Because this is the #1 post that comes up on Google when you search "appendectomy childbirth," I thought I would edit my post to give some background information before launching into my story:
I have given birth two times, both without any drugs or medical interventions. For the first birth in 2005 I labored at home and delivered at the hospital; the second birth in 2009 was a planned homebirth. When my second child was nine months old, I had an attack of appendicitis and had an appendectomy two days later.
I found both my birth experiences to be much more significant -- more painful, more intense, more psychologically demanding -- than my appendicitis.
On the other hand, I found recovery from appendectomy to be much more difficult than recovery from childbirth, especially my homebirth.
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Let's compare the pain of an attack of appendicitis versus the pain of giving birth without drugs. Which was worse? Well, it's not a straightforward comparison, because giving birth is so overwhelming and awesome both physically and psychologically. When my appendicitis started, I spent several hours crouched on the bathroom floor vomiting, but I was also sort of bored so I looked through a gossip magazine. Two days later, when I was at the hospital waiting for appendectomy surgery, I listened to an audio book on my iPod and even fell asleep. Labor, on the other hand, was much more intense than appendicitis, and it consumed me entirely; after it really got started I could concentrate on nothing else, and there was no way I could have slept through it.
While my appendicitis was painful, it was not excruciating; I've had worse pain with a bad case of stomach flu. Nor, for me, did it escalate in intensity; even at the end if I held really still, I could make the appendicitis pain almost vanish, although I felt quite ill. Labor pains start small and short, but they get bigger and last longer -- and then you have to push, which I found even more painful than the contractions!
As far as timing goes, my appendicitis lasted far longer, because I had pain for more than 48 hours. My first birth had 12 hours of hard labor, and my second birth lasted just two and a half hours. And not only was my labor shorter than my appendicitis, remember there is pain-free space between contractions, so with my second birth there might have been only 90 minutes of pain in total.
I truly believe that labor is "good pain" with a wonderful purpose, as opposed to appendicitis which is just something going wrong with your body. I had practiced many strategies for coping with labor pain, and I was prepared for it. I would highly recommend natural childbirth, and if I had to have another baby (not that I want to!) I would do it again.
But appendicitis was easier. Much easier. Much, much easier.
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However, recovering from natural childbirth was much easier than recovering from abdominal surgery -- even laparoscopic surgery with zero complications. (Recovering from a C-section must be so much harder.)
After my surgery I woke up feeling fairly well, and I declined the narcotics and anti-nausea medicine the nurses offered me -- I turned out to be one of those lucky people who has no bad reactions to anesthetic. I felt bruised and sore, and exhausted from poor sleep, and strangely bloated from the IV fluids. I hobbled around for a day or two due to my inability to bend in the middle, but if I respected my limited range of motion I had little pain. I did take a Tylenol or two, but that was because of the carbon dioxide* pain in my right shoulder -- the pain was knife-like, especially when I tried to lie down flat, so I slept upright for two or three nights.
But after my second birth I felt perfectly normal. It feels wrong to say that I felt "healthy," because my health had nothing to do with it -- I didn't feel like I had experienced a medical event. I was tired, yes, but strong and vigorous -- invigorated, even.
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My appendectomy took place on Laurel's nine-month birthday. This coincidence of date made me consider the ways in which having an appendectomy was different from having a homebirth. Obviously I was in the hospital for one and at home for the other, but there were other differences.
Unlike with my homebirth, with my appendectomy I found myself:
1) Having a surprisingly painful IV line in place
2) Becoming bloated and puffy from receiving IV fluids
3) Being unable to eat or drink anything despite being hungry and thirsty
4) Lying around for hours on a gurney in a hallway waiting for the doctor to be ready for me
5) Being told what to do by an assortment of kindly but unfamiliar nurses
6) Sleeping in a single bed while my husband spent the night in a chair by my bedside
7) Receiving heavy drugs which rendered breast-feeding impossible
8) Having a urinary catheter (luckily only while I was unconscious!)
9) Waking up with an abraded throat and bruised lips from the breathing tube
10) Being unable to drive for ten days
I had never had an IV before, and I was genuinely surprised that it hurt. I guess it makes sense, being a needle inserted into one's flesh! Since nearly everyone in labor gets an IV, I had always assumed it wasn't a big deal. But it was quite restrictive, even for an appendicitis patient who was basically doing nothing but lying down, and it was constantly uncomfortable. It was hard to do sedentary things, such as breast-feed or hold Laurel, and it was impossible to do active things, such as raise my arm to put my own hair into a ponytail. It would have been very difficult to give birth with that thing stuck in me, especially because being able to move around was an important part of my labor strategy.
With my first birth, which happened in the hospital, I had three items from this list (3, 5, and 6); with my homebirth I had none of them! I was lucky to avoid being one of the 30% of American women who end up with a Cesarean birth, because I believe most women who have a C-section end up with eight or more of these items.
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*Are you asking, "What carbon dioxide?" During laparoscopic surgery they inflate your abdomen with gas so they can see better. This is copied from Wikipedia: "Not all of the CO2 introduced into the abdominal cavity is removed through the incisions during surgery. Gas tends to rise, and when a pocket of CO2 rises in the abdomen, it pushes against the diaphragm (the muscle that separates the abdominal from the thoracic cavities and facilitates breathing), and can exert pressure on the phrenic nerve. This produces a sensation of pain that may extend to the patient's shoulders. For an appendectomy, the right shoulder can be particularly painful. In some cases this can also cause considerable pain when breathing. In all cases, however, the pain is transient, as the body tissues will absorb the CO2 and eliminate it through respiration."
It actually hurt a lot, so much that the very first thing I mumbled when I regained consciousness after surgery was "Why does my shoulder hurt?"
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