The Perils of the Postpartum in Western Capitalist Society
Even with the best preparation during pregnancy, after birth you are naturally exhausted, muscles strained, fatigued, hungry, sore. If you were undernourished in pregnancy or bled more than expected, all of that is worse. Then you are dizzy, it is hard to stand without fainting, for days or weeks. After a few days your breasts become full and sore and you’re overwhelmed by a cascade of emotions as your milk comes in and you navigate nursing and infant feeding. You might have difficulty or pain in urinating especially in the first few days, you might be unable to stand to shower and forbidden from sitting to bathe, maybe you even had stitches placed in your perineum or major abdominal surgery with an incision stapled shut across your belly that cut through layers of muscle and organ and now you cannot lift or carry even your baby.
And yet we are expected to go back to cleaning, to making dinner, to tending our other children, our partner, our pets our jobs as quickly as possible. For some, they get a couple of weeks, for some they get a few days, for some they get measly hours before they must pick back up their responsibilities and expectations and try to carry on, crying newborn and leaking breasts and all.
We drag our tired, weakened body from our beds before we should. We are forced—by Society, by lack of support, by the fact your partner was forced back to work after a few days of parental leave, or by an unsupportive and expectant partner—to stand, bleary eyed and faint at our sink washing dishes or folding laundry. We wake too soon after that last night-feeding to rouse older children for school or pack our husband lunch and see him off as the sun rises. Our weakness grows, our mind grows foggy and distant, tears well in our eyes, we cry out in the night. Our milk supply wanes, our baby grows more fussy, sleep is harder to find and we’re constantly exhausted, spiraling, the darkness closing in.
We may succumb to a postpartum mood disorder, or we may not. We may have a difficult few weeks or months, physically or mentally, and then recover. But more likely than not, the recovery never fully comes. How our bodies are treated, how they are supported in their recovery (or not) in the immediate postpartum sets up our physical whole-body and specifically genito-reproductive system well-being for the rest of our lives, including our likelihood of experiencing pelvic floor and organ issues (which reduces core strength, can cause infertility issues, and cause urinary incontinence or painful intercourse) and affecting how we experience the Great Transition that is Menopause. Having prior mood disorders before the postpartum increases our risk of them arising in the postpartum, and experiencing them for the first time in the postpartum increases the likelihood of struggling with them in the future.
But our traditional, ancestral, cross-cultural understanding and honoring of the sacred window that is the immediate postpartum—the Fourth Trimester as some call it—helps to mitigate or even prevent this reality. We see this reality as the most common expectation of what a birthing person will undergo after the birth of their baby in our Western, Industrialized society because we have stepped away from, even outright eschewed, this traditional wisdom. New parents to-be are constantly told by friends, family, and Society that this is ‘typical’ even ‘normal’ and to ‘be expected’. They are wrong. Just because it is common, does not mean it is ‘normal’ or even OK.
Humans are tribal, communal creatures. We are neurologically and biologically wired to live in cooperative interdependence, not isolated individualism. The former is the innate biological and social imperative of the human creature, that evolved on the land a part of the landscape and held within the container of Community. The latter is an unnatural social construct rooted in Patriarchal and Capitalist ideology that separates us from the Land and any sense of Village and pits us against each other struggling to survive. We aren’t meant to simply survive. We aren’t meant to travel through parenthood alone, isolated, and unsupported. We are meant to be held by community, to rest, to heal, to be nourished so when we emerge from our sacred postpartum nest we are replenished, rejuvenated, and able to be present for our child(ren) and family—we can give from an overflowing cup instead of an empty one.
Traditional birthkeepers hold the container of wisdom and holistic well-care that promotes healthy pregnancies, reduce complications in birth, and create the foundation for healthy babies and new birthing parents able to recover quickly in the postpartum. Holding a newly birthed family in the container of Community, of Village, lovingly guided by these ancestral wisdomkeepers and traditional birthkeepers, cared and tended for in these vulnerable weeks following the sacred journey of birth, reduces the incidence of postpartum complications and mood disorders, and increases success rates of lactation and family bonding. We are the way-showers, we can choose healing, we can choose a new path and legacy for our children
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