Category: Lifestyle

Recovery after birth is really important and I feel mothers sometimes feel a little bit neglected, overwhelmed and that they don’t have time to look after themselves. When all the adrenaline is out of the system you’re often left feeling all the hormones, increased so when your milk comes in and I feel if you’ve had a bit a traumatic experience during birth, a bit of guilt too. The phrase ‘to mother the mother’ often used by postnatal doula’s could not be more accurate to what a mother needs.

I can not dismiss that after birth recovery is vital and important, however, I only have experience of recovering from a c-section delivery and therefore that is where my ‘expertise’ lie. I’ve had two sections, neither were planned and one was a lot more complicated than the other. I want to talk about some of the ways you can best assist your recovery after a c-section birth.

If you know you’re going to have a c-section then a lot of these things can be prepared ahead of time, but if you are planning a vaginal birth but end up being induced, or having an unplanned or emergency (rare) c-section then some of these things might not have been considered so I’ll try and think of both scenarios for this post.

Time Off Together

2 weeks is not enough post c-section, try for 4 weeks with annual leave, or even better extend to six weeks with (unpaid) parental leave.

Encourage the dad or your patner to take some time off work. I strongly advise considering an extended amount of time off if this is possible. The first thing you want to look into is paternity leave which does have some stipulations and can either be one or two weeks. This can start from a selected date or the day you give birth and needs to be, I believe, within 52 days of the birth. Then I would really look into taking a week or two annual leave after the paternity leave. Having a period of four weeks off to adapt to your new baby will take a lot of the pressure off mum to bounce back after having major abdominal surgery. It’s also really important for dad/the other parent to find their feet and place too without the pressure of getting back to work quickly.

It is also worth looking into parental leave. It is unpaid but government backed therefore you can not be penalised for taking this time off. Parents are entitled to 18 weeks parental leave for each child (including adopted children) and you can take 4 weeks leave per child, per year. You must take it in week blocks and usually have to give around a month’s notice. It is unpaid so it is worth considering this if your funds are stretched or saving up during pregnancy to cover the amount of time off.

Adam only actually ended up getting around 10 days off work because I was in hospital from Thursday – Sunday. He was starting a new job and University so the pressure to ‘bounce back’ was well and truly on me and it caused some severe anxiety attacks which really affected my self confidence and recovery. You can’t drive straight after a c-section, you’re barely sleeping and you’re adjusting to a newborn. If you have other children, like I did, I couldn’t even manage the school run once in a day and needed the next day to recover let alone doing it twice in a day. If Adam had had that extra time off work, I probably would have recovered faster because I wouldn’t have been so stressed.

If you can’t take additional time off or unpaid parental leave

1. Ask other family/friends for help with other children, school pick ups or looking after for an hour or two.
2. If someone comes over ask them for help if you need something done or ask them to bring you food.
3. Get a slow cooker and add lots of one handed, nutritious and filling snacks to your grocery shopping – and do it online to make it easier
4. Do not feel you have to leave the house, ask friends and family to come to you.
5. Consider hiring a cleaner in the late stages of pregnancy so they can help in those early newborn days.
6. Just focus on you and baby. Your partner can deal with the housework before and after work and put a dinner in the slow cooker whilst you recover.

Consider some hired help – this can come in many forms

Hiring some help whilst you recover from a c-section is a priveledged thing to do and not everyone will have the chance to but if you can spare the cash then it can do your recovery wonders. Hiring a cleaner just to take care of some of the bigger jobs can really make a difference to keeping the home together whilst you focus on you and baby.

You could look into a postnatal doula who are there to mother the mother. They are the advocates for postnatal self care. The postnatal fairy godmother if you will. Postnatal doula’s are self employed individuals and offer a variety of different options to help your recovery. They are experts in this field. They will be there to help look after baby so you can get that shower, some can help with baby wearing and breastfeeding. Many will offer to bring a homecooked meal and some offer to do some light cleaning to take a load off. They are also amazing emotional support and a fountain of knowledge. A postnatal doula will be a pro at helping a mother recover from a c-section.

Recovery after a c-section usually takes around 6 weeks for the outer stitching to heal and 12 weeks for the inner stitching to heal. It is a long process. The most important thing is looking after you and your baby. The general advice is not to lift anything heavier than your baby and as your baby grows and gains, as will your strength. You do not owe it to anyone to bounce back.

In an evergrowing digital age language matters more than ever. I have absolutely made my mistakes in the past with language and what I’ve said. I’ve said silly things, things that have been taken completely out of context and sometimes I’ve said things which have made me rethink and actually check my priviledge. I do have to acknowledge that I am in a priviledged position as well as part of some marginalised groups.

