Postpartum Prep: Why Preparing for Life After Birth Matters More Than You Think

Welcome back to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. My name is Ceridwen. I'm your podcast host and your guide to preparing for a smoother start to life with your new baby.

If you're new here, I'm a postpartum doula, a lactation counselor, and a gentle sleep practitioner. I'm also just obsessed with preparing pregnant mamas for what comes after the birth. And that's really what we're going to be talking about today because I want to really emphasize why it's important to think about what comes after birth.

I've been having a lot of conversations in the DMs lately with pregnant moms and it's given me a little bit of a reality check and really brought me back to how I personally felt when I was a first time pregnant mom. And it's also reminded me of why I even, you know, I've been working on this podcast and working on putting it all together, getting it out there. It's really been a journey in the making for like the past two years.

And these conversations with the mamas who are currently pregnant is really bringing me back to why I wanted to start this podcast in the first place. Because it's reminding me, like I said, of how I felt when I was a first time mom and how I felt when I was a first time mom was just so completely overwhelmed with planning for the birth that I felt like anything that came after the birth was, you know, it came after the birth. It came after the birth in terms of when I was like thinking that I'd start learning about stuff.

But it also came after the birth in terms of my priorities when it came to what felt important to be preparing for during pregnancy. So it felt really important to me to prepare for the birth. The birth was my top priority.

And anything that came after the birth was like a secondary priority. It maybe wasn't even a priority because birth just felt like such a big, huge thing. And it is like, I don't, don't get me wrong, I completely think birth is such a huge thing.

And it's, it's like a once in a lifetime experience. And it makes complete sense to me why I felt that way, why I felt like birth was, I just needed to focus on preparing for the birth and I could think about anything else after. But boy, life after birth certainly then came as quite a shock to me.

And I know I'm not alone there. I think shock is an emotion that I often hear from new parents when they kind of get to the postpartum period and actually experience life with a new baby. And that's certainly what I experienced.

I was completely shocked. I did not realize how much, how big a deal it was to actually be entering life with my new baby. I just remember thinking, like, I couldn't believe I had spent so much time preparing for the birth when the birth was only one day.

And now suddenly I'm living every single day with my new baby. And the learning curve of it, I mean, you're going to have a learning curve in those first few days, in those first few weeks, months, years, like I'm still learning every single day with, and I have a two and a half year old now, but the learning curve in those first few days, especially, those first few days and weeks, but those first few days, especially, like that's a learning curve, like absolutely no other, I can't even begin to explain it to you. Although I'm trying.

That's why I have an entire podcast. But yeah, sorry, I kind of got carried away with my own thoughts there. But I think my point was just, I just remember when I was pregnant, all I could think about was the birth.

And then once I was actually postpartum, once I was actually in life with my new baby, I couldn't believe that the only thing I had really thought to prepare for was the birth and not what came after because, oh my goodness, the rollercoaster that was life after birth and the learning curve of learning to take care of my new baby, learning how to take care of myself again, as well as taking care of a new baby and, you know, also relearning myself, the whole, I guess, identity shift of new motherhood and, oh my gosh, breastfeeding. Learning to breastfeed was such a journey and yeah, one that I completely was, I didn't realize how much breastfeeding could be a learning curve. And by the way, I do have some episodes on preparing to start breastfeeding, episode 10 and episode 17.

Check those out. I'll make sure to link them in the show notes. But also the learning curve of navigating baby sleep was a big surprise to me.

Not necessarily the fact that it wasn't, I wasn't so surprised by the fact that my baby woke a lot. Like that wasn't a surprise to me. I think the things that were a surprise to me were things like just the reality of how it felt to be coping with that sleep deprivation was a bit of a surprise because it definitely felt worse than I had expected it would.

And if I'd known it felt that it was going to feel so hard, I definitely would have tried to prepare like more in advance in terms of maybe having more support and also in terms of like discussing responsibilities with my husband a bit more and trying to like think through what, how we would navigate sleep. And I mean, this is part of the thing, right? Like I didn't realize that there even were strategies that we could use to make it easier. Now as a postpartum doula, like I'm always talking with my clients about different strategies that you can use to kind of manage tag team a little bit between you and your partner when it comes to navigating or kind of coping with your baby's sleep and ways to make it a bit easier.

But I kind of went on tangent there. I think I was just talking about the other thing. I think I also just wanted to say the other thing that I wasn't prepared for that I was shocked or surprised about when it came to baby sleep was just the noise of other people's opinions and also like the absolute chaos of baby sleep advice on the internet.

