I have to be honest with you and say that I barely managed in the first week, but after that it progressively got easier. Like Mel, getting out of bed is really tough. Expect to find anything where you need to recruit your tummy muscles difficult. I actually had trouble walking upright for about a week or so....just got around a bit hunched over IYKWIM?

I had the benefit though of no other children and lots of helpers, so I barely had to lift DS even - DP did a lot of the carrying him to me, into his cradle etc. Probably if I was forced to, I would have done it and been ok though.

I drove a manual car about 3 weeks post c-section, I just checked with insurance and it was all good, no problems there.

I would say I was feeling a lot closer to normal by about the start of week 3 - still not doing anything silly like lifting heavy things or running marathons, but back to pretty normal function.