Here I am speaking at the Birth Without Fear Conference the other weekend. January Harshe, mother of six children flew to Australia for the first time to present Birth Without Fear downunder. She started her blog, Birth Without Fear, in 2010 and it gathered so much interest, she started running conferences, first in the USA, then Canada and now here in Aus.
January is super passionate about the postpartum period and so asked me to speak about it. I was honoured to present this special subject to over 200 women who had come from all over Australia, many of them with child number 3,5 or even 6 in tow as newborns.
Before the conference I went out to dinner with January. She’s super easy to talk to, chatty and very at ease with herself. In between our talk of birth, postpartum, health, self-care, food and “I wish Brandon was here” (that’s her husband), she would say… ‘You say take away? That’s so cute. We don’t say that in America, we say “to go”’.
At the conference there were lots of mums milling around, chatting to each other and super keen to hear what their star mum had to say on life, January Harshe.
She started the conference with a zoom chat to her hubby, who said hi to the whole crowd, which they loved. She then started talking about how important self-care was and how even when you are so low and think you can’t go any lower, it’s still important to give time back to yourself. So it wasn’t too much of a jump for everyone to put their regular thoughts aside and listen to me talk about postpartum care and what we can learn from Chinese culture.
Chinese medicine has a rich history with the four to six weeks post birth and it’s often referred to as the Golden Month or “doing the month”. There is just so much to say on this special time in a woman’s life. Sadly, it’s not seen as that special for a mum in our culture. It seems to be in most other places on the planet however, like China, India, Africa, Greece. All of these cultures have rich histories and current practices of taking care of women immediately after birth.
Women will receive attention, care, food, daily massage in the first 4 to 6 weeks post-partum. It’s the time when they most feel like a queen. Sounds good doesn’t it. Makes me want to have another baby just thinking about it!
I’m sure for those of you who have had a baby, this was probably not the case and I think we should start to make waves to change that, or at least small ripples first. Change has to come from the ground up, if it’s to stay and turn the tide.
The first month after birth is an incredibly important time for mum and baby to bond and to get to know each other. It’s super important for partners too but special care needs to be taken at this time of the mother and that isn’t being done on a big enough scale in our culture at this point in time.
It does make me wonder about why the Chinese culture is the largest culture in the world – could it be partly because they put the health of women and children at the top of the list and have done for centuries?!
Dating as far back as 6ooAD, when the famous Sun Si Miao gathered herbal recipes from all the doctors at the time in China, he organised his book so that women’s health and paediatrics was mentioned first. This may not sound like much of a big deal but it wasn’t done in other cultures at the time. Sun Si Miao said in his work, “The significance of [this structure] is that it venerates the root.” That means – attending to women’s health and that of their children will nourish the roots of health for all humanity. Hmmmm, again, sounds good and makes so much sense!
So now that I’ve introduced you to this concept, what can you do in your Golden Month to nourish yourself and your baby?
It is said that if you look after yourself at this time, you will reap the rewards of greater health for the rest of your life. It’s that important. Here are the ingredients for good postnatal care:
- Rest and plenty of it!
- Warming, easy to digest, nourishing food. If you fancy a meal planner for yourself or a friend, sign up here to get it email to you
- Warming & massaging. Moxibustion is great for this and can be bought in sticks to heat up your abdomen. Check out more about what moxibustion is here, or massage is wonderful too. Consider some house call massages around this time.
- Social & emotional support
- Treatment if there’s imbalance
I’ve mentioned these briefly but there really is a lot to them and it’s important to get the mix right for you and your bub. So, on the blog next month, we’ll dive into them in more detail. This month you get a taste and of course, get to sign up for some recipes – yum!
