The postpartum season is filled with the joys of life with your precious new baby….and spending a lot of time day and night taking care of the newborn. Oftentimes the healing and care for mom gets neglected in this busyness. However, this is truly a recent neglect within modern society. Traditionally, cultures considered the postpartum season to be a sacred time when mothers were supported by other women in their community to ensure the mother received proper care, rest, and nutrition. This is so important for three specific reasons.
First, building a baby during pregnancy requires a large amount of nutrients from mama’s body. Her body needs to replenish those nutrients postpartum.
Second, birth is like a marathon for a mama that demands nutrients to recover the energy expended and for repair of tissues, blood loss, and wound healing (whether it was a natural birth or C-section).
Third, if breastfeeding, mama will spend more energy and nutrients making this rich milk for the baby. Because the nutrients in the milk come from mama’s milk or her nutrient stores, a nutrient-depleted mama will have nutrient-depleted milk and a mama eating a diet of nutrient-rich foods will have nutrient-rich milk. [1]
Eating the right foods may seem more challenging these days because our modern American diet has become so consumed with processed foods and distanced from whole nutrient rich foods. And unfortunately hospital food, the diet of most mother’s immediately after giving birth, is not the nourishing menu needed. But if a mother is educated and has the proper support team, she can thrive.
Let me give you a sneak peak of what this should look like…a real food diet should be her foundation, similar to the ideal diet within pregnancy which I have shared previously [2]. On this foundation, there are many postpartum super foods that will support mamas during this season.
2 cups + of vegetables (with some fat, like butter or olive oil)
3-4 oz. of protein (with naturally occurring fat, like the skin on chicken)
1/2 to 1 cup of starchy or carbohydrate-rich whole foods
Now that we have covered the why for proper postpartum nutrition stay tuned for my next article in which I will provide more information on what proper postpartum looks like!
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