5 Tips For Creating a Postpartum Health Plan

Being a new mom is a delicate balancing act. Between caring for your newborn and keeping up with house chores, often mom’s health gets put on the back-burner. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why so many new moms struggle with postpartum depression and stress. In order to be at your best, most productive self, it’s imperative that you prioritize your own health and create a postpartum health plan to stay on track. This article will cover how to do just that.

1. Create a (Loose) Schedule

By creating a loose daily schedule, you’ll be able to prioritize your daily health goals surrounding your diet and exercise goals. By allowing flexibility in that schedule, you’ll be more likely to attain those daily goals even as your baby’s schedule changes as it usually does.

So how do you create a flexible schedule? Instead of making a goal to exercise at 8am every day, set your goal to workout in the morning between baby’s feeding time or nap time. This way if your baby gets hungry at 8am, you can still fit in a workout sometime before noon.

2. Create a Healthy Diet Plan

For new moms, your diet is a critical component to both your physical recovery as well as your mental well-being. If you’re breastfeeding, your diet becomes even more important because now you’re eating for two. By creating a postpartum diet plan, you can ensure you’re getting the proper nutrition you need to make a full recovery and feel your best. Without a diet plan, it’s easy to slip into the habit of eating food that’s convenient (and usually not the healthiest) when the stresses of caring for a newborn get heavy.

3. Be Realistic

Most new moms are eager to bounce back to their pre-pregnancy weight after delivery. Many struggle with body image issues, leading some to adopt unhealthy diets and intense workout routines when their body isn’t ready. It’s important that you are realistic with your health goals and you don’t try to push yourself too hard. Embracing fad diets and heavy workout routines will do little to speed up the recovery process and could actually do more to harm your health than help it. Setup realistic goals for your postpartum health and know that it usually takes 6-12 months before you’ll fully recover to your pre-pregnancy weight.

4. Get Some Rest!

Between caring for your baby, cleaning, cooking, and feeding, it can be easy for a new mom to feel overwhelmed with all the responsibilities. That feeling can be compounded considering your body is still in recovery during the first few months after birth. It is incredibly important for new moms to feel well rested in order to manage the stresses of caring for a newborn. You should prioritize this, and try to squeeze a nap in when your baby sleeps during the day in order to stay refreshed and energized. Cleaning the house can wait!

5. Stay Active

Just like light exercise was recommended during pregnancy, it’s just as important during the postpartum period. Going on daily walks with your baby and/or partner can help you regain muscle, rebuild cardio, and the fresh air can have a huge positive impact on your mental well-being.

These are the main things to take into consideration when formulating your postpartum health plan. It’s helpful if you write down both the result goals and action goals that are a part of your pregnancy health plan and share them with your partner. Doing this will make your goals more tangible and hold you accountable, which increases your likelihood of attaining them. There are apps for new moms that can help you record these goals and even track them on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.