Postpartum Must-Dos
Pregnancy is crazy and amazing. A woman’s body does an outstanding thing growing a human. And rightly so, during pregnancy we see the doctor ALL THE TIME. Our blood pressure, weight, belly, amount of swelling, blood sugar, and mood are checked constantly. Then the miracle of birth happens. Our bodies go through something that is equal parts beautiful and traumatic, and we birth a baby. Some vaginally and others via c-section. Either way, our body goes through the ringer. After we have our babies, as long as everything went well, we get around 48-72 hours in the hospital and then bye bye with no doctor visits for 6 weeks.
People had told me a few self care things to do after having my baby. The things I was told were: to sleep when the baby sleeps, make sure to eat and drink enough water, take time to have a date night, and find some ‘me’ time every now and then. All of those things were good and helpful. However, there were some very important things that I have since discovered, that people did not tell me about. Specifically, there were 3 things that turned out to be very important for me. I wanted to share them, because I’m thinking I am not the only one who could have used this information. So here they are...
1.GET A PHYSICAL AND GET YOUR BLOOD CHECKED
I’m not sure how everyone’s 6 week appointment with their OB after birth went, but my experience was surprisingly lacking. I came in, they asked me about my mood (I did the questionnaire for postpartum depression signs), they took my BP and weight, checked out down there and said I looked great. I had torn during birth, so she checked where my stitches were and said that I could return to normal activity...whatever that means. And that was it.
About 8 months after having Pax I was just feeling “off”. I was fatigued, a little more irritable than usual, having random heart palpitations, a few instances of anxiety, and was very intolerant to heat. I had been attributing all of this to having a baby and the lack of sleep that comes with it, but by this time Pax was sleeping very well through the night and had been for a few months. It just didn’t seem to make sense that I would be feeling like this. I told Nathan and my mom that I just felt “off”, I didn’t feel as healthy as I used to. I had started listening to a book on audible called The Postnatal Depletion Cure. In this book, written by a doctor in Australia, he talked about how he sees so many women postpartum that don’t have postpartum depression, but have what he calls “postnatal depletion”. He was describing a lot of things that I was experiencing and was saying that he has noticed women, after birth, can experience lack in certain vitamins and minerals and that many women (1 out of 6) have issues with their thyroid. While reading this book, and coming to terms with what I was feeling, I decided it was time to go get my blood checked.
I figured I must be lacking in some vitamin or mineral and that is what was making me feel off. I told the doctor my symptoms and they ran blood work. But even as I was telling the doctor my symptoms, after everything I said I tacked on a qualifying statement like, “I don’t know if it’s just because I just had a baby recently.” For example, “ I am more fatigued than normal, but I don’t know if it is because I just had a baby”. Thankfully, I had gone to the doctor and my doctor listened and ran blood work, because when my results came back the doctor told me that my thyroid levels (specifically T3 and T4) were very high. She had me do that blood work again to make sure it wasn’t a lab error...it wasn’t. I have hyperthyroidism. I have never had issues with my thyroid before now, but all of my symptoms line up with it perfectly. I have been referred to an endocrinologist to further investigate, but had I not gone to get a physical and blood work done, I would have gone on for many more months just assuming it was normal when you have a newborn and would go away eventually.
Why isn’t getting your blood work checked a part of postnatal care? I think it should be for every woman after childbirth, because It’s so hard to determine what is a result of lack of sleep and what is a result of something actually being wrong.
2.SEE A PELVIC FLOOR PHYSICAL THERAPIST
About 4 months after having Pax, after we had decided to move back to Indiana, I figured it would be prudent to go and get my annual gyno exam out of the way before we moved. It was a pretty normal annual exam. When she seemed to be done, I spoke up and said that I was having some issues. I said that I was having pain with sex and I think I am leaking pee (if this is TMI then you’ll just want to skip to my next point LOL). All my doctor said was “oh you look perfect down there, just give it some time and it will go away”...it had already been 4 months and it wasn’t getting any better, why would more time make it better?
Well it didn’t go away, but I didn’t know any other option. Months later, I sat in on a Zoom call, that the FIT4MOM group I joined hosted, with 2 therapists that work at Restore Your Core Physical Therapy. As they were talking I realized that the things I was experiencing were NOT normal and that “giving it some time” would not make it go away. After that call, I reached out to them to schedule an appointment. Only a couple of sessions later and I am already seeing HUGE improvements that months of waiting, like my doctor suggested, did not help with.
Every mom to be should know about pelvic floor physical therapy, it is so sad that I had never even heard of it before that Zoom call.
3.GO TO THE DENTIST
I’m not sure if our babies suck all the calcium out of our teeth while we are pregnant or if we just naturally tend to slack on caring for our teeth, but SO MANY women I know have had issues with their teeth postpartum. This is a big deal because dental heath has a direct link to heart health and many other things. I usually go to the dentist every 6 months for cleanings and I did that while pregnant, but I still had huge issues with my teeth postpartum. I had 5 cavities and a crown replacement that was needed in the months after giving birth. If we decide to have another child, I will see if my dentist will see me every 3 months for a cleaning during pregnancy LOL
All in all, our bodies go through something crazy and amazing when we have a child, and we should do all we can to take care of them! I didn’t know about some of these things, so my hope is that in sharing my story, someone like me will be helped by it. So share this with any and all the mom’s you know, you never know who might need to hear it!