Reflecting on, and sharing imagery, of my very real fourth trimester experiences and what life was like just after giving birth to both my babies, and myself...
Thank you for sharing this honest, real and vulnerable account of
postpartum Lauren. I can relate to all of it, so much of it just isn't talked about and like you say because of that we feel like there is something wrong with is when we aren't up and about. I had such different postpartum experiences with all 3 kids - I remember going for a walk with the pram at 10 days postpartum and having to turn back shortly after leaving the house, it was just too much. But my hardest recovery was from my c-section with my 3rd child, thankfully my husband was off for a month so could look after my older 2 kids but god, that was extremely tough physically and mentally. I'm so glad to see more honesty around postpartum ❤️ xx
Oh yes the healing after surgery was so so hard, and I too managed a few steps out of the house too soon and had to turn back. When I left the hospital it was the longest path to leave and I actually had to stop and sit on the floor and get my husband to go and get a wheelchair as I was in so much pain. Everyone is so different of course. Thank you so much for sharing your story as well, and for your words of support here. xxx
The pain is unreal isn't it, it's wild that you have a major op and then you instantly have to be up and about caring for a newborn on your own whilst trying to establish breastfeeding. Even when I'm writing it, I'm saying to myself well so many mums go through the same thing, as in I shouldn't complain, but that's the issue isn't it, that we feel like we shouldn't say how it really is we should just accept the pain and get on with it. But we should talk about it. All of it ❤️. Your honesty opens the doors for other mums to be honest too xx
The expectation to just get on with it is insane really!!! But hopefully we can open up to the reality in small safe places and that will ripple out xx
Thank you for sharing your postpartum with utter realness. So so much overlaps with mine, the car crash feeling, nausea, infections, anxiety, sweats, bleeding - the messy layers that felt anything other than ‘golden’.
I’ve wondered after reading why I have never said more about the visceral, bodily nature of my recovery. I thought that I had done it wrong somehow, that I had healed poorly, that I wasn’t made of a mother strong fabric. Fear perhaps that my telling would be met with - oh it wasn’t like that for me. Or that it would be perceived as ‘moaning’ for lest we should ever complain that This Is Hard.
But it’s the truth telling that frees others to know that the post partum cocoon is a wild ride. Just as I imagine an actual cocoon is. Thank you for your truth.
Thank you for sharing your story Lauren, I know it takes a lot of bravery ❤️ but I also know that it does so much good for so many people when we speak and share our truth
I’d love to have you over on my Substack over on my ‘postpartum stories’ segment, if you’d ever be interested ✨
I still have chronic pelvic pain from birthing Han over three years ago. And I just had no clue anything like that could happen.
For the whole of the first year, before I shared anything online, I was just so completely alone in it all. And that is why I think it is so incredibly important that we bring these experiences out into the wider, social consciousness. Because that feeling of being alone, or being the only one makes is so much harder when it isn’t even true.
So thank you for being so open and honest here 🙏❤️
Oh thank you so much for sharing, I’m saving this for later.
I think there is so much that’s unspoken and I know personally whenever I read a story that has any similar threads to mine I feel such relief. It’s lonely when we feel like we are the only ones.
This. So grateful for the realness, the rawness, the trueness of this share Lauren. I remember the word "visceral" coming to me over and over again when I was freshly postpartum. How birthing brings you so completely into the visceral reality of being alive, the literal viscera of existence... blood, piss, sweat, milk, shit, tears. Like the velveteen rabbit being finally made real by falling apart completely. I've never experienced anything that so wholly brought me into the glorious, painful, grinding, blessedly and blindingly immediate reality of existence. Thank you for sharing with us here.
Oh my gosh yes visceral is the word I would use - nothing else really comes close to explaining it... and I love all of the words you have used here... it depicts the reality of it all - and reminds me just how powerful we are to experience it. Thank you so much for reading and sharing your response. xxx
This is SO powerful and beautiful. Thank you from the depths of my heart for sharing, once again, so generously.
