This letter is as much a note to myself as to all of you: taking time to nap, to rest, to say no, and to cross things off your to-do list without doing them (or destroying the to-do list altogether!) is about as badass as you can get in a world that glorifies overwork and overdoing.
What can you do during pregnancy to prepare for the first weeks and months after you’ve given birth? How can you build your own support team to get through the challenging period of brand spanking new motherhood? What might a roadmap to recovery look like?
We place a lot of emphasis on planning for the perfect birth and making sure that our bodies are healthy during pregnancy. But what do we need to recover after the baby arrives? Lily Nichols shares her postpartum journey, discussing her extreme caution around physical exertion and the nutrients new moms need to heal damaged tissue and meet the energy demands of breastfeeding.
Even if you planned every moment down to the last second, there is always an element of unpredictability that can come into play: life happens. How can we embrace these unexpected curves, breathe, be patient and see what comes next?