Like most first-time moms, before my oldest son was born I read all the books, learned all the secrets, and listened to all the experts on how to get my baby to be a “good baby.” He was going to sleep in his own bed on a schedule. He was going to tag along with me while I went about my daily activities. He was going to be an addition to our lives and not a disruption. But, when my son was born, he had other plans. He was not the laid-back casual baby I’d read about. He did not intend to make the transition to parenthood easy for us. We spent the first few months of his life, or the fourth trimester, questioning and rethinking everything we thought we knew about being parents. I was miserable trying to fight his natural rhythms and biological needs in order to fit him into the box the experts had provided.
My next pregnancy ended at 19 weeks, when our second son died before he was born. I took six weeks of maternity leave to grieve and heal my heart. This time made me slow down and really consider what the fourth trimester was all about: It isn’t about perfect sleep schedules or matching outfits. It isn’t about bouncing back and showing off. Rather, it’s about meeting the mother you just became, finding a new rhythm, and going forward as a new person, usually with a brand-new person next to you, but not always.
I learned that the measure of a mother’s strength is not how quickly she gets back to life, dishes, laundry, or going out but rather how she cares for herself in her most vulnerable state.
When my rainbow baby was born, I committed to honoring the fourth trimester like never before. I wanted to enjoy all the moments I had missed with both my other babies. But this third time around was my chance to really do things differently and find the joy in that fragile postpartum time. I gathered a few fourth trimester tips along the way for how to have an easier fourth trimester.
Laying in
Somewhere between hunting for the perfect Moses basket and picking out baby names, I came upon the phrase “laying in,” also referred to as “sitting the month” or zuo yue zi in Mandarin. This is the traditional Chinese practice of postpartum recovery. I did not follow it to the letter, but I did adapt the practice to fit my lifestyle as best I could.
My idea was to spend the whole month in my house resting, starting with five days in my bed with my newborn baby. I was very bad at actually staying in bed. I got stiff, sore, and bored, and I wanted to be around my other son and my husband. But having the goal of staying in bed allowed me to rest so much more than I had been able to with my first baby. I moved slowly between my bed or the couch, always putting my feet up and protecting my tender body while it healed. If I needed something brought to me, I asked for help.
From this, I learned that the measure of a mother’s strength is not how quickly she gets back to life, dishes, laundry, or going out but rather how she cares for herself in her most vulnerable state. My sole focus was to care for the baby and myself and little else. I relied heavily on my husband, his family, and our close friends to take care of my older son and the house.
Trusting your partner
I really learned how to trust my partner in this fourth trimester. It’s not that I didn’t trust him the first time, but I just didn’t think he knew how to do anything with the baby, while I had spent nine months researching everything. I wasn’t even sure he knew where we kept the diapers and what size sleeper our baby was wearing. I knew he was incapable of comforting him when he cried . . . OK, I didn’t trust him. And as a result, he thought I didn’t need him to be involved. He expected me to be capable of being me but with a baby in tow. This led to a lot of quiet resentment and, ultimately, postpartum depression.
This time around, I relinquished control. I reminded myself that my husband has been a parent just as long as I have. He is capable of learning new things just as easily as I am, and he can get to know our new son the same way I can. I trusted him to figure it out or get by another way. It really doesn’t matter if the baby’s onesie fits just right or if he forgot to use diaper cream. I had to let that stuff go and trust my husband to manage his baby in his own way.
I also relinquished total control of the house to my husband. He would cook and bring me my meals as I rested. He did the laundry, the dishes, and school pickup and drop-off. Everything that I always considered to be my own responsibility was now his. I am grateful every day to have a partner who is available and able to take these things off my plate so I could focus on healing, resting, and caring for our baby.
Eating to nourish and heal your body
Entering the fourth trimester, my body had just worked hard for nine months to grow and stretch and open, culminating with giving birth to my baby, and its work was not done yet. My body now had the task of producing milk to nourish my baby. It was also going to work to shift everything back into its proper place. It was going to carry me through sleepless nights while it raged with hormones. In order to survive this time, my body needed to be nourished properly. Those early postpartum weeks are not the time to try to restrict calories or go on a diet. I needed to trust that my body would change over the next three months even if I did not do a single active thing. My body could not function well on a nutrient-deficient diet.
