What is Postpartum Care?
This is a common question I get, because this is not a common service offered in this day and age. And it’s also not a simple answer. From what I have seen in my experience and with my close circle, is that the current state of the postpartum time is generally from a mother’s limited time in the hospital, or potentially from a doula or midwife, the baby’s father, and potentially a short stay from one of the elders in the family. As I have seen it, mother’s rest on their living room couch for a day or so, and return to household chores right away as to not lose control of their household. The baby’s father tries their best to keep up with the older kids and all the household chores, but as mother’s and homemakers, he just “doesn’t do it like I do,” and so we step in, or we feel guilty for resting while he works so hard, and we muster up the energy to rejoin our matriarchal role within only a few days.
Now think about what a beautiful and restful postpartum time could look like... Did you ever imagine staying in bed for a week? 2 weeks? Maybe even 3 weeks? What would it look like if your family, maybe a mother or auntie or grandmother came to be at your house for weeks to nurture your family, cook for you, take care of older kids, draw an herbal bath for you, make you nourishing and healing teas? Your only job for the foreseeable future is laying in bed, healing, resting, processing your birth, exploring your new life as a mother, nursing your baby, bonding with your baby, exploring every sweet little part of your baby from the sweet little smile they give you after nursing all the way to the way their tiny toes twitch here and there while they are sleeping. Wouldn’t that be such a fantasy? The truth is that this isn’t fantasy. This is how mothers should be held and nurtured after birth.
And that is what postpartum care is. Mother’s laying in bed with their new baby while someone tends to their home, helps to cook for them, keeps their older children busy and happy, and allowing for mother to be transformed. For those that do not have that kind of support (aka most people), that is where a postpartum care doula comes in. Someone who understands, someone who is there to care for you, to listen to you, allow you to be in your true humanness. That is what we do.
Close your eyes and process what I am about to say. You are the most powerful human in the world. You have created life. Imagine a world where children are born and their mothers are radiating love and joy and adoration for their new newborn. They feel safe. They are nourished. They are expanding their mind. And that is all they needed to worry about. Could you even imagine how we could change our world? Babies feeling so deeply connected to their mothers, well beyond the 9 months of gestation. Babies being held and loved, and never cold and away from their life giver. Postpartum care will change the world. We will have a day where all mothers will rest and heal, and then when the moment comes, they will rise up from their bed, being the lioness for their family, sharp and alive. Mothers are love, and they radiate that to their children, and the day that mothers are honored fully for their magic, the world will be healed.