Soapbox: It’s Up to Us as Mothers to Help Ourselves

I’ve always liked working with mothers and birthing people, even before I was one. As an orthopedic PT and then also as a pelvic PT, it has always been rewarding to help people feel better in their bodies after having a child. However, I came to feel even more strongly about this after the experience of having a child myself.

I had a healthy and fairly easy pregnancy that culminated in a C-section birth due to a placental abruption shortly before labor began. My healing was normal, but here’s the thing: Even “normal” healing is not easy. As I recovered from abdominal surgery I navigated painful breast engorgement, difficulties with breastfeeding, extreme sleep deprivation, wild emotions, and pain when I finally tried to have sex again. These are all pretty standard things that a person might experience after having a baby, I was by no means an outlier. What I still can’t get over though, is how little help there was built into this recovery and new phase of life. It didn’t help that I gave birth in July 2020 and a global pandemic severely limited access to resources. But this was a problem before the pandemic, and it continues to be one after the worst of the crisis has faded.

I had to ask for help every step of the way: for lactation consultation to struggle through breastfeeding, for mental health support to combat post-weaning depression, for multiple visits to address stubborn pelvic pain. And I’m one of the lucky ones because I’m a healthcare professional who knows what help to ask for and how to advocate for myself. But a nagging part of me feels that I shouldn’t have had to work so hard to get help with very basic and predictable problems after giving birth. My experience, and that of countless other mothers, showed me that what we go through after birth is not considered very important in healthcare and in the broader culture.

Here in the United States, the standard is one postpartum visit with your OB/GYN at 6 weeks. This is sufficient to check on basic healing, but woefully inadequate to manage much else. I had my postpartum visit at a mere 4 weeks after my C-section, before many issues had a chance to manifest. It was too early to check on my physical health beyond basic incision healing, too early to catch postpartum depression, and too early to check on comfort with sex. My problems trickled in after that, but with no healthcare professional to check for them unless I sought them out. For many mothers, this is a barrier to getting care that would improve their health and quality of life.

Our system should be different. We should have multiple postpartum visits, and automatic consultations with lactation consultants, mental health therapists, and pelvic health PTs. I envision a system where each of those many baby check-ins during the first 6 months is also a check-in for the mother, with screenings for common issues and a chance to bring up evolving problems I don’t get to make that a reality all by myself, but I do get to be one of the people who helps mothers. Working with pregnant and postpartum people has even more joy for me now, because I get to be there in the trenches with them. After struggling through it myself, I learned that nobody is going to help us if we don’t initiate the help ourselves. I can’t always make that initial step easier, but I can be a source of support and care for a group that can be left behind after the baby arrives.

So if you need help, I’m here.