Preparing for My First Surgery: Any Tips?

Good luck! I just had my first last month. Here are a few things I think helped me in particular: 1) Plan to not wear real waist bands for at least a month. Target “stars above” brand leggings have been amazing for me because they’re super soft, very loose, and high waisted. After 4 weeks I am integrating in some real pants/dresses with belts, but I can still only wear loose fitting or high waisted pants and have to use a standing desk at work, otherwise my incision areas hurt after a while. 2) fatigue. Everyone’s different of course, but I had pretty serious fatigue for a solid four weeks, especially after doing anything at all (a “quick” Michaels run for more yarn in week 3 resulted in a four hour nap). I feel that less at about 6 weeks but I definitely don’t have the pre-surgery stamina I once did… everything I do takes longer right now. 3) don’t be surprised if you still have tough periods for a few cycles. They didn’t tell me this until it happened and then I read in a few places it’s normal. Because of everything you’re going through it can make you have a LOT of feelings when you suddenly experience terrible pre-surgery symptoms when you thought you were out of the woods. My first period was absolutely terrible. Just finished my second and it was bad, but came with different symptoms (a TON of back pain). 4) try to find someone to help you. I had planned on doing this myself because my partner was supposed to be out of town for work and I don’t have much of a local support network — and frankly I’m stubborn and brought up with a strong bootstrap mentality that’s been hard to shake. I am very glad my partners plans changed and I was able to have some friends stay with me when I otherwise would have been alone. It’s incredible the number of things that are off limits because of lifting restrictions. Plus, especially when on pain meds, I wasn’t able to move easily and for the first few days my partner had to “spot” me any time I went up or down stairs or got in or out of the shower. 5) pudding. You’ll never have a better excuse to eat pudding several times a day and nothing beats pudding belly. 6) get up and move a lot. I read in online forums how some people essentially kept themselves on bed rest the whole recovery. My doctor advised me that the sooner and more frequently I can get up the better, both to prevent blood clots as well as to promote healing (and prevent further scarring>future adhesions). I set a 30 minute timer so I would get up every 30 minutes just to stretch or take a lap around the room I was in. I let myself nap when I needed to, but otherwise tried to stay out of bed unless I was sleeping. 7) have a belly pillow handy. Nothing fancy, just something you have to protect your belly from unexpected pressure (like the aloof cats that suddenly decide to be lap cats). I used it to pad the seatbelt anytime I was in the car (especially right after surgery), when I was sitting or needed to bend over for something (having a pillow to ease the bend seemed to help), and still use one to sleep (it took several weeks to be able to side sleep comfortably, but a pillow did help with that). I’m going to leave it at that because I realized that was more than I set out to write, but I’m happy to answer any questions you have 😊 good luck!!