How long in bed for post C/S mothers?

[MeditationPeace]

Once they have their legs back, how long do you keep mothers in bed after C/S's? Because of the physical and emotional benefits of getting OOB after surgery, I was used to getting mothers up to the chair maybe 8 or so hours after their births; pre-medicated for pain of course, and stable otherwise. Their second time up was when they'd start ambulating a bit further.

Where I am now, the standard is to wait much longer! I suspect it's actually much longer than necessary. So, I'd like to hear what others do about this. Thanks for your input. :)

[rbytsdy]

Well, this explains a lot. My first baby was a c-section. The nurses didn't get me out of bed until 7am the following morning (17 hours!!!). My recovery was uncomplicated but I was in crazy amounts of pain. It took me 20 minutes to get off the bed. I wasn't medicated ahead of time though. The nurse came in, woke me up and pulled me out of bed. I was much too afraid of another c-section so I pushed for a VBAC. This was all before I started nursing school so I didn't know better. A couple years ago a woman died in a local hospital following a DVT turned PE after her c-section. She sat in bed for 24 hours and no one got her up.

[tablefor9, RN]

And is the patient a smoker? Because you aren't keeping them down!

Seriously, though, where I am, it's prn...and very patient driven. I like to stand mine to the bedside at the 6-8 hr mark and do pericare/pad/panties, minimum, dc foley and do "1st days" if possible, but at least by the 12 hr mark they should be OOB x 1.

Sigh...we're just having a shortage on steel magnolias, lately.