Night 3 in a hired recliner and I cannot get out of it without my husband hauling me. Is this everyone's first week?

Full tummy tuck with muscle repair last Friday, so this is night 3, and I am typing this at 2am from a hired recliner in my living room because I cannot get out of the thing on my own. Every time I need the loo I have to wake my husband up to haul me forward by the wrists. Three times so far tonight. I feel about ninety.

The chair itself I do not regret, sleeping propped up is the only position that does not pull, and I had read enough to know flat was not happening. What nobody warned me about is the GETTING OUT. Also my shoulders and neck have started aching from being permanently at an angle, which feels like a stupid thing to be complaining about when I have just had my stomach rebuilt.

Two questions really. How long did you all sleep propped up for, and is there a technique for standing up that does not involve waking another human? I keep half laughing half crying about it which I am told is normal at day 3.

The wrist haul. I had forgotten about the wrist haul and now I can feel it in my hands again. Mine was 2022 and my other half did that for about a week before we worked out the better version, which is them standing in front of you and you pushing DOWN on their forearms rather than them pulling you up by yours. Sounds like nothing, made a huge difference to my incision.

I was in the recliner just under three weeks, then a bed with a wedge and a stupid tower of pillows for another fortnight, then back to normal-ish at about six weeks. The neck and shoulder ache is real and it is not stupid to complain about, it is the price of the angle. A small rolled towel behind my neck fixed most of it.

Three weeks in the recliner here too. The thing that got me off the wrist haul was a walking frame, borrowed, felt ridiculous, worked perfectly. You push down on the frame instead of pulling on anything, and you can do it at 3am without waking anyone. Second-hand ones go for almost nothing and I passed mine on to someone else on this forum afterwards.

Gemma W. said:

my shoulders and neck have started aching from being permanently at an angle

This was the bit that surprised me most too. I spent so long researching the tummy and zero seconds thinking about my neck. Rolled towel, and I moved the recliner angle by a notch every day or two rather than staying locked at the same position, which seemed to help. By week two I could tolerate a much shallower angle than I expected.

Also, and I say this with love, put a bottle of water and your phone charger somewhere you can reach WITHOUT twisting. I learned that one the hard way on night 2.

Night 3 in the recliner is genuinely one of the low points of the whole thing, and it is worth saying out loud that it does not stay this hard. I was propped up for about a fortnight in a recliner and then another two or three weeks on a wedge, and the first night I slept even slightly flat felt like a bigger milestone than getting the drains out.

On the standing technique, everything above matches what worked for me: pushing down on something solid rather than pulling on anything, feet well under you first, and doing it slowly enough that you can stop halfway. The bent posture is protecting the repair, so the goal is not to stand up straight, it is to stand up without straining. I wrote the whole grim stretch up in week one of tummy tuck recovery, and the kit that actually earned its place is in what to buy before a tummy tuck.

The half laughing half crying at 3am is so common in this section that I would be more surprised if it were absent. It passed for me around the end of the first week.

Update at day 10. The frame idea was the winner, my mum found one in a charity shop for a fiver and I have not woken my husband up in four nights. Neck is better since the rolled towel. Still in the recliner and not remotely ready to think about a bed, but the panic has gone out of it. Thank you all, genuinely, this thread got me through a bad week.