I have helped quite a few women through pregnancy, delivery and postpartum. Across the board, I noticed one thing that most women seemed to comment or focus on. Especially first time mothers.
“I was not prepared for the postpartum period.”
As a midwife, I was trained to focus on the health of mother and baby through pregnancy and labor. If issues arose postpartum that it would almost be an automatic refer out. But why? Having moved from one state to another, I noticed that the frequency of visits in my practice for postpartum changed from 3 to 6. There is extra stress on that first week postpartum to make sure everything is going well. I actually have enjoyed getting to see the families more often. Baby snuggles and emotional support for that recovering mom can make a world of difference- in my mood and theirs 😉
Even with the frequency of visits, I noticed women still saying they felt inadequate when it came to their own healing postpartum. I set out to change that.
Every expecting mom gears herself up for the birth, but not many do much research into postpartum. That healing time and establishing breastfeeding can be more stressful than even the birth. When you think about it, labor, in the grand scheme of things, is just a blip in the time a mother will get with her baby. Even a long labor is done before you know it. In a few days, you will have doubled or even tripled the amount of time that you were in labor. With that in mind, I started to stress more on postpartum.
Postpartum period is “6 weeks”, but we all know that it is longer. Healing takes time and understanding that before being in the midst of it would be much better. They say that the body does not completely return to “normal” until about 18 months postpartum- and most mothers are expecting again by that time! As a midwife, I have realized that it is also my job to let my expecting families now what to expect, what to have on hand, and to mentally prepare.
To sum this post up. There are a lot of resources preparing families for labor, but there does not seem to be enough focus on postpartum or taking care of the baby. Let’s do better about this! We can NOT ignore preparation for labor and birth though we can make it more equally important with education on other things.
Sorry for the ramble!
The Hebrew Midwife