You are an imperfect human being AND a goddess. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, in fact they feed off each other in a virtuous cycle. Blood, tears, scars, bodily fluids of any kind, pain, exhaustion, the ugly, the uncomfortable, the bad — it’s all part of the journey and it’s so healthy to see it if not celebrated per se at least acknowledged and welcomed to the motherhood conversation.
This is what sisterhood feels like — ugly crying in the shower, then (when you’re done) taking a deep compassionate breath, remembering that you’re allowed it, that you’re not bad or mean or weak because of it, that some other beautiful woman out there has been there too and you know that because she had the courage to SHARE this moment of raw truth. Thank you. Truly.
Thank you for these utterly beautiful reflections and words. I could cry at your comments about sisterhood… being fully held and witnessed in the ‘ugly’ bits… my heart has longed for that for decades I think. Grateful for you xxxx
Oh Lauren, I can relate to so much to the emotions (and physical healing) of your story. As you already know I am a big believer in mothers being honest and open about these experiences, if I read something like this 8 years ago, I would have cried to know I was not alone in the toughness of it all! ❤️ hugs to you always!
Thank you for sharing. I think the most surprising part of postpartum for me was that I started my period 5 weeks after delivering my son. I was breastfeeding full time and literally thought I was hemorrhaging from my C-section. It was so scary! I remember calling the on-call doctor and being told to either “wait it out” or go to the ER. I chose to wait it out but I had no idea I could start my period again so soon after giving birth.
The other unexpected hardest part was how much my husband and I started fighting. Before our son was born, we’d had very few arguments or fights and so I was kind of shocked by how hard it was in our marriage in the early days. I expected it to be hard as a mother but I wasn’t prepared for how hard it’d would be in a partnership.
Noah is 1 1/2 now and I still consider myself to be postpartum, recovering my stamina, vitality, and identity after entering motherhood. For me postpartum is a lifestyle and recognition that we can never go back to who we were before and honoring that ongoing transformation.
Oh my gosh that must have been terrifying - I didn't realise you could begin your bleed so soon after either. And the shift in relationship dynamics is extremely disconcerting, I really do hear you on those big changes between you and your husband. It is such an adjustment for everyone.
I absolutely agree - we are forever postpartum - and I know it is thought that Matrescence is at least 2 years, and I read somewhere that (I think it was in Chinese Medicine) it is suggested that it takes three years for the body to replenish after birth - and I suspect that is only with a lot of tender loving care and nutrients. I definitely have felt that.
Thank you so much for sharing your honest experiences, I think it is so important to be honest and I am grateful for your courage here. xxx
Thank you for sharing your story, Lauren. I’m feeling your words so deeply and can relate to so much of this. The aching, the bleeding, the healing. My path to recovery from this birth has been littered with so much doubt and fear and shame.
I’m seeing a women’s health physio because my body has changed quite dramatically. Late pregnancy (I had polyhydramnios) and the early postpartum phase took a massive toll on my pelvic floor. So I’ve been referred for a potential operation but I’m trying my best to do exercises to avoid that. Pelvic floor movements aren’t always the first thing that spring to mind when you live with chronic fatigue though!
It’s been pretty exhausting. Not helped by the fact I’m experiencing some perimenopausal symptoms. I’ve just started working with a medical herbalist to help me deal with the sweats and lack of energy.
