“You’ll forget the pain of childbirth once you see your precious baby.”

“You’ll be so over-the-moon that you’d go through it all over again.”

Stop. Right. There. Heck. To. The. No.

Why do people do that? Why do people project how they felt during their experience of childbirth onto you, and tell you how you’re going to feel even though they have no way of knowing how you will actually feel? Then when you don’t feel the way people say you’re going to feel, you’re left wondering what is wrong with you. But I digress. I shall save that topic for another time.

I didn’t feel any pain during my C-section; recovery from having a C-section and from having twins, however, was and still is a really rough road. For that reason, I would never ever have another kid. Not like I want another one anyway.

Once I was all stitched up from the operation, I was wheeled into the recovery room where they monitored me as the anesthesia wore off. I don’t remember much from this time, other than feeling cold, beginning breastfeeding the twins, and baby girl being taken to be placed under a heating lamp because of low core temperature.

I remember feeling good during this time, and was texting away with friends and family who were eager to know how everyone was doing. Once the anesthesia wore off and I was stable, they wheeled me off to another room where I was supposed to stay until I was discharged from the hospital.

Shortly after, a nurse measured my blood pressure and it was alarmingly high. High enough where I was in danger of having a seizure at any moment (something about postpartum preeclampsia). I was immediately administered magnesium sulfate via IV, which made me feel incredibly nauseated, and the last thing you want to do after a C-section is vomit due to the strain on your abdomen.

I lay there on the hospital bed feeling like death with 5 nurses crowded around my room. Once my dose was complete after about 20 minutes and I was stabilized, I was transferred to a different room and floor than before, so a more specialized team of nurses could monitor me.

For the next few days, nurses came into my room every 2-4 hours around the clock to check my blood pressure and my C-section scar. This was SO exhausting, stressful, and was in addition to breastfeeding the twins whenever they were brought back from the nursery. (Yes, I had the twins sent to the nursery whenever they were asleep and it was AMAZING.)

During the times I was awake, I would take painkillers, eat, drink, pump, and repeat. Two days later, I had to get up and practice walking. I will never forget how difficult and painful that was. It took me 20 minutes just to rotate and move my body out of the hospital bed. The first time I got out of bed, I couldn’t even take one step. I had to get right back into bed because I was in so much pain. Walking and trying to squat down to pee in the toilet after a C-section were probably the most physically challenging things I have ever had to do in my life.

The following days were filled with excruciatingly slow walks down the hall, needing someone’s help to go to the bathroom every single time, and oh so many exhausted and painful breastfeeding sessions around the clock. Not once did I think, “Wow, this is so worth it.”

When the time finally came to be discharged from the hospital and sent home, I REALLY didn’t want to leave. We had SO much help at the hospital and we knew that once we left, we were going to be on our own without any user manuals. We took some final photos before we were discharged, took everything that was not bolted down in our room (extra diapers/creams/bottles/formula/burpcloths/etc.), packed up our car, and drove home.

Our world had been completely flipped upside-down going from zero children to two, but little did we know just how challenging the following year would be…