Difficulty breathing during C

[BellaClaudia]

I had a major difficulty breathing during C section.

I thought I am going to die. I was sure my lung collapsed.
med stff told me I am fine and should not worry as the numbers checked.

till today .. 3 years later I feel my lungs congested at times and have
long peroiods of hard breathing especially at night and during humid season or after vacuming..

any thoughts?

any ideas

[Romana]

I don't know if this is what happened to you, but sometimes the epidural/spinal can cause you to not be able to feel yourself breathing. So your lungs actually are working and you're breathing, but it's terrifying because you can't feel yourself breathing so you think or it feels like you're suffocating. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to go through that, and how panicking. I can't imagine that being told it was fine would help me relax very well if as far as I could tell I wasn't breathing.

I don't think it's associated with long-term implications, but it would make sense to me that having experienced that everything lung-related would be more noticed by you and bring back that feeling of suffocation. Let me see if I can find a website describing this complication/side effect so you can see if maybe that's what happened to you.

I'm having a terrible time finding what I'm looking for. Here's something that describes it a bit:

http://www.netwellness.org/question.cfm/43653.htm

[MaryLang]

I had that feeling with #2, I had a panic attack on the table, I was freaked to say the least. And it was that birth where I also, apparently got some air stuck near my chest area as they closed me up, it was soooo painful in the days following, they were sending me for CT scans and everything, because at first the pain was unexplainable. I wonder if it could have been my struggle to breathe that caused the problem? Anyways, it took a while for the air bubble to work out, but I haven't had any long term effects.

[kbond]

[QUOTE=Romana9+2;12586616]I don't know if this is what happened to you, but sometimes the epidural/spinal can cause you to not be able to feel yourself breathing. So your lungs actually are working and you're breathing, but it's terrifying because you can't feel yourself breathing so you think or it feels like you're suffocating.

I was told this would happen during my c-section, and it did. It's very scary, but as far as I know, no long term effects.

[Pod4One]

Had the same feeling here. Felt like someone sitting on my chest - had to tell myself "breathe in, breathe out" every time. Having the oxygen mask over/near my face helped out some but it's scary still. Can't think of any long term effects though.

P4O

[velcromom]

It happened to me too. I don't know what the after affects are but if you'd told me your symptoms without mentioning the c/s I would have immediately thought of asthma, especially since humidity increases molds & mildews which are notorious for triggering asthma, so are dustmites which get stirred into the air during vacuuming.