Thanks to one of my best girlfriends for inspiring this blog piece after a discussion about the ‘joy’ of childbirth. Warning – pictures of post cesarian wounds.

Cesarians – still taboo? I can’t see why. Vaginal or cesarian, childbirth is childbirth and each comes with their own set of pros and cons and possibly complications. I’ve had 2 cesarians – one emergency, and one planned. I chose to have a planned one the second time around as my first birth had been stressful and I wanted to have a small amount of control over the second one. I’ve only got a 15 month gap between the kids so it was pretty fresh in my mind!

Recently Bec Judd came out and talked about  her birth experiences – people seemed to have jumped onto her words of how horrific the cesar route is and that she would choose a vaginal birth every time and she’s getting slammed for it. But why? Find me a woman who has had a cesarian who doesn’t think it was awful, and i’ll find you a 2 year old who never says ‘no’. It’s major abdominal surgery for crying out loud!

Evie, as you probably know, was my emergency cesarian. Unexpected, I had no idea what to expect when they took off the bandage from my stomach. Hell, I didn’t even know I had a catheter in! The scar/wound was tidy though – internal stitches so I couldn’t see anything on the outside. The healing was pretty easy from what I remember (lifes a blur hey!) but I did have one random stitch that stuck out the very end of one of the sides. The midwife who checked on my at home said she had never seen anything like it and just snipped it – the inside eventually dissolved and a little bit of plastic came out the top.

When I had Hunter, boy was I NOT expecting what happened next! Staples! I looked like Frankenstein! Apparently stitches or staples, is all surgeons choice so it just depends on who you have on the day. Had I known and it was allowed, I would have requested stitches again. The staples were uncomfortable and restricted my movement slightly. They are supposed to come out on day 5 but after 2 phone calls and a whole day of waiting (and being reassured the midwife was still coming) suddenly it was 6pm and no one had come to me (at home). So day 6 a midwife came over to start snipping, and the skin had started healing in sections leaving red sore areas. To remove stitches they have to individually remove each stitch with a scissor like device and then pull them out. They say its not painful, and I’m sorry if you read this before having staples, but it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t horrific but the parts that had healed were painful to get them out – only briefly with each snip.

OKOK going through these pictures of my births and babies has made me RIDICULOUSLY CLUCKY DON’T TELL CHRIS.