My Priveledge and Marginalisation

My priveledge comes from being white and cis-gendered, the marginalisation comes from being a woman, being fat, being working class (at one point having lived in a hostel) and being a mother. Four groups of people that are frequently judged, oppressed, not taken seriously and questioned all of the time. What I do absolutely realise though is compared to other marginalised voices mine aren’t as vital because I already have that underline priveledge. Over time it’s something I’ve had to kind of push to one side, being in a position of priveledge is not really an attack of character and can be used to pull other more marginalised voices through. We need to open the conversation.

Always Period Products

Recently, Always decided to remove the venus symbol from their packaging to make it a little bit more appropriate for all menstruators. There seems to have been a real issue across the internet for this where people are frustrated that only ‘females’ have periods and these are products are only bought by women. There are even certain voices saying how Trans rights are being taken more seriously than women’s rights. It frustrates me because Feminism and equality is all inclusive of gender, and it includes all marginalised voices that have had to deal with inequality due to their gender. This means it includes women, dodging toxic masclunity and alpha male culture and anyone that identifies within then LGTBQ+ community. Menstruators are not just women. Menstruators are bleeders as some are intersex, some only have some of the female reproductive genetalia which causes periods, some are trans people who still need and deserve the same amount of dignity and healthcare when bleeding.

Why should we use all inclusive language for people that have periods?

When I first heard the term menstruators instead of women that have periods was an occasion I needed to check my priveledge. I’m also not a consumer of Always products opting for resuable cloth pads and currently looking for the right menstrual cup for my cycle and body. I think this move is a good thing. I think people are quick to jump ahead and say something is inclusive for women and get angry because it comes from a place of priveledge from never having dealt with gender dysphoria. The anger is coming from people that do not identify as intersex, trans or LGTBQ+. It’s mostly coming from cis women and a few men who feel they need to be the shining hero (feminisim has no place for shining cis white male heroes, it needs allies and cis men to pull marginalised voices through)

Why pronouns matter and why we should start paying attention

How would you like it if you were continously called the wrong name or associated as the wrong gender? If you were consistently reffered to as a gender that you actually didn’t feel a part of? I know I wouldn’t like it. I am very happy to be identified as she/her because I very much identify as female. But this isn’t about me. I accept that I am cis gendered but I am very much an ally for all and any that identify as a different gender and embrace being non-binary. I accept that gender is a spectrum and I want to see more LGTBQ+ voices pulled through because the more we see it the less sensationalised it is. All of these voices matter.

In the past I have brushed this off and said “oh it’s too hard” but actually it really isn’t. It’s not hard to ask what someone prefers to be called, we are just changing the question a little bit. Have we really got so stuck in our ways that changing the question is just too much effort? Refusing to accept that others may identify differently to what you have been brought up to believe is lazy. Radical even. So unthinkable. It’s only going to be unthinkable to people that don’t have a clue what it’s like to be in that marginalised group though isn’t it? Because thats what priveledge is, never having to be in a position where you are oppressed or judged because of a part of you that is just you. When we refuse to call someone by their preffered pronouns, or accept that they identify differently and prefer they/them (or others) we are refusing to accept and acknowlege who they are.

Why language is more important than ever

The way we speak to people is really important and it’s not about being a snowflake generation or being too politically correct. It’s just about being a decent person. It’s about accepting and acknowledging that people are different. We are quick to say to our own children that being unique and different is not something to be worried about, that everyone is different and no one is the same but it’s incredibly contradictory to then put a boundary on how different someone is allowed to be before it’s deemed socially unacceptable. I don’t think this is fair.

Cis gendered people need to learn and accept that gender is spectrum based and many people identify differently. We need to be allies and we need to raise allies. This is why I think the improvement to include LGTBQ+ families and identities into relationship and sex education is vital. Big changes start with teaching children different social constructs so this is absolutely vital to breaking down barriers, smashing the patriarchy and creating all inclusive allies.

Becoming debt free has been a real focus this year and it will continue to be a focus for next year too however I am pleased to say I have done really well this year. We have paid of, I would say, at least half of our debts and hire purchases now which is fantastic progress. I gave myself two years to be completely debt free so we sill have until 31st December 2020 to reach that goal. I think we’ve made great progress.

In July this year we completed a hirepurchase agreement which was costing us £17 a week. It was one of those quite big spends that we couldn’t really change which was quite frustrating. The second hire purchase will finish at the end of this month which is about £6 a week. It’s not a big difference but it’s a completed hire purchase and it will finally be done.

I have now closed around six debt accounts too of varrying amounts and I currently have three left. I’ve had to continously adjust the amount I can afford to pay back each month but I am still on track to close two more debt accounts in December as they are both under £200. It does make me feel a bit sick still thinking that I have to pay out £400 between now and the end of the year as the payments are a little bigger than I can afford but the feeling I get when I see those debt accounts completely closed will trump that feeling.

