Tips for treating during the early postpartum and newborn phases of life
When you are in the very real throes of early postpartum (whether you are treating yourself, your newborn, or you are visiting a professional), getting an accurate idea of what’s going on is very difficult. You are sleep-deprived, overwhelmed with care, and therefore remembering what happened one day to the next is practically impossible.
Here are a couple quick things that made a world of difference for me, while I was going through this period:
Journal
I know this seems like another task that you have to try and accomplish each day. But I’m not saying write a page, just a sentence or two. Pick a few symptoms you are paying attention to and note down each day what their status is. If you are tracking diaper rashes for example, put a piece of paper in the diaper bag or next to your changing table, and just note how big the rash was that day and its color for example. Only then will you be able to see the pattern over time. When you can’t remember what happened day-to-day, you need someway of either reporting to a professional or seeing for yourself what the overall pattern is. This does not have to be a traditional paper journal; it can be in any form that works for you: phone note, a simple check mark (1 check for ok, 2 for not great, 3 for symptoms are awful), marks out of 10 (1/10 symptoms, 5/10 severity, etc), a document on a tablet or computer, a note on a calendar in your kitchen, whatever. Something that’s easy to stick with but let’s you see what’s going on day to day. Otherwise, you are more likely to get stuck in the next section.
Try not to make emotional dosing or remedy selections
The early postpartum/early infancy (since they usually go together) period is very emotional and overwhelming. A new life has landed and changed yours forever. So it will just be overwhelming for a while. The danger is that our emotions will determine our actions, which can be to our detriment when it comes to homeopathy.
When my son was three weeks old, he developed colic. He would spend hours a day wailing until he was purple in the face. His tiny little hands balled in fists and sweat poured down his poor face. I was barely sleeping at that time, and desperate to do anything to make these crying fits stop. Because I was not tracking how often or when these things were happening (see number 1!), I had no idea what the patterns were. I couldn’t even remember if something happened one hour ago, three hours ago, or yesterday. I started giving him a remedy, but every crying fit convinced me I had chosen either the wrong remedy or the wrong dose. I would stare at that tiny purple face, in so much pain, and stare at the clock that told me I had been up for hours and was dying for sleep and I would desperately try a higher dose of a remedy I gave a few hours ago. Or I would antidote the remedy I gave a few minutes ago. In the few days after I decided to treat him, I changed his remedy twice and the doses probably 5 times. It was ridiculous. So I made a rule for myself after this nonsense: I would not change his remedy or dose until I saw a clear pattern, and I would not change anything sooner than 3 days. So I had to wait three days and then I consulted my journal to see if the pattern had changed over the three days, and then would use the thinking part of my brain to decide if the remedy or dose had to change. And only after that, did he start to really get better (shocking, that thinking helped! Ha!).
The point is that health is emotional. And especially when paired with all the difficulties of this time period. But emotions won’t help you make a remedy or dosing decision; more often then not, they will get in the way.
Be kind
This time of life is trying. Be kind to yourself as you go through it. Take it hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second if you have to. Change your timetable to one that you can manage.
During this time in my life, I found it incredibly difficult to stay out of the blame and responsibility world. When my son was doing well, I felt better and responsible. When he was doing poorly, it felt like my fault and the shame was crippling. But the reality is that there are many reasons why he did well, and many reasons why he struggled. Taking responsibility for those things was unkind to myself at best, and overwhelmingly self-important and torturous to my psyche at the worst.
I share this not because I mean to criticize you if you did the same, but rather to say that I have been there, and I know how much suffering it creates. And my best words of wisdom are to get yourself off the responsibility band wagon, in any way you can.
Other articles on newborn and postpartum care: