How long is postpartum, and how quickly can I recover from birth?

Dear Ready to Party,

Quick answer for you is that postpartum is a wild and glorious ride, and the fastest route to feeling your best entails really delving into recovery. Let’s go through postpartum’s essential details.

Postpartum Preparation

Postpartum is a time for nourishment and recovery. After all, your body just worked incredibly hard for you, shifting and adapting and growing to create and sustain new life. After the long-awaited arrival of the little one, though, it’s easy to forget that you need sustaining, too. 

Preparing for postpartum, assembling your go-to support team, and nourishing your body and mind during this period is so valuable to a family’s overall well-being. So let’s talk about all the details you need to make your postpartum the best ever!

What Is Postpartum?

During pregnancy, the body makes some drastic movements to make room for another human being: the uterus expands, organs and muscles shift, and the body grows an entirely new nutrient-providing placenta. After labor, the body needs to take a minute to gradually shift back to its non-pregnant state. Organs and muscles realign, tissues heal, and the uterus moves back to its pre-pregnancy shape and size. Then there’s milk production, which also comes with a whole slew of physical changes. 

There’s also no way to ignore how all these physical shifts can come with powerful emotional changes, as well. Postpartum can leave a person feeling overwhelmed, anxious, angry, ecstatic, elated, joyful—and sometimes you could feel all of that at the same time! You’re navigating perhaps all the feelings in the world, while also getting used to new daily (and nightly) routines and focusing on physical healing.

All of this rebalancing takes time! Some say postpartum lasts six weeks, while others say six months. But postpartum is really the next chapter of your life after pregnancy, so maybe postpartum is forever? If it is, let’s explore how to ease into this wild and beautiful new time in your life. After all, those physical changes might only take a matter of months to settle in, but the mental and emotional impact of a pregnancy can most definitely last forever. 

What’s the Postpartum Body Up To?

Your postpartum body is hard at work doing all sorts of healing.

• Uterus: The uterus is still contracting, but don’t worry, it’s way less frequent and less intense than what happens during labor. Some people don’t even notice them! These contractions help shrink the uterus back to its pre-pregnant state. Also, the area where the placenta was once attached to the uterus—which is typically the size of a dinner plate!—becomes an open wound after detachment. As the uterus continues to shrink, it actually clamps off what was once open blood flow to stop bleeding. While this healing is happening for about six to eight weeks, many people experience a discharge similar to a period, which is a mixture of blood, mucus, and uterine lining.

• Hormones: Huge hormonal shifts are at play postpartum. Hormones are the little chemical messengers that tell our body how to best function. Estrogen and progesterone drop dramatically, while oxytocin kicks up. Each of these hormones orchestrate milk production and emotional bonding. There are also thyroid hormones, which readjust and impact body temperature regulation, metabolism, and organ function.

• Brain: As wild as it sounds, the brain actually reroutes and rewires itself to optimize functioning in this new postpartum chapter!

• Milk glands: Bodies typically start producing milk in the first postpartum week, but every body is different. It can be a gradual or abrupt transition, and it typically comes with changes in your anatomy, as milk glands increase the size of one’s tissues as they produce milk.

Why Is Postpartum So Important?

Giving birth is a huge, life-changing thing. During postpartum, the body is healing, minds are actually changing, and families are often establishing totally new daily flows. Postpartum creates entirely new social connections. Babies are adjusting to a brand new world. You might be navigating logistics like healthcare appointments, going back to work, and juggling household tasks—not to mention having your typical sleeping and eating routines upended. It’s a lot!

Unfortunately, systems in the U.S. aren’t exactly set up for the care and support this kind of thing warrants. Most insurance coverage ends after 60 days and only covers one in-hospital postpartum check-in at six weeks. Federal paid family leave only extends 12 weeks postpartum. Many birthing folks experience an underlying cultural push to “bounce back” to their pre-pregnancy routines and bodies. And on top of all that, all eyes tend to be on the baby after labor. All of these things tacitly encourage you to “get back to normal” as quickly as possible.

But what if postpartum was different? What if there was a supportive team that enabled you to truly rest and replenish with holistic care? What if you worked with and through these enormous life changes instead of trying to get “back to normal”? By prioritizing nourishment and replenishment during this time, families can embrace the postpartum transition with confidence! And that confidence and care can extend far beyond the first six weeks or even six months, helping people step into a more powerful version of themselves as people and parents! All it takes is a bit of preparation and support.

Around the world, countries have much better outcomes for both newborns and postpartum people,, than the U.S. So what’s their secret? The recipe to those smoother transitions comes from more preventative, holistic care for both babies and postpartum people. Even if the systems set in place where you live don’t foster these smooth transitions, this resource can help you have a wild, loving, and empowering postpartum—the best After Party of all!