These truths are so important and help people feel less alone 💛
Oh gosh lovely, that sounds like so much to add to the already expansive load of Mothering. I am glad you are getting the support you need, and it takes a lot of courage I think to ask for it. Our bodies go through so much and unfortunately there is often a lot of dismissal over some of the changes in the female body.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your own tender experience. I am so grateful. xxx
This was so beautiful, raw and honest. Thank you for sharing your story ❤️ c sections are so tough. No one can prepare you for the feeling once those drugs wear off. Day 3 was hell. You are such a strong momma and so cool how you documented all of this and shared all that is the rollercoaster of postpartum. ✨ xoxo
Thank you so much for your comments here, Day 3 - oh my gosh between hormones and milk coming in and the medications wearing off - it was brutal. Nothing can prepare you as you say. It truly was (still is!!) a rollercoaster - sometimes one I would quite like to get off... but then I would miss the views!! xxx
Lauren, you are amazing, a goddess and warrior in the most tender form. Thank you for sharing all of this so vulnerably, it is so important and speaks so much more to my experience to the view we are so often fed of the ‘baby bubble’. And yes I love that Rupi Kaur poem.
I feel like I have so much to say and would will keep returning to your piece. You have inspired me to reflect more on my two births and postpartum periods, entirely different experiences, both extremely full on for different reasons. I did a birth reflection for my first birth just before my second birth (it didn’t happen at the time due to COVID etc) and I found it incredibly empowering to be seen and heard by the head midwife who listened and read notes from what had been my ideal (but unbelievably and unexpectedly intense) birth I had wanted on paper to ending up in emergency surgery (still with no pain relief) during an extremely large haemorrhage, then a less than ideal stay in hospital, to caring for a very sensitive little one whilst recovering from losing half of my body’s blood volume. At the time I knew no different and got on with it (deeply cocooned thankfully after poring over The First 40 Days book) but yes looking back, it was WILD! So much more to talk about in response to your experiences, sending love to you and past Laurens xx
Oh my gosh this is such a lot lovely, thank you for sharing this reality. I too had the birth reflection before Vesper and it was really helpful actually to be validated in just how much of a rollercoaster it had been. So grateful for your supportive words and your presence here. xxx
Thank you for this. I have been thinking of writing my own version of this post and reflecting on those early days postpartum. It is strange how we don’t talk about it. As always, thank you for your honesty and rawness.
My eyes filled several times as I read your words. I’m 7 months pp now with my second son and it’s an entirely different experience than my first—both difficult but in vastly different ways, both left me feeling utterly alone and ill-prepared at times; wondering what was normal and judging my lack of intrinsic knowing. X
Thank you for sharing your honest experience. The loneliness - particularly I found in the first year - is so heavy at times. I think that the fact it is so unspoken of is what makes us struggle to connect to that intrinsic knowing because we haven't been familiarised with the many spectrums of what birth and postpartum really looks like. I am so grateful to you for reading and commenting here. xxx
Thank you for this piece Lauren it really is amazing. It’s beautifully real and vulnerable and so appreciate you sharing your experience.
I think my initial experience of breastfeeding was similar to your first baby and I gave up within 3 weeks because I started to get engorged and it was just so very hard. I relate very much to the guilt and the pressure the want to keep going with it and I felt a lot of shame; I felt not good enough etc but I also have read a lot since and know now that it is an experience many mothers go through. My mental health was really starting to suffer from the stress of it all and using formula was a great relief in the end, so much so a midwife commented on me looking much happier (and i was) that first postpartum period for me was intense and life changing I wish I had taken more pictures back then, but like you say I just want to reach back to the past me and give her a huge hug because she needed it ❤️❤️
Thank you. So, So much!!! I had very similar in that the health visitor came back a week after I had stopped BF and commented on how different I appeared. It was like a huge fog lifted and while there was still a lot of grief and processing to do - I felt like I was able to think and see clearly again, and show up for my baby. There is no way I would have been able to give her the love and care she needed when I was in the depths of the breastfeeding fog.
We really are just such tender beings in those early days.
