POSTNATAL HEALING & 5 reasons why GOOD NUTRITION matters

When it comes to postnatal recovery, there is limited and often conflicting information. In pregnancy we are given advice from healthcare providers about what we should eat and how to optimise our health and wellbeing. However, the weeks after giving birth can feel a bit of a clueless minefield; trying to sift through and find the correct information on how to heal our postpartum body. On various media platforms we are inundated with articles and photos of women who ‘bounced back’ after giving birth. Is this achievable? For some maybe (but this depends on how you interpret ‘bounced back.’) But ultimately, for your body to truly heal after pregnancy and childbirth it can take up to 18 months. Postnatal recovery is much more complex than fitting back into your ‘pre-pregnancy jeans.’ Whether you had a vaginal birth or C-section, your body has suffered a significant trauma and for the connective tissues to heal properly you must feed your body with a nutrient dense diet and take on positive lifestyle choices.

1) Eating Sufficient Calories to optimise healing and recovery

In the postpartum period, we shouldn’t be calorie counting or limiting what we are eating.

When we are recovering from birth our body is in a hypermetabolic state. This therefore means that we should consume enough calories to ensure that we are meeting the additional needs of healing, looking after our newborn, as well promoting the production of breast milk. This doesn’t mean we should start eating lots of cake (sadly). We need to nurture our body and provide it with a diet rich in clean protein, lots of vibrant and colourful fruit and deep coloured vegetables. We also need to prioritise eating essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals all of which will help with cell regeneration and collagen production.

2) Provides good gut health

Maintaining good gut health & having frequent bowel movements is important after we have given birth, especially if we have had a C-Section (due to the administering of antibiotics which can compromise gut health). Your gut is a major detoxification pathway, & without regular movements we are re-toxing our body. Additionally, it can also create a significant load on your abdominal wall and pelvis, which can have a negative impact on the surrounding organs which are still healing post birth as well as on any separation of the abdominal wall (Diastasis Recti). Nutrition plays an important role in helping to detox your body, so we should be eating fibrous foods, such as fruit, vegetables, pulses, nuts & whole grains and drinking plenty of water.

3) Improve low mood and anxiety

The brain is connected to the digestive system via the Vagus Nerve. If the brain is inflamed and not functioning well, its ability to help the digestive system to heal and digest stops. This can then cause the digestive system to feed back to the brain in a negative way, keeping it in a chronic loop of inflammation. This may therefore cause mental health challenges such as the risk of depression and anxiety.

Eating a high-quality diet can help to reduce inflammation in the digestive system. Removing food sensitivities such as dairy, gluten, eggs and soy may help to lower chronic gut inflammation, as well as reducing sugar, caffeine and processed foods and oils. A nutrient dense diet can help to optimise your gut/brain health by including Omega-3 fats such as coconut oil, avocados and nuts, selenium, vitamin D, iron, zinc, magnesium, active B vitamins and turmeric.

In addition, Vegetable fibre and the Butyrate it creates are excellent at improving gut microbiome. So eating a diet with plenty of vegetables can help to improve mental health.

4) Hormone regulation

Good nutrition in the postpartum period can naturally balance hormone health. Eating macronutrients such clean protein, complex carbohydrates and fatty acids can help to support the mothers energy levels, milk production and a healthy level of sex hormones.

Micronutrients also play an important role in helping to support the biochemical reactions, such as breathing and digestion in the postpartum female body. Many pregnant women are already deficient in micronutrients, so they arrive into the postnatal period already running on empty. Feeling sluggish or fatigued can be symptom of this. Nourishing the body with the correct vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals can help to improve this.

The post-partum period can be very stressful and overwhelming for women, and therefore it’s important to minimise physical and emotional stress. The adrenal glands are responsible for moderating the stress hormone cortisol. If the adrenal glands are resilient, and stress is manageable and under control it creates a better environment for creating sex hormones. In order to maintain this balance we need to nourish our adrenal glands to support optimal levels of cortisol. One of the ways to do this is to ensure we stay off the ‘stress sugar rollercoaster.’ As a mum it’s very easy to get onto this rollercoaster. It depletes us of our energy, and good mood. Maybe you are familiar with it or even riding this roller coaster today? Eating a diet which is high in foods such carbohydrates, sugar or caffeine, will contribute to these ups and downs and it’s a feeding regime very common in mothers as we battle with lack of sleep and exhaustion. If we are hungry, it’s easier to just ‘grab’ a snack or coffee to keep us going, but these foods are contributing and making our tiredness and overall health feel worse. When we eat these types of foods our blood sugar is cranked up really high, really fast. This encourages our pancreas to release large amounts of insulin, which subsequently causes our blood sugar to crash. Symptoms of which present themselves as mood swings, intense sugar cravings, difficulty focusing and low energy levels.

To keep our blood sugar stable, we need make sure we are eating clean protein, healthy fats and fibre at every meal and snack. We also need consume less sugar and avoid eating processed foods. If we do this our body will avoid the vicious cycle of spikes and drops in our blood sugar levels.

5) Good nutrition can help heal connective tissues, Diastasis Recti and Pelvic Floor muscles

A woman’s body will need time to heal and recover from the trauma of birth. Post-delivery, Pelvic Floor muscles, ligaments, abdominal muscles, tendons, skin and joints will have all been strained and will need a combination of prescriptive exercise, soft tissue therapy and a diet rich in nutrients to heal. Foods containing collagen are essential for recovery and eating foods high in collagen can help to support healing. Examples of foods which contain collagen are Bone Broth (ideally homemade), chopped organ meats or a collagen powder. In addition to this, amino acids (found in protein sources such as meat, chicken, fish and egg whites. Or wheat germ and peanuts for vegetarians) help to build collagen. Postpartum women therefore need to be eating high sources of protein to get enough amino acids to help rebuild their collagen.

Before you undertake any changes to your diet, it is always advisable to consult a dietician or nutritionist who will be able to assess your overall health and advise the correct steps forward.

Resources:

Burrell Education

Jessica Drummond, MPT, CCN, CHC