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Trust your intuition

[00:00:00] All right, mamas. So I'm here on labor and delivery with marks on my face from my. I'm waiting for someone who is pushing, and I was doing rounds and several of my patients, the theme was the same, which it often is when it's postpartum. And my theme is self-care, right? Which is really important. I wanna be sure that I tell you all the things that you need to remember when you're about to go home from having a baby. 

Anyway. But one of my biggest nuggets and themes is this. We as women are often taught to not listen to our intuition. Oh, that's not what you really want. Oh, that's not what you should really think. Oh, you think you want this, but you really want something else. Right. It is very pervasive in our society, and it's often from well-meaning sources, whether it's family, friends, partners, spouses. 

Coworkers media, right? I think that our, our true intuition is not what we are, um, honed to listen to. Now, here's the rub. What ends up happening is that [00:01:00] in an effort to combat against that, I think many of us end up saying, well, I'm just gonna listen to my intuition. I'm just gonna listen to like what I want against all of the. 

People who actually maybe are schooled and learned in it. Mm-hmm. And that can be a tricky business as well. For example, when you go home postpartum, you might feel great. You might be a doer who is used to in your normal life, getting all kinds of things done and being very, very, very, um, compulsive and um, efficient. 

Right. That's wonderful. But here's what I offer you. When you have one baby, two babies, four babies, however many babies you have, and your home postpartum, your inclination if you feel okay, cuz many of you might feel horrible and you have to be resting, that's actually very common too. I felt that way with my first, but with my second and third, I actually felt pretty good. 

So my inclination with my second was to say, I know they're all telling me to rest cuz I had just had a C-section, but I feel good. And I had even told my. You should rest because you need [00:02:00] to nurture yourself. But in my mind, arrogant doctor, I was like, but I'm different. I can get away with things and so postpartum, even though I had a C-section and I had an extra kid at home, I was starting to do because my intuition was telling me that I felt fine and I could like clean up and do baby announcements and do all the things and be really a. 

Efficient with my time because maternity leave for a working mom is like, you gotta get everything done you don't normally get done. And guess what? That was wrong. First of all, it didn't lead to any harm, but it certainly made my recovery a little bit harder. I started getting a little bit of oozing from my incision cuz I wasn't resting. 

And what it really taught me is this, what I fooled myself into thinking was that it was my intuition. My intuition, which I'm supposed to be listening to. I've taught myself to listen. My intuition is telling me that I can be more active than other. But actually that was not my intuition. That was society's subtle symptoms and signs to all of us to be productive, to constantly produce. 

Whether that production is, you feel okay despite the fact that you just grew a human and [00:03:00] therefore, go ahead, do baby announce it's cleanup. Start to learn how to cook all the things you don't normally do, she, because you're working so much. Right? That was, that was my intuition, but that wasn't my intuition. 

If I really listened to my intuition, my intuition might have said something like, it took you 10 months to grow this. And you just went through four miscarriages before this baby, another vaginal delivery before this baby, two miscarriages. Prior to that, this is gonna be your last kid. By the way, it wasn't my last kid, but I thought it was. 

Um, and you work a lot and your body had to grow a human, an extra human, using all the resources that you've given it, which is probably not enough healthy nutrition cuz you work so much. Not enough healthy exercise because you work so much. The time intuition would tell me to rest and nest and enjoy time with your toddler and infant. 

Not that it's always so enjoyable, but to also just allow yourself to heal. And so by my third, I smartened up. I was almost 41, and I just sat in front of that TV with that little baby girl and let my boys sit next to me. I would do a little bit of cooking, [00:04:00] but really nothing aggressive, and it was such a more enjoyable time, which doesn't mean it was sunshine and roses. 

There were times where I hated. Because it was still exhausting. But again, I urge you owe humans with uteruses who maybe have just birthed a child, listen to your true intuition, not your intuition that has been infiltrated by social media and the societal world around us that wants us to constantly be productive. 

That is not our intuition. Our intuition would tell us to allow other people to help us, nurture us, nurture yourself. Take care of that baby only. And don't be the only person to take care of that baby. If you can afford help, pay for help. And if you can't afford help, you can sign any trustworthy human with arms that you can get to come help you so that your only role is to be there for the baby when you can, but also to be there for yourself because you need to, and too many of us don't do this. 

So please, please, please, I urge you, listen to your actual intuition.