of who you are
So forever I'm thankful for the scars.
My scar tells a story. There is pain. There is a lasting visible sign of the trauma to my body. But there is so much goodness that came from that scar. I got two beautiful, perfect babies, who at 36 weeks needed no NICU time, no special tests or treatments, had no issues eating, digesting or pooping and passed all the screenings to allow them to come home just 3 short days after birth. That is INCREDIBLE. My God is so good. I can be thankful for this scar because of the gifts it brought me. It's hard to say I'm thankful for the pain. Pain is exhausting. It is humbling. It reminds us of our humanity. So I'm thankful for the people who got me through the worse parts of the pain, the people who helped me out of bed when I couldn't help myself, the people who stepped in and changed diapers because I couldn't stand long enough to do it myself, the people who pushed me to walk laps in the maternity halls even though I felt like absolute crap, the people who made sure my water glass was always full and reminded me to eat, the people who brought me pain meds like clockwork and encouraged me to shower every day or every other day if that was all I could manage. I'm thankful. And I'm blessed.
In college I went to a tattoo parlor with friends to get my conch pierced. The big burly man who was going to pierce my ear told me the conch is one of the most painful piercings you can get because it cuts through multiple layers of cartilage. He tried to talk me out of it. He said he'd seen "pretty little things" like me faint from the pain. I took his condescending concern as a challenge and told him to pierce me anyway. I braced myself for the searing pain. Pop. Pop. Pop. He punched through three layers of cartilage, pausing before each punch to assess my reaction. I didn't flinch. I felt the heat that comes with any piercing and the pressure as the needle pushed through each layer, but you know what I didn't feel? Pain.
I've gotten my fair share of shots over the years. I always brace myself for the pain to follow when the nurse says "this may hurt", but I never feel more than a tingle or sting. Maybe this stems from the fact that I got a lot of shots in the butt when I was little because I got strep frequently so I've become desensitized to whatever pain response I'm supposed to have.
I was worried about a lot of things regarding child birth - when I would go into labor, how breastfeeding would go, when the swelling would go down, when the first bowel movement would be, how I would function on little sleep and so on. But you know what I wasn't worried about? Pain. Even after being warned about pain management in recovery I thought how bad can it be?
When I was wheeled into the operating room the morning of March 31st the first person I encountered was the anesthesiologist. He prepped my back for the spinal. He said, "this is going to hurt." I felt the equivalent of a pin prick. "I'm ready," I said. He laughed. It was already done. Soon a warmth moved down my abdomen and filled my legs all the way down to my toes and then I couldn't feel a thing.
A few minutes after one of my daughters was placed on my chest I started to feel a tenseness in my right shoulder. I tried rotating it to work out the tension but that just made it worse. A sharp jab of pain ripped through my shoulder and upper back causing me to pull my shoulder up toward my ear. What was that? I reached for Alex with my free hand. "I think I have pain in my shoulder," I said. He turned to the anesthesiologist. "Um, she's having some pain?" The anesthesiologist told us it was gas pain from the anesthesia. Some women experience it after birth but the pain should dissipate as the feeling in the lower half of my body came back.
Ok, no big deal. He said it will go away.
But it didn't go away. The feeling intensified over the next couple of hours. The nurse gave me some pain meds to take the edge off. My mind was preoccupied with nursing and visiting with family and learning how to take care of these two tiny humans and for a while I forgot the pain was there.
By evening the first night the feeling in my legs was starting to come back but I still couldn't move them and I couldn't feel anything in my abdomen. My parents left to sleep at our house. We didn't board the dogs so someone needed to be home with them. Alex was attempting to sleep on the couch in my room. He had moved the bassinets over to the left side of the bed so I could see the girls. We were both terrified they would stop breathing if one of us couldn't see them. Violet was fussy. I couldn't get up to pick her up so I laid with my right arm awkwardly extended over the left side of the bed so I could gently rock her bassinet back and forth. I hugged myself with my left arm and massaged the pain in my shoulder for hours.
Very early the next morning feeling had mostly returned in my legs, just a lingering numbness remained. Two nurses helped me maneuver my way out of bed and shuffle to the bathroom. That was the first time I registered pain around my incision. Once in the bathroom one of the nurses removed my catheter. I had heard that would hurt. I was relieved when I felt nothing. She told me I needed to go to the bathroom twice in the next six hours and then they could remove my IV. She turned on the faucet in the bathroom to stimulate a response. I sat there for probably five minutes before I started swaying, losing my balance with nothing to support my back and not feeling fully in control of my legs. I said I would try again later.
