While having a baby may be taxing on your body, it is one of the best feelings ever! After forty or more weeks of waiting, you finally meet your bundle of joy. Once you have delivered, you get into the postpartum phase, which can be challenging for some to undergo, especially if you’ve had a painful birth. Here’s what you need to know about a painful delivery and how to recover from it.
What Is Birth Injury?
Birth injuries refer to physical injuries you experience when delivering a baby. The injuries can affect the mother, baby (neonatal birth trauma), or both. Birth injury in a mother may include symptoms like vaginal tearing, pelvic floor damage, hemorrhoids, or nerve damage. On the other hand, serious birth injury in newborns can involve bruising or a broken bone. While, in many circumstances, it’s not possible to prevent birth injuries, you can fasten the healing process through various ways, like:
Rest Well
Getting enough rest is crucial in ensuring quick recovery post-delivery. Nurturing a whole human for nine months is not an easy task. Now couple that with giving birth, and not just a normal delivery, a painful one. After delivery, your body adjusts to life without a baby. A lot is happening; your hormones adapt, the uterus shrink, etc. You need lots of rest to ensure you recover fully and everything goes back to normal. So, sleep anytime you get the opportunity, like when your infant is asleep.
Exercise
In case you’re wondering how you can do exercise after a painful birth, know that there are many forms of exercise to engage in. While intense aerobics are not suitable for postpartum mothers, walking is an excellent low-impact exercise that new mothers can benefit from. When you exercise, as in walking, you keep fit, get fresh air, and reduce your risk of blood clots formation. Walking can also be a good way of meeting fellow moms and interacting with them.
Manage Constipation
After delivery, your hormones are not in their right profile, and your stomach muscles are weak, thanks to the stretching to accommodate the baby. There are also lots of lying down. All these factors can increase your risk of getting constipation. Constipation plus a painful birth may take a toll on your health and happiness. Drink plenty of water, especially warm water, as it’s a stool softener to manage constipation. Also, eat fiber-rich foods like vegetables and fruits, which add bulk to your stool, aiding bowel movement. If in any case that constipation occurs and leads to hemorrhoids, knowing how to clean hemorrhoids can benefit you then you can use hemorrhoid cream to treat them after cleaning
Relieve Pain
You don’t want to cope with the demanding job of parenting while struggling with pain at the same time. Consult your healthcare provider on the type of medications you should take, especially if breastfeeding. Some drugs can enter the breast milk and cause undesirable effects on the baby. So, discuss with your doctor, who may prescribe painkillers like acetaminophen or ibuprofen. If your pain doesn’t go away, visit the hospital and get the proper guidance.
Go for Checkups
The 4th trimester, 12 weeks post-delivery, is as crucial as other trimesters. Ensure you don’t miss your checkups during this time. Depending on your location, the checkups maybe 2 or 3 weeks after delivery. When you go for checkups, your doctor assesses you to see how your recovery journey is. If there’s an issue, it is fixed as soon as possible. This way, you avoid health issues advancing, which can be fatal.
Seek Therapy
The postpartum period comes with severe mental issues like anxiety and depression symptoms for some. While it’s normal to experience postpartum blues in the first weeks post-delivery, some people experience these symptoms for a long, even up to a year. Consider seeking professional therapy to help you process your emotions and cope with the situation if this is you. If your symptoms persist for more than a month after giving birth, don’t take it lightly, assuming the symptoms will go. Seek professional counseling and along with that try some post-birth recovery packs for mothers available at relaxandrecover.com.au to take care of your mental health before things get out of hand.
Eat Well
Good nutrition is essential in the postpartum stage, as it was in pregnancy. Ensure you eat a healthy and varied diet consisting of whole natural foods like whole grains, lean meats, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Eating good foods ensures your milk has all the nutrients your baby needs and maximum supply if you are breastfeeding. Good nutrition is also critical in enhancing your healing.
Quick recovery from a painful birth can be challenging, although possible. Prioritize your health and baby during this time, and ensure you take utmost care of yourself. Also, remember this is just a stage and will pass faster than you think.