Susan Burton

And Vanessa says she kind of feels a little prick.

And then the doctor cuts into her, and she definitely feels that.

It's extremely painful.

And now I feel like before I keep going with Vanessa's story, like maybe I should just describe what actually goes on during a C-section.

Please.

Okay.

And I don't want to be too graphic, but I think it's also important to be able to visualize what's going on.

So in a C-section, there is an incision.

It's called a bikini incision, which sounds like something really tiny, but it's actually a fairly sizable incision.

Mm-hmm.

And then the doctors, you know, open the abdomen.

There's a pair of muscles they need to separate to access the uterus.

And these muscles are hard to separate.

Doctors told me this is a really physical surgery.

You know, sometimes you see the doctors kind of leaning back like in tug-of-war, right, to separate the muscles.

That's what happens at the beginning of the surgery, right?

And, you know, then as the surgery goes on, the baby is eventually separated.

pressed out of sort of this hole in the patient's body.

After that, there's still a lot of the surgery left.

Seven layers of muscle and skin need to be sewn back up.