Postpartum
What can you expect as new mother throughout your postpartum journey?
After giving birth to your beautiful baby your body will go through a huge shift! It takes 9 months to create a baby, and another 3-6 months to recover emotionally, mentally, and physically. Throughout this important time be patient and give yourself the opportunity to bond with your baby. Six months postpartum is the estimated time for your hormones to “normalize”. Around this time depending on breastfeeding, many mothers’ cycles return, and hormonal changes in estrogen and progesterone balance to pre-pregnancy levels.
Postpartum Hormones
Did you know that your baby literally creates hormones to draw others in to love and care of it? It uses a hormone called oxytocin and it is an essential hormone for labor and breastfeeding, it is what connects you and others to your baby!
Studies have shown that oxytocin also impacts social behavior as well, specifically, oxytocin helps you stay tuned in to respond to important signs in your environment! This hormone may promote feelings of trust and bonding or contrary reactions such as defensiveness. It’s important to allow this bond to form, it is a natural and beautiful journey that helps a mother and her baby feeling safe!
Thyroid hormone levels can change after giving birth. The thyroid might react to bouts of inflammation releasing extra hormones causing…
- Anxiety
- Irritability
- Unexplained weight loss
- Increased sensitivity to heat
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
Postpartum hormonal shifts may also lead many new mothers feeling alone. Other common experiences include mood swings, poor sleep, lack of appetite, depression, and anxiety, and irresistible urges to cry. When these feelings don’t go away or get worse, it may indicate postpartum depression, something that impacts so many mothers and has lasting mental implications…
- Loss of interest in the newborn
- Feelings of hopelessness
- A constant urge to cry
- An inability to cope or take pleasure in things
- Loss of memory and concentration skills
- Excessive anxiety
- Panic attacks
- Sleeplessness and extreme fatigue
- Aches and pains
- Feeling unwell regularly
- Decreased appetite
There is no Quick Fix to Postpartum
There is nothing someone can give us in our registry to “fix” the effects of postpartum, and no one can prepare you for what you will face as you embark on your journey of motherhood. Instead you can give to yourself, create a self-care schedule, ask for support from those around you, have food prepared, and another set of hands to help you.
Give yourself time to harmonize your hormones with your baby to rediscover balance in your life. You cannot force yourself to heal faster, so take time to establish a trusting relationship with your child. Leaving a baby too early can be devastating for a mother’s emotional wellbeing causing guilt, shame, lack of worthiness, and a destructive self-image.
Pray, meditate, and remind yourself you are given what you can handle. Listen to your body and listen to your baby, and you will know what your child is asking for! Motherhood is such a beautiful experience! Every two hours your will need to feed, and your body will crave the skin-to-skin contact. Allow this experience to be what it needs to be and make room for it to show you what it is it needs from you! We must shift our lives around our babies instead of shifting the babies needs around our lives!
Blessings
Meagan Buchanan, Eternity in a Box
