Postpartum Care?

No doubt you have heard of prenatal care for mom and pediatric care for baby. What is postpartum care, why do we need it, and who's job is it?

Problem #1

During pregnancy, we relish getting to shower mom-to-be with cute outfits, blankets, and (for the utilitarian) diapers! This is a wonderful tradition that celebrates the new life coming into the world, but it focuses on the baby's needs and not the care the mother needs after baby arrives.

After the mother gives birth, in our present fast paced lives, we (her community) continue on with our usual lives and forget about mom's needs after baby comes. Mom goes off behind closed doors to care for baby. When they emerge again, we assume that if the baby is doing well, mom must be fine. This is a mistake.

The Truth

During pregnancy, most women are showered with love and attention and hopefully wonderful medical care. After mom has the baby, she finds herself alone, at home in a void with a baby that needs everything from her. For the next 6 weeks (at minimum and up to a year to greater or lesser degrees), she will walk through a time of social isolation, extreme hormonal shifts, physical and mental exhaustion, shifting from pregnancy that has drained her body of nutrient reserves and healing from an internal open wound that is the size of cantaloupe (where the placenta was attached). 

Problem #2

 While pregnant, the mother-to-be cares for her baby nearly exclusively by simply caring for her own health-as a pregnant body builds baby on hormonal and physical autopilot. Once baby is out (now in the world and helpless), mom shifts from actively caring for herself to actively caring for her baby. In this shift, many women put aside their own needs (body, mind and spirit) to prioritize baby. This seem right until remembering that all things the good things (love and nutrition) that baby needs flows from the mother. If mom's health (physical/mental/spirtual) suffers, then baby is down stream of this health weakness. When the mother is fully cared for (both by herself and community), mom uses her postpartum rest to adjust well to her new life with her newly expanded family. The key (as emphasized) for the mother's role in self-care to adjust well to her new life is rest.

Sound easy? For woman today, rest is last thing that gets prioritized. Look at all of a woman's roles and responsibility for her family, her finances, her community and also her basic needs of nutritious home cooked foods for her own body after pregnancy and breastfeeding. Now layer on top of that our fast paced, always busy, always being bombarded with information-attention economy lives.  

Postpartum Care as Self-Care

Mom needs to be mentally prepared and plan for all of those responsibilities to be temporarily given to others and to choose to turn off the noise of the outside, busy world and rest. She needs to acknowledge the truth that the best service that she can give to her body, mind, spirit, baby, family and community now is to rest, recharge and therefore make the adjustments and time needed to move forward later in all her roles in her family and community in health. This will not be done by accident or by serendipity.

Second to rest is nutrition. As a reminder: after birth your body has been depleted by giving to baby during pregnancy and now your body is shifting into pulling more nutrition to creating milk to help baby double in weight in 6 months. If mom is resting how is she going to eat nutrient dense food? This needs to be prepared and planned in advance so there will be minimal to no work needed postpartum. Note and consider as well that you and your family will not necessarily be eating that same things. You are resting in bed hopefully eating warm, soft, fiber, protein and healthy fat rich foods for healing, digestion and hormone balance. Your family may be eating a their normal diet that may be higher in energy foods. The point, again, is to prepare and plan now with your own power and/or enlisting others to assist*. (*Special Note: Food usually taste better when others prepare it for us.)

Postpartum Care as Community Care

We, as supports of the new mother, are to do everything in our power to help her rest. This is three-fold. The first thing is to encourage her to rest in words. Tell the truth to her about how important rest is and what real rest looks like for the body and the mind and her spirit. Secondly, do whatever you can in deed to support that rest. Provide (nutrient dense) meals; offer childcare, housekeeping, money for whatever, pickup errands and whatever else her life usually entails that you can do for her for a few weeks. Third and lastly- try to leave her alone and be incognito. Be a guardian of her rest time. If you are a close friend or family, be with her in her home (if asked) to just sit quietly, take baby as needed and bring her anything that she needs. Otherwise, buy or make her a care package or real meal. Offer encouragement with cards not phone calls; drop off flowers and disappear.  Bring a hot cup of her favorite drink and run away. You will see her and baby soon glowing from all their rest and bonding. Do something for her that shows that you are thinking about her; that she is not alone; that you love her; and that you are so happy that she is truly caring for herself, investing in her family, and loving on her baby in this time!