Postpartum Recovery

Throughout my past 26 years in private practice, hundreds of women have told me the same story in very much the same words: "My health problems started shortly after the birth of my child." The child may have been a woman's first or fifth baby and could now be a teenager or grown man or woman, but the mother remembers the postpartum onset of her symptoms as if it were yesterday!

Symptoms that start within the first nine months postpartum may vary among mothers and run a wide gamut such as depression, chronic fatigue, insomnia, lack of confidence, loss of sex drive and passion, muscle and joint pains, unhealthy skin and hair, digestive disturbances, bladder problems, chronic anxiety, heart disease, asthma, and a host of troubling emotions. That the symptoms remain with her even decades later is often puzzling, frustrating, and even embarrassing. Why? She has told many doctors the same story, and none has found her self-observation worthy of comment. Yet she can't shake the feeling that something about that particular birth began her health decline.