I had planned a home birth but unfortunately that dream wasn’t fulfilled because after a scant 3 hours of very early labor at home with my lovely birth team I experienced something called PLACENTAL ABRUPTION. This means that the placenta separated from the uterine wall prematurely, causing the baby’s oxygen supply to be partially cut off and the uterus to begin filling up with blood. We knew that something was very very wrong when my midwife did her routine check for heart tones and found that the baby’s heartbeat had suddenly dropped to a dangerously slow rate. We rushed to the hospital and after nearly 2 hours of closely monitored labor they attempted to put a fetal monitor directly on the baby’s head through my cervix. When they did that they broke the amniotic sack and the liquid that trickled out was dark brown. Bad. Very very bad. Brown amniotic fluid means that blood and poo (meconium) were in the uterus and the baby was swallowing that and getting it in her lungs. Ok so they decided to do an emergency C-section.
Emergency Anesthesia
All this time I had been having steady hard contractions but when they moved to the operating room they gave me a drug to stop the contractions so that they could perform the surgery on muscles that weren’t constantly squeezing. The impact of this drug on me was that in addition to painful rip roaring contractions I was suddenly shaking uncontrollably as the drug tried to stop my body from being in labor. Awesome. I was wheeled into the OR and the anesthesiologist looked down at me over his mask and said “I’m doctor Patel, I’ll take care of you.” And that’s all I remember of that.
When I woke up I remember having an immediate sensation of relief, I felt so relaxed and rested. Then a voice said “Can you wiggle the fingers of your left hand for me? How about your right?” and I suddenly became horribly aware that not only could I not wiggle my fingers I also couldn’t breath! I tried to take a breath and nothing happened, I tried to speak or call out to say “I can’t breath!” and nothing happened. I was drowning in air and I couldn’t tell anyone! Then all at once (or so it seemed to me) I miraculously could breath again and I was being wheeled out of the OR and back up to maternity.
I wish someone had explained in that moment what was happening to me. It was a very simple thing but I didn’t get an explanation for several hours until I asked a nurse about it later that night.
I WISH I’D KNOWN: Just in case you ever find yourself needing emergency anesthesia keep this story in mind: I had been intubated and I didn’t know it. When they reduced the anesthesia to wake me up they left the breathing tube in place until they knew that I had awoken sufficiently to be able to breath on my own. Then they removed the tube in my throat. So when I woke up there was a machine breathing for me and I couldn’t take my own breaths until they removed the tube. This was a horribly frightening experience and I wish they had just told me what was going on.
Muscle pain after emergency anesthesia
Another thing I wish they had told me to expect was the pain in my neck and shoulders in the 48 hours following emergency surgery. It was worse by far than the pain of my incision, which was excruciating, and I couldn’t stretch my muscles out, all I could do was sit propped up uncomfortably in bed.
I WISH I’D KNOWN: Apparently they have to strap your arms down in a ‘Jesus on the cross’ pose when you go under general anesthesia and being restrained in this unnatural pose for over an hour frequently results in this kind of severe shoulder/neck pain.
Betadine Allergy Rash (The miracle of Breast milk!)
Ok this one is huge, I wish I could shout this piece of hard learned knowledge into the home of every single human being on this planet, but especially pregnant women because it would have saved me so much discomfort and distress if someone had just given me this information immediately after my C-section.
Surgeons cover the area they are going to cut with a layer of Betadine before they begin surgery. This is to prevent infection and kill bacteria. So after I was wheeled into the OR they painted my belly with Betadine Surgical Scrub and then proceeded with their surgery. After they had stitched everything back up they left the Betadine on my skin. This is common practice, but it had huge ramifications for me in the days that followed.
Two days after my surgery I was able to stand up and move around a bit so I took a shower for the first time and I carefully washed off all the yellow/brown staining from the Betadine. Three hours later I noticed a red rash starting to appear all over my belly. A couple hours after that I noticed that the rash was itchy. Shortly thereafter I was in a world of pain. None of the doctors or nurses caring for me recognized my symptoms or had ever encountered this problem. What could be causing these severe red welts to be quickly expanding across my sore tender belly?
