Tummy Team Prenatal Core Week 6: Postpartum Recovery

Focus of the Week: Postnatal Plan

I really appreciate Kelly bringing this up. After the baby is born don’t obsess about recovery in the beginning. The important thing, is to connect with your baby. Splinting afterwards is helpful, if you find it comfortable. If not, don’t worry about it and pick it up later.

I probably haven’t gotten as much out of this program as I would have liked, but I really like Kelly’s reminder to integrate the various stretches and abdominal engagements throughout things you are already doing after baby is born. When you nurse the baby, when you change the baby, when you pee. Since the last week or two of this program I’ve mostly been doing integrated motion. I have trouble counting and remembering to get everything in, but I try to use certain triggers throughout the day to help me. (Sitting for meals, brushing my teeth, standing in the kitchen, etc.)

Transitioning back to fitness. Fit2B Studio continues to be my primary plan. It will be hard to really slow down and take it from the beginning but those Foundational Five will probably be all that I can manage in the beginning anyway.

Update

Since I originally wrote this post, I had my baby!

Simon Edward Vitaro was born on Tuesday September 15. (It’s hard to believe it’s already been more than a week). He came nine days early and after a 19 hour labor, which is the longest of my three. I’m sure I’ll be sharing more details in the future, but I just wanted to briefly highlight how The Tummy Team helped during my labor and delivery. By the end of my pregnancy I was splinting almost constantly which I continued during my labor, including pushing. I believe this helped a lot by taking pressure of the muscles and ligaments. I also made good use of belly breaths during contractions, at least until close to the end. I’ll admit that when the time to push came, I wasn’t thinking about proper pushing form and technique, it just kind of happened and very quickly. So hopefully I didn’t totally destroy my core as my little boy entered the world at top speed.

I’ve also been splinting postpartum and feel as though things are shrinking down much faster than my last two. Knowing that the splint is helping to hold my core together while I recover is giving me some peace of mind as I mostly focus on rest and taking care of my baby.

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