What Do I Do After a Birth?
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Kaely Harrod 00:04
Welcome to doula Tips and Tits. This podcast is a place where we answer one question about doula work, both to support you and to help you support your clients. I'm Kaely Harrod. I've been supporting families in this perinatal space since my oldest was born 12 nearly 13 years ago. I am a birth and postpartum doula childbirth educator, lovely cheerleader, and a doula coach. I love guiding and supporting doulas as they work out their doula business, it is a tremendous joy to be trusted in this way. Thank you for joining us on this journey. All right, so today's episode is diving into the question, what do you do after attending a birth. So the last episode was before attending a birth. And this episode is all about after. Now, some of the things are kind of similar. So it might sound a little redundant. But I like to think of it as kind of the book ends, right. So the pre and post bursts kind of ramp up and ramp down, right? One big thing is to do whatever you have been needing to do. And what I mean when I say that is sometimes at the end of a birth during pushing, and then the immediate postpartum time, you're sort of not able to maybe leave and go to the bathroom, or get some water, get some coffee or whatever. So the very first thing I do when I leave a client after and I've, I've, I'm completely leaving them, like I'm saying, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be texting you to see how you're doing. If you need anything, please let me know. You know, are you comfortable with me leaving now this is normally when I would leave. So I've like legitimately been like, congratulations, happy birthday, baby, I will be talking to you guys soon. And I've left their room, if they're in a hospital, I've left their house, if they're at house, I've left the birth center, right, or at least their room in the birth center. So the first thing I usually do is make sure my water is filled for my trip home, and either get some coffee, or a plan on where I'm going to stop to get both food and also some caffeine. Because I find that after every birth, I have a very strong rush of adrenaline around like pushing and birth time when it's kind of like oh my gosh, you did it. You had your baby. Here we are babies here. And then I'm like, Who am I body comes down from that. And then I'm exhausted. And so it's really not safe for me to be driving, if that happens, and I don't have any kind of caffeine or anything to sort of keep me higher, and keep me awake on the way home. So So I make sure I have my water bottle filled and all of that before I leave labor and delivery if I'm in a hospital or before I leave the birth center if I'm at a birth center. And then I also go to the bathroom because usually I have sort of been like hydrating, well, and that kind of stuff, I really pay attention to that at a berth. And so I do typically need to pee before I leave and drive so. So I do that I go to the bathroom. And then my very first thing, when I leave wherever I am, is getting some food. The reason for that is that I usually really need to eat before I go home and go to sleep. And once I get home, it's really hard for me to feel like I have the energy to make myself food. And so that I have a couple of different sort of go to post birth meals, usually some kind of breakfast sandwich or some like hash browns, breakfast potatoes, something like that, that feels like comforting and warm and easy to digest. Like that's sort of what I lean towards. I also really love warm, like grain and drip veggie salads. So there's a restaurant here in DC called sweet green that has like different kinds of warm salads that have some like cooked veggies and some raw veggies and different proteins and whatnot. That's one of my favorite post birth meals. Oftentimes, when I'm leaving a birth, in the middle of the night, I'm getting like a McDonald's breakfast sandwich and hashbrowns and coffee because that's the only thing that's open and I really need to eat. It's easier for me to eat on the way home like eating in the car or eating right before I get in the car. Because once I'm home, either I like everyone's asleep and I really just want to go to sleep, or everybody's awake and they're all excited to see me and then they want some of my attention. And so I don't want to just get home and crash if I can avoid that. Or get home be like I just have to eat and go to bed, you know and be like grouchy, grouchy with people. So, so eat something. The other thing I do is talk so it's very very helpful for me to verbally The process of birth, especially when something has been rough, or something has been, like, traumatizing, or it's just been like long or whatever, right. So obviously, if it's like two in the morning, I'm not necessarily talking to a person, sometimes I'm literally just talking like, I have a friend listening to me. And I'm like talking to myself on my way home, you know, I do really love jamming out to music, if that's if it's two in the morning, and I can't call somebody and talk about it. So sometimes I'll do that, especially music that I can sing to, because I really love singing and dancing. And so singing and dancing to music on my way home also helps me stay awake, which is important. And so when it's like the daytime, on the morning, or the afternoon, I have my mom is usually the person I talked to, because she loves to hear about births, and she loves for me to call and process them. And she will validate me and encourage me and you know, respond in like an active listening kind of way. I sometimes call one of my sisters and talk through it with her, but she hasn't had a baby. And so I don't want to terrify her. And so oftentimes it is my mom, I do, then usually just go straight home, I try really hard to go straight home because I'm usually really tired. And my adrenaline is kind of waning. And so then I don't want to be like, Okay, I have to stop at the grocery store, I need to stop and run this errand, or I need to do that thing. I try to legitimately just go straight to my house, if I can, if I can write. Once I get home, the two things that I do is hug everybody like tell everybody hi, reconnect if they're awake, and shower. So I have had many times where I'm like, I am so dead and I'm ready for sleeping. And I still make myself take a shower because I think it's really helpful emotionally as well as it's helpful on like a practical level of like, you've been with people and you've had germs and whatnot, who knows if you got a little amniotic fluid on you or whatever. So on that side, I think on a like very practical note, you need to wash yourself after you've been at a birth because it's just a messy business, right.
