When I was in having my second bub, there was another woman on the ward who had just had hers out and she had an 8 or a 10wk old and was over on our side so she could have help with looking after him etc. The cousin of one of my friends had hers out when her little one was 12wks old. It certainly is doable, but the BF can be tricky because you have to fast and are nil by mouth and you know how thirsty you get when BFing!
Hi
i had my gall bladder removed when my oldest son was 5 months old..
i wasnt allowed to have him at the hospital with me as her was too old but i was only in hospital over night and with pain relief i was able to look after my little man 2 days later when my DH went back to work
Im not sure exactly what you want to know but if you have any questions just let me know and i should be able to answer them for you!!
I had my first gallbladder attack when my DD1 was 4 weeks old. This was over 12 years ago now. Because I wasn't in a HF and going through the public system, it took 6 months before I got my gallbladder removed. I had loads & loads of attacks during this time which was awful. My sister also suffered from gallstones 4 weeks after birthing her DS in 2001. She had hers removed in less than a month.
I am very glad we have a private HF because I can't imagine how you put up with it for while on the waiting list Lisa and Marydean! The attack came on so suddenly and didn't seem to be triggered by food (had eaten a relatively low fat normal diet that day). By the grace of God, family members were around to look after baby because I was totally unable to do anything except groan, vomit and sweat. In the end I had morphine for the pain.
I am concerned about the BFing though. After several lactation consultant visits, they've diagnosed me with a permanent low supply (possibly due to lack of breast tissue or hormone issues). So we are BFing but topping up with formula. I can only ever express 30mLs at a time (in total) and I am worried that surgery/fasting will result in my meagre supply drying up completely...
I am going to ask the surgeon if we can go to the post natal ward - thanks for the idea Trillian.
How long a recovery do you reckon I'll need until I can go back to looking after baby solo again while DH is at work? Also, did you have much pain afterwards? If I'm BFing I'll want to avoid as much painkillers as possible.
Ruth I had my gallbladder out earlier this year - 16 months after my DD was born but in hindsight I was having mild gallbladder attacks all along (I thought it was reflux) but they got really bad towards the end. The actual surgery was pretty minor, they kept me in over night, basically to check that your pain management is ok and that you're eating before they discharge you. I was flat and tired for probably a week or so afterwards, but recovered pretty quickly, and the relief from the gallstone attacks was immediate.
In the meantime, if you strip out as much fat as you can from your diet it will help prevent attacks. I went thru the public hospital system so had to wait for a few months for surgery, so I had quite a lot of nasty attacks in that time. I took pain killers and maxolon (to stop the vomiting) when I was first having attacks - but at the end they gave me buscopan in the ER one time and it worked really well -so check with your GP what you can take if the attacks are bad for you.
If you can have surgery sooner rather than later I would do it, just because those attacks can be really nasty and in my case they were quite frequent and debilitating. If you're breastfeeding it's a good idea to start expressing now so you have a supply of EBM for the short time you can't feed - and discuss how to manage the breastfeeding when you see the surgeon. Good luck!
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