And how much, I mean, this is like a whole other conversation, but there's a lot of people on the internet who just don't know what they're talking about when it comes to baby sleep. I didn't realize it was like a completely unregulated profession. So people who work in baby sleep, some people will say whatever they want to say just to make money.

And I certainly fell for some like bad advice there, but yeah, so that was another part of my like learning curve or things that I didn't realize about life after birth. And then another big one was my relationship with my husband. And I just didn't realize, first of all, kind of how much having a baby would change our relationship, not all in bad ways, but it was certainly an adjustment to put it nicely.

And you know, we learned to grow together into our role as parents. I think sometimes we're still learning, but that's just life, isn't it? And we've also learned how to better take care of our relationship now as parents. But that was a learning curve in itself.

We had to learn, we had to relearn how to nurture ourselves as a couple whilst also being parents. And I guess I'm just listing out right now all the things that I wasn't prepared for when it came to life after birth. But really what I wanted to share with you today was just a little, if anything, just a little pep talk, I guess, to hype you up for your postpartum prep, for your commitment to... I mean, first of all, if you're even listening to this episode, that tells me that you think preparing for life after birth matters.

And I think if that's what you already think, you're really like ahead, way ahead. You're already winning the game. Like I commend you for being here.

I commend you for making preparing for life after birth a priority, for making the time to listen to this episode. And I truly think your future self will be thanking you. And I also think your baby will be thanking you for making it a priority to prepare not just for the birth, but for their arrival and for living, actually living life with your baby.

If you've been listening to the podcast before, you'll know I love a good Instagram poll. I just think it's a really fun way to get the thoughts of moms who are actually going through it or who have actually been through it, just to show you like that we're really not alone in our experiences as parents. I think sometimes, you know, it would be easy for me to think, for example, it would be easy for me to think that I was alone in feeling so overwhelmed after birth, after welcoming my baby in that postpartum period.

It would be easy for me to think that I was the only one, especially because social media seriously makes us think that most people have this like really easy, happy, smooth, gentle, cozy transition to life with a new baby. But like, I'm a postpartum doula. I literally work in people's homes after they've given birth in the day to day.

I know that it's not always this picture perfect experience after birth. Anyways, I digress. I just wanted to explain why I love Instagram polls, just because I think it really shows that like we're not alone in our experiences.

So the poll that I wanted to share with you today was, I had posted in my Instagram story a thread that I had shared. It says, if you're currently pregnant with your first baby, this is your heads up that preparing for postpartum can be even more important than preparing for birth. And I asked, in my poll, I asked experienced moms, what do you think? Because I want to, I mean, maybe it's just me, maybe preparing for birth really is more important.

And it's, I just think postpartum prep is more important because it's what I am talking about on the podcast every single day is what I do for work. Maybe it's just like me thinking this, but this poll clearly, clearly, it's not just me. I had a few options.

I said, postpartum prep is more important than birth prep was option one. Birth prep is more important than postpartum prep was option two. And they're equally as important was option three.

Let me just start off by saying 0% said that birth prep was more important than postpartum prep. Can we just take a moment and like, let that sink in? I'm going to say it again. 0% of moms thought that birth prep was more important than postpartum prep.

Nobody in this poll who had already given birth thought that birth prep was more important than postpartum prep. Compared to 57% felt that postpartum prep was more important than birth prep. And then 43% felt that they were equally as important.

So I think the takeaway from this poll was really that like experienced moms who have been through birth, who have been through postpartum, none of them thought that birth prep was more important than postpartum prep. It was kind of split half and half between thinking that postpartum prep was more important than birth prep or thinking that they're equally as important. But more moms thought that postpartum prep was more important than birth prep compared to the moms who thought that they were equally as important.

But either way, I think this says a lot about where our priorities should be during pregnancy. I mean, obviously, let's just take this like with a pinch of salt, because obviously this is literally just an Instagram poll. Also, like this cannot nearly account for everybody in the world's opinion.

Like this is probably not even the opinion of everyone in my Instagram. Like we would never consider this like a real research study, okay? But I just, I'm using it to demonstrate my point here because in pregnancy, it can feel like preparing for birth matters so much more than preparing for what comes after birth. And I get it.

And I think it's partly like, it's just, you know, it's where a lot of our anxieties go. I think we have a lot more anxieties about what if something goes wrong during the birth? Or if I just learn enough about birth, then I'll have a good birth, that kind of belief. And I'm not saying if that belief is right or wrong, but I'm just saying I understand where this like prioritization of birth over postpartum prep comes from.

