Thursday 24 February 2011

Postpartum mysticism

I watched Christina Applegate on Ellen yesterday, she of Veronica Corningstone fame. She has a new film out, but I won't be going to see it due to the presence of a 7 month old babyand a distinct lack of sitters within 4000 miles (our fault, not theirs!).

Anyway, she has just had a baby. Really just had a baby, as in 3 weeks ago! Crikey! She was talking about the mystical land of 'postpartum' about which no woman ever speaks. This is true; everyone tells you about the pregnancy, about the birth and how to look after your new bundle of joy, but the details about what goes on after the labour can be described as sketchy at best. There was a small section at the back of my pregnancy book, an appendix, I guess, which discussed terms such as episiotomy repair, perineum tenderness, engorgement blah, blah, blah. But when you are focused entirely on labour & delivery, you gloss over these fancy sounding words and think yeah, yeah, that's for another time and anyway, it won't be worse than the labour right?!

WRONG! Ms Applegate was completely right no-one tells you about postpartum, and I think the reason is that if they did, the human race would immediately dry up and become extinct.

In reality, Christina didn't actually have to say anything factual about how gruelling it is, I could see it in her face; the inward wince as she gently lowered herself into the chair and rearranged herself into a 'comfortable' position (ha!).

I think she's amazing for going on national television just 3 weeks after giving birth. I'm sure she felt up to it at the time and she looked fantastic. 3 weeks after having Imogen, I still couldn't shower properly and looking back, that time was pretty much a big blur. My guess is that she will look back in a few months and wonder if she did, actually go on the show at all, or was it a dream?!


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This week I am loving Layla Grayce www.laylagrayce.com a stylish boutique website for women & children. My favourites are these delicate polka-dot wall letters to spell out a child's name and this cutesy growth chart which can be personalised.

Just need to save my pennies now!

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