I had a good number of things available and prepared for Postpartum. Until you are in it and your body has gone through the process of delivering a baby, you won’t actually know what it is that you want, need, and like.
There were some things I thought I was going to hate and ended up loving and visa versa. It took using them and understanding what my body was doing in order to respond appropriately.
For instance, whether or not you have tearing will influence the process of caring for that region. I had a little episiotomy so wiping was a big no and there was more healing that my skin had to do. I am not a healthcare professional so as always, consult with your doctor or midwife for advice on using any of these products.
Here are a few things that helped me get through postpartum and some of these I even give as gifts to expecting mommas:
Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links which means if you purchase an item through these links I earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
1. Frida Mom Disposable Underwear
I thoroughly expected to not like having to wear a mesh underwear/diaper situation. But these mesh disposable underwear with a pad was what worked really well for me.
If they got dirty I could just throw them out but if not I could just replace the pad and didn’t have to worry about ruining my clothes
I foolishly only bought 1 pack so do yourself a favor and get 2 or 3.
2. Pads
In the beginning, I used level 5 absorption night time pads for maximum coverage while I was dealing with a normal but heavy amount of bleeding. I was also laid down resting a lot because first of all you should and second because sitting straight up was not an option with my stitches so the pad needed to be full coverage.
My first mistake was not having enough of a supply of the smaller sizes to move into after that initial phase of heavy bleeding.
My next mistake was continuing to buy small packs of pads thinking they would become unnecessary soon so I wouldn’t need very many. Do yourself a favor and just buy a lot before you even have the baby. Prepare for potentially 6 weeks of pads for not only bleeding but other fluids and discharge that takes its time to work its way out.
3. Healing foam
Frida mom has a healing foam that I liked to put on my pad that I feel lived up to its name.
I didn’t do it every time I went to the bathroom but a couple times a day I would put enough on a pad to cover the area. It also provided a little bit of cool relief to my stitches.
4. Sitz bath spray
This stuff is the closest you get to magic. There are a couple different ways to do this kind of thing. One is an actual sitz bath (this is the one I got for a friend as part of her baby shower gift, the herbal remedy and the sitz bath for toilet seats), another is to put the stuff into a peri bottle and rinse the area with it. However, this stuff just came in a bottle ready to go that you just spray on the area and leave it.
I didn’t use it at first because I didn’t really think something like that would work. I wasn’t even sure what it was at first, it was just in with a bunch of leftover stuff my sister gave me from her postpartum journey.
When I did decide to use it I was pretty taken aback by how quickly I felt a change in the area of my stitches. I had been struggling with the pain and still couldn’t sit straight up because of it. Within about 12 hours of finally using this, I felt markedly different.
It would have been quite the coincidence if the sitz spray had nothing to do with it. I continued to use it a few times a day for a while.
5. Peri bottle
The peri bottle helped provide some relief to the area with the warm water but it also helped the hygiene aspect.
Before getting pregnant I never wore pads because I hated the way it felt and how quickly I felt dirty and in need of a shower. I felt like tampons helped me stay clean and so I always used them.
You can’t use tampons during postpartum so having no real choice but to use pads was a whole experience that I was not a fan of. However, having the peri bottle helped because it allowed me to take a mini shower and feel cleaner throughout the day without having to wipe so much at an already sore area.
I did use the given one because it was set up and ready for me after the baby was born but I had bought the Frida mom one beforehand. I do wish I had used that one as I think it would have helped me to reach more and be even cleaner but I was so out of it and unable to do extra things. I just didn’t have it in me to go looking for where it went and get it ready for use.
What I didn’t like:
Frida mom ice pack pads and the breast gel packs for hot and cold.
I really felt like I needed to put this here because I was so thoroughly disappointed by these products. When I got a few of the ice pack pads from my sister’s leftover stuff I was pretty happy because they seemed like such a cool and useful product.
These were not useful. All of the cold basically fell to the bottom of the pad in the direction of the underwear. I basically had to sit in a way that hurt my stitched area to feel any cold and that just hurt. Even if I did that I barely felt any cold to really make a difference.
It was much more useful to just get a gel ice pack and put that on the area.
And the gel packs….don’t hold any of the coolness or the heat you put into it. Even for that brief moment where you can feel the temperature difference with your hand, it is impossible to get that through even the thinnest protective layer and make any impact on your breast. You also can’t put it directly on the skin because that wouldn’t feel good either.
In Summary
These products are the ones that made the most impact on my postpartum recovery and ones that created a lot of disappointment…
Everybody is different and the type of birth you experience will have an impact on the items you will need. Some of these may not be the ideal products for you and work as well as they did for me and that is okay but I swear by them and like I said these things make for very helpful baby shower gifts.
Comment below the postpartum product you swear by and if you have used any of the ones I have listed then I would love to hear your experience.