Dry yourself very gently: pat your vulva dry–don’t rub–and don’t be tempted to use the hairdryer on it because you can burn yourself.
Consider hiring a ‘valley cushion’. Available from the nct, this is a special cushion designed to help you sit comfortably (or less agonisingly) after giving birth.
Take any painkillers, homeopathic or herbal remedies you fancy: anything’s worth a try and now is no time for stoicism.
AT HOME:
Put bags of frozen peas in a sealed bag wrapped in a thin towel, and put them against your perineum.
Try regular ‘sitz baths’–a shallow bath in which you bathe your parts (a plastic washing-up bowl of warm water will do). Into this, herbalists at Neal’s Yard Remedies recommend putting a few drops of hypericum and calendula tincture, and a few drops of lavender essential oil.
If you had a Caesarean birth, you’re likely to be feeling pretty wobbly too. Here are a few ways of dealing with this.
Again, pain relief drugs. Maximum doses. Deny yourself none.
Get the midwife to show you alternative breastfeeding positions that don’t press on your scar, which is going to be sore.
Expect to feel weak and make sure someone is with you when you first try to get up.
Try padding/supporting your scar by putting a sanitary towel between it and your knickers and wearing very high-waisted knickers that won’t rub.
Move: follow all the instructions you are given about movement, and get up when the midwife says you can. This will help your recovery and reduce your chances of getting a blood clot.
Remember you just had abdominal surgery. You’re bound to feel a bit dodgy.
However you gave birth, you will bleed for about seven days as if you’re having an excessively heavy period; you will then have normal period-type bleeding, that gets lighter and lighter, for about a month. This is your womb shedding its lining. You might pass some freakishly large blood clots at first–tell the midwife if you pass anything larger than an ordinary-sized plum (!), if it smells foul or if you come down with a fever.
As your womb starts to shrink, you’ll get bad period-like cramps, known as ‘afterpains’, in the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours. To cope with these, use painkillers, massage your lower abdomen and lie on your stomach with a firm pillow or hot-water bottle under it if your Jordan-sized breasts allow. If you hired a tens machine for pain relief in labour, it can help to put it back on.
HOW TO DO PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES
Imagine you need to stop peeing halfway through: that’s the muscle you’re trying to use.
Clench this, tighten some more, then some more, as if going up three floors in a lift.
Hold it clenched there for about five seconds.
Then release, one ‘floor’ at a time.
Repeat this a few times.
Alternate this exercise with simply doing ten quick squeezes.
Try to make this a regular part of your life from now on by having daily ‘triggers’, such as when you go the loo, or have a drink, or get to a traffic light, or do the washing-up. You’re aiming to do these exercises about ten times every day.
There are other post-birth thrills too. Your bladder control may be practically non-existent in the first forty-eight hours or so, and decidedly dodgy for some time after. The cradle of muscles that supports your bladder and womb has been stretched by the pregnancy and birth and it needs tightening up–this will help your long-term gynaecological health, your ability to hold in pee and your sex life. Start the pelvic floor exercises along the side of this page in the first twenty-four hours. At first you may feel absolutely nothing down there, but twitch away and eventually sensation should return. If you are having any problems with this, or with incontinence, talk to your GP who can refer you to a physiotherapist. Don’t be shy: this is far more common than you’d imagine.
Another delightful and common side-effect down below is piles, or haemorrhoids. These are varicose veins in your bottom that can be sore, itchy, bleed and generally make you feel like your bum has turned inside out. If you suffer from piles, don’t strain to poo, get over-the-counter haemorrhoid treatments, avoid long periods of standing or sitting (lie on your side instead) and try soaking cotton wool in witch hazel and using it as a kind of soothing compress.
Constipation happens to the best of us after childbirth. It is caused by your changing hormones, but pooing a brick full of nails is the last thing you want to contend with after having a baby. So: drink tons of water–keep a jug by your bed–and get your partner to bring you fibre-rich food (hospital food is generally hopeless) like fruit (dried fruit, such as prunes, make a handy snack). When you attempt your first poo after a vaginal birth, try putting a sanitary pad over your vulva and holding firmly. This can seriously help the weird feeling that ‘everything’s falling out’.
Even if you’ve decided not to breastfeed, your boobs will produce a pale liquid called colostrum at first; after a few days they should become swollen and full of ‘normal-looking’ milk. If you are not breastfeeding, use breast pads and a good solid bra and your milk supply will gradually stop.
Talking of emissions–and this is the last one, honest–you’ll also sweat a lot at first to expel the extra fluid your body amassed during pregnancy.
How you may feel emotionally
It’s not just your body that’s going to feel the after-effects of childbirth–your mind can go a bit doolally too. This is partly down to hormonal shifts, partly exhaustion and partly the sheer phenomenal experience of new parenthood. If you’ve just got through a particularly difficult birth, you may well feel shell-shocked by what happened. If the birth went well, you’re likely to feel anything from high as a kite to completely invincible. Giving birth can genuinely make you feel you’re capable of anything, and that nothing in life will ever scare or daunt you again.
Except, perhaps, keeping this wondrous infant safe and well and happy–forever. This is whopping great life stuff and it makes the early days (and weeks) of parenthood unimaginably special. But while it’s going on, you’re also likely, at some point, to crash. It’s not surprising–birth is a big deal, both physically and emotionally, and a few nights in charge of a new and almost inconceivably precious baby, probably in a loud ward with little in the way of support, are enough to do anyone’s head in. You might experience the ‘baby blues’ around day three, where you feel all weepy and helpless (see here for more about this). Or you might just wobble up and down, sometimes precipitously, from time to time. All of this is normal. The best thing for you is a supportive partner who’ll be there not just to hold the baby, but to hold you too sometimes. These early days of snuggling, feeding and gazing at your newborn together are what life’s all about. To say it’s an ‘emotional time’ is the understatement of the century.
The two of you: getting to know your baby
It is, of course, a massive over-simplification to say all your newborn will do is eat, sleep, excrete and cry. Your tiny being will stretch and snuffle and squeak and yawn and suck and wail and move her limbs as if she’s doing an underwater dance. She’ll gaze at you, or drift off to sleep, her fingers will curl and uncurl, and in her sleep her eyelids will flicker. Sometimes she’ll jerk her arms and wake up shocked and howling. Sometimes she’ll whimper and stir and grimace, then go back to sleep. Sometimes she’ll lie so still she looks like a tiny, perfect doll and