Do You Know Why is Rest Important Postpartum?

How rest and placentas are intricately connected:

We hear a lot about resting and the importance of rest during postpartum, at least I’m constantly harping on about it! Women are sent home from hospital and told to rest with their new baby, but what I’ve learned from talking with women and hearing many different stories and experiences is that most women don’t know WHY it’s important to rest. Knowing the why is so important, education is power, so let’s talk about it.

Is it because she’ll be tired from not sleeping when the baby is up?

Is it because birth is hard and takes a lot of energy?

Is it because she’ll just be sitting down to breastfeed anyways"?

While it’s true that many new moms are tired for those (and many other) reasons, there is another HUGE reason why rest is crucial to your overall health and wellbeing in the weeks/months following birth (no matter how you birthed!).

Let’s talk about placentas:

Around 10 days after your baby's conception, a new ORGAN begins to grow and continues to grow throughout your whole pregnancy. Of course if you didn’t already know, you can probably guess that this new organ is the placenta. Here's a couple facts about placentas:

- They vary greatly in size, but on average are a little over 1 lb and about 8-10 inches diameter or about the size of a dinner plate.

- A placenta is attached (take mental note of that) to the wall of your uterus by blood vessels and is connected to the baby by the umbilical cord.

- Your placenta is what keeps your baby alive! It delivers vitamins and minerals, water and oxygen to your developing child.

- Placentas take over progesterone production from your ovaries during pregnancy as well as producing and releasing other hormones like estrogen, oxytocin and human placental lactogen (look it up, it's a cool hormone!)

Aren't placentas cool? And that’s just a few things they do for you and your baby. So here's the important part: after you deliver your baby, your placenta is told "ok your work here is done, thanks and bye!" and the organ (remember about 9 inches in diameter) detaches from the wall of your uterus and is delivered. This happens about 5-15 minutes or so after your baby's birth by the same uterine contractions that pushed your baby out. (Don't worry, it doesn't really hurt, it's a lot smaller than a baby and is soft and pliable since there's no bones in it. Many women don't even know when they've delivered it!)

This process leaves an open wound inside of your uterus the same size as your placenta. Of course your uterus shrinks back down to it's pretty-pregnancy size at a pretty impressive rate which helps to quell bleeding from this site, but it takes about 6 weeks for it to fully heal. Yes, this is one of the main reasons why you bleed after giving birth! Too much activity or stress on the body like lifting heavy things, moving around too much can REOPEN that wound that's doing it's best to heal over–think of it almost like picking a scab.

You will see a direct correlation between your bleeding postpartum and your activity level. Your bleeding tells you everything you need to know about how much rest you need. I do a lot of education with clients about what your bleeding should look like, both in color and quantity, because it's the *best* tool your body has of communicating if it needs more rest or if you’re ready to inch back into your normal activities. You'll notice an increase in quantity and quality of blood if you've done "too much too soon" as I term it. This need for physical rest does a beautiful job of paving the way for you to focus on the other things you need rest for. Mainly, to be able to bond with your baby, learn how to feed them and focus on fueling your body with what it needs to be replenished and become fully nourished again. It's a really gorgeous system and one that does not get the attention, education or respect that it deserves

I hope you learned something about this amazing system and the WHY behind the importance of resting postpartum!