“Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby” That’s all that matters, right? I hear it all the time, “Well, it was okay because I had a healthy baby.” Yes, we all agree, having a healthy baby and a healthy mom is important. But, in our baby-centric culture, “Healthy mom and healthy baby” often means, “healthy baby, living mom.”
After birth, we dismiss the emotional and physical challenges of birth (before birth we don’t talk about birth at all or we find the most horrific stories possible to scare moms) . Mothers who experience complications, discomfort, or pain often get a message that their particular concern is invalid, because they have the gift of a healthy baby. We assume the recovery from a surgical (cesarean) birth is ‘normal’ because many women experience that type of birth. But healing from surgery is not ‘normal.’ It’s different from healing from a vaginal birth, just as healing from a five minute second stage may look very different from healing from five hour second stage.
In addition to the obvious physical differences, there are also emotional differences. A mother welcoming her rainbow baby at thirty seven weeks has a different experience than a mother at 40 weeks birthing her fourth baby from her fourth pregnancy.
Women on the other side of birth are looking for ways to process their experience and heal from the emotional and physical events. They are often met with platitudes and unrealistic expectations to “bounce back.” Birth is a big deal, yet in our culture we want women to instantly become competent and confident mothers all while instantly returning to their pre-baby bodies and schedules.
For most women, healing from birth requires time. It requires space. More for some, less for others, but every woman deserves to have her birth story treated with honor and respect. Birth can be an amazing, transforming event in a woman’s life and it can also be disappointing, difficult and even traumatizing. There needs to be space for a discussion of the experience, good, bad, painful, and exhilarating.
So, if you come up against a well intentioned platitude about birth, remember: It doesn’t matter how you gave birth. Birth is a big deal. Your birth was a big deal and Your experience of birth matters.
Today, in our culture, the only word that we have to describe the sacred time after a woman has a baby has been conscripted as shorthand for a disorder. I hear all the time, ” I think I had a little Postpartum.” What she means is, ‘I think I might have had a Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder (PMAD).’ You don’t have Postpartum, You ARE Postpartum. We’ve taken the only word that describes this vulnerable, magical time of transition and changed it into a disease. And we wonder why there is so much pressure for women to bounce back, get back to work and get back in shape. 
I want there to be a word that embodies everything that we hope for a postpartum mother. That she is cared for, supported, and pampered. That she has good food, and time to rest and heal. That she is recognized as a whole person, separate from her child, but no less worthy. And that she is given space to evolve and grow into herself as a mother. Maybe that word is Matrescence or maybe it really is Postpartum with all of its’ baggage and misuse.
As these public conversations were beginning, Courtney and I created 4th Trimester. In the past three years this class has been informed by experts in our community and beyond and it has changed as our own experiences and practices have grown and changed. This fall, we are refocusing on the 
I tried to figure out what made a ‘good’ mom, what made a ‘great’ mom and what dragged a woman down to the horrible range of average. So, I created a schedule for my two week old baby, 
When I had my first baby, I had three baby showers. Yes, three. I should have felt like the luckiest woman alive, but instead those showers felt like an obligation. I felt happy that everyone wanted to celebrate my baby, but something in these exquisite lunches with beautiful cakes, fancy decorations and generous gifts felt false.
When I had my second and third babies, I had baby showers, but they were different. They were gatherings of very small groups of friends and family, they were opportunities for my tribe to surround me and say, ‘we will support you’. And at those gatherings, my friends agreed to provide support in ways that were meaningful to me, not by purchasing smocked rompers and deliciously soft stuffed animals, but by promising to call and listen, to stop by and rock my baby so that I could get a shower, to force me to go on a walk, to bring me a hot meal.