Chills After C-Section: What They Can Mean

Shaking can happen during or soon after a caesarean birth, including while the effects of spinal or epidural anaesthesia are changing. Anxiety, fluid shifts, a cool operating room, and medicines used during labour or surgery can also contribute. Chills alone do not establish the cause, and they may settle as you warm and recover.

A new fever, feeling unusually weak, confusion, increasing pain, unpleasant-smelling vaginal discharge, or redness and drainage from the incision needs clinical assessment. Blood pressure concerns can also matter after birth; severe headache, vision changes, upper abdominal pain, or sudden swelling should be reported urgently because pre-eclampsia can occur after delivery.

Tell the midwife, nurse, or doctor when the chills start and whether you feel hot, cold, dizzy, or short of breath. They can check your temperature, pulse, blood pressure, incision, bleeding, and other signs of infection. Use warm blankets if staff offer them, and take only medicines recommended by your care team.

Once home, rest, drink fluids as advised, keep the incision clean and dry according to your discharge instructions, and record any temperature reading with the time. Arrange same-day advice if chills return, continue, or accompany increasing wound pain, heavy bleeding, or difficulty passing urine.

Seek urgent help for chills with a high temperature, severe or worsening abdominal pain, heavy vaginal bleeding, fainting, chest pain, trouble breathing, confusion, or a wound that is opening or releasing pus. Contact your maternity service urgently for a severe headache, visual disturbance, or pain beneath the ribs, even if your blood pressure was normal during pregnancy.

Ask what temperature or symptom should prompt a call, how to care for the incision, which pain relief is suitable while breastfeeding, and how to distinguish expected recovery from infection. Ask whether your medicines, including oxytocin or anaesthetic medicines, could have contributed to the shaking and whether you need a follow-up check.