Today I want to talk about postpartum. First of all, if you have reached the postpartum stage - congratulations! Let’s take a moment to appreciate everything you have been through, everything your body has gone through while growing a little human being. Today we are going to talk about four simple exercises to help you on your journey of postpartum recovery.
A lot takes place during those nine months as the baby is growing. Your organs get all squished, your diaphragm gets pushed up to make room for the baby, your ribs start to spread out, your abdominal muscles get stretched out, and other muscles tighten down to try to support all the changes happening. One of the big changes we see during pregnancy has to do with your posture. With where the baby grows throughout those nine months, everything is thrown forward changing your center of gravity. A lot of times, it’s not just that our belly is more forward, but our head is more forward, your shoulders, etc.
Get moving in the right direction
Once you have your little one, things don’t automatically go back to the way that they were. It took nine months for those changes to occur, it’s not something that is going to just go away overnight. All that said, there are some good things you can do to help support the recovery of these changes. Today I wanted to give you four quick exercises to get your body moving in the right direction for postpartum recovery.
First, I want to give you some words of encouragement - it takes time to get back to where we want to be and it happens differently for everyone. These four exercises I am going to show you are not necessarily prescription exercises for you specifically, so if you are having issues that are not resolving, please get in to see an in-person therapist - specifically a pelvic health therapist. But in general, these exercises would be good for just about anybody in the postpartum period.
Give yourself some grace
During that one-month to three-month window of postpartum, your body is still doing a lot of healing. You as a new mama, have a lot on your plate. Most likely you are the primary caretaker of your newborn, you might be nursing so you're getting up a lot in the nighttime for feelings. With all of these responsibilities, self-care is just not at the top of the priority list. I want to make sure you give yourself a really nice graceful window of time to return to activity. These four movements will help to restore the parts of your body that aren’t moving and we want to make sure that we bring everything back on board like it’s supposed to be.
Pictured below are examples of the four exercises we are going to go through today. Think two sets of ten reps, three sets of ten reps, or two sets of fifteen reps when doing these exercises. But, really, the idea is just to start to build those connections again between the diaphragm, core, and pelvic floor.
Sidelying Rib Breathing (both sides)
Angel Wings (both sides)
Single Knee To Chest (each side)
Cat-cow
Coordinating your breath and spinal column movements helps to get your core, pelvic floor, and diaphragm all working together in postpartum to help you heal appropriately. It’s this healing and waking things back up that is necessary to get back to doing higher-level activities.
I hope you found these exercises helpful, and again - give yourself some grace mama. You're doing great.
If you'd like to follow along with the video I created for these exercises, check out the link here!
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic or have questions, feel free to reach out to us at 502-939-8564 or request a consultation here.