Managing After-Birth Contractions
You’ve probably heard that after the baby is born, your uterus will need to shrink back down to regular size. Every time you nurse, your body will release oxytocin from nipple stimulation, which will stimulate uterine contractions, which will shrink the uterus back down to size. It’s quite a miracle! Give yourself a little google if you want to learn about how long it takes, and for more information about the actual medical side of it all.
I’m just here to talk about how to manage these after-birth contractions. My first time it was mildly uncomfortable and I didn’t use anything to manage it. I had heard that with each subsequent pregnancy they can get more and more painful. I didn’t think much about it because the first time was super manageable and I expected the second time to be maybe a little more intense. Boy was I wrong. About 24 hours later after she was in born, I was nursing her in the middle of the night in excruciating pain. I felt like I was in labor again... toe curling pain while trying to nurse a newborn. I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken a pain reliever and ended up taking Ibuprofen for the next 36 hours.
So knowing it *might* be worse this time… (although maybe not!), I really want to be prepared and throw everything I can at it! I crowdsourced our Instagram and these were the top answers people wrote in… These are personal shared anecdotes and not meant to be medical advice. Talk to your doctor/midwife for more info.
Recommended Items:
- Tinctures/Elixirs (For Tinctures/Elixirs someone recommended to take every 15 minutes after birth for the first few hours, and then right before you start nursing until the cramps subside)
- After Birth Essential Oil Roller from @thegreenmamma - DM her for orders
- Red light therapy (I have a Lumebox - use Shawna’s discount code - ALITTLELESSTOXIC)
- This is a hefty investment, but our whole family uses our red light ALL of the time.
- Arnica Pellets
- Arnica Gel (rub onto belly and use a heating pad to accelerate absorption)
- Magnesium
- Electrolytes (Use code MAMAMEALS for 15% off!)
For pain management:
- Birth combs
- Labor coping techniques like breathing
Here’s what I plan to do:
- Rubbing the following on my belly with a heating pad:
- Arnica gel, magnesium spray, @TheGreenMamma roller ball
- Red light therapy on my belly using my lumebox (I also plan to use it on my perineum to help heal everything down there)
- Plenty of electrolytes from bone broth and electrolytes from Redmond's Real Salt in water
- Arnica Pellets (I already have them so why not)
- Orally I will be taking
- Wish Garden After Ease and
- Nova Rising Elixir
- I’ll note that you don’t need both, but I was gifted both of these and plan to use them both! If you plan to purchase one, Nova Rising is a small business and she will literally do a happy dance with your order!
I am a firm believer that mindset going into anything is extremely important. I am not going to go into this thinking, OMG, this is going to be horrible… because a lot of times, what we think, becomes. I am going into this with a positive mindset believing it will be more mild than my last postpartum AND I will also take measures to help facilitate an easier time with the things I mentioned above. It can be both.
Lastly, you don’t know how many messages I got from 3rd+ time moms messaging in saying their was first wasn’t bad, second was horrible but 3rd time was not bad at all. It is said that the after birth cramps tend to get worse with each birth, but a lot of people wrote in with anecdotes where that hasn’t been the case… so just believe that anything is possible! Plus… what’s the point of stressing about it now… it’ll just steal your peace from the now!
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