Thank you for reading and sharing your experience. xxx
Thank you for sharing this honest, real and vulnerable account of
postpartum Lauren. I can relate to all of it, so much of it just isn't talked about and like you say because of that we feel like there is something wrong with is when we aren't up and about. I had such different postpartum experiences with all 3 kids - I remember going for a walk with the pram at 10 days postpartum and having to turn back shortly after leaving the house, it was just too much. But my hardest recovery was from my c-section with my 3rd child, thankfully my husband was off for a month so could look after my older 2 kids but god, that was extremely tough physically and mentally. I'm so glad to see more honesty around postpartum ❤️ xx
Oh yes the healing after surgery was so so hard, and I too managed a few steps out of the house too soon and had to turn back. When I left the hospital it was the longest path to leave and I actually had to stop and sit on the floor and get my husband to go and get a wheelchair as I was in so much pain. Everyone is so different of course. Thank you so much for sharing your story as well, and for your words of support here. xxx
The pain is unreal isn't it, it's wild that you have a major op and then you instantly have to be up and about caring for a newborn on your own whilst trying to establish breastfeeding. Even when I'm writing it, I'm saying to myself well so many mums go through the same thing, as in I shouldn't complain, but that's the issue isn't it, that we feel like we shouldn't say how it really is we should just accept the pain and get on with it. But we should talk about it. All of it ❤️. Your honesty opens the doors for other mums to be honest too xx
The expectation to just get on with it is insane really!!! But hopefully we can open up to the reality in small safe places and that will ripple out xx
Thank you for sharing your postpartum with utter realness. So so much overlaps with mine, the car crash feeling, nausea, infections, anxiety, sweats, bleeding - the messy layers that felt anything other than ‘golden’.
I’ve wondered after reading why I have never said more about the visceral, bodily nature of my recovery. I thought that I had done it wrong somehow, that I had healed poorly, that I wasn’t made of a mother strong fabric. Fear perhaps that my telling would be met with - oh it wasn’t like that for me. Or that it would be perceived as ‘moaning’ for lest we should ever complain that This Is Hard.
But it’s the truth telling that frees others to know that the post partum cocoon is a wild ride. Just as I imagine an actual cocoon is. Thank you for your truth.
Thank you dearest, I am so grateful for you reading and sharing the resonance. Xxx
Thank you for sharing your story Lauren, I know it takes a lot of bravery ❤️ but I also know that it does so much good for so many people when we speak and share our truth
I’d love to have you over on my Substack over on my ‘postpartum stories’ segment, if you’d ever be interested ✨
Thank you... I truly hope it is supportive. And yes I would absolutely love that. ❤️
Let’s chat over email or Instagram? 🥰
This is some of my story - https://postpartummatterscic.substack.com/p/why-is-our-postpartum-experience
I still have chronic pelvic pain from birthing Han over three years ago. And I just had no clue anything like that could happen.
For the whole of the first year, before I shared anything online, I was just so completely alone in it all. And that is why I think it is so incredibly important that we bring these experiences out into the wider, social consciousness. Because that feeling of being alone, or being the only one makes is so much harder when it isn’t even true.
So thank you for being so open and honest here 🙏❤️
Oh thank you so much for sharing, I’m saving this for later.
I think there is so much that’s unspoken and I know personally whenever I read a story that has any similar threads to mine I feel such relief. It’s lonely when we feel like we are the only ones.
Email sounds good... I’m not on IG consistently at the mo... lauren@laurenbarber.co
Xx
This. So grateful for the realness, the rawness, the trueness of this share Lauren. I remember the word "visceral" coming to me over and over again when I was freshly postpartum. How birthing brings you so completely into the visceral reality of being alive, the literal viscera of existence... blood, piss, sweat, milk, shit, tears. Like the velveteen rabbit being finally made real by falling apart completely. I've never experienced anything that so wholly brought me into the glorious, painful, grinding, blessedly and blindingly immediate reality of existence. Thank you for sharing with us here.
Oh my gosh yes visceral is the word I would use - nothing else really comes close to explaining it... and I love all of the words you have used here... it depicts the reality of it all - and reminds me just how powerful we are to experience it. Thank you so much for reading and sharing your response. xxx
This is SO powerful and beautiful. Thank you from the depths of my heart for sharing, once again, so generously.
