C-section incision separating?

Question

i had a c-section on 8/12, on 8/19 i had my staples removed (what a relief!). at that time the incision looked great and my dr placed steri strips over the incision and said they would fall off on their own. within a day all the steri strips had fallen off (i know they are not meant to hold the incision together). i woke up last night/early this morning and the incision felt weird and when i touched it i noticed it was bleeding (not much just a teaspoon or so). i rolled up a white wash cloth and put it over the incision to monitor the bleeding and went back to bed (i didn't want to wake the kids up to go to the er, especially since it wasn't really an emergency).

anyway, i had my husband check the incision today and he says its open about 3/4" or so. i called my drs office and am waiting on a return call.

my questions: will they glue the incision back together, or will they staple again (lord i hope not)? will that be done in office or will i go to the hospital for that? any information would be appreciated. thanks

Answer 1

wow wow wow, relax woman and quit doing house work, do you have someone to help you out with the chores and babies? i know a trip to the doctors is a must for you but i really dont know what he is gonna do to close it again, sorry

Answer 2

Please, please, please take care of yourself & follow the doctor's guidelines!  You can't keep anything going if you're back in the hospital or have an incisional hernia!  I know that waiting for the return call is hard but hang in there.  Do you have anyone you can call on for assistance?  Someone to come & wait for the call with you, throw a load of laundry in for you?  Now is the time to ask for and allow others to help you.  The jump from one child to two for me was very hard & took a LOT of adjusting of my own expectations.  My house isn't as neat, my clothes aren't washed every day, etc.  BUT, my children are well cared for, I am a happier momma & we are having an awesome time with the kids.  It gets easier & better, I promise, but it won't if you're not physically well.  You MUST allow time for your body to heal.  Take care.

Answer 3

Take this seriously!!  

A very similar thing happened to me and I ended up back in the hospital for a week WITHOUT my newborn daughter because I had to be quarantined due to the highly infectious Strep A.  After 7 nights in my hospital room by myself on IV anitbiotics, I was discharged and ran down to the ER to meet my very sick 3 week old daughter and her father.  She caught the infection from me and spent another week in the pediatric ICU.  I almost lost my baby girl because this infection moved very quickly.  

It took a long time for my incision to heal, and now over two years later it is still red and ugly.  I don't know what they are going to do for you, but you absolutely are going to need to call on friends and family to help out at home until it has closed.

Answer 4

I would say, s***w waiting for a call back, get your husband to come home from work and go to the ER. The last thing you want as a busy mom, is to be in the hospital because of a major infection. You are just asking for it to get infected. I'm not sure how they will get it back together. They may need to cut around the old insicion to have fresh tissue to sew together or whatever. But you definately need to go in. You can get a serious infection.

Answer 5

ER doesn't seem necessary. I had my incision open back up. Depending on how far open it is, it MIGHT need to get packed with wound packing material to help it heal, in which case you would need a home health nurse to come once or twice a day to take care of that.

If it doesn't need packing, the doctor will probably use steri strips.

Answer 6

When you say that the incision is open I assume you mean just the outer most layer because all the other layers inside are held together with sutures that have not yet dissolved.  (If you think you are actually open deep inside then you should call 911.)  If you are just talking about a very shallow layer open then wait and see what doctor says.  It may too late to try staples or anything else, you will probably have a much thicker scar and more scar tissue showing at your incision site.