6 Weeks Postpartum… You’re Good To Go!
You deserve BETTER!
Six weeks postpartum - TA-DA! “You’re good to go.” Wait….what does that mean?
Your body has just spent the last 9 months growing a human being, then went through the incredible and challenging event of BIRTHING a human, and yet sometimes our medical system fails to recognize the importance of addressing postpartum recovery in a way that makes sense.
After birth, our care providers tell mom to go home and “rest” for 6 weeks. They are typically given pretty good instruction about how to care for their perineum after a vaginal birth, and even initial C-section incision care as well. Moms are told to rest, use ice as needed, and even compression at times for care of the perineum/abdominal wall. So far, so good.
If you sprain your ankle, you would be told to do the same thing “RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.” This is where the story deviates though! With an ankle sprain, you would not be told to do this for 6 weeks, then return to your doctor for a quick check where they ask a few questions and then say “You’re good to go!” You wouldn’t leave the doctors office after resting your ankle for 6 weeks and then just start back to playing competitive softball, or running 6 miles!! I think we can all agree that would be a recipe for DISASTER both physically and emotionally.
So why is it ok for us to do this for moms after growing a baby in their body for 9 months and then birthing that baby!!??
Many women return to their physician around 6 weeks postpartum and sometimes the physician doesn’t even look at the perineal tissues, but after asking mom a few questions they send her on her way without any guidance about returning to activity, just a simple “You’re good to go.” Unfortunately, many women take that office visit to mean that they can simply return to every activity they’ve done in the past. Just as in the ankle sprain situation, you would obviously want to work on improving your ankle mobility (range of motion) and make sure you have good strength and stability of that ankle, and start with some progression toward returning to playing softball or running 6 miles. You’d definitely practice walking before you run! Postpartum recovery should be no different, and in fact, it may be even MORE important because women often don’t understand their pelvic floor as well as they do their ankle. It’s an area of the body that we typically don’t see on a regular basis, and it probably worked on “autopilot” before we grew a human in our body and birthed that human! Now that pelvic floor might not be working in quite the same “automatic” fashion, in addition to the fact that it typically works together with the abdominal wall which was also recently stretched to a maximum and is still slowly returning to it’s new normal position!
You wouldn’t run before you walk after an ankle sprain, so let’s approach postpartum care in the same way. In fact, there are probably some things you can start doing even before your 6 weeks of “rest” postpartum is complete. Talk to a pelvic floor physical therapist about some safe things to start your gradual return to life after a baby! It’s absolutely true that the tissue of your abdominal wall and/or perineum need 6 weeks of healing time, but there isn’t something magical that happens at 6 weeks to allow you to resume back to the life you lived before getting pregnant. Start your healing and recovery journey postpartum off in the right direction by working with a pelvic floor physical therapist to guide you safely back to your pre-pregnancy activities!
Written by: Renee Hancock, Pelvic Floor Specialist
