Following on from my extremely informative interview with Sara from the Postnatal coach and given she had so much helpful advice throughout our chat ,I wanted to separate out her advice for women pre and post pregnancy and share her advice for anyone who didn’t catch our first chat which you can read here.
Have you any tips or advice for women pre and post pregnancy?
I could give tons but I’ll narrow it down to my top five key things that I have learnt from some of my amazing teachers and mentors over the years. I have passed these onto my Moms and if followed they have found them hugely helpful.
- Listen to your body, your pre pregnancy, pregnancy ,labour and postnatal day to day is unique to you. Don’t look and compare yourself to anyone else especially to anyone on social media ,or think you should be at a particular stage because someone else is. If you are feeling good, then get up and move , but do it gradually. Please don’t go from zero to ninety overnight, start off slowly and build up both your strength and fitness overtime. One of my mentors uses the phrase “Move & Monitor” which I love. Move, see how that felt to you and your body, if it felt great do more, if it felt terrible, do less.
- Give yourself enough rest during and after pregnancy, your body is doing the most amazing job, growing another human being and I really don’t think we give our bodies enough credit or appreciation for this. The body needs to do so much healing & repairing in the postnatal period, it can’t be just about losing weight or getting your body or abs back! Yes I know these things are important for Moms, but when the body is ready. Otherwise and trust me I often see Moms going backwards in their recovery which can be extra hard for them to handle mentally. So keep it slow and steady.
- Nutrition wise – Moms are not going to like me saying this, but cut back or get rid of sugar in your diet as much as possible, it just has no benefit whatsoever to you or your baby and it really messes with the hormones, especially cortisol (the stress hormone). With lack of sleep or when dealing with a crying baby, there is enough cortisol going around the body already. I say to Moms all the time to just get it out of the house, if it’s not there you won’t be tempted. Also ask visitors very kindly but strongly not to bring it, if they want to bring you something to eat, bring something nutritiously healthy that will help you heal and make you feel better not something that’s going to make you feel like crap and hungry again soon after.
- Another nutritional tip I give on my program is to start upping the intake of protein for repair and healing of tissues and muscles. So whether you had a tear, c-section or a very straight forward vaginal birth, there is more then likely some connective tissue repair or muscle elasticity to be build up again in these tissues. A quick and fairly easy way to do this is to make (but you can also buy) and drink bone broth as it’s not just full of protein but collagen which is extremely helpful in tissue repair and renewal. You can drink it straight once drained or use it as a stock in your cooking. Feel free to message me if you would like a recipe.
- Also make sure you are getting enough good fats, which also plays a vital role in repair, healing and balancing of hormones. I recommend Moms to start taking a good brand of supplements of Omegaa 3’s, for not only brain health, function, mood and many other benefits but also if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, for the babies brain health.
What I found different from the moment I met Sara is that she cares about not only helping women find happiness with their body post pregnancy but that she also cares and offers guidance on how to be healthy from the inside out. Mental health awareness especially when you are post partumn is something many women feel they cannot talk openly about, but knowing that lots of others have felt the same and normalising post pregnancy mental health awareness can only be a positive. Overall knowing someone that could offer guidance to be a strong mother both mentally and physically was key to my own journey as a new multiples mother.
For more information please see Sara’s site https://www.thepostnatalcoach.com/
DodeestoDaquiris 
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