What Not To Do After Giving Birth: Things You Must Know!

Medically reviewed by Maria Sarino, MD FACT CHECKED

After keeping a baby for nine months in your womb, giving birth might be one of the most painful yet happy experiences in your life.

However, we all know giving birth is a daunting task. What’s even more difficult is the period after giving birth! This is also referred to as the Postpartum period.

This is because it is during this phase that you need to take care of your body to the utmost extent. The four weeks after delivery, known as the postpartum phase, maybe quite precious and strenuous for you.

The reason being, how your hormones are heightened during this phase and you might even be facing unbearable pain if you had a C section.

Generally, your postpartum body may be quite delicate and requires good care. However, amidst all this, there are certain errands that you still need to perform.

You need to take care of your baby, perform the household work, and even meet all the people that visit you. So there are a plethora of things that you need to do after giving birth. However, have you ever thought of the things that you should not do after giving birth?

Yes, you heard it right. There are certain things that you should evade doing after giving birth. And though you might be overwhelmed while you try to recover and take care of your infant, you can always ease the process by not doing certain things.

Hence, let’s glance at the different things that you may not do to ease the transition into motherhood and make your postpartum phase sail smoothly.

  1. Do Not Forget To Eat At The Right Time

    Presently, you may think that who could even forget eating after giving birth? However, it might be so convenient for you to completely forget eating that you may not even realize about this.

    The primary reason behind this is because you could be involved in a plethora of errands and activities that you may completely forget about your eating schedules.

    And then during bedtime, you might remember how you didn’t have your diet and are feeling hungry now. This happens because you could get so caught up in the daily activities and taking care of your child that you may put yourself second. Or sometimes you might even have to choose between eating and sleeping, and you may choose the latter option.

    So it is crucial to make eating schedules and set alarms for the same. Eating provides nutrition to your recovering body during the postpartum phase.

    The postpartum diet is discussed here.

  2. Do Not Waste Your Baby’s Nap Time

    Naturally, your instinct might incentivize you to clean up your house, wash clothes, or even perform other household errands while your baby is asleep.

    As tempting as it is make sure not to indulge in this urge and perform other activities while your baby is asleep.

    Rather, you might help your body by providing it with the required rest during this time to recover from birth.

    Can you even imagine how your body has helped to deliver a tiny human being? So don’t you think that it requires all the rest and sleep? And what could be the best time to sleep other than while your baby is asleep?

    You could refer to this link for other bedtime habits for infants.

  3. Evade Meeting Up With Tones Of Visitors

    After giving birth, your close friends and relatives might want to visit you. However, you may not like to socialize with so many people after giving birth.

    Hence, do not hesitate to say no to them. Rather, you could tell them how you would let them know when you are ready to socialize with people. Postpartum is not the time to think for others but think for yourself and your baby.

    Once you let the visitors visit you daily, you might be leading onto various things. First of all, it could take your precious time away to bond with your child. Secondly, you might need time to relax and figure out a method to perform different activities in your schedule.

    Thirdly, many people visiting your house might expose your baby to germs. Moreover, you might even stress out sometimes while scheduling different time slots for different visitors. And in the end, who would like to listen to unsolicited parenting advice from so many people and get confused?

    So you should not be the one to feel uncomfortable after childbirth just because you have a lot of visitors at your home or the hospital. Rather, you could just tell the suitable time to the visitors to visit you later when you are ready.

  4. Do Not Leave Your Hospital Before The Time Allotment

    Hospitals are indeed an uneasy and uncomfortable place. Once you give birth, you might want to leave your hospital and get comfortable at your own bed. When you are allowed to lie down stiffly without moving, then all you could do is miss your home.

    However, no matter how much you think you are ready to leave, the safest place for you and your baby until the full recovery is a hospital. In the hospital, you can get your baby as well as yourself monitored whenever needed. Moreover, the doctors may make sure that there are no complications after delivery if you stay at the hospital for the full recovery time allotted.

    This is because, after childbirth, your body might be prone to high blood pressure, infections and even your baby may require treatments. So it is best to stay in the care of the nurses and physicians who can resolve any issues that arise after birth.

    After vaginal delivery aspects are discussed here.

  5. Do Not Hesitate To Ask For Help

    Once you give birth, you might be occupied with a plethora of errands like taking care of your child, taking care of your home.

    Amidst all this, you might stress yourself up which would not be very great for your body’s health. So it is crucial to get assistance from your loved ones whenever possible.

    Moreover, your partner may even be willing to help you all the time. However, since he may even be having a tough time, you may not burden him with all the tasks.

    What you could do is ask for help from your close family or friends. Wouldn’t it be great if one of your friends or family members could prepare a meal, run out certain errands and take care of your baby while you are busy?

    Detailed aspects are discussed here.

  6. Do Not Insert Anything Into Your Vagina

    You may wait until the doctor approves if your privates are ready to function like before.  You can always clean the outer region of your privates gently. But you might wait for at least 6 weeks to insert anything in your vagina. So you may not use tampons and even not have sex for six weeks.

    This even means that you may say no to Jacuzzis and pools till six weeks after childbirth. The reason behind this could be because inserting anything in the vagina might enable the bacteria to enter the vagina and cause infections.

    A few of the pointers are discussed here.

  7. Do Not Lift Heavy Items

    During the postpartum, your muscles and body need to relax. Hence, you may not lift any heavy objects that could intervene in your recovery process. Besides lifting heavy objects might even cause you more damage.

    You also might want to take a look at this summary.

  8. Say No To Tight Clothes

    Once you have given birth, you might want to get back in your skinny jeans and enjoy your new figure. You could even be get motivated by all the celebrities on the TV who just had their babies and wear tight clothes to flaunt their figures. However, this is not real and you should avoid wearing tight clothes.

    The reason behind this could be that once your body gets back to normal after nine months of change, you might be sweating and even leaking different fluids. So you might give your body some time to recover and always choose loose clothing.

  9. Do Not Strain Yourself While Pooping

    The muscles that help you to poop are the same muscles that helped you while giving birth. So you need to let these muscles recover and be easy on them.  It may be normal if you take a few days to poop after childbirth.

    This might help you out if you are facing constipation.

Final Thoughts On What Not To Do After Giving Birth

Hence even after having read numerous blogs and knowing all about childbirth, you may face certain issues. Hence, you may not expect the process of childbirth beforehand.

This is because there can always be certain end-moment changes and issues that might arise. However, once you give birth, do not be in a rush to get back your life together.

This is because the postpartum phase is one of the most important phases in your life. So you may take care of your body to the utmost extent.

Due to this, it becomes crucial for you to not perform certain activities as listed in this article. Most importantly, you may not engage yourself in household chores, or other errands.

Rather, this is the time when you need to take care of your health and bond with your baby.

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