This week, I sent out an email to my client list regretfully letting them know I’d be extending maternity leave by 2 weeks. It’s a fine line on the internet – I don’t like to be a Debbie Downer, but the truth is, my C section recovery with Joy hasn’t been a total walk in the park. And in the spirit of sharing just in case someone else finds themselves in the same boat, here’s what we’ve been dealing with.

Initially, this time around went off without a hitch. I felt like my incision was healing well, and there wasn’t much bleeding to speak of which was fantastic. I felt like a rock star. I wanted to get out back and help Josh build a chicken coop and get spring plants started in the ground. I made myself take it easy though, reminding myself that I needed to keep things at a slower pace. I was, after all, still recovering no matter how good I felt.

One thing I did notice was a little bit of a pulling sensation when I moved around. I wasn’t too worried about it, because I’d read that’s normal with a healing c-section incision.

What I did start worrying about was pain I started feeling all of a sudden, 3 weeks after Joy was born. I should be feeling better and better in my c section recovery. Not worse and worse. I remember that Saturday night looking, really looking, at the surgery site in the mirror and going “oh boy. That does not look good.”

My downstairs region was red and angry looking. It was puffy. And it hurt. After 3 weeks of healing up, it decided ummmmm no.

The worst thing you can do in this case on a Saturday night is to WebMD your symptoms. Seriously, all you’re going to do is make yourself go crazy because you’re going to decide that your c section infection is obviously the worst case scenario discussed there. You’ll go into the doctor office Monday morning convinced they’re going to admit you into the hospital immediately to do major surgery to deal with the c section infection.

All that really happened was they put me on antibiotics.

But the fun didn’t stop there – because that’d be too easy. Over that week of antibiotics, my body started developing a nice strong allergic reaction to the drugs. So the following Monday, I was rocking a 102 degree fever and feeling like I was dying. Tuesday morning, I woke up with hives all over my body. At that point, I freaked out again because obviously I was dying.

I wasn’t dying. My doc calmly changed the antibiotic I was on that was dealing with the c section infection, and also put me on a steriod for 2 days to help fix the allergic reaction.

Not being able to breastfeed for the 2 days I was on that steroid sucked, and my girls are still trying to get back to normal feeding status… but we’ll get there.

So I’m almost done with antibiotics now, the c section recovery is back on track, and the incision looks way better than it did a couple of weeks ago. This whole round of medical shenanigans has been a pain in the rear end, and if I could just be done with doctors and medications for a good long while, I’d be real happy about that…

It’s left me feeling a little less than normal Steph. Kinda beat down, run down, foggy. Some of that is having a newborn in the house and getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night for sure. But truly, I’ve been feeling a little run down after all of this. I don’t feel quite like me, and I’m looking forward to kicking that in the behind and getting back to my normal self soon.

Did you have any issues with c section recovery?

If you’ve got any weirdness you had to overcome, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!