One of the biggest battles you fight with your relatives after giving birth is about when you are ALLOWED to go outside with your baby for the first time. Where I come from there is that old one: mother and baby must not go outside for 40 days, not for anything in the world. And I ask: why?
I understand that hygiene conditions used to be different, that medicine was less developed and that people were therefore guided by superstition.
But let’s look at the problem with pure logic: who likes being TRAPPED indoors, even for a couple of days, unless they have to? And a custom is not the same as physical weakness. It is exactly that, a CUSTOM. So, dear mums, babies in your arms, or in the pram, and out into the fresh air!
Is there anything lovelier than a family walk?
I gave birth at the end of May, just when the good weather starts and nature is at its most beautiful. And for someone like me, who won’t stay indoors as soon as the sun comes out, even through the clouds, it was unthinkable to sit between four walls for 40 days (which is definitely more than a month)! Why would I do that? I need fresh air, and what I need, my baby needs too! So my husband and I, as the ones directly responsible for the little being we brought into this world, decided that we would take our baby for a walk EVERY day from the day we left the maternity ward. With all due respect to the advice of our elders (mums, dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunts and everyone else).
To be honest, we are first-time parents too, and we certainly weren’t born knowing everything, so for every important decision I like to consult professionals, midwives and doctors. That’s why, even before leaving the hospital, I asked them when it is best to start going for walks. And this is what they told me: the baby is already in this world, so it is practically outside already, no longer in the protected environment of mum’s tummy. And besides, you can’t teleport from the hospital to your home, which means that by leaving the hospital you have already taken the baby outside.
Since the hospital where I gave birth is literally less than a ten-minute walk from our home, and since we had walked there for the birth itself (admittedly, with contractions the walk took a liiittle longer), with the doctors’ blessing we also took our baby home on foot. We wrapped her up warmly, tucked her into the car seat and slowly set off through the park that lies between the hospital and our home.
At first my body, exhausted from giving birth (because birth is definitely stressful for the body), wouldn’t let me walk fast or for long. So during the first month we only walked the streets near our home, and those walks never lasted more than half an hour a day. Our baby loved the fresh air, she always fell asleep the moment she felt the freshness of the outside world. And I enjoyed every second of those walks too. Physically, because with every step I felt myself getting stronger and becoming my old self again, and emotionally, because I couldn’t wait for the three of us to finally go walking together.
I think common sense makes it easy to conclude that it is much healthier for both mother and child to go out at least for a short while, even just into the yard (because every woman experiences birth differently and recovers at her own pace), than to breathe the same air and stare at the same view for 40 days.
Listen Only to Your Body and Your Baby
I love my grandmothers, parents, relatives and friends and respect them enormously, but everything changes and moves forward, so why shouldn’t we change some ancient habits too? After all, I am that child’s mother and I am responsible for her.
Others can share their opinion, but however much experience they have, they are still not you and they are not in your body. If it suits you to lie in bed for 50 days without poking your nose outside, that’s fine too, as long as YOU want it that way, and not because someone once declared it an absolute must!
I honestly believe those daily walks are also the reason I felt physically great in record time (no, I didn’t lose the extra weight overnight, and I’m not interested in that phenomenon, that’s a topic in itself). I simply didn’t feel like someone who was ill (because bringing a new being into the world is not an illness, it is a DIFFERENT STATE, as we say in Serbian).
And treating a healthy woman and a healthy child as if they were ill, and locking them up in a confined space because of it, is in my opinion veeery problematic!
It is very important to dress your baby well and protect it from the cold, strong sun and wind, because babies need time to get used to temperatures outside their mother’s body. Apart from that, you can go for walks every day, as much as your (the mother’s) body allows.
Warmly,
S-Mama
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