Learning about birth is still, it matters, but I guess what I'm just trying to invite you into is like, perhaps instead of doing three birth courses, you could do one and do two postpartum prep courses, or read a book, or listen to my podcast, hey? I've tried to make it super easy for you. I think the whole reason why I decided to do a podcast, I used to have a blog, but I changed to a podcast because I felt like a podcast, there's like no excuse, right? There's no excuse for not listening to a podcast because you can literally do it while you're doing anything else that you'd already be doing in your life. You can listen to the podcast when you're driving in the car, when you're on your commute to work, when you're taking a walk, when you're working out, when you're in the shower, when you're brushing your teeth, when you're washing the dishes or loading the dishwasher, like you can so easily integrate a podcast into your everyday life and learn about, you know, and my podcast.

I'm not here to give you like a fake idea of what life after birth is really like. I'm here to paint a realistic picture and I'm also here to encourage you in your self-trust as a mother. I think one thing that I do find tricky about like traditional postpartum prep is that it's often like from this perspective of like, this is the right way to take care of your baby, this is the right way to do things, this, if you do this, everything will work out fine, this is the right way to feed your baby, this is the right way to handle baby sleep.

And like the truth is, there literally is no right way because every mom and every baby is so different and so my hope is that this podcast, like you'll never get this sense of like there's only one right way to do things. And more than anything, all I want you to take away from this podcast is like a better understanding of yourself as a mom, a better understanding of your baby, a better understanding of the connection between the two of you and a better understanding of how to nurture that connection because at the end of the day, I think there's nothing better that you can do for your postpartum prep than understanding that your connection with your baby is the foundation for everything. And when it comes to postpartum prep, when it comes to preparing for your bonding with your baby and preparing for your postpartum recovery and preparing for things like breastfeeding and for mental health and for sleep, all of that is rooted in supporting the connection between you and your baby.

That for me is the core of like what we're preparing for when we're preparing for life after birth. We're preparing in a really intentional way to set you up so that you're able to as much as possible nurture that connection between you and your baby. So if that resonates with you, I hope you'll stick around.

I hope you'll listen to a few more episodes. And yeah, before we end, I just wanted to let you know about a new resource I have, a free postpartum prep checklist. I will be sure to link it in the episode description.

I'll link it in the show notes. You can download it from my website, motherbabywellbeing.com. You can also download it. I'm sure I have it linked in my Instagram bio too, at motherbabywellbeing on Instagram.

I created this checklist based on the postpartum plan template that I always have used with my postpartum doula clients. And actually, if you get this free checklist, linked inside of the checklist is the postpartum plan template. So I'm literally giving away all of my best stuff for free.

But I just know what a difference it would have made for me personally if I had had this checklist. If I had had someone who had already been through postpartum show me like, here, these are all the things you need to think about. Because I think, you know, when I was pregnant, I literally I had a postpartum binder.

I still have it. And I thought I was prepared for postpartum. Like I had it.

I had my postpartum prep checklist. But the thing is, as a first time mom, I didn't know what all the things were that I actually needed to be preparing for. I I don't know how I came up with this checklist.

I think it was the things that I just, you know, the things that I thought to do, like washing the baby's clothes and creating postpartum freezer meals. But real postpartum prep just goes so much deeper. And it's really just things that I wouldn't have even thought to put on this checklist as a first time pregnant mom, because I just I didn't know what I didn't know.

Does that make sense? Like I said, this checklist is completely free. It is just an offering that I I just I want you to have this. I want you to be able to have a really clear step by step.

I want to take the mental load off your plate and just give you the step by step anything to make your life simpler. Because girl, I know that you're already so busy and overwhelmed with planning for the birth. I know you don't need more on your plate when it comes to preparing for postpartum.

So that's why I'm trying to make it simpler for you right now. So go grab that free checklist. You'll see the template in there.

I also I also have other Canva templates linked in there as well and some other free guides linked in there as well. Like this is like a little treasure chest. I just want you to go look through it and find all the treasure.

And as always, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at Mother Baby Wellbeing if you have any questions. If you found this podcast episode helpful today, please share it with another pregnant mama who would also find this episode helpful. And it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This podcast is still pretty new and I'm still trying to grow it and I'm still trying to get the word out there to as many pregnant moms as I can and, you know, get my free resources, get this free podcast, get my free checklist out there to all the pregnant mamas. This is literally just my passion and I really just want to be able to share. I want to be able to keep doing this.

I want to be able to keep creating this podcast and keep sharing as many free resources as I can. But I really do. Your your support is what helps this podcast to continue growing and is what helps me to continue making this podcast.

So sharing with a friend or leaving a review or even both are the best ways that you can help me so I can keep helping you. Thank you so much for listening today. Be sure to look through my previous episodes and add them to your queue if you find any that pique your interest.

And I will see you in the next episode.