The Wheel of Postpartum Need
One of the most basic structural blocks to Nourished Postpartum experiences is education. Whether you are a practitioner or community member who wants to know how to support the folks around you in feeling fully held, or you are a pregnant or postpartum person looking for guidance on how to prepare/ask for what you need, we have tried to put into words what we commonly see in the experiences of deeply serving postpartum people. After years of supporting people after birth, we have developed our own set of categories, pie slices if you will, of what people need in the postpartum period. Sometimes it helps us to tether back to this as doula to remember that each person needs a little bit of all of this.
Let’s strike “Let me know what you need” from our collective vocabulary and instead offer specifics.
“I know you need food, what’s your favorite takeout dish? Can I chop some vegetables for you and drop them off in tupperware too?”
“Who is going to walk the dog after you have the baby? I can do mornings for the first three weeks.”
“Here is a gift card for a wash and fold laundry service”
“Do you have a postpartum care fund where I can send cash to?”
“Has anyone created a meal train for you?”
We hope after reading this list you will feel grounded in your understanding to show up for postpartum.
NOURISHMENT - Nourishment is not just nutrition, it can come in all kinds of forms. We are specifically talking about food, and yes, ideally: easy to digest food and high in bioavailable iron and nutrients. Nourishment is not, however, solely about that; we are also talking about food that tastes good, feels good and is familiar/among our faves. Additionally, we are also talking about enough food. Put down that granola bar and grab a sandwich! Grab two!
PHYSICAL HEALING - Regardless of how your baby was born, you will be healing. Your body will need tending. You may have a tear or stitches, an incision or even just a weakened abdominal wall and pelvic floor. You will be healing from pregnancy, as well as the moment the baby was born. Physical healing can look like herbal sitz baths, comfortable clothes, wrapping or binding the middle of the body, using a peri bottle, a castor oil pack on scar tissue, witch hazel pads, perineal steaming, staying warm, staying rested and so much more. If physical healing isn’t centered now or is skipped over it can take years (or a lifetime.)
SPACE HELD - What does this actually mean? ‘Space held’ is our way of saying that your mind, emotions, spirit and whole being, need to be acknowledged when you speak, and even when you don’t. Will you need/want some tips and tricks? Maybe. But we believe that people mostly need witnessing, without judgement, with their own voice amplified back to them as the expert on their own experience. Holding space for someone implies an active process, ‘holding’ is a verb after all. If you are holding space for someone, there is an implication that you are showing up to support the regulation of the space - you are striving to de-center yourself and make a light energetic impact. Holding space means not looking away from someone, or down at them, not interrupting or denying their reality. Holding space implies deep presence. New parents need less advice and more held space.
GATE KEEPING - Boundaries are essential to a Nourished Postpartum. How can someone rest and relax without boundaries? Should the postpartum person have to do all of this boundary work in real time during the most tender moments? NO! We highly recommend doing boundary work and deciding on a “Gatekeeper” during pregnancy. You can make a sign for the door, send an email out to family, have times/rules/needs/boundaries at the top of a Meal Train - doing this work up front will help you receive care on your terms and mean that you’re less likely to snap at Great Aunt Susan (that is a called a reactive boundary!) for showing up unannounced the day you get home from the hospital. A gatekeeper can be a partner, a friend, a doula, a sibling - truly, anyone in the space who is consenting to center and honor the boundaries stated by the person who is trying to rest and heal. It is doubtful that any one person can fill this role entirely, we are suggesting here that the rings of support consider how, when and who can support the necessary gate keeping around the new family.
REST - We specifically wrote rest instead of sleep, because we know! But yes, you want to string together some sleep and also center rest even when you aren’t sleeping. 7 days in the bed, 7 days on the bed, 7 days by the bed. Perfecting the art of rest will help your healing expenitionally. Resist the culture of productivity/capitalism/white supremacy. You deserve to be well. The ‘Bounce Back’ is a vicious lie to get you back to Costco (we get it, we love bulk snacks too). You owe your future self a pelvic floor that is strong. Even if you can’t ‘sleep when the baby sleeps’, your rest is foundational to your healing and transition.
