How to Bridge the Gap between Physical healing & Emotional healing in Postpartum
Let's get started by sharing a bit about you and how it all began.
I am a physical therapist by background. I've been a practising physical therapist for over 10 years now. I am also a yoga teacher and have been practising yoga teaching for like five to seven years, or something around that. But it's always been a part of my life.
I began practising yoga in high school. I took courses in college and then finally got around to taking my yoga teaching training, but, I have been transitioning.
I'm a neuroclinical specialist in physical therapy, and I've been kind of transitioning to more of women's health and public health prior to having my kids, taking a lot of courses and continuing education in that realm.
After having my 2 kids, which was a process in and of itself I really needed to shift a little bit more quickly than I was anticipating, as sometimes happens in motherhood and we will kind of get into that a little bit as we move along, but I had a really hard time having kids in general.
I had to do IVF for both of my babies, It was a rough transition into motherhood, which took me by surprise for several reasons. I think I just wasn't expecting it as someone, who was so excited and really trying to be a mother for as long as I waited to have a child. It took four years until I was able to have my son.
With my daughter, my second, I had a particularly challenging postpartum experience. I suffered from postpartum depression. I had a lot of pelvic pain and I was navigating through that with my background in physical therapy, kind of knowing what I needed to do to recover and knowing how to navigate the health system and what is all available, which can be a completely overwhelming thing.
With that background and knowledge, it was a challenge and struggle and that was what catapulted me into postpartum wellness coaching. Like I said, probably it was sooner than I was initially ready for because I was still kind of in the throes of it myself as I decided to start my business and transition into coaching, but here I am, very happy with the decision and it's something that I think is super, super important and really needed. I needed it for myself, that was the whole reason that I jumped into this transition as quickly as I did.
It just feels so important, especially after you've gone through it and heard a lot of stories from people of the struggle, but we don't know when somebody is struggling in postpartum until, a year or two down the line when people start to open up about it.
I had this really difficult time and I want to change that. I don't want people to feel as alone as I felt, I don't want people to feel overwhelmed, and I really wanted to bridge the gap between the physical recovery that I believe is so much needed and that I believe everybody needs and the emotional recovery piece, that again, I think is really needed.
Diagnosis aside, you know, that both pieces are needed regardless of whether there is a label or a diagnosis on them. I think, you know, the fact that you've had a baby kind of already qualifies you for needing this recovery time again, both emotionally, mentally, and physically. So, I desperately wanted to bridge the gap and blend the two together and also try to make it a little less overwhelming for others, and not have to go to a million different places trying to piecemeal all of your care together, but really do it in a holistic way that kind of checks all of your boxes.
Can you share a bit of your Postpartum care experience?
In my experience, the system that I was in had no support. To find things that I needed in postpartum in the fourth trimester was nearly impossible because I was struggling and I think so many mamas are in that space, they need help. They know they need help, but finding it is like a needle in a haystack and I think what's so hard is admitting that we need help.
They cared for my child and then myself but there were a lot of expectations around motherhood, expectations of who we're going to be and expectations of doing things right and perfectly, and not failing or needing to show weakness. We want to do it all and be the superhero mom we hear about all the time that we need to be because we can juggle everything and do it all.
So, we feel like we have to do it all by ourselves and that's just not the case. You know, it's not true, you need help.
It's definitely not a weakness to admit that you need help. But yeah, admitting that and taking that first step can be really challenging.
We have no problem as new moms spending hours researching everything about our babies, from the tiniest, oh, my baby has hiccups, Is this normal? and then we go down a rabbit hole with that and we will dive into all of their needs but we neglect ourselves. I feel like we do it in part because we feel like we have to, we have to be kind of self-sacrificing, we have to put our baby first but in reality, we have to put ourselves first, in order to actually take care of our baby and to really be there for them in a truly supportive way.
Did you ever have the thought that, okay, I'm a mom now, I don't matter anymore?
Yes, absolutely I did. I don't know if it was so straightforward like that, you know, that exact phrasing, but that's the underlying meaning, and that's really hard to swallow. Again, It's hard not to see it when our care is neglected and so we're not shown the care that we need or the care that we deserve or even still, the support that we deserve. So much of the emphasis is on the baby and the baby's well-being, we want to support our baby and we want to do what's best for them and take care of them but we can't forget that there's a mother there and that the baby and the mother for those first three months need to be treated like they exist as one.
And so if we're forgetting the piece of the mother, whether it's that internal piece like, I don't really matter anymore, all of my focus has to shift here or whether it's coming from the community and society by the way things are structured and by even the simple things like friends and family wanting to come over to see the baby, well-meaning or not, it can easily feel like you don't matter and that you're kind of just there early on postpartum.
