MOTHERHOOD.

Challenging Convention: On Bouncing Back? 

The time afterbirth is a time of paradox, one of an encompassing love and beauty and one of great pain. This time can be difficult for mothers/ carers to navigate as they encounter a multitude of changes within both their inner and outer landscape, through the transition from the end of pregnancy, through birth into nurturing and caring for their infants.

Popularly held belief centres around the concept that the majority of healing afterbirth is complete at six weeks. Yet there is mounting reason to refute and challenge this view. . Pelvic Health Physiotherapist Grianne Donnelly and Colleagues in their article ‘Ready, steady.. GO! For the British Sports Medical Journal state that the pelvic tissues may not be fully recuperated until at least 4-6 months postpartum. Casting a wider glance at maternal health after birth also reveals via a recent study published in the Lancet Global show that up to one third of women have lasting health issues afterbirth, emphasising that current timescales for postpartum restoration are an inadequate representation of healing times for mothers/ persons after birth.

Evidence and lived experience both suggest that far from ‘bouncing back’ the changes induced by the process of becoming a mother maybe irreversible and enduring. Accepting and becoming aware of the everlasting and irreversible changes that motherhood has liberates us from the cultural and self inflected pressures of ‘bouncing back ‘. The postnatal period, far from representing a defined period of linear time in which we recover to our pre-birth state is a phased, cyclical and dynamic event that begins before we give birth and ends long afterwards

Resources and Further Reading.

Donnelly Grianne, et al, Ready, steady…GO! Ensuring postnatal women are run-ready!, British Journal of Sports Medicine Blog May 20,2019,BMJhttps://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2019/05/20/ready-steadygo-ensuring-postnatal-women-are-run-ready/ Accessed online 28 April 2024

Vogel J P , et al , Neglected medium-term and long-term consequences of labour and childbirth: a systematic analysis of the burden, recommended practices, and a way forward, The Lancet Global Health, Published:December 06, 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00454-0 Accessed https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(23)00454-0/fulltext 28.4.2024

Gregory, Andre. A third of new mothers worldwide ‘have lasting health issues after childbirth’The Guardian, 7th Dec 2023. Accessed https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/06/a-third-of-new-mothers-worldwide-have-lasting-health-issues-after-childbirth 28.4.2024.

28th April 2024.

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