it's been awhile.

I did not reassess at the next 6 month mark, like I had promised to do in my last post because I was pregnant again. Kibuyu's 2nd birthday is coming up this weekend, so I am assessing my recovery now.

While pregnant, my symptoms worsened.

During the second trimester, my leaks had gotten so bad that a standard panty liner was no longer enough. I upgraded to Poise liners. If I needed to cough or sneeze, I could clench my muscles to keep from leaking, but the pressure of the baby on my bladder caused me to leak throughout the course of the day, and I wasn't always aware of it.

My scars were more painful, daily, as pregnancy went progressed, and I couldn't take ibuprofen. I just had to live with it. Staying off my feet and soaking in a hot bath tended to help. I don't remember the pain being bad enough that I resorted to using an ice pack.

BB (as I've nicknamed baby # 2) will be 4 months old this weekend. I keep thinking that at this point in Kibuyu's life, I was still in pain daily, sitting on ice packs, and taking ibuprofen all the time. My second experience with childbirth was much, much better.

BB was born via scheduled c-section. It was wonderful. They kept morphine in my IV for the first hours (maybe 12 hours?) afterwards, making the first hours of his life virtually painless. Once I was on oral pain meds, day 3 was bad, but the recovery was a breeze compared to my first.

As for my symptoms now, I think I am slightly better than I was when I wrote my previous post in Nov 2010. I have found that I can wear only one brand and style of thong, but no others as they hurt my scar. My scar also hurts the first day or two of my period. The first 6 weeks of BB's life, my c-section scar hurt more often and more intensely than my Nate scar, but it became the opposite around week 7, and that remains true. I only have leaks if a sneeze (or something else that causes me to tighten my tummy muscles) sneaks up on me, and I don't have time to intentionally tighten my pelvic floor muscles. I feel like I have a lot better control of those muscles now, but I still lack the reflexive tightening that should happen during a sneeze.

I "met" someone online recently who had possibly more extensive damage than I. (I say "possibly" because we didn't compare scars or anything. It's not a contest.) She had two surgeries to try to repair her damage. When I was referred to physical therapy, I was told that surgery would be my other option. Sometimes I wonder if my current symptoms would be "cured" through surgery. However, the symptoms I am left with aren't bad enough for me to pursue that course.

All in all, two years later, I am either getting close to "back to normal," or I am used to my new normal.