Day 4 and still haven't been to the loo. Terrified to push in case I wreck the muscle repair

Full tummy tuck with muscle repair on the 4th, so day 4 today, and I have not had ANY sort of bowel movement since before surgery. I feel bloated and heavy on top of everything else and I am genuinely scared. Nobody mentioned this bit to me at all.

Here is the thing that is doing my head in: I am on codeine for the pain, and I have read that it bungs you up, but I am also petrified to push even a little because I keep imagining the plication going ping and undoing the whole repair. So I am stuck. Do I strain and risk the muscles, or do I just wait and hope? Is 4 days a blockage?? Talk some sense into me please.

Breathe, this is SO normal it is almost a rite of passage and nobody warns you. Mine was 2022, full TT, and my first movement was day 5. The codeine is the main villain here, it genuinely slows everything to a crawl, and you have also had a general anaesthetic and you are barely moving, so of course things have stalled.

What helped me without any pushing: a little footstool so my knees were up higher than my hips, prune juice which I now keep in the house on principle, water constantly, and my slow kitchen laps every hour. The point is to make it easy so you never have to strain. Please do not just sit and hope for 4 days though, ring your team about a softener, that is exactly the sort of thing they expect a call about.

Gym person, same panic on day 3 or 4. The codeine was the whole problem for me. Once my surgeon was happy for me to step down to plain paracetamol things started moving within a day. Do not strain, that is the one bit of advice I would tattoo on. Ask about a softener rather than forcing it.

This is one of the most common things people arrive at the forum panicking about, so first: a few quiet days at day 4 is expected, not a blockage by default. The reasons stack up together. Opioid painkillers like codeine slow the bowel, the general anaesthetic quietens the gut for a while, you are moving a fraction of your normal amount, and you are eating and drinking less, so a slow bowel is close to the default in the first days rather than the exception.

Now the fear I really want to take off you, because I had exactly the same one. A normal bowel movement will not undo your muscle repair. What you sensibly avoid is hard straining and bearing down, and the way you avoid that is by softening things so going is easy, not by pushing harder or by holding on. The common instinct to push through is the wrong one: soften, do not strain. Fluids, a bit more fibre, moving little and often, and a stool softener if your team agrees, that is the actual toolkit. I will not name a product or a dose because that is genuinely a question for the team who operated on you, and they will not think you are being dramatic for asking.

The one pattern that is a phone call today rather than a forum question: no movement AND no wind at all, a hard swollen painful belly, or feeling sick and vomiting. That combination needs a proper look. Short of that, this usually sorts itself as the codeine wears off and you get moving. I wrote the whole thing up here: constipation after a tummy tuck, and the wider first week is in tummy tuck recovery week 1.

Update and a big thank you. I rang the team like you all said, they were completely unbothered and sorted me out with something gentle, and told me the same thing Rebecca did about not straining. Things finally moved yesterday and honestly the relief was ridiculous. Footstool and prune juice now permanent fixtures. For anyone else googling this at midnight: you are not broken, it is the codeine, ring them.