You are an imperfect human being AND a goddess. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, in fact they feed off each other in a virtuous cycle. Blood, tears, scars, bodily fluids of any kind, pain, exhaustion, the ugly, the uncomfortable, the bad — it’s all part of the journey and it’s so healthy to see it if not celebrated per se at least acknowledged and welcomed to the motherhood conversation.
This is what sisterhood feels like — ugly crying in the shower, then (when you’re done) taking a deep compassionate breath, remembering that you’re allowed it, that you’re not bad or mean or weak because of it, that some other beautiful woman out there has been there too and you know that because she had the courage to SHARE this moment of raw truth. Thank you. Truly.
Thank you for these utterly beautiful reflections and words. I could cry at your comments about sisterhood… being fully held and witnessed in the ‘ugly’ bits… my heart has longed for that for decades I think. Grateful for you xxxx
Oh Lauren, I can relate to so much to the emotions (and physical healing) of your story. As you already know I am a big believer in mothers being honest and open about these experiences, if I read something like this 8 years ago, I would have cried to know I was not alone in the toughness of it all! ❤️ hugs to you always!
Hugging that past version of you lovely. And thank you so much for your support and encouragement. xx
Thank you for sharing. I think the most surprising part of postpartum for me was that I started my period 5 weeks after delivering my son. I was breastfeeding full time and literally thought I was hemorrhaging from my C-section. It was so scary! I remember calling the on-call doctor and being told to either “wait it out” or go to the ER. I chose to wait it out but I had no idea I could start my period again so soon after giving birth.
The other unexpected hardest part was how much my husband and I started fighting. Before our son was born, we’d had very few arguments or fights and so I was kind of shocked by how hard it was in our marriage in the early days. I expected it to be hard as a mother but I wasn’t prepared for how hard it’d would be in a partnership.
Noah is 1 1/2 now and I still consider myself to be postpartum, recovering my stamina, vitality, and identity after entering motherhood. For me postpartum is a lifestyle and recognition that we can never go back to who we were before and honoring that ongoing transformation.
Oh my gosh that must have been terrifying - I didn't realise you could begin your bleed so soon after either. And the shift in relationship dynamics is extremely disconcerting, I really do hear you on those big changes between you and your husband. It is such an adjustment for everyone.
I absolutely agree - we are forever postpartum - and I know it is thought that Matrescence is at least 2 years, and I read somewhere that (I think it was in Chinese Medicine) it is suggested that it takes three years for the body to replenish after birth - and I suspect that is only with a lot of tender loving care and nutrients. I definitely have felt that.
Thank you so much for sharing your honest experiences, I think it is so important to be honest and I am grateful for your courage here. xxx
Thank you for sharing your story, Lauren. I’m feeling your words so deeply and can relate to so much of this. The aching, the bleeding, the healing. My path to recovery from this birth has been littered with so much doubt and fear and shame.
I’m seeing a women’s health physio because my body has changed quite dramatically. Late pregnancy (I had polyhydramnios) and the early postpartum phase took a massive toll on my pelvic floor. So I’ve been referred for a potential operation but I’m trying my best to do exercises to avoid that. Pelvic floor movements aren’t always the first thing that spring to mind when you live with chronic fatigue though!
It’s been pretty exhausting. Not helped by the fact I’m experiencing some perimenopausal symptoms. I’ve just started working with a medical herbalist to help me deal with the sweats and lack of energy.
These truths are so important and help people feel less alone 💛
Oh gosh lovely, that sounds like so much to add to the already expansive load of Mothering. I am glad you are getting the support you need, and it takes a lot of courage I think to ask for it. Our bodies go through so much and unfortunately there is often a lot of dismissal over some of the changes in the female body.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your own tender experience. I am so grateful. xxx
This was so beautiful, raw and honest. Thank you for sharing your story ❤️ c sections are so tough. No one can prepare you for the feeling once those drugs wear off. Day 3 was hell. You are such a strong momma and so cool how you documented all of this and shared all that is the rollercoaster of postpartum. ✨ xoxo
Thank you so much for your comments here, Day 3 - oh my gosh between hormones and milk coming in and the medications wearing off - it was brutal. Nothing can prepare you as you say. It truly was (still is!!) a rollercoaster - sometimes one I would quite like to get off... but then I would miss the views!! xxx
So true those views are worth it.
