Postnatal Depletion Questions You NEED to be Asking: EP95

Welcome to the Postpartum University podcast.

I’m Maranda Bower and I’m so thrilled to be here to answer this question, and I’ve gotten it several times in my inbox in the last couple of weeks, so I know it’s on your heart and I know it’s on your mind, and we need to have a conversation about it, and that is postnatal depletion.

I will tell you, I have been preaching about this conversation for the last several years, nourishment, sleep, nervous system care, or the lack of all of the above, and how that greatly influences how a mother feels.

Our bodies are so much more sensitive in the postpartum period, and we have more needs.

And likely, because we’re having these sensitivities and these more needs, we’re coupling that with a lot less support.

We need more support, we need more education, and there’s so much misinformation out there on top of it that we get lost in the sea of how to care for ourselves.

And there is no one there to support us in that process. And all of this leads to what has been coined postnatal depletion.

I will tell you, I really don’t like the term postnatal.

It may sound a bit silly, but postnatal refers to the time after baby, the focus being on baby.

So I will absolutely use this term postnatal in reference to the baby. But when we’re talking about the mother, I use the word postpartum, that is very specific to the mother experience.

And that is where this conversation needs to happen. They care for a mother. And when you care for a mother, you simultaneously meet the needs of her baby.

Okay, so let’s talk about what postnatal depletion is, or what I call postpartum depletion.

It has been referred to and written about very recently actually, by Dr. Oscar Serrallach in his book, The Postnatal Depletion Cure, which has really revolutionized how we look at this postnatal depletion.

He put it on the map. So now we actually understand it for what it is.

And it’s been written about as a condition that can occur in new mothers.

It’s characterized by feelings of exhaustion, physical weakness, emotional stress, even depression, anxiety, all of these things.

But I actually don’t like turning this into a pathological issue or a condition because it’s not the fault of some germ or the body being diseased and failing. That term condition is very misleading because it sounds like women are the problem at hand.

Women become something broken to fix, and really the problem is not women at all but instead a system that is failing them tremendously.

We are not supporting women and families as we should.

We are not giving them the education about what’s happening to their body, how to nourish their body with food, how to set up care systems in place to make sure that they are healing properly, that they’re getting enough rest. Instead, they are forced back into the workplace.

They’re supposed to go back to work and look their best and breastfeed in the process, yet still maintain a clean home, and a healthy environment, and speak three languages, and do all the things right.

Of course, I’m over-exaggerating and starting to add more things.

But the idea is that we are putting so much pressure on the mother to get back to herself after she just had a baby when really we should be supporting her and healing her body first.

That we should be helping her get the rest that she needs, recover, nourish her body, do all of the things for her, help her take care of her children, do the laundry, do the dishes so that she can recover and get back to life as she needs to in the time frame that she needs to.

But that’s not part of this conversation, but it is in the sense that we need to understand that it’s not our fault.

This is not our fault.

So if you are experiencing this, please know it is not your fault. It is the system that has failed you and nothing more.

Okay, so I want to talk and shift the conversation a little bit about why this is happening.

Obviously, the system is not there to support you. So postpartum depletion is really caused by a lack of support, obviously.

The lack of proper nutrition, the lack of sleep, and the lack of nervous system balance. And maybe you’re experiencing postpartum depletion, and you have all the sleep you need, but there’s nervous system balance, there’s nutrition, and there’s just general emotional support that needs to be had.

So you might have a couple of pieces in there that feel really solid for you, and other pieces that feel completely out of balance.

It’s not necessarily that all of them are doing this to you.

You really have to take a look at where you are in the process of healing and answer some really important questions about your body.

I want to share some really important questions to define a little bit more about how are you in the process of healing, of postnatal or postpartum depletion, and what can you do about it, okay?

But it’s the culmination of all of these things, or maybe just one of these things, that can greatly influence the way you are feeling again, because our bodies are so very unique during this time.

They’re so sensitive during this time, and they require so much of your attention.

And that can be really hard when you have a newborn baby who requires so much of your attention. And not necessarily just a newborn, we’re postpartum for years. It takes us years to heal our bodies. And we need to recognize that for what it is too.

It takes a long time to recover from creating a human being and birthing that child into the world, that’s no easy feat.

And so, if we lived in a society that recognized that and honored us women as the life creators that we are, we may have very different outcomes here.

And this may not be something that you would be experiencing because we would have a society that would set you up for success. But obviously, that’s not the case, not the case.

So, you couple all of these things, the lack of support, lack of proper nutrition, lack of sleep, lack of nervous system balance.

And you couple that with hormonal changes and the physical and emotional demands of caring for a new baby.

And you have a recipe for fatigue, anxiety, depression, difficulty bonding with your baby. And all of the things that you need to know about your baby and all of the things that you need to know that we have come to normalize as new parents in the postpartum period.

