Postpartum: Life AFTER life after birth control

One of my midwifery professors calls it "the forgotten period," due mainly to the fact that in traditional obstetrical management, a new mother doesn't see her care provider again until six weeks after giving birth. Plus, it somewhat lacks the excitement and novelty of pregnancy and birth. Rixa at Stand and Deliver, who had a baby herself not long ago at all, recently opened an honest discussion of feeling "dumpy and frumpy in one's postpartum body." I was still pregnant when she posted it (5 days before I had Eden), and so I admit most of my attention was taken in by this excerpt:

For the first few weeks after giving birth, I feel incredibly attractive. Every day, especially during the first week, I look thinner and more shapely. My breasts get bigger, my stomach gets smaller, and when I see myself in the mirror each morning, I think, "Wow! I look good!"

I find newly postpartum bodies incredibly beautiful. Very feminine--or perhaps the better word is womanly. I love the empty, rounded belly; the soft bread-dough skin; the flush of hormones.

It seemed too good to be true. But like a prophecy, that was pretty much how I felt in the days after giving birth. Losing 32 pounds in under a week (10-lb baby, 3-lb placenta, and evidently about 19 lbs of fluid) didn't hurt at all, and neither did getting back those ankle bones I'd been pining for.

Rixa went on to say that a few weeks later, the dramatic body changes hit pause for awhile, and she's left feeling less than pleased with her appearance. By way of perspective, though, she posted a link a couple of days later to an article entitled "Maternity leave--or reprieve?" in which the author calls for the "need to respect the time parents spend with newborns." The author notes, "It would be a shame to lose reverence for those gentle, maddening months after a child is born, when you are in a sleep-drained reverie, stitched to a baby's rhythms and sweet suckling; when you watch them unfurl, watch their eyes focus on the world, their lips curl into smiles, their startled limbs jerk and then grow strong."

So, right now, are the days of our lives. While I am getting past the honeymoon stage of no longer being pregnant, and I am struggling a little to come to peace with the idea of all the things about my body that will never quite be the same, I'm also inclined to marvel that the price of creating human life--of suddenly producing into our living room a whole new ten-pound being, our daughter--isn't in fact any steeper. And I try to remember to be amazed, as well, at what my body can do: create a baby, efficiently discharge a baby, and now continue to feed and nourish a baby (no less, after being up all night with said baby).

And on the whole, I've felt remarkably good: despite the exhaustion, optimistic and energetic the majority of the time. The day Eden was born, we took her for her first walk outside; my coworkers are still surprised that I haven't felt at all teary or bluesy since she was born. The closest I've come was a surprising torrent of tears when we buried the placenta, when she was a little over a week old. I think in large part that was because of the sense of closure it gave me, the feeling that this pregnancy and birth--which were such a wild and beautiful and spiritual adventure--were really over. As Matt put it, "You've put so much work into this pregnancy and this birth, and growing such a good strong baby--and now all of that seems like it's forgotten." Not that I'm not overjoyed to be moving on to the next step, because I am, but goodbyes, for me, are always hard.

Other than that, though, I'm doing my best to identify with and take comfort in the final sentence of the previous article:

When you delight in the life you have created, it becomes a lot less important to get your own life back the very next day.

Then here's to delight.

Ode to my cloth pads

I have a lot to catch up on with this blog--Eden's birth story, for one, but also all of the postpartum-y things I've become intimately aware are part of "life after birth control"--but I can't help myself from taking the quick opportunity while Eden is sleeping to share my deep and abiding passion for cloth postpartum pads. Matt and I were actually cutting them out (loosely following this pattern, but there are tons of others out there) before we went to bed the night I went into labor, so obviously we didn't have time to sew them ("we" meaning "Matt" because I can't sew) by the time I gave birth. I was almost ready to throw in the towel and just keep using disposables, as my motivation was largely environmental and I figured the planet would understand, just this once--but Matt, bless his heart, sat down a few days ago and finished them, and I am now the proud owner of about 16 of the softest fleece-backed flannel pads with snaps on the wings that I have ever seen. The comfort is absolutely out of this world--to go from feeling like I was wearing a crinkly, sweaty, leaky plastic diaper and being constantly aware of that fact to being essentially unaware of the whisper-soft flannel lying absorbently next to my skin is one of the closest things I know of to postpartum heaven. They're slim, they're soft, they breathe, and they don't leak!

I'm sure the next question on everyone's mind is what you do with a used cloth postpartum pad. We've rigged up a nice system wherein we have a 1-gallon bucket under the bathroom sink that has several inches of water and a splash of Biz thrown in (upon my mother's recommendation, Biz is about the only thing we can find that gets out tough "human" stains like blood, sweat, and ring around the collar; we figure that in our largely chemical-free lifestyle, it's a concession we can make). I put the used pads in there and then dump the bucket in the wash when it's full. A little Biz and laundry detergent gets them sparkling clean again.

Plus, at $16-23 a pop to buy cloth pads (which you can do on Etsy or many other places if you don't have a sewing-inclined husband), we've saved literally hundreds of dollars by making them at home from a flannel sheet we got at Goodwill for a couple of dollars, a fleece blanket we picked up at KMart, and snaps we got for under $2. Plus, they were custom-made by my loving husband. It just doesn't get better than that!