Postpartum Care for Mothers...
What postpartum looks like for most mothers…
• Visitors - usually with well wishes, gifts, and wanting to meet & cuddle baby
• Continuity of care - zilch - no follow-up care (unless private doula care is paid for)
• Back to “normality” within a few days
• Battles of breastfeeding - a huge lack of support in this domain
• Little to no rest - leading to exhaustion
• Food lacking sufficient nutrients - too much sugar - not enough collagen-rich healing food
• Lack of traditional healing practices
How it should be based on our physiological design as humans….
• Rest
• 40 days of “bedding in” or a “golden month”
• Nutrient-dense warming foods
• Visits from loved ones - showering mother in love, bringing the family meals to eat and freeze, caring for older siblings etc.
• Community of women - of all ages sharing and partaking in the care and well-being of the family
• Skin-to-skin contact consistently with baby mother.
• Traditional healing practices
• WARMTH
We have moved so far from what is in our blueprint during the postpartum period, it’s at the detriment of women’s health, children’s health, and the health of families as a whole.
YES, I did say that. And if that is triggering, go and deal with that.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) it’s believed that women have 3 golden opportunities that will inform our later health through our lives and postpartum is one of them. What does that mean? Basically put, the way we tend to ourselves in the postpartum period has the capacity to bring our bodies a total rejuvenation or a massive depletion.
Of course, we want to feel rejuvenated but how many of us as women are taught what postpartum should look like? I hear women celebrate that they were in the supermarket 2 days after birth. Back to their pre-baby gym routines. I was told that once the baby is here you just have to get on with it. I wonder how we can be expected to support our healing bodies when this rhetoric is so celebrated.
After my eldest daughter was born, I was haunted by postnatal depression - I was lacking just about everything. I felt utterly alone, I was totally unsure, receiving advice that went against all of my intuitive senses, and then questioned myself even further, leading to a deep mistrust of myself and my capacity as a new mother. I could feel in my bones that none of this felt right, I went back to work whilst I still has stitches in my perineum because again – I was encouraged to believe I had to support myself – whilst my partner pleaded with me to stay home longer and be with our 3-week-old baby.
I listened to so much noise, I lost touch with what I needed, and I think it is the same for so many women. We have lost our connection to our ancestral traditions, to the traditions of the Great Mother, we have lost our roots to the earth.
The second time around, I was so clear on how things had to be - it was definitely not perfect by any means - but it was so much more nourishing - I didn’t have a sudden “baby blues” as my hormones shifted, I felt pretty great, I felt vibrant. I really did feel well. I rested in my cocoon, I didn’t have many visitors, I rested, ate good warm nourishing foods, and allowed and welcomed support.
The first thing we want to do is cuddle a new baby - I mean who doesn’t need that level of cuteness in their lives?! However, I wonder how many mothers would just like the opportunity to cuddle their new baby, without having to think about cleaning up, doing the laundry, or preparing a meal? These are really not tasks a new mother should be concerned with.
All she is concerned with is allowing her body to begin to heal - which will last around 18 months until the pelvis is healed (YES REALLY).
Filling her body with nutrients, skin-to-skin with her baby, establishing breastfeeding, and feeling loved.
This feels so far from the current zeitgeist, and whilst I know that is due to the way society is functioning, the systems are broken. We need to re-establish and remember our ancestral traditions that brought us into the right connection and relationship to life itself, and to honouring our divine nature.
When new mothers are celebrated, showered with love, and shown how magical and wonderful they are, they are able to heal more easily, they are able to give more fully to their children – this, in turn, leads to happy, healthy, resilient children who then go on to repeat the cycle they were shown.
Your birth and postpartum becomes you, it becomes the way you parent and interact with your children, and whether an individual becomes conscious of this or not is a question.
The most important thing we could do to give humanity hope of reclaiming its potential and power is to really understand what it looks like and what it is to care for new mums and families. AND when that care has not been in place, support mothers in their grieving of this reality through dedicated nourishing inner and outer work.