We need to get this important point that it's not true, like you very much matter in those early days, especially to your baby and we have to kind of start shifting that a little bit. As the postpartum journey goes, you come home with your beautiful little baby maybe it's taken you a long time to get there maybe there were some bumps along the way of getting there and it's like overnight you go from an individual who has wants and needs and hobbies and all of these things and now you're home from the hospital and you are junior's mom and all of that other stuff.
You’re different, your body's changed, you are beyond tired, and now you don't have time for your hobbies and your friends treat you differently, your family treats you differently, your life has changed, It has shifted massively in such a short period of time, and that can be hard.
It's pretty much the biggest transition that we go through as women. We go through more changes than we do during puberty. Our brain changes, our body physically changes, our hormones are shifting a ton and all of that in and of itself is really hard.
And then you add on the social aspects of it that, you know, whether you are taking just the six weeks to be home with the baby if you have that, or you're taking an extended maternity leave, you're pausing your career or what you were formally identifying as for some period of time. What we can do, produce and who we are in a career path is shaken up a little bit in motherhood, when we are home for a while with our baby, readjusting because we're learning and becoming part of this completely brand new relationship.
So, you know, when you add any new relationship into a dynamic think shift, whether it's a new friend that you met as you move to a new location, things kind of readjust, but this is a very intimate new relationship, you're learning this new baby, you're adjusting to that relationship, then your relationship with your partner is going to go through some adjustments that I don't think anybody is prepared for or even realizes and that kind of ripples out your relationships with everybody.
Changes come in a little bit, and some of these changes are permanent shifts while some are not, but I think we need to be prepared for that and be accepting of it a little bit and to know that you're still the same person. If you are only identifying yourself as like what you did and what you were producing, then that time in postpartum can be a really big challenge.
How were you able to pull through postpartum isolation?
Here in Canada, we have 12-month or 18-month maternity leaves and I know that when I had my daughter and I was on my year off 12-month maternity leave I would go to the school I was teaching at to have lunch with my coworkers so that I would have somebody to talk to while I ate my lunch. It can be very lonely because it is isolating and we feel alone, even though we're not.
The same things kind of come up over and over again, that feeling of being isolated, being exhausted and being overwhelmed. And you know, the feeling, that you can't really ask for help. You don't know where to turn for help and you just don't know who you are for a particular period of time.
You feel foreign in your body, you're like, what just happened to me? And it takes some adjusting. I think that it's time that we start being really proactive in that time, as opposed to being, you know, passive and reactive and just kind of taking it and expecting that it's going to be a struggle which we have kind of really normalised a lot of that.
I think that while we don't want to feel alone we want to know that other people are feeling the same way, I feel like when we normalize things too much, then it kind of stops people from seeking help, because they just kind of chalk it up to like, oh, this is mom life now, and this is just how it's going to be for a while and it's really easy to then get stuck there, and not really move through it.
Most times we are offered Just a conversation and a brief one at that. There needs to be more! Education, more awareness, more care, less gaslighting and manipulating around the challenges of motherhood.
I think that it's kind of easy to gaslight ourselves as new moms with feeling exhausted and with the physical changes that we're having, pelvic pain or any type of discomfort. It's easy for us to say like, Oh, it's not that bad.
Or of course, I feel like this, you know, again, this is just mom's life now. I'm going to be tired, but no, there's, there's a ton of reasons that you can be tired or exhausted in postpartum that again are not normal. if your iron levels are really low because you had a lot of post-ops, I'm thinking if you had a cesarean and had a lot of bleeding after having your baby, whether it was excessive vaginal bleeding from vaginal delivery or post-op bleeding from a cesarean, or excessive amounts of blood loss for whichever reason, that can lead to feeling really fatigued and same with If you're not eating enough calories, because we feel like, oh, I've had my baby, I'm not eating for two anymore, which, you know, is never really true.
But now we are trying to cut our calories are trying to get back to our pre-baby weight really quickly because we have these unrealistic expectations that that's just what's supposed to happen. And so you're not eating enough, you're now in a state of depletion on top of being tired from postpartum.
When you say that new mom life makes one tired, let's look into the reasons why you are so tired and if can we do anything about it.
Sure, It could be because you are feeding your baby all the time, whether it's breastfeeding or bottle feeding. And you're so in this rounded position all day long and carrying your baby but also there are things that we can do about it so that you don't have to be so uncomfortable. I think we have to stop gaslighting ourselves first.
With our very quick checks at the 6-week mark, we need to be careful about that and not be afraid to speak up about what is going on and to know that postpartum again, is longer than those 6 weeks. Studies and research coming out say it's like five to seven years or really anywhere from two to seven years, but again, like, does it have to be that long? Because we're neglecting the needs that we actually have. And we're not doing any of the proactive care that we need to allow our bodies to heal and rebuild and to provide ourselves with the actual emotional support that we need to heal because a lot is brought up in postpartum, whether it's from the birth process itself, or all of a sudden you're triggered into all of your childhood that happened in the past.
