Prepare for Postpartum Care!

During the exciting time of pregnancy, a great deal of attention is paid to the labor and delivery process. An equal amount of importance is placed upon preparations for bringing your little bundle of joy home and caring for the newest member of your family. We create registries, fill our homes with all of the latest baby gear, enjoy baby showers and wait with ever increasing excitement for the joyous day when we bring our little one into the world. Of course, we take all of the classes, too - everything from labor and delivery preparation to caring for your newborn and breastfeeding. We are so ready to be new parents!

...or so we thought.

I did all of this, but I, like many other first time mothers, forgot about one important piece of the pie - myself. In all of the hoopla that leads up to your first childbirth experience (all very fun and important stuff - don't get me wrong), we tend to leave out the part where we come home from the hospital, totally prepared to care for our beautiful, helpless newborn, but completely oblivious to our own needs during this time of postpartum recovery. After the birth of my first child, I was discharged one day before the baby. As I was breastfeeding my daughter (or trying to breastfeed, as my milk had not yet made an appearance), I had to return to the hospital every two to three hours to feed her. Unfortunately, I was no longer a patient, and she was in the regular nursery, so there was not a room for me at the hospital. I lived very close, so this was not a problem in terms of time or travel. It was, however, a big problem in terms of pain. Recovering from a major episiotomy, the walk from the parking lot to the nursery was a slow, tortuous trek that I made three times that night. Towards morning, the pain medications that I had been taking as a patient were wearing off, and I realized that I did not have any ibuprofen at home. I had to send my husband to the nearest pharmacy at 6 a.m. to buy me some. The pain was pretty intense (and this from someone who had just been through a natural childbirth without an epidural!). Finally, my daughter was discharged early that morning and I could go home and recover on the couch.