The postpartum period needs to be treated as a special time, a time when women deserve extra care. Your mind and body are engaging in important work right now, whether or not you are consciously aware of it, including:
- Physical Healing: It takes your body approximately six weeks to heal. During that period, postpartum bleeding completely stops. This is a time of unparalleled change in your body as your reproductive tract returns to its nonpregnant state. In addition, your cardiovascular, respiratory, musculo-skeletal, urologic, gastrointestinal, endocrine, and nervous systems all also return to a nonpregnant state. If you experienced perineal tearing or had an episiotomy, you may be experiencing pain that makes it difficult to sit down. If you required a cesarean, you need additional time for muscular healing, and may be recovering from loss of blood. Some practitioners think of the postpartum period as a “fourth trimester.” While some mothers feel “back to normal” at six weeks, others may require up to three months.
- Learning to Breastfeed: If you’re breastfeeding for the first time—or even if you’ve breastfed several babies, it can take time to master this practice, and it can be emotionally frustrating.
- Bonding: Most people still believe that mother/infant bonding happens immediately and completely, right after birth. Some lucky women do experience “love at first sight.” For others, bonding can take a week or more. In any case, bonding is an ongoing process that requires a tranquil postpartum period.
- Hormonal Changes: While your hormones are hard at work helping every cell and organ in your body to return to their pre-pregnancy state, the fluctuating levels may leave you feeling vulnerable and fatigued. Until your body recovers, you may cry at the drop of a hat or feel an overwhelming sense of joy.
- Dealing With New Emotions: Even if you have other children, you’re now faced with a completely new experience. The new sense of responsibility, your protective love for your new baby, and your fears for his health and safety can seem overwhelming—and you need time to adjust to these new emotions.
- Adjusting to Relationships: No matter how well you’ve planned things, your relationship with your partner will undergo changes. Until you both adjust to the new situation, it can be stressful. If you have other children, you may feel guilty for taking attention away from them, or you may mourn the loss of the exclusive relationship you once had with an older child.
- Starting the Process of Separation: For many months, you and your baby have been functioning as one. The postpartum period is the first step in a long and gradual process of separation that will carry on for many years. It may feel strange at first, and takes getting used to.
- Learning New Things: While changing a diaper is not intrinsically difficult, it is new. So are a hundred other things about a new baby. How do you answer the telephone while breastfeeding? How do you bathe a baby? How can you schedule anything¾even reading the newspaper—when you don’t know when the baby will be sleeping? Unfortunately, you’ll be learning these new skills “on the job,” and it will take time to develop your own methods.
Join us this month for MANY classes to help you wok through this amazing transition:
January 14th for a class on babywearing….help your baby and help yourself move through this fourth trimester and beyond!
And then on January 28th for a breastfeeding class…..NEVER to early for that!
also join our NEW Childbirth Education series (think Lamaze and BEYOND!)
Wednesday Jan 8th, 22nd and 29th
Amazing Amazing times!!
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