Coming home after giving birth and adjusting to life as a new parent is mammoth. The lack of sleep. The fragile new being you're now in charge of. The life upheaval. It's one of the greatest challenges anyone can take on. It's well-known just how impossible it is for most to carve out a minute to do anything remotely close to self-care.
Well, some doctors and researchers have suggested new mums could be doing more to look after themselves. The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology have published new guidance, advising mothers to exercise two hours and a week and avoid screens before bedtime as soon as their child is born, unless there's a physical reason they can't. They claim this would improve mothers' physical and mental health.
Specifically, their advice was to: do at least two hours of moderate to vigorous exercise a week, do daily pelvic-floor exercises, and avoid screen time and 'maintain a dark, quiet environment before bed' to improve sleep quality.
The idea that new mothers need to take more ownership of their health to improve their lives is laughable. With a crying baby in tow at 2am, how are they exactly supposed to reduce screen-time? More importantly, how are they expected to have good quality sleep exactly?
Countless structural issues exist that make it hard for new mothers to look after themselves, including the cost of childcare, poor shared parental leave and a lack of family and community support. Placing more blame on new mothers, now for their health, is just another way to shame them for not doing a 'good enough job', when getting by is hard enough.
Justine Roberts, the founder and chief executive of Mumsnet, said: 'Clear, evidence-based guidance on postpartum exercise is long overdue, and it’s encouraging to see recommendations that prioritise the wellbeing of new mothers, even if some of them seem wildly optimistic about what looking after a newborn entails. As Mumsnet users will attest, "developing a healthy sleep routine" is much easier said than done.'
She went on to say 'it’s crucial that this guidance doesn’t become yet another stick to beat new mums with'.
In response to the news, one Instagram user wrote, 'The load of motherhood just got bigger and more unrealistic!' Another said, 'Any mention of the need for supported pelvic floor rehab before returning to exercise?! No wonder mums feel like they are failing - the system just doesn’t support them.'
Rather than pointing out more issues with new mothers, perhaps a roadmap to actual support would be better?