That will then leave me with four credit cards and one last debt, which has been the biggest one for ages.The biggest debt is our water rates and every six months has around £200 or so added to it from the water company. It’s currently about £1400 and I’m only able to pay £5 a week right now as I focus on bigger payments for the other debts. I am then going to focus on my smallest credit card which has a balance of around £175 before increasing my weekly payments to £15 a week.

The credit cards are hard because there are times when we need to use them however, the balances on them is now quite high and I am keen to spend 2020 clearing those balances as much as possible. I do want to close the water account though so I will have to do a new budget at the start of the year and work out exactly what I can afford to pay where.

Here is my update:

Credit Card 1 – owe £175
Credit Card 2 – owe £650
Credit Card 3 – owe £950
Credit Card 4 – owe £2400
Debt 1: £140
Debt 2: £199
Debt 3: £1400
SimplyBe Account: £150 – currently paying £50 a month back on this one which I’m happy with as it’s clearing it nicely and I have a balance should I need any clothes – being plus size means my size isn’t usually stocked in stores.

The amount has fluctuated through the year as I expected it would. I’ve had credit limit increases on my card which seemingly have come at the right time for when we’ve been short and frustatingly that balance has increased because of the smaller, regular purchases. We also have not stuck to some of my budgetting tips, meal plans, shopping lists and have had some more extravagant purchases which we really shouldn’t have done. However, I don’t want to feel guilty about that because there’s no point to it. What I want to do is celebrate the fact that I have closed some debt accounts, we have closed hire purchases agreements and will have another two debt accounts closed by the end of the year.

It’s been really hard some months and I want to make it much more mangable for us next year. I am going to start putting money into a savings account each week again from the start of the year. I think I will start with £5 a week at first and then as more debt accounts and credit card balances come down I will increase this. Ideally I’d like to have saved around £250 by September to go towards Christmas.

I have two big financial goals for 2020. The first is to get rid of the water account debt of £1400 and the second is to clear the balance to within £100 on Credit Card 3. We have a cruise booked in December 2020 and I really want to put Credit Card 3 as my cruise account card. I won’t use the entire balance but I think it will be better to budget if I have some spare funds. Adam is going to link his own credit card to his cruise account so we can take it in turns paying any extras.

My other financial goals for 2020 are as follows:

Earn an average of £2080 a month through self employment, freelancing, blog and social media work
Pay off my two smaller credit cards and keep the balance under £50 on Credit Card 1 and £100 on Credit Card 2
Stop spending on Credit Card 4 and gradually increase payments as and when I can
Have £500 saved for Christmas
Add an additional £300 to my private pension fund throughout the year

We want to try and clear everything as much as we possibly can between now and the end of 2020 so we can start 2021 with as clean a slate as possible and focus the first six months on saving as much money as we possibly can to be able to move house. I would absolutely love to be able to save £6000 in those first six months of 2021 as it could make a huge difference to moving house. This would be enough to cover the first three months rent on our ideal type of property, deposit and fees, and then hopefully some moving costs too. In an ideal world, we would want six months worth of rent saved but e will just have to see how much we can clear next year first.

Celebrating Felix’s first birthday at the start of the month was really nice. We had a great day at Legoland as a family and got on a few rides. The weather was nice too which was great. This last year has been so busy and watching Felix grow, change and develop has been a real priveledge. He is such a happy little boy and has a lot of love to give.

Physical Development

Felix isn’t walking yet. I thought he might be by now but I think he just realises how quick he can get places by crawling. I know he will get there when he’s ready but it does make going out quite tough sometimes as he wants to be out of the pushchair, highchair or not being held. However, it’s not always safe to pop him down. He can cruise around the furniture with ease. He can pull himself up, reach down for things he drops with one hand, squat and get back up again. He is now climbing up and down the sofa. We are trying to teach him to climb back down backwards to keep him safe. He can also get himself out of his highchair straps and tries to get out of there too.

His pincer grip is getting stronger and he has mimicked clapping two objects together. He loves to knock down towers of bricks too. He very much plays with his toys now and of course one of his favourite games is throwing something down for you to pick back up again. He will hand me objects or try to put his dummy in my mouth which often ends with him punching me in the nose! He now likes to discard things by throwing them behind his back and is starting to try and put things together like putting the lid on his bottle.

Social Development

He is making lots of funny noises with his mouth at the moment like clicking his tongue and doing a sort of fish face. He has also started giving kisses to his teddies and to me, usually in the morning when I get him out of bed. Felix is constantly chattering away which is so lovely to hear. He is really practising all the sounds and shouts, screeches and has had more moments of that big belly laugh. He sometimes nods and shakes his head if we ask him questions but it’s usually with a smile and then the opposite reaction straight away. He does make us all laugh.