Sunday 29 August 2010

Recovery

A few things about the physical recovery after being operated on for ectopic pregnancy...

Like with any pregnancy, your body has prepared itself to be pregnant.  This includes the lining of the womb thickening and blood capacity starting to increase.  When you're suddenly not pregnant anymore, your body must re-adjust to being normal.  This includes shedding the extra lining.  As a result, after an ectopic pregnancy you will bleed for awhile (about a week and a half in my case, although it was not at all steady).  Like after childbirth, you can't use tampons because of the risk of infection.  You also can't have sex again until you've completely finished bleeding (to give your body a chance to recover and because of the risk of infection).

If you have surgery, you won't be allowed to shower for the first day or two.  After that, you can take shower, but you can't submerge your wounds in water until they're completely healed over.  So no baths, swimming, etc.

Even if you do everything you're told to, you can still get an infection.  One of my incision sites got infected and so I had to go through two rounds of antibiotics.  If your wound starts to look really red and inflamed, stink, or have a yellow colored discharge (yes, I do realize it's gross), see your doctor immediately and make them swab it and prescribe antibiotics.

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