NURTURING TOUCH - the body has just been through an incredible feat, let's honor it by touching it in a way that soothes, heals, comforts and eases the build up of lactic acid and the cramps from holding a person or persons for almost a year in there. And as for parents feeling “touched out”? No one is ever “touched out” from receiving amazing massages! Primary caregivers, particularly those healing from birth and especially those healing from birth AND feeding from their body, are giving touch all day long to their baby or babies. It is reasonable that parents feel resentful when they themselves are not being held, or soothed, by anyone. Pregnancy is incredible taxing on a physiologic level and birth, for many, is extremely activating. It is our deeply held belief (and a cross cultural postpartum wisdom practice) that postpartum people need the somatic regulation of safe, nurturing touch to ground back into their bodies, release the adrenalized birth experience, and feel like their body still deserves tenderness and care, even though it isn’t carrying a baby anymore.
POSTPARTUM INTIMACY - Postpartum intimacy is a foot rub, kisses that have no obligation attached to them, light tickles. Postpartum intimacy is time alone and the space to create your own pleasure and not being responsible for anyone else’s orgasms but your own. Postpartum intimacy is someone listening to you about your anxiety and not trying to fix it but just holding you while you cry in the bathtub. Postpartum intimacy is gatekeeping with the inlaws, spooning between feeds and getting home when you said you would. Postpartum intimacy is so many things and almost last on the list is penetration so let's stop putting it first.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - It’s easy to overlook what’s just happened because our society helps us take it for granted but every postpartum person needs someone who will acknowledge and even say “Wow, you just made a human with your body, that’s incredible” or “woah, you birthed a person two weeks ago, I can not believe it, you are amazing.” And not just acknowledgement of the birth and of the baby but of the postpartum time, the healing, the sleepless nights, the giving from the body, THE EVERYTHING. Make the invisible visible.
AVAILABLE JOY - Just because the transition to early parenthood is commonly stressful and sleep deprived doesn’t mean it isn’t also funny. There is so much to be said about the lack of humor and joy in this time period; it is natural to feel stressed and stretched and taxed and too tired to crack a joke. But it isn’t natural to be left for days alone, with no connection and camaraderie; friendship and banter can be the deepest medicine. Helping postpartum people laugh and smile is one of our favorite things. Available Joy is our perinatal mental health philosophy, and not only does it refer to postpartum laughter, it also pertains to the ability to receive the joy that is available in the moment that is actually happening. This somatic skill of presence, perspective and active receivership is something we share with all of our clients. We don’t say “Enjoy every moment!” because that's impossible! And guilt inducing! Please stop saying that to new parents! We encourage clients to look for where the joy genuinely is, and to truly try and let it fill their being and their body. Even if the moment right after is covered in spit up down the shoulder or the 47th wake up.
RESOURCES - Before birth, people need to know what is available to them in community. This could mean lactation support, meal delivery, virtual parenting groups, helplines, etc. Prenatal postpartum planning will help families identify their pre-existing needs and plan for how to meet them on the other side. If someone attends therapy for mental health, how can that be supported in the early weeks and months of parenthood? If your family has a dog that needs walking twice daily, is there a family member, friend, neighbor or dog walking service that can be set up to take over for the first month? There will of course be new and emerging needs that can’t be planned for, one way you can support postpartum people is by doing the metal labor of researching resources in your area and vetting practitioners and spaces for cultural competency and inclusivity.
A KIN KEEPER - Postpartum people don’t need to worry about Thank You Cards. This is a metaphor (but feel free to take it literally). Worrying about what everyone thinks/feels/needs is not where the mental and emotional body of postpartum people should be focused. If the older sibling has a birthday party 1 month after the second baby comes along, the healing person needs to not be standing on a ladder trying to hang a banner they painted at 2am in between infant nursing sessions. This scene is all too common. The healing person’s job is to heal. Prenatal postpartum conversations around emotional and mental bandwidth can prevent shame spirals and contextualize to family and friends what to expect AFTER someone is expecting.
COMMUNITY - What does this mean to you? Community can be online, in person, new, from childhood, over the phone, sat in the park, your far away friend that you can facetime in the middle of the night because the time zones are just right for that, your social orgs, your faith community, your co workers, your accountability pod, your neighbors, your cohort in school, your ex boyfriend’s mom, your healing justice group, any service organization that meets your specific needs, anyone you’ve built trust with and could open to allow to be a near or distant ring of support for your journey. And we mean community that serves the postpartum person, not that takes more from them. Include them, invite them, even when you know they can’t come. And continue to. Circle around them and don’t stop.