C-Section Recovery: One More Item for the Hospital Bag

Planned or unplanned, recovering from a Cesarian Section can be complicated. New research suggests that there is one more tool to speed recovery up. The challenge? Getting the new mother’s bowels moving again (motherhood is all about glamour).

According to study results reported in Maclean’s Magazine, chewing gum may help women get their innards back in shape faster:

• Early resumption of eating has been shown to stimulate bowel recovery after surgery, but has not been widely adopted. “Maybe old habits die hard,” says Dr. Bela Satija of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. “But also, some patients do not tolerate early feeding, and experience nausea and vomiting.”As an alternative, an innovative technique such as sham feeding has been described,” she says. “Sham feeding such as gum chewing mimics food intake … and achieves the goals of early feeding without actual intake.”Satija and her colleagues tested this approach in 32 caesarean-section patients, 15 of whom were randomly assigned to chew gum three times per day as soon as they recovered from anesthesia until the time they passed gas or had a bowel movement.

The researchers asked 15 women who had undergone cesarians to chew gum three times a day between the time the anesthetic had worn off and when they had their first postpartum farts (or poops). They recovered after an average of 28 hours. The 17 non-chewers in the study took 44 hours.

It’s a small study, but it can’t hurt to try something so simple to get things moving again. So, if you’re in labour or have a scheduled c-section planned, stick a few packs of gum in your purse and start chewing as soon as the drugs wear off!