What to Expect After a Birth with Interventions

When Recovery Is Rough

By Marsden Wagner, M.D., M.S.

There is always a period of healing from childbirth, but births with unexpected complications may mean additional physical challenges for new mothers. Those who’ve had Cesarean sections, for instance, are recovering from major abdominal surgery and will need extra support for several weeks or months.

If you’ve undergone any kind of interventions during labor and birth, your recovery may also involve coming to terms with strong feelings about what happened.

Inducing and Augmenting Drugs

Serious postpartum hemorrhages are slightly more common among women who’ve had their labors induced or augmented by drugs. This makes sense though, because the purpose of the drugs is to stimulate stronger and faster uterine contractions and sometimes the uterine muscle can run out of gas and lose its ability to contract. The serious hemorrhage usually occurs because the uterus is atonic – meaning it has lost its ability to contract – and therefore isn’t shutting down and squeezing against the raw surfaces.

Your healthcare practitioners will give you instructions on reasons you should call them or go to the emergency room in the immediate period following birth. If you do not hemorrhage within 24 hours of birth, chances are good that it’s not going to happen. It’s even unlikely after a few hours.

Inducing and augmenting drugs are metabolized and out of your system within a few hours of taking them – evidence of this is that your contractions cease. Therefore, they cannot be passed to your baby through your breast milk.