You have to be proactive on all of those fronts and work on them together to move through it so that it doesn't take seven years because that's almost a decade. That is a huge amount of time to not feel like yourself. I don't want to wait that long, I mean, when a kid is seven years old, they're in like second grade and you're still healing from them being born.
So what tips or tricks or strategies do you have that you recommend for mamas to find their identity again and navigate postpartum with more ease?
I think it's really important to blend the emotional aspect of not knowing who you are with the physical aspect because we're not feeling like ourselves in our bodies. Our bodies feel foreign and we're like, why do I still feel squishy? Why does everything ache? And I can't move like I was able to move before. You know, going up the stairs is a challenge now. Whereas like, I didn't have to think about it before. It's really hard to feel like yourself when you're feeling like that physically. And then vice versa, if we're feeling down or really anxious.
It's hard to then shift the focus back into how our body is feeling physically and put the effort into getting it back into kind of the right things back into the right places if you will, because that takes a little bit of time and it takes some attention. And if we're not emotionally feeling ready or sometimes even feeling worthy to put in that time and care, then we're not going to do it. So I think the following steps will help. First is,
Setting your expectations
This is knowing that if you don't have a baby yet, preparing now that things are going to change is going to be a really big shift and if you’ve had a baby already kind of resetting your expectations and seeing where you are at takes you into the process that I go through, of really identifying, integrating and then igniting. Step two is,
Identifying where you are.
So if we're talking about feeling like yourself again, or kind of like, finding your way again, it is how I kind of phrase it because you do you feel so lost.
It Is to identify what is going on, like, taking some time to write things down. Journaling was a huge piece of what I do. I find it to be a really helpful tool and really important to kind of see what's going on. So, you know, write down who you thought you were before and then kind of where you're at now.
See what's overlying and start to shift away from identifying yourself as what you do. And that's even your role as a mother. So shifting out of that role and not just jumping into the role of like, okay, I'm not a physical therapist now, I'm a mom, I'm a full-time stay-at-home mom for my son for a period of time, or however way you would want to phrase it. You need to kind of go a little bit deeper, go a layer deeper and see what's underlying that, asking yourself a few questions like what got you into the role that you were doing before? And how do you see yourself as a mother? What are the characteristics that you're looking for?
Jot those down and start to identify yourself with those characteristics instead of the titles. And that has been a really big shift because that doesn't necessarily change for me personally. I got into physical therapy because I am a huge believer that movement is medicine and that proactive care is way better than reactive care.
In my personal opinion, of course, it's not always going to be the case. Sometimes we do have to react to what we get thrown at. But, you know, those underlying values, that's who I am, and that also is reflected in how I am as a mother.
So it's, it's just kind of shifting the perspective just away from the titles and more to like, what's underlying those titles and what's really there and then from there,
Start working on integrating it
You know, the emotional and physical aspects that you're feeling, trying to kind of begin to tie them together and really not just to be more present in your body, but also with the day-to-day activities. That can be a really big key to shifting out of that lost feeling. Journaling has been huge for me. Not so much in postpartum, but in healing my trauma. It's a huge tool that you can use for many different purposes so if writing with pen and paper doesn't feel safe for you, use a password-protected app on your phone or use a password-protected medium on your computer.
There are many different ways to journal. It doesn't just have to be one particular way. How I do it and how you do it may be different, and that's okay. The goal is to just let things out.
Can you elaborate more on this password protection piece?
The password protection piece I think is huge because, for me, I know that that was a barrier. I have a very trusting relationship with my husband, but that was initially a barrier to starting to write.
I think it goes back to having a journal as a really young child and then in high school on two different instances, I've had people read them, two different people, and it feels really violating when that happens. Now, It is a tool that I use a lot, not every day anymore, but when I was in postpartum, it was an everyday thing. As I said, I do have a trusting relationship with my husband where now I can leave it on the counter all over the place, I know he's not reading it because we have that level of trust, but getting to that point took a little bit of work too, of being like, no, this is safe. I can do that.
So how can people connect with you further if they want to connect?
I hang out mostly on Instagram as far as socials go, and that is my name, Arielle Martone.
I do have some free resources that you can find there. The 2 resources that I have right now are how to feel less tired and less exhausted without sleep training your baby. It addresses some of the many different reasons why you might feel exhausted, not just the lack of sleep.
So it’s kind of diving into that and again, taking that look into why are you feeling this way, and what can we do about it? It comes back to making the changes for yourself and taking action not just brushing it off and gaslighting yourself and saying that being tired is part of mom life.
Also, I have a great free resource that is more specifically focused towards pelvic health and pelvic healing in those early days. It's kind of a pelvic floor recovery guide that has nine different tips in it. And a lot of information on things that you can do to really start the healing process for yourself and what to look for.
