The Sanctuary Plan

By Henrieta Haniskova, Former Nurse, Certified Clinical Aromatherapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

At 32 weeks, I was getting my daughter's room ready and cooking meals to freeze for after the birth. I didn't even realize I should be tending to my own nervous system too, and expecting other people to take care of certain things for me.

If your freezer is filling up and the tiny clothes are washed and folded, I love that. Getting ready for your baby is one of the sweetest parts of these last weeks. So let's make a little room in the plan for you, too.

We spend nearly a year preparing for a baby, and very few of us remember to consider ourselves after the birth. Medical care for new mothers often doesn't extend beyond a six-week visit, and a fifteen-minute one at that. The traditional village, the women who once surrounded a new mother, have all gone to work. In Slovakia, where I'm from, towns and villages used to pay midwives to care for new mothers and babies, and from the 1950s, when births moved into hospitals that were meant to take over, that role faded. But a midwife's or a doula's care goes far beyond the event of the birth.

It's quite unusual that our society doesn't think of the mother after birth, because many other cultures do. We guide young girls as they go through adolescence, yet we don't offer the same support to a brand new mother whose body is depleted and has to heal and replenish her stores, while also breastfeeding and tending to a baby 24 hours a day.

I believe a mother needs to be mothered, and guided through the early part of motherhood in exactly the same way. Everyone will be so excited to meet your baby, and they should be! The woman who just gave birth needs people thinking about her too.

Planning for the weeks after the birth

Your birth plan probably gets plenty of attention. Kimberly Ann Johnson, a Somatic Experiencing practitioner and the author of The Fourth Trimester, suggests giving the weeks after the birth just as much care, with what she calls a postpartum sanctuary plan. Her reasoning is hard to argue with: "I have never heard a woman lament having too much postpartum support."

She tells the story of a client, Joanie, who had always been proud of handling everything herself. When Johnson asked who would take care of Joanie after the birth, she drew a blank. She had assumed she and her husband would figure it out, and the very idea of being mothered made her recoil. In the end, she hired a postpartum doula to bring her nourishing food and keep her company, and later called it the best decision she ever made.

Johnson's plan begins with four questions, and they're worth sitting with while you still have a clear head and a little time:

What support will I need?

Who do I want to support me and my family during this time?

What do I want my home to feel like in the first weeks after the birth?

How will I get my needs met, so I come out of this stronger and more whole?

Some of the answers will be wonderfully practical: who brings dinner, who does the laundry, who's welcome in the first week and who can wait a month. Johnson suggests deciding these with your partner ahead of time, so they can be the one who keeps to the plan while you rest. Once the answers are settled, the asking is already done by the time you need it.

If you have a partner, there's one more conversation worth having before the baby comes. Couples therapist Dr. Stan Tatkin calls it the couple bubble: an agreement that the two of you come first for each other, and that you turn to each other before anyone else. Johnson built a sweet exercise around it. Each of you finishes a few sentences on your own, like "What I bring to us is..." and "What you bring to us is...", and then you read them to each other. It's a lovely way to remember who you are together, right before two become three. And if you're planning without a partner, the same conversation works beautifully with whoever will be closest to you: your mother, your sister, your best friend.

As a former nurse, I know how quickly the care changes. Right now you're checked on all the time, and your baby's heartbeat is heard at almost every appointment. After the birth, all that attention moves to the baby. Even the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now recommends that postpartum care be an ongoing process rather than a single visit, starting within the first three weeks after birth.

So, what would your sanctuary look like? This week, pick one of Johnson's four questions and talk it through with your partner or a close friend over dinner.

The Threshold series continues next week.