I was working on The Nourished Village the other day specifically around those first 72 hours after birth and what might actually be useful to eat when your body is recovering, and I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole. Because I kept coming back to the same thought:
Why are we so obsessed with tea and toast after a woman has given birth?
Like when did we collectively decide this was the absolute pinnacle of postpartum care?
And before anyone thinks I’m coming for toast, I’m really not. I love toast, like realllly buttery toast. And if you’ve just given birth, you feel sick, you’re exhausted and a slice of toast is the only thing you fancy, then PLEASE eat the toast.
It’s not really about the toast.
It’s more that I find it slightly mad how much we celebrate it when you think about what a woman’s body has actually just done.
You’ve spent nine months growing a baby, you’ve then birthed that baby, you may have lost blood, your body is beginning the process of recovering and healing and you might also be establishing breastfeeding.
There is a LOT going on nutritionally and physiologically.
Yet we put so much thought into preparing for what the baby is going to need and comparatively so little into what the woman is going to need afterwards.
We research the pram, we buy the nappies, we wash the tiny clothes, we batch buy muslins because apparently you can never have enough of the bloody things (and I’m telling you now, you actually can!!)
But how many of us are encouraged to think who is actually going to feed me once this baby is here? Or how am I going to recover from birth?
And not just is there technically food in the house?
But more I mean what am I going to want to eat or how easy is it going to be to eat something nourishing?
Because I think we could make those first few days so much easier if we put even half as much thought into feeding the mother as we do into preparing everything for the baby.
For me that looks much more like warm, comforting, nourishing food. Things like soups, stews, ragus, curries, porridge. Meals with protein, carbohydrates and iron-rich foods where appropriate. Plenty of fluids. Things that can be batch cooked, reheated easily and, crucially, don’t require the woman who has just given birth to stand in the kitchen making them.
I’m not talking about a perfect postpartum diet or superfood powders or lactation cookies.
Just actual food, chosen with the fact that she is recovering in mind.
We spend so much time teaching women how to prepare for birth and how to care for their babies afterwards but very little time teaching them how to care for the body that has just done all of it.
So no, I’m not cancelling tea and toast.
I just think women deserve a slightly higher standard of postpartum nourishment than us all going: Ooooh, that tea and toast after birth though!
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