Part 3: Postpartum

This week’s episode is part 3 of a 4-part series on my pregnancy journey, birth story, postpartum, and one year of motherhood. In this episode, we’re diving into all things postpartum! I start this episode by sharing some of my favorite postpartum resources and what I prepared before the baby arrived. I share what postpartum was like for me, my postpartum essentials, what I did each week for the first month, and then how I navigated the months following, including self-care practices, bodywork, exercise, and more.

Enjoy! 

In this Episode:

• Preparing for postpartum
  • The First 40 Days 
  • The Fourth Trimester
  • Cooking soups and stew 
  • Fat balls
  • Lactation cookies 
  • Muffins
  • Egg bites 
  • Electrolytes 
  • We had pretty much enough food for both of us to eat without much thought for the first week 
• Lots of tea, warm food and not leaving the bed for the first few days 
• Postpartum essentials
  • Padsicles 
  • Adult diapers or disposable undies 
  • Comfy undies and warm loose clothes 
  • Perri bottle
  • Wet wipes
  • Witch hazel or some sort of herbal spray for the perineum 
  • Calendula cream 
  • Nipple cream 
  • Nipple guards 
• Physical discomfort
  • Very weak core and not being able to stand very long
  • Painful pelvic floor 
  • The uncomfortable phase doesn’t last forever! 
• Intense hormones and waiting for milk to come in
  • Getting a lactation consultant to look at the latch 
  • Electric pump helped milk supply 
  • Supplementing with a bit of formula because of dehydration and a bit of jaundice 
• Baby sleeps around 20 hours per day but needs to be woken to be fed every 3 hours
  • The routine of changing her and getting ready to feed her 
• Midwife support
• The doctor coming to our house for the first visit
• Getting her initial bloodwork done at home 
• My husband was off work for 3 weeks which was so helpful 
• Consuming some raw placenta and mostly encapsulated placenta 
• Took some medicine to prevent infection with the stitches and a bit of Tylenol in the first few days for the pain 
• Continued prenatal vitamin and Vitamin D and started postnatal DHA
• BIG appetite in the first few days and weeks after giving birth while milk was coming in 
• First week – lied horizontal, ate warm foods and stayed in bed
• Second week – started moving around the apartment more 
• First trip out of the house was for her newborn photoshoot around 10 days old and then for a chiropractor adjustment at 2 weeks
  • Continued adjustments for me and baby weekly since birth 
• Third week – our parents arrived so I was a bit more active 
• Having visitors in the 3rd and 4th week was great, but it was also a lot when we were still trying to figure things out 
• Around 2-3 weeks, I started craving movement and started doing really light stretching and movement and a lot of breathwork
• Got 3 lymphatic drainage massages to help with the puffiness and excess fluid 
• Purchased the Birthfit postpartum program and that has been amazing
  • The first 30 days are all about resting, starting to stretch, abdominal massage and breathwork and then the program gets more intense from there. I’m still doing workouts from it! 
• Around 1 month I started walking a bit more – very slowly and not very far 
• Around 6 weeks, I started working with a physiotherapist to help with my pelvic floor and started doing hipopresivos 
• Around 7 weeks, I got checked and my stitches had mostly healed and everything was looking good. I still didn’t really feel ready for a lot of exercise. 
• Around 2 months I got a series of massages to help close my abs and heal the diastisis. Also did some belly binding.
• Around 3 months I started acupuncture to help with my healing and hormone balancing 
• I lost most of the baby weight within the first 2-3 weeks but my body was still very different and around 3 months, I was starting to feel more like myself  
• Around 3 months I was feeling more ready for bigger walks and starting to go back to the gym and my body felt like home again 
• At 4 months I started working super part-time and by 7 months I was working up to 20 hours a week. With only 10 hours a week of childcare, it felt like too much and I need to back off a bit to only doing about 10-15 hours per week of work. 
• Postpartum yoga, Mom and baby pilates, mom and baby yoga, walking regularly, gym 1-2x per week 
• 11 months postpartum and I’m feeling pretty much back to how I felt pre-baby – hemorrhoids and perineum are feeling pretty much back to normal and my strength is slowly returning
• TIRED! 
• And much more… Here’s the episode!