I did not always check all the usual boxes for signs of depression, but I did feel off at times and not quite right even after the first few weeks of motherhood.
Eating warm hearty foods while resting is one of the best things a postpartum mama can do for her body. Heat instigates blood flow, and blood flow is necessary for healing. Using warm food and drinks to keep my body temperature up meant my body could work on healing rather than having to divert energy to also maintain its temperature. Some cultures insist new moms wear multiple layers and lots of wool to keep the temperature up, because a warm body is a healing body.
Easily digestible foods are also beneficial to a new mom. The less work my body had to do to use the food I provided it, the more it could heal. Great options are oatmeal, porridge, mashed potatoes, soft-cooked stews, and warm milk. Isn’t it ironic that a lot of foods we might feed our baby (when the time comes) are also foods that we should be feeding a new mother? I didn’t want my body to work hard on anything other than healing during this time.
If I was hungry during the long nights with my newborn, I ate something. Nevermind the societal norm of waiting for the morning to break my fast. If I was awake and my body was signaling for food, I fed it. I kept one-handed, easily digestible snacks near where I fed my baby. If the baby was hungry, I probably was too. It takes about 400 extra calories just to produce breast milk. Adding that to all the other work my body needed to do made me realize just how much nourishment it actually needed.
Guarding your emotions
During this delicate fourth trimester, new moms are already a cocktail shaker of emotions. From crying over sleepless nights and spilled milk to crying for no reason at all, trying to regulate our own emotions is hard while also trying to regulate our newborn’s. The last thing I needed was to be feeling the emotions of others. I committed to guarding myself against any outside influence on my delicate emotions.
For me, this looked like watching heartfelt TV shows rather than the usual dose of exciting true crime. It also meant staying off of social media, where things tend to get heated quickly. It even went as far as distancing myself from anyone who might have brought a negative energy into my postpartum space.
This time and this space is sacred. It is where my baby and I were getting to know each other. We were both brand-new every single day. We were vulnerable and in need of protection. I was not about to let emotions and negative energies that had nothing to do with me influence this time or steal the safety of my postpartum space.
Anticipating a postpartum mood disorder
With my first baby, and probably also with my second (although with the grief, it is hard to know) I had terrible postpartum depression (PPD). It went undiagnosed, however, because my mind-set was “I’m strong. I’ve got this.” I was strong and I did have it, but I could also have used help from a professional. I was in denial that PPD could happen to me, and as a result I didn’t recognize it when it did. Please don’t make that same mistake.
I think that every mom deserves to have a fourth trimester as beautiful and revered as the first three.
Going into the fourth trimester this time, I was aware of what a mood disorder such as PPD or postpartum anxiety (PPA) truly looks like. It does not always manifest itself as overwhelming sadness. It can sometimes look like plain overwhelm or even indifference to the baby. Maybe it manifests as anger toward the baby or my partner and other children as well. It can feel like drowning all the time or just having spurts of not being able to breathe. PPD sometimes made me think things like “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I was not meant to be a mom. I won’t survive this.” I did not always check all the usual boxes for signs of depression, but I did feel off at times and not quite right even after the first few weeks of motherhood. Now I knew that I had the power to ask a professional for an assessment and there was no shame in being honest about the scariest things I was feeling or thinking.
I finally understood that a postpartum mood disorder is not a sign of weakness or failure. It does not mean that I am a bad mom or that I was failing. PPD and PPA get the strong ones too. Those scary thoughts or those terrible feelings are coming from a place that loves my baby so fiercely that I was in a state of fight or flight and trying to make sense of it. It is common, but it did not have to be my normal state of living. Thankfully, I knew there was help and all I had to do was ask for it.
I think that every mom deserves to have a fourth trimester as beautiful and revered as the first three. We’ve done an incredible thing by making a new human and now we get to work on making a new mother too.