I mentioned it to several of the nurses caring for my baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and after showing the rash to them somebody said “oh yeah that’s a Betadine allergy”. Several of them had experienced the same thing after their own babies were born. It turns out that a large portion of the population gets a contact dermatitis allergy from Betadine, but nobody mentioned this possibility to me so when it appeared I had no idea what it was or how to treat it.
I was in a huge amount of pain, the incision from my surgery felt like it was being torn open and my skin was extremely tender and horrifically itchy at the same time. Touching it hurt, my clothes brushed lightly against my skin as I moved and that hurt. Itching it hurt but also made it feel better in a perverse way. I’ve had poison Ivy many times and I’ve also had Poison oak, and this was like those multiplied by a factor of 10. I set about treating it as I would treat poison ivy, with a combination of Aloe, cortizone cream and cold compresses. None of it helped. The cortizone cream seemed to inflame it more in fact, and after a day of shellacking my skin with aloe vera gel to no effect I took a cool shower. As I painfully peeled off the layers of sticky gel and cream I realized that all I had been doing was capping the rash with an impermeable barrier that didn’t allow my skin to breath. I researched online and began applying a diluted solution of apple cider vinegar to my skin that left me feeling only slightly better and made me smell like a pickle. Luckily the next morning I was in my babies room in the NICU and a new nurse said “oh, have you tried breast milk? Breast milk fixes everything.” So strange as it sounded I dabbed my own breast milk all over this evil red rash from hell and IMMEDIATELY felt relief! That whole day and night I applied milk to the rash multiple times and the change was striking: from angry red welts that looked almost neon the rash faded to a muted pink glow that resembled a slight sunburn. The itching disappeared literally overnight. My will to live returned as well. Why didn’t the medical community know about this issue? If the Betadine had been rinsed off of me the same night as the surgery perhaps I wouldn’t have had a reaction at all or at least it wouldn’t have been as severe. Having a painful itchy rash develop on top of an area that just got sliced open and stitched up seems almost impossibly shitty. Betadine is meant to prevent the spread of infection and bacteria, this seems like a case of the prevention being the problem. There are viable alternatives to Betadine for use in surgical prep when the patient has a known allergy but none of them are as completely effective as the antiseptic properties of iodine. Also, you have to know you have an allergy in order to request an alternative scrub. Kinda sucks that we all have to find this out the hard way. An ounce of prevention (washing off the betadine after surgery) could have prevented a ton of pain (5 days of severely painful rash on top of an already painful surgical site).
I Wish I’d Known:
Betadine can cause a severe contact allergy when applied directly to the skin. You need to get that shit off your skin as quickly as possible to avoid having a reaction. I had it on me for around 30 hours and it was really really bad. Other women I talked to seemed to have less extreme reactions than me, maybe they showered sooner than I did.
What Helped Me:
Rinse the area clean as soon as you possibly can. The longer the betadine stays on your skin the worse the reaction will be. If you are a lactating woman, rub your breast milk into the rash and you will experience immediate amazing relief. For non-lactating people try apple cider vinegar and aloe vera gel.
Steri Strips
Steri Strips are the glue tape that goes on over your C-section scar to keep the stitches in place until they dissolve and to hold everything together. The doctors say you can gently pat the area of your incision when you shower but not to scrub at it or try to peel the strips off in the first week and not to soak in the tub for the first week. Everyone said to me that they would fall off on their own after about 10 days. Mine didn’t. I couldn’t see my incision unless I stood in front of a full length mirror and leaned back. I wasn’t sure where the ends of the actual cut were since the strips go beyond the edges of the incision and it was very creepy for me to touch the area and feel only numbness above the scar and only hard tacky glue strips on top of the scar. I was worried the stitches weren’t healed so I waited 2 weeks and then a bit longer and still the steri strips were perfectly glued in place. They were getting really dirty from lint and pant fuzz and they looked terrifying but I wasn’t able to pick them off because it felt like I was peeling my skin off every time I tried. Finally I got into a tub and soaked until they just slipped off easily.
*A side note about numbness: 4 months after my surgery the numbness above my scar went away. But I talked to a nurse in the NICU who told me that she was still numb around her scar 1 year Postpartum and I’ve heard that for some people the feeling never completely comes back (especially after multiple C-sections) so just be aware that results really vary from person to person.