New Mom Question and Answers: Postpartum Depression, Pumping and Sex

Length of PPD, Painful Pumping, Sex Discomfort and More

This week's New Mom Question and Answer covers pumping, sharing the load of baby care, painful sex, postpartum depression, communication and more. Read on.[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHw1RkVZq20&w=854&h=480]

New Mom Question 1: Pain while pumping, what do I do?

All right, you guys, I'm not a lactation consultant, but I was an exclusive pumper for 13 months. So I know a little bit about this. If you're experiencing pain while pumping, there are a few things you want to look at.

My first thing that I encourage you to do is check your flange size. So the flange is the part on the outside of the pump that actually suctions on to your breast. Pumps come with a standard flange, but this might not be the right size for your breasts and your nipples. And so you want to check the flange size. You can look online for a flange check. And you may need to get a different size because if it is too big, it's pulling too much, and it's not working appropriately. If it's too small, it's going to be tight and cause some pain.

Photo from Medela

Potential Pumping Problems:

If that is not the solution. I want you to look into thrush, make sure that you're not dealing with that. And also look in to mastitis, just make sure you're not dealing with clogged ducks, and engorgement. And if you continue to have pain while pumping, try to identify where the pain is, is it deeper in your breast? Is it your nipple, and this is something you might want to talk specifically to a lactation consultant about if the flange doesn't do the difference. And if there's not, you know, an underlying issue like thrush and mastitis, one last thing you might want to look at is what kind of suction you're using on your pump.So if you are also nursing, you want this suction to mimic baby. I know how tempting it can be to up the suction, to try to decrease pumping times and I've been guilty of that too. But if you are having too high of a suction and too high the speed that could just be too uncomfortable for your breastRelated: Boob Problems After Birth New Mom Question 2: Tips on Making Sex Less Painful, Especially When You are NursingI love that she brings up being a nursing mama because what this means is that often the hormones that are helping you to produce the breast milk are also decreasing your libido and decreasing the moisture that your vagina is able to make when you are getting in the mood or starting into sex. And so my number one tip y'all is more lube, lube lube lube, I'm going to put below the link for my favorite lube, Coco lube, and you want to be super liberal with your lube. And don't feel any shame or weirdness about that, because your body is just not in a place to make as much as it did before.

Pelvic Floor Therapist

The second thing if you're experiencing painful sex is to go to a pelvic floor therapist, this might be a physical therapist or an occupational therapist, often you can get a referral from your ob or midwife or just directly contact the therapist on your own. So some of these are insurance based, some of them are private pay, some of them are coming to your home, some of them are going to the office. But there's so much that happens in that little region during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. And in many parts of the world, pelvic floor therapy is standard care. 

Rebuild the Pelvic Muscle

So it's not weird at all, if you need to go and have someone help you to rebuild that structure in that muscle and tissue after giving birth.If you want more information on this and just postpartum sex in general, I actually do interview a variety of people from a therapist, to a pelvic floor therapist to historians and doulas and more in my back in the sack, postpartum sex ecourse.

New Mom Question 3: Bleeding from C-Section Scar 3 Weeks After Birth

At postpartum together, we call c-sections belly birth, because you also gave birth, it just came out of your belly. Reminder/Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I am a coach who focuses on the postpartum/new mom period. My advice is from research and anecdotal, but not from a medical degree.

What Bleeding is Normal?

So this momma is saying that at three weeks, she's still having a small amount of bleeding. Now, I did check in with this mama a little bit more and it seems like it was fairly normal bleeding. When you look into this repair this recovery, it's about four to six weeks when you want that bleeding to just substantially decrease or go away. This is usually the time where you have that postpartum checkup as well to check your C-section scar. But I say this also- if you feeling like something is out of place, if you're feeling worried, it's totally fine to check in with your provider. Send them a picture. Ask them if these things are normal. Never feel like you're being a burden or that you shouldn't be able to check in with your provider as you are healing.Related: Belly birth scar massage

New Mom Question 4: Can Postpartum Depression go Off and On Through the First Year?

Yes, yes. And yes, you are postpartum which is not just depression, postpartum is the season after baby, you are a postpartum for a year-ish after baby. This means that your hormones, your neurological system, all these things can take a year or even up to 18 months to recover. We see that postpartum depression can onset up to a year postpartum because of the changes of hormones.Read More: Baby Blues or PPD, How to Tell the DifferenceYou may have weaning hormones- hormones related to nursing. It is important to know that this you might see some highs, you may see some lows, you may feel like you are having this off and on postpartum depression through that first year.

Providers, Medication, Conversation around PPD

I say that to also say continue to check with your provider. If you are using medication, continue your usage of medication and don't just like go cold turkey on that if you're feeling good for a few days. If you're seeing a therapist, continue to bring that to your therapist and know that you're having ongoing changes. Postpartum depression is common, it is something that we don't need to be ashamed of, we don't need to leave it as taboo. And so if you are facing this, continue to talk to your provider, but know that you're probably going to have some highs and some lows throughout that first year-ish.Related: How to find a therapist

New Mom Question 5: How Can I Make Baby Responsibilities Shared Between a Stay at Home Mom and 40 Hour Work Week Partner?

This is a really tough one that goes into so many different layers of communication and scheduling and understanding what it actually takes to take care of a baby. So I encourage my clients who are also stay at home moms to think about that as your 40 hour a week job and then your partner has their outside of the home 40 hour a week job.

Block Scheduling

Now how do we look at the in-between and the other things that need to be done? This doesn't mean that stay at home mom is also the default parent all night, all weekend and all the time. We don't want to fall into that default mode. What I use with some of my clients and I actually do one-on-ones is block scheduling. This means that we aren't just kind of wondering who's on or hoping that the partner takes over. This means that we are being intentional and proactive about our time about who's in charge; who's kind of the default parent. This means that we can enjoy our time. We can schedule in time to be together, we can really schedule in meaningful family time. But this means that we don't have this default, where the stay at home mom is also the person who's picking up the slack at 9pm, or the middle of the night or the weekends. Be really intentional about your communication, be really intentional about how you split that time outside of the 40 hour work week. And also honor the fact that being a stay at home mom is really freaking hard and we can count that as our work. But that doesn't mean that our work is 80 or 120 hours a week. This means that we honor that time, we honor our partners’ other work time. And then we think about that in between and all the gaps that needs to be filled, and how we proactively fill that together.Related: Communication after babyThank you guys for submitting your questions this week on Instagram you can always head over there to submit questions for the week.