Kimberly Ann Johnson - The fourth trimester : a postpartum guide to healing your body, balancing your emotions, and restoring your vitality

Get your body back after baby. Right? Thats what we hear from other moms, that what we see in the mediaperfect images of stunning pregnant celebrities who, mere weeks after delivery, somehow seem to have returned to their impossible prepregnancy bodies. We even tell ourselves, in our confusion about what we should expect postpartum, something along the lines of, if I could just get myself back to what I was before, then everything will be okay. The social pressure to get back to the hot, sexy, non-mom self is enormous. The turbulence caused by the transition into motherhood is real, and yet, we are left totally without any guidance as to how we are to restore ourselves after such a tremendous body and life altering experience.

When you think about what you learned about preparing your body to recover postpartum, what were you told? Is this something your doctor brought up with you? Did your mother, sisters, aunts, or girlfriends share their stories with you in a helpful and positive way that showed you what your game plan should look like? Did anyone help give you perspective on what you should expect for the period of time immediately following the birth around your body, your hormones, your sex life, and your relationship? If any discussion was there, it likely mirrored the conversation around your first period: expect and accept an unavoidable and unchangeable negative physical experience.

So much of the time we use during pregnancy is dedicated to preparing the nursery, planning the baby shower, trying to find clothes that fit your changing body, and dealing with all of the unexpected things that can happen with our bodies, health, and moods during pregnancy, all while making sure you are doing your very best to eat and take care of yourself for the benefit of your baby. It is presented to us as a finite adventure (filled with shopping), which after the birth is then complete. Were encouraged to put so much careful thought and planning into the shower, the nursery, the birth plan. We dont get any guidance on the planning we should be doing to care for the body of the mother who just completed the herculean task of 3-D printing a tiny human for nine months!

We go through the intense, physical experience of delivering that tiny human out into the world safely. We then continue to nourish from our own bodies and nurture that new person with so much intensity and focus. All of this is incredibly depleting of micronutrient stores, and has real impact on the organs, tissues, and fascia of the abdomen, back, and urogenital system. And yet we are left surprised and vulnerable when our health and bodies start to suffer.

This missing conversation not only downplays the largesse of this experience as women, but also undermines our chances of proper recovery. Motherhood is a process of becoming, transforming, and responding, which develops over time and begins in pregnancy. The birth moment is one part of the transformation, but it continues in the fourth trimester and beyond. Yet the support, access to information, and expectations around what is actually needed postpartum leaves much to be desired. What if you were told instead that your pregnancy time is already preparing you emotionally, spiritually, and physically for your transformation into motherhood, and that specific care in the days immediately following the birth are required for your hormonal recovery, your emotional and physical wellbeing both short and long term, and for your ability to be fully present and enjoy the gift of motherhood?

As a functional nutritionist and hormone expert, Ive spent the past seventeen years helping women balance their hormones with food, recover from frustrating and debilitating menstrual disturbances like PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, PMS, and improve their fertility to become the mothers they want to be. Every woman Ive ever spoken with, who has long suffered with symptoms and the conventional failed approaches of medication, surgeries, and synthetic hormone replacement, wishes she had been taught how her body worked and how to deal with her inevitable hormonal fluctuations naturally. As someone who has suffered personally with a hormonal imbalance, I know how reclaiming hormonal health totally transforms every aspect of ones life. That is why I wrote WomanCode. I wanted there to be a guide for women to navigate the inevitable hormonal turbulence that comes with puberty, periods, pregnancy, postpartum, and peri-menopause, so women everywhere could know what I discovered in my research, that foods, not pharmaceuticals, are the way to restore balance and reclaim your vitality, and that an ongoing relationship with your body and organizing your self-care around the innate cyclical patterns of your biochemistry is the only way for women to live their healthiest, happiest lives.

Kimberly Johnson leveraged the protocol in WomanCode to help regain her hormonal balance during her own postpartum healing process. In her book, she is now sharing all of her vast knowledge as a doula and pelvic floor expert to help women understand how to use this postpartum period as a time to partner deeply with our bodies to reclaim our health and set ourselves up for lifelong wellness as mothers. She will encourage you to listen to your intuition that you do in fact need more support and your own body deserves attention after baby because a healthy mother is best for baby.