As if having a baby wasn’t enough, you’re not done, mama. There’s still the postpartum part of delivering your child that you need to be concerned with.
If this is your first child then you may not be aware of what to fully expect once you bring your bundle of joy home. Fear not, though. We’ve got you covered.
Postpartum encompasses a range of happenings from the emotional to the psychological to the physical. You may or may not experience some, all, or none of these postpartum symptoms.
Here are four symptoms you may go through once home from your labor and delivery.
1. Crying And/Or Heavily Emotional
Every woman handles her pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum experiences differently.
You may get home and be so happy to be in your safe haven (and out of the hospital) with your little one that you’ll cry happy tears. Or you may feel so overwhelmed and stressed that you’ll cry anxious tears. You may even be so overcome with your mother-child bond and this new, raw love that you’re experiencing that you’ll cry tears of pure joy and confusion.
You may not feel like crying but being still - taking in how your surroundings, life, and world have changed drastically within the last few days.
Perhaps you’ll feel elated and won’t be able to wait to show off your baby and start interacting and getting back to normal or you may feel like crawling into bed and sheltering your child and yourself from the world.
Your range of emotions will no doubt fluctuate tremendously in your first few weeks, even
months, home with your new baby while you both become adapted to this new life.
2. Temperature Fluctuations
Because of the rush of hormones that you’re body is coping with immediately after birth, your body will attempt to compensate itself for these changes.
That, in turn, can make your overall temperature rise and fall drastically which will allow for you to feel these changes in the form of an array of hot and cold flashes.
It may be not as noticeable to some new moms while others will put a sweater on one minute and be fanning yourself the next.
3. Swelling
If you’ve had a natural labor and delivery with no intervention, then you most likely won’t have any swelling since you weren’t given any abnormal fluids during your labor.
But if you labored in a hospital while being hooked up to an IV, then the excess fluids and drugs that you received during your stay will be floating around in your body for a few days to a week and they may cause swelling.
The swelling will most likely be in places like your legs and ankles, but could show up in your
hands, face, and fingers.
4. You May Still Look Pregnant
Everyone’s uterus contracts and goes back to it’s original pre-baby size at different rates.
So even though you just popped out a seven pound baby, your body is still in pregnant mode, so bear with it for a little while until it realizes it needs to start getting things working in the postpartum sense.