Lauren, you are amazing, a goddess and warrior in the most tender form. Thank you for sharing all of this so vulnerably, it is so important and speaks so much more to my experience to the view we are so often fed of the ‘baby bubble’. And yes I love that Rupi Kaur poem.
I feel like I have so much to say and would will keep returning to your piece. You have inspired me to reflect more on my two births and postpartum periods, entirely different experiences, both extremely full on for different reasons. I did a birth reflection for my first birth just before my second birth (it didn’t happen at the time due to COVID etc) and I found it incredibly empowering to be seen and heard by the head midwife who listened and read notes from what had been my ideal (but unbelievably and unexpectedly intense) birth I had wanted on paper to ending up in emergency surgery (still with no pain relief) during an extremely large haemorrhage, then a less than ideal stay in hospital, to caring for a very sensitive little one whilst recovering from losing half of my body’s blood volume. At the time I knew no different and got on with it (deeply cocooned thankfully after poring over The First 40 Days book) but yes looking back, it was WILD! So much more to talk about in response to your experiences, sending love to you and past Laurens xx
Oh my gosh this is such a lot lovely, thank you for sharing this reality. I too had the birth reflection before Vesper and it was really helpful actually to be validated in just how much of a rollercoaster it had been. So grateful for your supportive words and your presence here. xxx
Thank you for this. I have been thinking of writing my own version of this post and reflecting on those early days postpartum. It is strange how we don’t talk about it. As always, thank you for your honesty and rawness.
Thank you so much, and I would love to read your own reflections in your own post - I really truly do think we need more openness around it. xxx
You are welcome! They will come, reading this sparked something else to move through me! Funny and beautiful how that works!
I love that ripple effect of truth speaking xx
My eyes filled several times as I read your words. I’m 7 months pp now with my second son and it’s an entirely different experience than my first—both difficult but in vastly different ways, both left me feeling utterly alone and ill-prepared at times; wondering what was normal and judging my lack of intrinsic knowing. X
Thank you for sharing your honest experience. The loneliness - particularly I found in the first year - is so heavy at times. I think that the fact it is so unspoken of is what makes us struggle to connect to that intrinsic knowing because we haven't been familiarised with the many spectrums of what birth and postpartum really looks like. I am so grateful to you for reading and commenting here. xxx
Thank you for this piece Lauren it really is amazing. It’s beautifully real and vulnerable and so appreciate you sharing your experience.
I think my initial experience of breastfeeding was similar to your first baby and I gave up within 3 weeks because I started to get engorged and it was just so very hard. I relate very much to the guilt and the pressure the want to keep going with it and I felt a lot of shame; I felt not good enough etc but I also have read a lot since and know now that it is an experience many mothers go through. My mental health was really starting to suffer from the stress of it all and using formula was a great relief in the end, so much so a midwife commented on me looking much happier (and i was) that first postpartum period for me was intense and life changing I wish I had taken more pictures back then, but like you say I just want to reach back to the past me and give her a huge hug because she needed it ❤️❤️
Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you. So, So much!!! I had very similar in that the health visitor came back a week after I had stopped BF and commented on how different I appeared. It was like a huge fog lifted and while there was still a lot of grief and processing to do - I felt like I was able to think and see clearly again, and show up for my baby. There is no way I would have been able to give her the love and care she needed when I was in the depths of the breastfeeding fog.
We really are just such tender beings in those early days.
Thank you for reading and sharing your experience. xxx
Honoured to know you and be held by your spaces. ✨❤️💫
Grateful for you. Xxx