The Long Six Weeks
Waiting six weeks postpartum to see a medical professional is often too long. Women are sent home after childbirth knowing how to monitor every shade of their infant’s poop, but nothing about how to monitor their own injuries. Most women are told little more than ‘nothing in the vagina’ for six weeks (like we’re chomping at the bit 🤔…). So now we’re left alone with an infant, in a blur of 24-hour days and round the clock feedings, with our dark scary thoughts and no concrete information. No matter the mechanism of delivery or severity of injuries, our bodies are never the same after 40 weeks of gestation and childbirth. This does not mean we can’t fully heal, and ultimately come out on the other side even stronger and more fit. But it requires an understanding of the healing timeline, and some fundamental strategies to help our bodies along.
The spectrum of postpartum conditions is sprawling. Most women spend the first six weeks enduring painful or uncomfortable symptoms that impact their quality of life such as painful bowel movements, urinary leakage, pelvic pain, or weakness. For some, symptoms may be more life threatening, or interfere with their ability to care for themselves and their children, such as nerve injuries, critical bleeding, blood clots, or cardiovascular conditions. Alternately, some women feel awesome after delivery and are eager to get back to physical exercise, but don’t know how to progress safely. No matter where one lands on that spectrum, all women deserve better screening, more information, and individualized strategies to self-monitor and safely progress their recovery.
In my personal experience, the first six week postpartum were some of the darkest days of my life. I was surrounded by family, friends, and a loving husband, but I had never felt so lonely or overwhelmed. I felt like the rug of my former life had been pulled out from under me and I was in free fall. I felt betrayed by my body. My nipples were scabbed and bleeding, I could barely roll over in bed, everything was instantly two inches too far from me, and I resented having to ask for help to do absolutely everything. I assumed I would never sleep again, and I was sure my body could never recover. The helplessness was suffocating. And I was resourced. I had a PT consultation in the hospital prior to discharge (where I was given a packet about self-management that I had helped write). I had a lactation counselor come to my home every week, for free, for the first month. Though I knew intellectually how to begin to activate my core and pelvic floor safely and how to manage my C-section scar, I had failure to launch. It was like now that these things were happening in my body, I forgot everything I knew as a professional. I could not be my own advocate. I wasn’t sure I would ever crawl out of that darkness or feel like myself again. I felt that by bringing new life into this world, my vitality had been sacrificed.
But in time cracks of light seeped in, and my rebirth began. The weeks and months melted away, and I allowed my body’s new wisdom in, and observed its resilience. I returned to working with other new mothers on their postpartum healing journeys, in turn a vital part of mine. I listened with crisp awareness and heard these labor and delivery stories in a new way. Though each story was unique, they shared the theme of lack of information and support after birth. Women felt isolated and uninformed for the long six weeks leading up to a brief follow up with a physician or midwife. The abundance of information at the fingertips of the modern mother was a double-edged sword. It was riddled with comparison, confusion, and lack of individualization.
This confluence lit a fire in me. I realized that I was now uniquely poised to shift the paradigm of postpartum support. I created Hearth to be the light in the darkness. To hold space for women to get the answers and guidance they have a right to, sooner than six weeks postpartum. My delivery not going according to “plan” was not unique to me. But the convergence of my professional knowledge and personal experience is. This has primed me to help women understand what they can control in their recoveries, what type of specialist to see and when, and what other resources are available to them. Giving birth is the most powerful act. The weeks that follow should not feel powerless. All women should feel empowered to put themselves first, know where to get answers, and confidently begin to heal.