How to help your body heal after having a baby
There is a saying, 5 days in the bed, 5 days on the bed, and 5 days around the bed. Basically, this means that you should plan on not leaving your room for, at the very minimum, 5 days after having a baby. This is especially true if leaving your bedroom means going up and down stairs. Do not plan to do any household chores or go on walks. Your jobs those first 2 weeks are to rest and bond with your new baby.
Okay, I know, I know, this is a strong statement. The fact of the matter is that too many people think that after having a baby they can just get up and act like they weren’t pregnant for 9 months or that they just had a whole human come out of their body. A WHOLE HUMAN!!!!! That is AMAZING!!! Now, give you body the gift of rest to allow it to heal.
If you have any other medical procedure done, you would allow your body to rest to allow it to heal and to help decrease the pain. So why not allow your body to rest when it just went through a HUGE transformation of birthing a baby?
For the first 5 days, stay in bed. The only place you should go besides your bed is to the bathroom. By staying in your bed, you are allowing your body to heal. It just spent 9 months growing a human (which means it had a lot of physical and hormonal changes). It needs to rest in order to heal. One of the main pregnancy hormones is relaxin. That will stay in your body for 12 weeks after having your baby (even more if you breastfeed). It is the highest after having a baby. It causes the ligaments to stretch out to allow a baby to come out of your pelvis. Your organs are also held in place with ligaments, if you are up and walking, gravity will put a lot of pressure on the organs and cause them to pull down. If you are up walking around, or even lifting and carrying things, after having a baby, it can cause those ligaments to stretch more which can lead to a pelvic organ prolapse (your vagina falling out of your body (this is an extreme statement, it usually does not fall out, but it can)) and/or low back, hip pain, pubic bone pain, since your ligaments will not be in the ideal place to support your joints.
For the second 5 days, you want to stay in your room. You can be up sitting in a chair, but still try not to go up and down the stairs. This will continue to allow your body to heal as you start to do a little more, but not too much to cause more stress on your body.
The third 5 days, you can start to walk around a little more. It would be most ideal to still limit your stair use. If you need fresh air for your mental health, you can walk to the end of your driveway and back. Try to limit only doing the stairs once a day.
Unlike most injuries, when you have a baby, your hormones are changing and shifting so much. This is why rest is key to healing. For almost any other injury, I would recommend that you actually use and move the injured area to get blood flow to the area to help promote healing to to help your brain know that the pain it is feeling is not “dangerous”. However, since you were just pregnant for 9 months, birthed a baby, and you are now breastfeeding, the best way to heal is to actually rest. When you feel pain after having a baby, it is because something is going on and it is your body’s way to tell you there is a “dangerous” situation and you need to rest and allow your body to heal. When you breastfeed, your uterus contracts allowing blood to flow to your pelvis. This is why you do not need to be up walking around to get blood flow to the area to promote healing.
People have been birthing babies for thousands of years and our bodies know how to heal as long as we let them.
Listen to you body. This is not the time to push it and show everyone what you are cable of. Everyone knows what you are capable of…. YOU JUST CREATED A MIRACLE, that is the largest accomplishment!
