Having a baby is hard on the body no matter how in or out of shape you feel you are. Some women can bounce back rather quickly, but you should always give your body what it needs after birth so that you are fit and ready to go when you need to be. Your new baby will sleep and eat a lot, which will leave you feeling very tired, and if you try to do everything else along with caring for your newborn, you are going to take longer to heal and you may even have some complications. Take some time to care for yourself and allow others to help you. This is one time when you don't have to be superwoman.
After birth, you are going to be tired and sore. Walking will be a problem if you had some pain relief while you pushed. You will have to wait for this to wear off before you can get up, and once you do, the first place you will go will be the bathroom. The nurses that helped you through birth will be there to help you when you use the bathroom. You may think you can do it on your own, but you are weaker than you think after birth and all the pushing. Allow them to help you. If your baby was taken somewhere else in the hospital, allow them to put you in a wheelchair to go see him or her. Don't walk.
Once you get home, you are going to have relatives and friends that want to come see the baby. If they have had children of their own, they understand how you feel after birth, and they may offer to cook and clean for you. Don't stop them. Let them help you in any way that they can. You concentrate on resting and sleeping when the baby sleeps. If you try to do everything and don't sleep, you are going to be so exhausted in the weeks after birth that you can not care for your baby properly. You care for baby and let everyone else take care of everything else.
Your doctor will tell you to take six weeks off from any sex after birth. You may think you feel fine, and your bleeding may have stopped, but you really do want to wait. Birth does a number on the body, and if you try to have sex before healing has occurred, it will be painful and could cause more problems. If you had a Cesarean, you may think that sex right away is okay, but you still want to wait a while for your incision to heal properly. You run a huge risk of infection if that incision is not given time to heal and pops open. Ask your doctor how long to wait for sex after birth if you had a C-section.
Take your time working back into your normal life after birth. Your main concern should be taking care of your new baby and taking care of yourself. Relatives and friends will stop by for a while, but after a while you may be on your own. It will then be up to you and your spouse from then on. You want to take advantage of both help and healing time after birth so when you do need to do it all again, you have the energy to tackle life head on once more.
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