What are the symptoms you may/might feel during recovery period?
‘’Be kind to yourself and give your body the time it needs to heal.’’
It might take 6 to 9 weeks for a postpartum mother to feel like who she was before delivery. Whether it involved a vacuum assistance, forceps or just plain stitches. Healing takes time and you need to be patient with your body. The postpartum care period is very important for the mother to develop a healthy relationship with her body and her baby and is crucial for the mom and baby’s wellbeing.
It is very common to experience pain after a vaginal incision during vaginal delivery. This happens because the baby’s head pushes through the vagina and causes tears and lacerations during labor. More often than not, your gynecologist may initiate a small incision to help with the labor, this takes time to heal.
Use an icepack around the area to help with the inflammation, use a soft padded flat or ring-shaped cushion while sitting, try using warm water while washing your perineum and perform a sitz bath to help with the pain.
A sitz bath is a shallow soak of your perineum. Take a clean tub and fill it up to 4 inches with warm water, you can add about ½ cup salt or whatever is recommended by the doctor for you. Sit and soak in this water for about 10 to 20 minutes. Make this your “me-time” and light a scented candle or a novel reading activity while you do so. Remember, after having a baby, you need to take time out for yourself before the stress piles up on you like a pressure cooker about to burst.
Bloody red discharge occurs for about 3 to 4 days changing into a yellow discharge and then white-colored for the next 10-12 days. Keep changing clean sanitary pads regularly and advise women on hygiene health and frequent showers.
After delivery the uterus contracts back to its pre-pregnancy size and it is experienced as after pains or post pregnancy cramping. They usually come in combination of dull and sharp pain that spike and fall with time. Taking an over-the- counter acetaminophen spaced at 6 hour intervals can be helpful and some women find the heating pad and hot water bottle extremely helpful, too.
This is a very common complaint-post delivery and has more to do with psychological fear than a medical concern. We recommend you increase your water intake during this time, add Ispaghol 1 tablespoon with every meal, increasing fiber in your diet alleviates this fear. You need to consult your doctor when you haven’t passed a bowel movement in 4 days, so you can try adding a stool softener.
During the first 24 hours, urination can be quite a problem. This is because the bladder might have been traumatized during delivery