Tips For Welcoming Ease in Your Fourth Trimester - Lowering The Bar to Wellness and Minding H.E.R.S.
This entry contains affiliate links. Click here to read my affiliate disclosure.
Preparing for your postpartum experience is so critical. After spending the greater part of a whole year growing a baby (and a mother!) - your body, mind and spirit will long for a new kind of tending, a consistent nurturing. The first three months after delivery is a transformative period of time, now commonly referred to as the fourth trimester. Restoring after birth and making space for a new way of life often catches many a new mother (or new again) by surprise. Shortly after childbirth - whether vaginal or surgical - your body will begin to release the fluids and tissue it no longer needs, estrogen and progesterone will dramatically decrease and in optimal (and hopeful) fashion - oxytocin will flood over you, helping milk to flow and good feelings to abound.
No matter if you’re enamored with this new little life in your world, no matter the deep appreciation you may have for your body and what it has accomplished, no matter the awe you may feel that you did that, mama, ‘cause you did! - these first few months after birth will be filled with incredible new realities and transitions that require enlightened support and thoughtful embrace. I encourage my mamas and families to lower the bar to wellness. Do everything that you can - ahead of time - to plan for your well-being. Awareness + preparation lowers the bar. You’ll thank yourself for designing a nourishing experience that will serve as a cushion from the very common, very Western lifestyle-encouraging pitfall of postpartum depression.
Ask yourself what you need to feel normal.
Nine hours of sleep a day? A daily cup of morning coffee. Laundry folded and put away before each day ends? A weekly FaceTime or in-person visit with a friend? One take-out meal every few days? To put on real clothes each day? Bubble baths?
And then, figure out what it would take to do those things on a regular, this makes me feel normal and tended and ok basis. Need to hire someone to handle something in particular or do you have a helpful friend or family member who would love to do that? Hire the person, schedule (communicate this, put it on the calendar, make it real) for the friend/family to come by and make it happen.
Once baby is earth side and you’re in the thick of this new motherhood, continue on in keeping the bar low. Deepen it and simplify it with the reminder that your most basic needs are critical and important and need addressing. If they are not, they will drain the life within and around you - make it difficult to show up in your body and in your mind and in your experience in a healthy, manageable way. It’s more important than ever before that you pay attention to the things that keep you feeling steady and well. And while you’re in the thick of managing this new life and your new life (and when your husband or partner is here in this with you - this is their daily checklist to abide in for the remembrance and the tending of and to YOU) always remember:
HERS -
Hydrate - she needs her water, her green and life-plentiful juices, her herbal tisanes
Eat - she needs to eat. Three squares. Snacks in between. Even in the middle of the night. Things that are easy to digest, warming
Restore - she needs to brush her teeth and bathe. Take some moments to breathe. Step outside and smell the air
Sleep - she needs sleep every day. Throughout the day for the first month, maybe two or three
This doula remains in service to her clients for six weeks postpartum. I am here, specifically, to hold space and offer a soft-landing with words and deeds of support - ‘cause I’ve been there and I know, girl - for the early days of this new life.
May the support you have designed encourage the ease you need in your fourth trimester.
