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In our last post we talked about the use of essential oils before and during pregnancy. I hope that the specific essential oils we talked about (lavender, peppermint, and bergamot) have already begun to balance your health and wellbeing. Integrating essential oils into your life can help create a healthier environment for your body and growing baby while relieving or lessening some of your pregnancy related discomforts. Let's jump in to essential oil use during birth and the postpartum period! Essential Oil Use During Birth Labor is defined as "hard physical work". Your body was designed for the process of bringing your baby earthside. Without any intervention, most women will fare extremely well. Essential oils, although not necessary in the birthing room, can help in a variety of ways.
Peppermint essential oil also works to stimulate urination. For some women, bladders may not release easily shortly after birth. Simply putting a few drops of peppermint essential oil into the toilet and sitting down should do the trick.
Essential Oil Use During Postpartum What a delicate time! Do all you can to focus on your physical and emotional healing. You just brought a human into the world through an intense, draining, but beautiful experience! Beyond resting, staying hydrated, and keeping visitors at bay until breastfeeding is fully established, the use of essential oils may also help speed and or ease your recovery. "Medicated" pads are wonderful for healing your perineum and surrounding areas after birth. Fill a 16 mason jar with alcohol free witch hazel. Depending on the size your jar, include 5-10 drops of lavender essential oil. Shake or stir and either pour or spray onto large overnight size pads. Place “medicated” pads in a single layer into bpa free gallon freezer bags and put into the freezer. You can switch out the pads as often as you like in your early days postpartum. Both the witch hazel and lavender essential oil are antiseptics and promote healing of open wounds while reducing inflammation. Exhaustion may also effect your postpartum period. Forget your to-do’s and visitors and focus on you and baby. These early moments pass all too quickly, and you won’t get these precious days of bonding back! Sleep or rest when baby sleeps and have your partner do skin to skin with baby while you shower and meet your own needs. Even if you do protect your time and space, you will still need to adjust to the responsibilities of caring for the every need of another person. This can be tiring, to say the least. Remember when you used that glorious citrus smelling oil during pregnancy to fight the anxiety and general sluggishness? Bring that bottle out again! Using bergamot essential oil is a wonderful way to increase your energy and uplift your mood by calming the nervous system. Breathe in deeply, straight from the bottle!
You may have noticed that the essential oils I recommend for use during birth and the postpartum period are the same essential oils I suggested in the previous post for preconception and pregnancy use. This is intentional. There are hundreds of wonderful essential oils with outstanding properties that you can choose from, but my intention is to simplify your options. Here's to utilizing what the earth has to offer us for focus, healing, and health! Resources: http://www.healthychild.org/respiratory-risk-before-the-first-breath/ The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy Comments are closed.
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H A P P Y D A Y
A U T H O R : 
Kellie Bailey
- wife of 13 years mother of 3 certified doula educator collective director |