If you’re a birth and postpartum professional who wants to give the families you serve some solid holistic evidence-based information regarding nutrition, and nourishing your body after baby, this is for you. I have 18 beautiful pages in a handout form that is completely free.

Free full guide to nutrition completion, common misconceptions, supplement support, favorite recipes, 30 healthy and quick snacks, and so many more. You can download your free collection with handouts at postpartum.u, that’s the letter u.com/handouts.

So if this is you, if this is what you’re feeling, or maybe you support your clients through the postpartum period, this is something that you absolutely want to investigate, something that you want to bring the attention to so that there is an understanding of, one, it’s not your fault. And two, there are ways in which you can help your body heal.

But first, what we need to do is discover what it is that’s actually causing this.

So again, postnatal depletion or postpartum depletion, there is a multitude of areas that might need to be addressed.

And so, it’s very helpful to ask yourself these following questions. I have eight questions that I want you to be asked, yourself. And from that, you’ll be able to better understand your personal situation and what you need to do to heal and to address those areas of concern.

Okay, so question number one, how are you sleeping?

Are you getting enough restful uninterrupted sleep each night?

And I know that sounds funny because we’re mamas and we need sleep so very much. But how do you do that when you have a baby who’s waking up consistently because they have needs and need to be cared for? And we’ll tell you, there is a better way.

And we can get the sleep that we need in interrupted spaces that require a little bit more longer stretches.

Now, I won’t get into that here, and I’m just gonna kind of leave it at that, and you’re probably thinking, “What is she talking about?”

We have an entire blog post article on how to get better sleep without disrupting the biological normal processes that are occurring within your baby.

So I’m gonna refer you to that, okay? So that’s question one.

Question two, how are you eating? Are you maintaining a healthy, nutritious diet of foods that are nutrient-dense, that are very easy to absorb?

Foods that don’t take a lot of energy from your body and that are just filling you up, just whole foods that are filling your body up?

Are you eating when you should as often as you should?

And are you eating foods that are nutrient-dense?

Okay. Third question.

How are you feeling emotionally?

Are you experiencing feelings of depression, anxiety, emotional stress?

And if you are, being really honest with yourself about those emotions and those feelings, oftentimes we have a tendency to cover them up, to hide them, shove them under the rug, to put a label on them of being normal when they’re really not.

These should not be a normal part of motherhood.

Question four, how are you feeling physically?

Are you experiencing fatigue, weakness, other physical symptoms?

Maybe acne or something like that, hair loss, incontinence.

Ask yourself those because those play a tremendous role in how you might be feeling emotionally.

How are you bonding with your baby?

Are you experiencing difficulty connecting with your baby emotionally?

Question six, how are you coping with the stress of new motherhood?

Are you using healthy coping mechanisms? Or are you relying on unhealthy ones?

Maybe you were never taught healthy ones.

I know I surely wasn’t taught healthy ones. I had to learn that all over again, especially in motherhood. And maybe that’s you too.

What are you experiencing in terms of pain, or discomfort, or any other complications that may have risen from the birth experience?

Did you experience birth trauma? And if so, are you getting help to process that birth trauma?

And last but not least, how are you managing your time and energy?

Are you able to make time for self-care? Are you able to make time for rest?

Are you being forced back to do all the things, to work, to laundry, to taking care of the other children, to running up and down the stairs?

Because… because that greatly influences how you’re feeling overall.

Now, answering these questions may help you identify specific areas in which you may be experiencing difficulties and help you address and develop a plan to eliminate this postpartum depletion.

Now, I am going to list all of these on the screen, our blog post for this episode so you can go back, you can listen into this, you can journal on these, and hone in on what it is that you need and really how you’re doing, okay?

And if you need additional help, we have the postpartum recovery quiz, it’ll take you two minutes to complete, it’s 30 questions, we go into all of these, are you sleeping? eating, feeling emotionally?

And so if you’re not feeling very clear about where to even begin, maybe these questions feel overwhelming for you, go to the postpartum recovery quiz.

We’ll have that linked in the show notes and you can get a really good idea of what’s going on in your body, where you stand and exactly how to support yourself in that process. And remember, postpartum depletion or postnatal depletion is not your fault.

And it is something you can heal from.

It’s not going to go away with supplements and smoothies and CBD oil and medications or picking up exercise.

It’s going to go away when the root of the problem is addressed at its core. Thank you for watching.

So these questions, which again are listed on the blog so you can reflect and journal on them, are to help you get to the root or get to the heart of what you need to feel like you again.

Because I promise you, postnatal depletion is common, very, very common, but it should not be the normal. that’s specific for the unique needs of mamas and the years postpartum.

See you there