I ended my first childbirth with a 2nd degree tear, which the doctor described as “normal”. This meant that I had skin and muscle damage, but not such that it extended all the way to the back. From my internet research, I knew this meant stitches— which was what I got.
A few hours after giving birth in the Labor and Delivery Ward at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, I was moved to the Family Centered Care Unit. (Those are two long mouthfuls!) In the second location, the nurse told me that a postpartum woman should urinate every 2-3 hours and then explained my new postpartum bathroom routine. It was rather long.
I was given a spray bottle that looked like a condiment container and what looked like large and soft paper towels. I was instructed to:
- Use the bottle to spray water and then
- Pat yourself dry with a napkin, which goes in the trash and not the toilet. I was told not to use toilet paper, because the fibers of the toilet paper could get stuck in and infect the stitches.
The nurse did not say whether this spraying happened from the front or the back. I asked and was told rather matter-of-factly that it should be done from the front. I had done some research online before giving birth and noticed that some women strongly prefer a peri bottle with an angled nozzle. After having been in the situation, I can say that the hospital bottle without an angled neck was very easy to use. Had I been pregnant and trying to use it, I may have had trouble reaching around my large belly. I would also have preferred an angled-neck peri bottle if I were unable to reach down easily.
While at home, I ran out of the napkins. However, I had paper towels that did not seem like they shed bits or broke easily, so I used those instead to carefully pat myself dry.
After cleaning yourself, the standard procedure is to:
- Put on some enormous and stretchy disposable underwear. (Does not need to be replaced unless blood or urine gets on it.) This is pretty much required if you are going to do Item 2, which is…
- Lay a large flat pad inside of the underwear to catch any blood leaked from…
- The perineal cold pack, which is basically a maxi pad that happens to also feel cold, on top of which you lay…
- Witch hazel circles (3 of them, if you are using the AER brand the hospital brand had.) on which you use…
- antiseptic spray 4 times a day. I chose midnight, 6 AM, noon, and 6 PM to make it simple.
So far so good— but I was never told was how long I had to do all this.
I continued to do the spraying and patting dry until my six week postpartum checkup. However, after a week, I did not have enough blood flow such that the large pad and perineal cold pack were necessary. I began to only change the witch hazel pads for some bathroom visits, because I had light enough blood loss to be caught by the witch hazel circles alone. After I ran out of the cold packs, I tried a brand I purchased on Amazon but found they were too cold! I switched to medium flow pads. I ran out of the hospital AER brand witch hazel circles and used the Tucks brand I purchased. The Tucks brand I bought on my own were smaller in diameter and I felt that I needed 4 circles to cover the same area fully. I then got tired of the witch hazel circles and found the passing coolness to not be worth the effort of sometimes pulling them off my skin. So, I started using panty liners and nothing else.
I vaguely worried with each change whether I was doing things right.
I probably did things about right, because my postpartum checkup at the OB-GYN found that the skin was healed as it should be.
One last thing I would like to say is “Remember to advocate for yourself.” My husband walked outside to the counter multiple times for the supplies which were running out. I do not understand why it took so much effort, repeated requests, and sometimes a few hours to get more witch hazel, cold packs, etc. The nurses are the ones who told me to urinate every 2-3 hours, which would be 8-12 bathroom visits a day for urination alone. It was necessary to change everything out but the underwear every time at first, but I was able to reuse the large flat pad if it had not gotten damp. That still means that I would need up to 12 cold packs and 36 witch hazel circles every 24 hours!
