Post-Partum: What To Expect When You Get Done Expecting

The post-partum period is just that—a period. A big mean one, too, like whoa.

Not only does your precious little new wrecking ball take with it your bladder control, muscle tone, and ability to sit down without a bum pillow, it also leaves the door open for blood to trickle steadily out of your body. And "trickle" is standing in for several potentially oozier, gushier words here, you understand.

Remember Vaginal Fallout/Post-Partum: The Musical? HelloFlo's clever, funny ad for their New Mom kit riffed good-naturedly on the lack of information/warning for women about those magical days immediately after the baby moves out.

Many women know to expect up to six weeks of intermittent or continuous vaginal bleeding.
And many don't.

So if you have a first-time-pregnant friend, do her a favour. Mention it in passing, so she knows to stock up on the heaviest-duty [heavy duty-est?] pads there are. There is a time and a place for tampons and menstrual cups, and this is not it. Especially not if she plans to stand up after sitting down for any length of time. Trust.

And while you're at it, here are a few other nice things you could get her:

• 
  A nice big container of of craisins, dried apricots, or raisins. Call it anecdata, but I found eating my own weight in dried fruit a few hours after birthing a baby made Days 2 and 3 considerably easier.
  Why? Because that first poop after you have a baby—cesarean, vaginal, it doesn't matter—is hard. In every sense. If you don't load up on tasty fibre, best to pop some ibu and expect to cry, or so I'm told.
  Hospitals and midwives will offer you a stool softener. Accept it with gratitude. Mine lay untouched, by the way, and I like to think I have a huge bag of jumbo dried cranberries to thank for that.
  (If talking about poop makes your friend uncomfortable, well, the next few years might be revelatory.)
• Allergies permitting, consider mixing that lovely dietary fibre with a quick hit of protein via a bag of roasted nuts. Lots of snacking can be easier than sitting down to a big meal in the scattered, surreal hours immediately afterward. (Some brie and chocolate would not be out of place, either. If you're making a list.)
• A spare phone charger. Because hers is invariably out of reach, broken, forgotten or otherwise unusable. And when you are trapped under a baby, and your arms about as useful as a T-Rex's, connectivity is EVERYTHING.
• 
    A nice heart-to-heart with her partner. Remind him or her that the new mum requires waiting on hand and foot. That her body just did something phenomenal. That her hormones are going to plummet with an almighty crash around Day 3, and that even when breastfeeding goes well—and it often doesn't, especially at first—it hurts like a mofo.
  If this spouse seems even mildly unconvinced of the need to pander to the mum's whims, hand him or her a bar coaster, one of those circular ones. Her cervix is going to be slightly smaller than this, you can point out. Have you seen the size of the average baby's head, you can muse.
  Then stand a safe distance away and wait for the partner's head to explode.

There are lots of other interesting things you can warn her about—how breastfeeding causes uterine contractions. How it's important to stay hydrated and to snack constantly because breastfed babies are basically going to suck your every last vestige of moisture and energy right out of you. How coughing or sneezing can necessitate a change of unders.

Of course, it is all a giant ride into the unknown, so all the anecdata and friendly heads-ups in the world will help her only so much, but it can't hurt to know. Knowledge is power, after all. And new mums need all the power they can get.

Bloody right.

For an actual professional's advice on what to expect once you're done expecting, here is a post-partum handout. Maternal care is on Page 4.

Sonia Verma is in no way affiliated with any dried-cranberry purveyors, though she would dearly like to be, so she could eat her way through their inventory.