C-Section Shame, Healing + Exercise Tips

You’ve got your birth plan all laid out. Awesome music, no medication, your trusted doula. Then the big day comes and despite all your prep, planning and positive imagery, you’re whisked to the operating room for a cesarean section before you can even wrap your head around it.

Or maybe you knew you were in for a c-section all along. You had time to google, talk to your OB-GYN, ask friends and understand the procedure. Everything went according to plan. You’ve got no regrets.

Then they wheel you out with a major abdominal trauma, put a baby into your arms, and tell you not to “push it.”

And that’s it.

You don’t think anything is wrong. You don’t even know how to tell if something is wrong. So you go about your business, not wanting to bother the doctor.

“After, a flood of emotions hit me like a truck.”

People want to hear about your birth story. But you don’t know exactly how to process it.

If you had an emergency c-section, you maybe feel like you “failed.” Like you couldn’t cut it in the birth department. Your birth wasn’t “ideal.” If you had a planned cesarean, you got the “easy way out.” You didn’t experience “real” birth.

These dark thoughts and whispered stigmas around cesarean birth truly hurt.

Then there are the flashbacks. The life-and-death moments that keep coming flooding back.

“No one even offered me a wheelchair.”

Not to mention… it hurts to walk. It hurts to breastfeed. It hurts to get out of bed in the night…six thousand times.

But this is normal, right? You should just suck it up?

“That c-section recovery? It sucked.”

This week on BB #WholeMama Wednesday: Jessie Mundell, Fitness Coach and Pregnancy/Postpartum Fitness Expert, shares her personal emergency c-section story, her recommendations for returning to activity, tips to help heal, and her opinions on the stigma and lack of care surrounding cesarean sections.

The current c-section rate is hovering around 30% of births in North America. We need to do better caring for our mamas’ emotional & physical well-being after this major operation.

If you have ever had a c-section, might have another baby, or know someone who has had a c-section, you need to watch and share this interview. Please comment below or on our YouTube channel to share your own beautiful cesarean birth story, or your ideas for how cesarean care should be improved.

Stay tuned for weekly #WholeMama videos, launching this fall.