Kaely Harrod 07:23
And also, I think it's really helpful emotionally to kind of process through if it's been a really hard birth especially. And I will typically just take a shower and literally climb straight into bed. And so I'm showering. I'm like maybe brushing my teeth, if I'm awake enough to do that. And then sleeping. And I do find that like the time the very few times when I have skipped a shower and gone straight to sleep because I'm like so dead. That hasn't felt as great in terms of like the ritual of coming down from a birth. So I don't know if that sounds maybe silly to be like, Oh, it's a big deal to not skip that shower. But but really for me, I think it has been like really an A soothing thing as well as a cleaning thing, right. So that's my immediate kind of coming home and ending a birth scenario. The next thing that I do is try to stretch and massage. I have like a massage gun kind of thing. I have some different massage tools. I have some different stretching tools. I really love doing yoga and pilates. And so I have a foam roller like there are things that I do to work out some of the tension in my own body. I will say that even a fast birth is physically demanding for the doula and so there's a physical impact for the doula regardless. And that's really important to note until like give yourself space for recovery, right. So that's one thing that I do typically the next day, I very rarely stretch or massage or anything like that before I go to sleep unless my husband wreck unless my husband volunteers to do that. While I'm like essentially falling asleep because that's I can't stay awake while I'm doing it. But that's a really important sort of like getting my body back into a good physical rhythm and mental space, etc. The other thing that I really tried to do in the coming days after the birth is get myself back on a normal sleep schedule, especially if I've been up all night at the birth now, sometimes that's easier than other times depending on when the birth happened. The most recent birth I was at actually, probably when this episode comes out it won't be the most recent but the most recent I've had when I'm recording this episode is was a birthday that I joined them around 5am and the baby came around noon and so I was home by like three. And so that was is like it took a little less recovery in terms of sleep. Because I mean, in terms of sleep, like rearranging, because I, I managed to like I tried to stay awake, it didn't work, I fell asleep on the living room floor and then was just like go to bed. So I went to sleep probably at 6pm that night and then slept all night. And so it was earlier than I would normally go to sleep. And so I woke up at like five in the morning or something but but because it was like almost to my normal nighttime time, then which I mean, I am an I'm a night also, I don't go to sleep around six or seven ever, except in a situation like this. And so it didn't take quite so many days to recover, where when I get home at like 4am and then sleep like almost all day, then my sleep is off for like probably four or five days because my body is just like awake and asleep at the wrong times. Right. So it depends on the timing of the birth, how long that takes for me for my body, and everybody is different in that. But that's kind of the longer recovery process for me as well. So I hope this was helpful. Um, I would love to hear from you just like in last episode, when I said I would love to hear what your pre birth things are. I would love to hear what your post birth things are. I know that we're all a little different and how we recover from births. But I would love to hear what you incorporate what's been helpful for you. And what you find really makes a big difference physically and mentally and spiritually and emotionally and all of that. So I look forward to the coming episodes. I'm super pumped about some things that we have coming up. And also as always, I love to answer your question. So please do take a minute to jump onto Instagram. Connect with me there. Herat doula is my handle over on Instagram, and then send me a message with a question that you have for the podcast. Because I really, really, really would love to make sure that I am answering a question that is helpful and pertinent to you right now. Okay. All right. Until the next episode, I wish you lovely in informed consent filled business and do like experiences. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula Tips and Tips podcast. If you learned something today or had an aha moment, we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at Herat doula, so we can celebrate alongside you. If you found this podcast helpful. We would so appreciate you taking a second to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app that helps other doulas find us as we do this work together. This podcast is intended as educational and entertainment it is not medical advice or business advice. Please consult your own medical or legal team for your own needs around
Just like before a birth it’s important to prepare (check out the last episode for that info!), it’s just as important to have a post-birth ritual or rhythm to help yourself recover. Births are a lot of work both physically and emotionally, so it’s vital to have a ritual of coming down from the work you’ve done as a doula and helping yourself be ready for the next client.
This is one more of many things that are very personal in what it should include. So while I can’t tell you exactly what to do I can give you ideas and share why I do the things I do so you can start figuring out your own rhythm. This is something that will change and adapt as you attend more births and get a sense of what your body needs after this work.
A big piece of this is to take care of yourself during the birth and before the birth so that your body and mind are less taxed after the process. I will say that taking care of yourself in general is going to go a very long way in sustaining yourself in this work.
Key Takeaways:
This is my typical routine after a birth:
I eat! Immediately after I leave a birth
I usually get home and shower
I sometimes stretch if I am awake enough!
If it’s the middle of the night I get in bed and sleep
If it’s daytime and my kids are home I hang with them a little before sleeping
If It has been a really long birth I cancel anything coming up in the next 12 hrs before I go to sleep or I will likely just sleep through it on accident.
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Kaely Daily is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Birth Prep Blueprint Childbirth Class
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
