Urination post surgery

[ToriJo]

I'm a couple weeks post surgery (MTF).  I'm having real trouble urinating normally - by normally, I mean sitting on a toilet and emptying my bladder when my bladder is full.  I have no problem standing in the shower and doing this, so I know things at least sort of work.  Sometime it works after I have a bowel movement on the toilet, but generally not.

Any tips?

[Mendi]

I think it´s normal and will improve when more time passes. I had also difficulties with peeing and I was still with catheter after two weeks! So you are definitely ahead of me where I was at that point.

It gets better!

[Mariah]

It can be normal for some, however I recommend you reach out to your surgeons office and see what they say about it. Hugs
Mariah

[Dena]

One of the problems is that the surgery causes a good deal of swelling. This can make it difficult to pass urine unless you're in the right position. In my case it took months before it was easy to pass urine and probably a year before my aim corrected it's self. If your doctor is available, a follow up exam to check the healing and answer any questions might be a good idea.

[Shawnna]

I'm four weeks post-op. I had a similar issue and it took me awhile to figure it out.

The urethra and penis have a lot of sensation. When I peed as a boy, I'd relax my muscles, felt the flow start, then heard the sound of pee in the potty.

With my girl parts, I relax my muscles and then hear the sounds but don't feel the flow. I was not able to fully relax because I was waiting to feel the flow. I could get started but never get a real flow going.

Now I focus on the sound. Once I hear even the slightest sound, I can relax and pee like a race horse! I had to retrain my brain to pee like a girl.

It can still take my a little longer to get started, but once I hear it and relax completely, I'm golden!

[JillianC]

I'd recommend seeing if there is a transgender friendly pelvic floor therapist in your area. I started going to one myself and she's helping me several different things related to urination issues, scar healing, stomach stuff, and a tailbone pain. I know of another lady who's going to one post vaginoplasty and also recommends it.

[ToriJo]

I did ask my surgeon about this today - he ended up trimming some dead tissue around my urethra, thinking that may be the issue.

I didn't pee between the time I left the surgeon's office today and arriving at home, like 8 hours later. I tried not to drink much (bad, I know).

So when I got home, I really had to pee.  So I said, "$#, maybe I'll try sitting and peeing."  Sure enough, that worked fine.  I feel so much better, even knowing that this probably won't work this way all the time quite yet.

[davego]

Hi ToriJo.  I'm glad you may now have resolution for this. 

I will just add that throughout my entire life (as a guy) I found that I could produce more pee when standing up than when sitting down.  As a result, as a guy if I sat down to poo and pee, I would always stand up at the end (facing the toilet of course) and do one last pee to 'empty out' my bladder, so to speak.

Interestingly, having just had my GRS (2 weeks ago), I still find that it is easier for me to pee standing up than sitting down.  Now I obviously can't pee facing the toilet!  So, instead I stand facing away from the toilet and crouch down just enough to enable the flow to avoid the floor and hit the toilet bowl.  It took a bit of practice because my pee is currently is not a focused stream but is dribbling off my labia mayora in several places  (due to swelling, hopefully, which will reduce in time), so it's a bit like Niagara Falls!  But I succeed 98% of the time, which is good enough.

By the way, I also found as a guy that peeing was always more successful after emptying my colon of poo.  And this is still the case now, post-op; poo present in my colon seems to prevent me from peeing.

Of course, these things might be peculiar to me, but I thought they were worth sharing.     Daniella

[ToriJo]

Thanks all.  One final update: I'm peeing just fine now.  What a difference a week makes - I'm peeing just fine now (well, other than I manage to pee on both sides of my labia too!).  It does seem to get easier every day, too.