When is the best time to start postpartum recovery?

In fact, there is no absolutely unified "best start time". The core principles are to follow the dissection, start as needed, and err on the side of slowness rather than rush. Most low-intensity recovery exercises can be gradually arranged from the day after delivery. The core depends on your current body tolerance. Don't stick to the "3 days, 7 days, 42 days" dead node mentioned on the Internet.

Nowadays, two schools of thought are quarreling on the Internet. One school advocates that "the sooner you recover, the better the effect." You should wear a belly band and do Kegels right after giving birth, and you should deliberately close your belly even when walking.

I accompanied my sister to give birth to her baby in the maternity hospital last summer. She had a natural birth without side incision and slight tear. Two hours after the birth, the nurse helped her to go to the ground to urinate. That night, the nurse taught her to lie down and do abdominal breathing for 5 minutes, which helped promote uterine contraction and expel lochia. After two days of doing this, she said that the pain in her stomach was much lessened.； But another mother in the same ward had an emergency cesarean section. Even turning over in the first three days after delivery caused pain from the wound. Not to mention doing training, she was sweating even if she sat for more than two minutes. It was just too much to force her to speed up her recovery at this time.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that you have to wait until the wound is completely painless and your whole body feels comfortable before you move. Just match the corresponding intensity at different stages, and there is no need to rush to jump to another level. In the first week after childbirth, regardless of the cesarean section, the core task is to rest and eliminate lochia. At most, you can do some toe grasping, ankle rotation, and slow and deep abdominal breathing that you can do while lying down. The intensity is about the same as if you were lying down and checking your mobile phone and moving a few times, it is completely effortless. Think about it, the uterus that has just been given birth is like a balloon that has been inflated for ten months and is still in the process of slowly shrinking. If you shake or pressurize the abdomen hard at this time, wouldn't it be adding burden to it? A fan once told me that she listened to the words of an internet celebrity during her confinement period and started doing sit-ups on the third day after giving birth in an attempt to slim down her belly. As a result, her lochia, which was almost clear, increased. She went to the hospital for a checkup and found that her uterus was stimulated, which delayed her recovery.

The 42 days postpartum that everyone often talks about is actually an important reference point. It does not mean that you can start to recover on this day, but you need to go for a postpartum review at this time to confirm the reset of the pelvic floor muscles, rectus abdominis muscles, and uterus. If there are no problems, you can slowly add targeted training such as Kegels and core activation. If it is found that the rectus abdominis is separated by more than 2 fingers, don't do exercises such as crunches and planks blindly, otherwise it will only make the separation more serious.

There are also many merchants who say that "half a year after childbirth is the golden recovery period, after which there will be no effect." This is purely to create anxiety. My cousin's baby has already been in kindergarten, and she has always had urinary leakage problems before. Last year, she insisted on repairing her pelvic floor muscles for three months. Now she skips rope and runs with her baby. It is just that the body's metabolism is fast in the first half of the postpartum period, and the hormone level has not yet completely dropped, so the recovery efficiency will be higher. It is definitely not too late to start after this time.

In fact, after all is said and done, your own body is the most accurate yardstick. If you feel relaxed after doing any exercise, with no discomfort, and no abnormal bleeding, then you can continue doing it. If it hurts for a long time after doing it, your back is sore that you can't straighten up, or there is an increase in lochia, stop immediately. Don't force yourself to catch up with the progress bar. After all, recovery is a slow process, and being steady is better than anything else.