Over the past few months, I’ve talked to a few different women about post-partum recovery and their various experiences, both positive and negative. My own recovery after Ellie’s birth was quite easy. I know part of that was because my labor and delivery were relatively short. I also delivered without any pain medications, meaning that I had the benefit of all those fabulous God-given hormones to help me recover (which epidurals short-circuit).
There are several other dimensions that contributed to my easy and complete recovery.
Immediately following Ellie’s birth, Nik’s mother was an incredible help to us. She came over every day, cooked us wonderful meals, cleaned, organized, held the baby, made us take naps, and generally made it possible for us to survive those first few incredibly hard days.
Then my mother came. She got here when Ellie was five days old and stayed a little over three weeks. It was indescribably wonderful to have so much time with my mother. She not only fed us but kept our house clean and worked on tons of projects that I had wanted to get accomplished before Ellie came. She also gently guided us in learning how to care for a newborn and gave us much needed confidence to carry on when she left. She also provided much needed companionship for me; this allowed Nik to feel much less stressed about going back to work.
After she left, Nik took a couple days off from work to help me transition back to being by myself with Ellie. So Ellie was almost six weeks old before I spent an entire day alone with her.
I also had several good friends who came over to our house to keep me company, listen to me tell Ellie’s birth story, and encourage me. Many more amazing friends brought us delicious meals and sometimes stayed to eat them with us, providing more companionship, laughter, and willing arms to hold the tiny baby.
Through all of this, we tried to follow the Orthodox tradition of sequestering ourselves for 40 days after Ellie was born. We certainly didn’t hold to this all that tightly – as in, I went out for doctor and chiropractic appointments and a shopping trip maybe once or twice. I actually went out whenever I needed to. But we tried to severely limit the number of times we left the house and particularly the number of times that we took Ellie out. Mostly, we just stayed at home. We didn’t go to church, or covenant group, or Bible Study, or moms’ group, or playgroup, or the mall, or anything. We just stayed home and rested.
(I was introduced to this tradition right around the time I met Nik through this article. The thought behind the tradition – that of being allowed to stay home to bond with your child and heal- was highly appealing to me, long before I had a child. I’d recommend reading the article if you’d like to learn more about the tradition.)
By the end of 40 days, I was ready to get back into life again. And after we did, time and time again, I heard, “Wow Laura! You look great. You look so rested. Not like you just had a baby.” I usually responded with, “My mom was a huge help!”
The truth is, though, my mom was a huge help but so was six weeks of rest. I’ve seen far too many moms at church, whose babies are just days old. Their faces look wan, they’re exhausted, and they’re not happy. One mom I actually told, “We didn’t come to church for six weeks. We even skipped covenant group. You should too!” And they did for a couple weeks until they felt ready to come back. I think they needed permission from someone that it was OK to step out of normal life for a few weeks.
I loved those six weeks at home. When Nik and I were talking about this, he mentioned that part of why I loved my six weeks at home and part of why I healed so well, without any trace of post-partum depression, was that I had my mother with me. He’s totally right – I would have been desperately lonely by the end of that 40 days of sequestering if I hadn’t had my mother along with many other lovely friends to keep me company. So I probably would have gone out before I, my body, and Ellie were ready because I would have needed the company of other women.
So my conclusion? We need each other! We need community. We need to be surrounded by people who love us, who we can love back, who can provide companionship, who can help us make hard decisions, who need us too.
I’m trying hard to see and meet these needs in other women now. I know I fail more times than I succeed. I know I look through too many needs instead of seeing them and doing something about it. But I’m trying. Maybe you can try too?
Salmon and Souvlaki 