Laughing, Sneezing, and Coughing Can Hurt—A Lot While it's rare for your stitches to come apart, it is important to give yourself literal, physical support after a C-section. The best thing you can do when you feel like laughing—or coughing or sneezing—is to put a pillow over your stitches and press it onto yourself.
Hold your belly when you sneeze, cough, or laugh to keep it still. Ease your pain. A heating pad (set on low) or a warm washcloth can help with pain around your belly. You may also need acetaminophen, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), or other pain relievers.
After a c-section it is important that you still take deep breaths and cough when you need to in order to get the phlegm off your chest.
Some women feel pain, restriction, or a pulling sensation on or around their scar months or even years after surgery. This is normally due to the build-up of scar tissue which can stick to muscles or even organs and cause pain.
The scar tissue that forms as a natural part of this process tends to be rigid and less flexible than normal tissue. As a result, any movement that requires any amount of "give" to the abdomen, as can happen with coughing or sneezing, may cause a feeling of tightness or pain.
Abstract. Pain and swelling in abdominal wall scars that become more severe on coughing and straining, are typical symptoms of postoperative ventral hernias. Other abdominal wall lesions, such as hematomas, granulomas and neoplasms, can evoke similar symptoms.
C-section scar recovery
Your wound will take about 6 weeks to heal.
If you have stitches from a cesarean birth (C-section), these heal in varying degrees. The stitches in the skin should heal in 5-10 days. The underlying stitches in your muscle layer will take longer to heal. These won't completely heal for 12 weeks.
After a c-section, you should sleep on your back or side. This shouldn't put too much strain on your c-section wound. You can also try sleeping on your back with your head elevated. Use pillows to keep your spine aligned and take pressure off your joints.
3 weeks post-cesarean delivery
After you've been home from the hospital for 3 weeks or so, you might be walking for up to 15 minutes, gradually building up the time if it feels good. Keep up your daily pelvic floor exercises too.
Use a pillow for support when coughing or laughing.
After surgery, it will be uncomfortable to cough, laugh, or do anything that requires your abdominal muscles. Therefore, we recommend taking a pillow and providing support to your abdomen when you need it.
Walking after c-section is encouraged and should be your go to for the first few weeks. You'll start to notice day to day movement getting easier and less discomfort lifting baby or moving around.
It's essential to avoid any kind of excessive pressure on your abdomen, so try not to laugh, cough, or sneeze for the first few weeks after surgery. Doing so can cause pain and even rupture your incisions.
Just make sure not to push yourself too much, as overexertion after C-section delivery can have serious consequences, including wound infection or injury.
Dissolvable stitches will usually disappear on their own in 7-10 days. Non dissolvable stitches may be removed at 5-7 days after being assessed by the midwife that they are ready to come out. During this time you may see small pieces of stitch material poking out of the healing scar - do not be tempted to pull these.
Doctors, traditionally, have advised women to avoid stairs after a C-section. But Kathryn Houston, a clinical instructor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, shrugs off that recommendation. “Stairs are fine as long as you take them slowly,” she says.
With a cesarean or c-section birth, you must wait six weeks to lift your toddler or anything heavier than ten pounds. This is critical to your recovery. While these lifting restrictions may not always be possible, following them as closely as possible (especially for those with incisions) is essential.
Laughing, Sneezing, and Coughing Can Hurt—A Lot
While it's rare for your stitches to come apart, it is important to give yourself literal, physical support after a C-section. The best thing you can do when you feel like laughing—or coughing or sneezing—is to put a pillow over your stitches and press it onto yourself.
Signs and symptoms to look out for include: abnormal swelling, redness, and pain around the wound. clear or discolored fluid coming from the wound. abnormal vaginal bleeding.
The C-section pooch occurs when the C-section scar is anchored down to your core abdominal muscles. That makes the stretched out skin of your belly and the fat above it more noticeable. When the layer of fat between the skin and the muscle is disrupted during the surgery, the scar is not able to move freely.