I think people often hear the term postpartum and associate it only with depression. Postpartum is a period of time, after having a baby. I am not going to define the length of time because we have clients hire us for many many reasons, and seasons.
We like to refer to it as the fourth trimester as well, but that really is only the immediate 3 months after baby has arrived.
So why would someone want to invest in hiring a postpartum doula?
Imagine this;
You’ve just had your first baby, and you’re being sent home from the hospital earlier than you expected. You thought they would teach you how to take care of a baby there… how to do a bath, how to get them to sleep not on top of you, how to feed them…
But you didn’t learn any of those things. They were busy, you were exhausted and reeling from one of the most insane experiences of your life. You go through your labour journey and without any time to percolate or decompress you are assigned a human, FOR LIFE.
Enter care in the first week. You can hire a doula to come into your home for 9 hours overnight on night two. That’s likely your first night home. That doula is an expert in infant feeding, and confident in infant care. This means you can sleep, and rest easy knowing someone is looking after your baby while you heal and rest. We can bring the baby to you to feed if you are breastfeeding and trouble shoot any latch issues at those moments. If you are formula feeding we can keep the baby the whole 9 hours and give you a solid night of rest if that is what you want.
You could add some 4-6 hour day time shifts into that first week as well. We can go over the baby bath, help with light cleaning, laundry, food prep and errand running. We are a listening ear if you have anything from your birth you need to process with a compassionate ear. We can watch and snuggle your baby while you get a nap to give you the stamina to get through another night.
You could hire a postpartum doula to come for when you get home from the hospital, for 24 hours straight. Its like getting a manual for the first week to walk you through all of your questions, fears and worries.
We offer customizable, personalized contracts for all our clients. We meet you where you are, see where your life needs the support most, and fill in the gaps!
We are different than your mother, or mother in law. We work for you. Which means you don’t have to entertain us. You don’t have to worry we are going to be offended by anything. You don’t have to put on a show for us. We want to see your mess. We want to help you step into your new life as a bigger family and thrive. Just because you CAN do it all (I know you can! I have no doubt in you), doesn’t mean that you should do it all!
Our mothers generation was notorious for martyrdom and we are breaking the damn mold. We refuse to ‘yes’ and ‘I’m fine’ our ways into depression, depletion and burnout. We are allowed to grow, dream, and explore a new way of mothering where we are asking for help unapologetically in order to facilitate our health.
Next week we will cover what a postpartum doula after the first week can look like!