Motherhood provides a life-changing experience to every woman. While it creates that immense feeling of happiness and excitement of becoming a mother it can also cause maternal fatigue. This is the result of the mother undergoing significant physical and mental changes during pregnancy and after the childbirth. The labor can cause extreme exhaustion and postpartum depression. Most women develop “baby blues” after birth that lasts for a few days. But about 15% of the women get into postpartum depression, which is a more pressing and prolonged condition that demands medical attention.
There are ways to cope up, but before getting there, let’s first understand the most common reasons behind labor exhaustion and postpartum depression:
- Some women have a hyperactive thyroid gland that can lead to fatigue after the childbirth. In such cases, they must consult a doctor for a healthy diet and lifestyle. Labor can sometimes extend for hours. The energy and strength required to give birth exhausts the mother completely; and the medical doses given to relieve pain add further.
- Cesarean procedures also exhaust women as their body deals with the trauma of the surgery involved.
- During labor, women lose a lot of blood resulting into fatigue or even anemia, in some cases.
- A young baby needs to be fed every 2-3 hours, which brings changes in the mother‘s sleep schedule and often leads to lack of sleep or insomnia. This in-turn creates tiredness throughout the day and the other typical side-effects.
- Breastfeeding provides the necessary nutrients for the baby, but also demands the mother‘s body to keep replenishing nutrients. So, taking a balanced diet with suitable nutritional supplements becomes crucial.
The symptoms of postpartum depression range from high to low, causing emotional bursts, anxiety, guilt and fatigue, impairing mother’s ability to take care of her baby. When the symptoms are severe, it needs counseling and medication, for which one must consult a specialist.
In majority of the cases, taking basic precautions and following a lifestyle that enhances mental and physical fitness, helps the mothers deal with the condition.
Here are some tips to help overcome fatigue and postnatal glooms.
1. Exercise:
Physical exercise keeps you healthy. After giving birth, some light exercises help you heal your lower limb weakness and regain stamina. Add a few planks, squats and jog/walk into your daily routine for maintaining healthy lifestyle. Take your baby out for walking too, for getting some fresh air and sunlight.
2. Sufficient Sleep:
Caring for the baby and feeding the baby every 2-3 hours might change your sleep schedule and even lead to insomnia. Try synchronizing your sleep with your baby’s sleep. Sharing the duties with your partner will also buy you time to sleep. This is a better bet for your partner!
3. Yoga and Meditation:
Yoga and meditation help your body and mind relax. You can perform a few yoga poses to ease your body; and meditate to calm down your mind. This helps you avoid anxiety and fatigue.
4. Healthy Balanced Diet:
It is very normal to feel extremely exhausted after giving birth, which must be compensated by suitable nutritional feed. Make sure to maintain a healthy balanced diet, besides taking vitamins and other nutritional supplements to regain your stamina and immunity.
5. Stay Hydrated::
This is a well-known fact with so many articles highlighting the importance of staying hydrated, pretty easy to follow but often neglected. Water helps you replace the fluids you lost and keeps you energized throughout the day. So, keep yourself hydrated by drinking water or other fluids.
The journey of motherhood is like a roller coaster ride – bringing mix of excitement, fun, thrill, anxiety, crying spells and depression. It all gets over eventually, but in order make that ride or journey more enjoyable, one has to keep good health. As it’s said that a ‘healthy mother is the key to a healthy child’, make sure you follow healthy balanced diet, stay hydrated, introduce exercise and yoga/meditation into your routine and last, but not the least, take nutritional supplements.
We recommend you to try-out Ridomaxx Multivitamins to help you gain energy, boost immunity, and strengthen your body.