I tried two more times. Nothing happened either time. This was particularly frustrating because getting out of bed was a production requiring multiple people's assistance because the gas pain in my shoulder was so bad that putting any amount of pressure on my hands to try and sit up sent searing pain through my entire back and my legs were so swollen that bending them to sit and stand was painful. It was a tight skin kind of painful, like it was stretched the furthest it could possibly stretch and if you poked my leg with a needle I would pop. I had to rely on other people to pull me into a sitting position and swing my legs to the side and then hoist me up onto my feet by hooking their arms under my armpits. I could tell my bladder was full but I couldn't feel anything to be able to release the urine. I was starting to get very uncomfortable and my nurses were growing more and more concerned.
A few hours later two nurses came in to straight cath me since I had passed my deadline to use the facilities on my own. One of them said, "this may hurt." I was not mentally or emotionally prepared for the pain that followed. She couldn't find the urethra. Tears streaming down my face I screamed the loudest I've possibly ever screamed. The other nurse tried. More pain, more tears. I choked on my screams. No more sound came out. I couldn't breathe. Alex was holding my hand with white knuckles, the color completely drained from his face. They gave me a minute to regroup while they found a labor and delivery nurse. It only took her a few seconds to get the catheter in. Third time's the charm. The nurses all apologized what seemed like a million times for my pain and discomfort. Once my bladder was drained I was much more comfortable but I was exhausted. They let me sleep for a bit.
Showering was also a particularly painful highlight. It was very difficult to stand completely upright. I had to hunch slightly to keep the incision pain at bay. It was almost as if standing completely straight stretched the incision in some way. The skin around the incision was so tight, but also completely numb. It felt cold to the touch and when I stood straight I swear I could feel my heartbeat in the incision line. It probably took me 30 minutes to shower and by the end of it I was thoroughly exhausted and crying from the pain both at the incision site and in my shoulder.
I thought I had a high pain tolerance, but nothing prepared me for this. The pain after birth was unlike anything I've ever felt before. Hot and cold. Sharp and dull. Searing, tearing, throbbing, the kind of pain that just doesn't take a break. In my back, in my shoulder, in my stomach, in my legs. One morning I had a headache too, like there weren't enough body parts already throbbing.
It took a week before just breathing didn't hurt, two weeks before getting up and down multiple times in a few hours didn't bring me to tears, three weeks before I could stand for more than 5 minutes at a time and a month before I could sleep on my side.
For some reason we tell ourselves that a c-section is no big deal. But it is a big deal. It's major surgery. Muscles are cut and have to figure out how to fuse back together again. People look at me and say "You look great!" Maybe they assume I feel great too. Appearances can be deceiving. I still have numbness surrounding the incision and a dull constant pain on my right side where I can feel scar tissue under my skin. It's been 10 weeks. Women have told me I may never feel the way I did pre-birth again. It's possible I tried to do too much in weeks 4-7 when I had a false sense of feeling healed. When you have two babies you don't have much of a choice. You have to care for them. There were times I picked them both up at the same time or carried both car seats at the same time. I can't regret those things because I was being a mom the best way I could in that moment.
There is a song that plays on KLove a lot called "Thankful for the Scars". The words of the chorus are:
So I'm thankful for the scars
Because without them I wouldn't know your heart
And I know they'll always tell of who you are
So forever I'm thankful for the scars.
My scar tells a story. There is pain. There is a lasting visible sign of the trauma to my body. But there is so much goodness that came from that scar. I got two beautiful, perfect babies, who at 36 weeks needed no NICU time, no special tests or treatments, had no issues eating, digesting or pooping and passed all the screenings to allow them to come home just 3 short days after birth. That is INCREDIBLE. My God is so good. I can be thankful for this scar because of the gifts it brought me. It's hard to say I'm thankful for the pain. Pain is exhausting. It is humbling. It reminds us of our humanity. So I'm thankful for the people who got me through the worse parts of the pain, the people who helped me out of bed when I couldn't help myself, the people who stepped in and changed diapers because I couldn't stand long enough to do it myself, the people who pushed me to walk laps in the maternity halls even though I felt like absolute crap, the people who made sure my water glass was always full and reminded me to eat, the people who brought me pain meds like clockwork and encouraged me to shower every day or every other day if that was all I could manage. I'm thankful. And I'm blessed.
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