Birth closes one cycle (pregnancy) and opens another (postpartum)
When a baby is born, so is a mother — and she needs just as much care and support as her newborn.
More and more, we are realizing the importance of the first 40 days after birth.
These first weeks is a time to slow down, recover, and get to know this little human who has just arrived in your life. A time in which you should not worry about a damn thing.
You are both learning. Learning each other’s rhythms, needs, and ways of communicating. And this takes time
Some days you may feel overwhelmed or frustrated. Other days you may be filled with awe and love. Most days will probably be a mix of all of it.
If trusting your instincts doesn’t come naturally to you, pregnancy is an awesome opportunity to invest time in it, and, if necessary, look for support and relearn it.
We are so used to looking for answers outside ourselves — on the internet, from friends, from family — that we sometimes forget that every baby is unique, and every mother-baby relationship is unique too. What worked for someone else may not work for you.
And newborns are constantly changing. Their needs, rhythms, and behaviours can shift from one day to the next, sometimes from one hour to the next, while they adapt to life on earth.
That can be exhausting.
Postpartum is a time of recovery, integration, and rebalancing.
Your nervous system, hormonal system, and immune system are deeply interconnected. Michel Odent has a brilliant book called “ Primal health” that explores and challenges our assumptions about health.
This is evidence-based information for everyone, but especially for mothers and babies during this time of intense adaptation.
ON YOUR SIDE
Your body has just done something extraordinary.You spent months growing a baby and then brought them into the world.
Pregnancy and birth require immense amounts of energy. During birth, you may have lost blood, experienced tears or other injuries, and regardless of how your baby was born, your body is now recovering from a profound physical event — including healing the place inside your uterus where the placenta was attached.
All of this is a lot.
Which is why it matters so much that the people around you support you in simple, practical ways.
A nourishing meal.Someone to hold the baby while you shower. Someone who is a good listener and doesn’t have the need to offer advice all the time or tell you that in her case or in her time she did this, that, or the other…
Small acts of care can have a bigger impact on your well-being than we might think.
FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF YOUR NEWBORN
So much is happening for your baby too.
Imagine going to sleep one night and waking up on the moon.
That’s a little bit like what being born is like.
The light, the temperature, the sounds, the feeling of clothes on the skin, hunger, breathing through the lungs, and so many different smells…gravity…Everything is new.
While adapting to this world full of stimuli, babies find comfort in physical closeness with their parents. Through touch, smell, sight, hearing familiar voices, and taste, they reconnect with sensations they already knew from life in the womb.
Once I heard a sentence I never forgot: “A baby’s natural habitat is human contact.”
It is through this closeness that they regulate their breathing, temperature, heart rate, emotions, and sense of safety.
Keep in mind that you are a dyad. Your well-being influences your baby’s well-being, and your baby’s well-being influences yours.
You co-regulate each other.
And this is why doulas know that when we take care of the mother, we are also taking care of the baby.
Many Eastern traditions and Ayurveda have understood this for centuries.
They invest time, care, and community support into the first weeks after birth, knowing that mothers need space to heal, rest, and settle into this new identity.
In these cultures, postpartum care is not a luxury. It is a ritual.
Perhaps we need more of that, too.
New motherhood can be a roller coaster. Don’t underestimate it.
Investing in those first weeks is investing in the health and well-being of both mother and baby — not only now, but for years to come.
(Doula support for pregnancy, birth and postpartum, pregnancy and postpartum massage, birth photography, and birth video in Lisbon)
