Five nights after keyhole gallbladder surgery and I cannot get comfortable in bed. How is everyone else sleeping?

Writing this at midnight which tells you everything.

Op was Monday, keyhole, home the same evening, all straightforward as far as anyone has told me. Days are honestly not bad. Nights are miserable. I cannot lie flat because the ache under my ribs and up towards my shoulder gets noticeably worse the moment I go horizontal, I cannot lie on my right side because that is where the cuts are, and I am not a back sleeper so lying propped up feels like sleeping in a chair. I am getting maybe three broken hours and I am wrecked.

Nobody mentioned the sleep thing once. Loads about the gas, loads about diet, not a word about the fact you have to relearn how to lie down. Is this everyone or have I done something clever to myself?

Completely normal and it was the worst part of the whole thing for me too. Flat was awful, three pillows and half sitting was survivable.

It lifts fast though. I remember waking up around the end of the first week having slept on my side without thinking about it and realising the operation was basically behind me.

Pillow under the knees as well as behind you, it takes the pull off your middle. And if you laugh or cough, hug a cushion against your tummy first, sounds ridiculous, works instantly.

Also getting out of bed. Roll onto your side, drop your legs off the edge and push up with your arm rather than sitting straight up like a vampire. I did the vampire once and only once.

You have done nothing clever to yourself, and I remember those nights vividly.

Mine were the same shape as yours. Flat was the worst position because that is when the leftover gas presses up under the diaphragm and the referred pain into the shoulder tip gets loudest, and my own cuts meant right side was out for the first several nights. I ended up half propped with pillows, one under the knees exactly as described above, and a cushion within reach for coughing. It lasted about five nights for me and then eased sharply, which fits with the gas being absorbed over the first few days to a week. Walking in the day genuinely made the nights better rather than worse, which felt counterintuitive when all I wanted to do was lie still.

Two things that helped that I would not have predicted. Going to bed later than usual, so I was tired enough not to lie there cataloguing every twinge. And accepting the broken sleep for what it was rather than fighting it, because the tiredness in the first week is doing something, and it is not a sign the operation went badly. The whole arc is written up in the week by week recovery guide.

The honest caveat: everything above is my experience and other people's, not a plan for your body. If the pain is climbing rather than easing, or you get a fever, or a wound starts looking angry, that is a call to your surgeon or GP the same day rather than a night spent reading this board.

Mine is booked for next month so I am reading this like a set of instructions. Buying more pillows.

Genuinely had no idea the lying down bit was a thing. Everything I had read stops at the cuts and the diet.

Night nine and I slept six hours in one go, mostly on my side. The knee pillow was the thing that changed it for me, I would not have guessed that in a hundred years.

Leaving this here for whoever searches at midnight next. It is normal, it is short, and someone else was awake at the same time as you.