by Gabrielle Anwar
While your hormones stabilize for the healing, breastfeeding, mothering journey ahead, your body requires time to acclimatize to the new status quo. The misconception that your belly will be gone once Baby is born can be disconcerting, but it takes time for your organs to return to their pre-pregnancy positioning, even your bones need to recalibrate. Your belly, though now no longer home to your child, will be soft, even saggy and malleable. The continued contractions after birth aid in shrinking the uterus back to pre-pregnancy size, and breastfeeding triggers the same tightening in the belly. We have been so conditioned to frown upon extra weight on the body, that we generally do not appreciate what our beautiful body has just been through and instead of worshipping the weight that housed, fed, carried our baby all those months, we are impatient for our body to return to “normal”. If there was tearing in the Perinium during delivery, the sutures will cause soreness and stinging while urinating until the skin has healed. After a C-section you will have a significant surgery to recover from as well as welcoming your new Baby into your world.
It is imperative that we rest the first days postpartum. Baby will be as exhausted and the two of you should sleep as much as possible. Once Baby recovers from the passage from within, she will become more vocal, expressing her needs for you to translate and you will likely be more and more sleep deprived. During the first week at home, regardless of a C-section or vaginal birth allow your partner, family, friends to cater to you and Baby. You should not be in the kitchen, at the gym, or even catching up with emails and calls. This is a very special and important time for you and Baby to bond and the rest of the world can wait.If you are a first time Mama, luxuriate in the attention you can give your Baby.If there is an older child in the home, be attentive to their needs and the introduction to their sibling. Create moments when your partner is bonding with Baby for you to share one on one time with your older child. Invite them under the blankets with you in bed, read to them, or better yet, tell them the true story of how big sister or brother is now guardian to their young kin, in the best Faerytale version of your life as you can muster. Enchanting the older sibling with this new entity will pay off in dividends as they grow together.
