During prenatal sessions with my doula clients, I always make a point to discuss postpartum plans. In the way in which every woman usually has some sort of birth preferences (hospital birth, home birth, birthing center birth, midwife, doctor or OB, natural birth, epidural birth, and so forth...) it is important to develop some ideas around what the plan is for postpartum care.
Some of the questions I encourage my pregnant couples to ask themselves are: what is our sleeping arrangement and what are our beliefs in infant sleep? Where is our healthy food coming from? Who's around if we need support? Would we like a postpartum doula? How much time can we take off? Who is in charge of feeding? Who is in charge of feeding? Who will do the laundry and the chores?
Mothering the Mother: New Mothers Need a Focused Period of Rest and Recovery
An excerpt:
The postpartum period is considered to be the roughly six-week period when a woman recovers from the magnitude of pregnancy and birth. It is also the wild, messy, tender, achy, exhilarating time when a woman begins the process of shedding one way of being for an entirely new identity. It is a fleeting, essential moment, a powerful pause before the full initiation of the next chapter of her life. But in a society that encourages a new mother to "bounce back," right after birth, a woman is pushed to do the opposite of resting and recovering; she is encouraged to get back to a version of her body and her life that is gone forever. She has been forever transformed by the profound act of making another human being and requires care and attention before hurtling forward.
