You’ve just delivered your baby. With a tiny new life in your presence, you might feel exhausted, overwhelmed, elated, or some combination of emotions.

The minutes and hours immediately after birth can be a powerful bonding experience. At Magnolia Birth House, we respect that precious time when parents first meet their babies, while also prioritizing safety.

Whether it’s your first pregnancy or you’ve previously given birth at a hospital, you might have some questions about the immediate postpartum period. For example, you may be wondering, “What happens to my body after delivery?” or “How does a mother feel just after giving birth to a child?”

Your body undergoes many physiologic and emotional changes after birth. This post will explain what we do at Magnolia to make sure you and your baby are healthy, and you feel supported as you begin the journey of parenthood.

Physically Taking Care of You and Your Baby Immediately After Birth

Immediately after delivery, we will place your baby on your belly or chest, initiating skin-to-skin contact, which has physical and emotional benefits for you and your baby. It’s helpful for bonding and breastfeeding. Your baby may even do the “breast crawl” and attempt to latch on without any prompting.

Shortly after the natural birth, your uterus will continue to contract. These sensations will feel significantly less intense than labor contractions, but they signal that the placenta will be delivered soon. The placenta delivery is usually quick, within a few minutes of the baby’s birth, but it can sometimes take 30-60 minutes.

When your placenta is delivered, we wrap it, put it in a bag, and place it beside you. This means that your baby’s cord remains intact. We usually cut your baby’s cord during the newborn exam, which occurs about an hour or more after birth.

Just like during pregnancy and labor, we continue to monitor you and your baby’s physical well-being after the birth. We will listen to the baby’s heart and check your bleeding, uterine position and size, and blood pressure.

Clients remain at the birth center for three to four hours after the birth. During this time, you’ll have an opportunity to breastfeed your baby, and our staff members are available for lactation support. You’ll also rest, recover, and shower.

In addition, after you’ve had your baby, it’s important to have a meal with protein, so you don’t feel light-headed or pass out. We encourage you to bring that meal with you when you arrive at the birth center. Depending on the time of day or night, you also may be able to order food from a nearby restaurant.

For the newborn exam, we perform that at the bedside, so your baby never leaves the room. We can give erythromycin eye ointment or a Vitamin K injection if you want your baby to have them.

Usually by about hour three, most people are ready to take their baby home and get into their own bed. Before you leave the birth center, however, we will discuss postpartum symptoms to watch for when you get home. We want you to understand warning signs that should prompt you to call us immediately. These include newborn respiratory problems, postpartum infection, breastfeeding difficulties, and other postpartum complications.

Even after you leave the birth center, we continue to support you by providing postpartum care that focuses on your wellness, helps you with breastfeeding, and eases the transition into parenthood.

Understanding Hormones and Emotions During the Immediate Postpartum Period

In her book Nurture, Erica Chidi Cohen contrasts the very gradual process of growing a baby inside your body to the sudden physical and hormonal changes right after your baby’s birth.

“Little by little, your body grew, changed shape, and gained a new, previously unknown purpose and power,” she writes. “After delivery, with your baby now on the outside, your body might be somewhat unrecognizable — and it will be doing some things it’s never done before, very suddenly and with little time for acclimation.”

Just like throughout pregnancy, hormones are major players during labor and birth. Estrogen and progesterone drive much of what happens during pregnancy. When you are in labor, oxytocin is a crucial part of the process, and the body releases the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, too.

After the baby is born, the body experiences a “birth high” when endorphins and oxytocin overwhelm your system. Cohen calls it “a flood of the most powerful emotions you’ve ever felt.”

Then, as soon as the placenta is delivered, progesterone and estrogen drop quickly and dramatically. Kimberly Ann Johnson, author of The Fourth Trimester, refers to this shift as the beginning of “a months’ long process of recalibration from growing and birthing a baby to now nursing a baby and helping your body recover.”

It’s important to understand that, in the hours and days after the birth, there is a wide range of what’s normal when reacting to all these emotions. Some birthing parents want to hold and snuggle their babies, and the bonding is immediate. Others are exhausted and overwhelmed, and the bonding happens gradually. Either response — or anything in between — is OK.

Continuing Postpartum Care After Leaving the Birth Center

Even after you leave the birth center, we continue to support you by providing postpartum care that focuses on your wellness, helps you with breastfeeding, and eases the transition into parenthood.

In addition to the time immediately following the birth, the postpartum period lasts up to eight weeks. This is when your bleeding has stopped and the initial healing phase is complete.

During this time, The Fourth Trimester encourages bathing a postpartum mother in the sex hormones, especially oxytocin, often called the “love hormone.” The author writes, “The ‘baby blues’ can be less blue if a woman is surrounded by people who love her and she is receiving love through delicious food and caring touch.”

Because postpartum depression and anxiety are more common than most people realize, it’s important for us to prevent and identify any signs at your four postpartum visits with Magnolia midwives. We screen for postpartum mood disorders during your postpartum check-ups and discuss your emotional and mental adjustment to parenthood.