Post Partem urinary retention

[WorldSpawn]

My wife gave birth 2 weeks ago and has had to wear a catheter since then as she is unable to urinate on her own.  She had an epidural and delivered vaginally... there was a lot of trauma and she had second degree tears.  I'm not sure if this had anything to do with it or not.  She is seeing a urologist, but so far they are just doing tests to narrow down the problem.. they have not been able to tell us much yet.  She just started self catheterization yesterday and is finding that there is blood present when she removes it.

I was wondering if the problem is treatable?  I'm really hoping this is not a permanent issue for my wife!  Does anyone know of any cases where patients were able to recover?

[Katie688]

I'm almost 3 months postpartem and have urinary retention as well ( self cath every 4-5 hours). This is hard to do while taking care of a 3 month old, and I'm sure your wife can relate.

I just want you and your wife to know that you are not alone. It seems like for me every month it gets a little better (100 CC less). My urologist did tell me it could take up to 1 year to recover, which is not something I wanted to hear. At this point, I just want to recover. Also, he put me on medicine to "wake my bladder up"...maybe you could look into that. Hope this helps and I would like to hear back on how everything is going. As I'm sure you have found out this is not a common issue and it helps to hear  that there are other women going through the same thing.

Just trying to stay positive
Katie

[WorldSpawn]

Just a follow up to this.  My wife was able to void a small amount (30%-40%) for the first time this weekend, we were both so happy!  It's only been 2 months so we are keeping positive.  The urologist says to wait another month or so to see what kind of progress she makes before looking into other options.

Cheers!
Matt