Distressing video on social media
I was quite shocked today when I saw a video of a new mother (she gave birth two days before the video) cleaning the whole house by herself. It wasn’t a normal clean, it was three days of mess caused by three children under the age of four kind of clean. A lot of women were praising her in the comments under the video and saying how strong women are but personally I found it very distressing.
The changes in your body during and after pregnancy
During pregnancy and after giving birth, a lot changes in your body. Your body has been developing a baby and will prepare for giving birth as well. One of the many changes that happens to your body is the pelvic floor muscles. The pelvic floor muscles soften (due to pregnancy hormones) and stretch considerably because of the baby sitting on them and when you have a vaginal birth they will stretch during birth as well. This all needs to recover after birth. On this website by Sydney based Dr Colin Walsh you will find some exercises for your pelvic floor that you can follow during and after your pregnancy. The exercises that you will find there are all low impact exercises. This is because you need to give your body enough time to heal.
Healing after birth
Resting your body is a big part of healing after birth. Not only do you need to rest because of your pelvic floor but also because of the wounds you might have. When you had a cesarean it’s maybe more obvious that you need to heal because of the operation that you had but also after a vaginal birth you need to give it time to heal as well, even when you don’t have stitches. What we advise at Cradle Care is to listen to your body. Your body is very capable of telling you when you have to stop or when you did too much. It is different for everyone.
Set your own goals don't follow others
What makes me a bit cross about the video is that the mother who posted the video has set a standard for herself but by posting it, she might set a standard for new mothers or mothers who think they are not doing enough or might think they need to do more. This could be catastrophic for some women. What you don’t know about the video is how she gave birth, how she recovered after birth, what was the condition of her body before, during and after birth, how long was her birth and how many stitches does she have. The new mother might be thriving after she got her house clean while she was wearing her newborn baby and she might not have any physical problems after hours of cleaning but she is setting a wrong example of what you should do after birth for mothers all over the world. This behaviour should not be encouraged. We already lost the support of “the village”, we can’t stay in hospital for more than four hours and now, we also have to get out of bed and make TikToks two days after giving birth?
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