01 Oct Postnatal Exhaustion

Postnatal Exhaustion is a term I prefer to use instead of postnatal depression.
For the majority of people who present with this symptom there is always an underlying energetic issue that requires attention.
 
If you were to think about it this way for a moment, when a woman is pregnant she spends nine months focusing her awareness, energy and actions upon an incredible miraculous creative process of building a child in her womb.
 
This is not a few hours a day or a few days a week kind of task.
 
This requires 100% commitment, twenty four hours a day every single day until that child is born.
Every aspect of that creative process is being generated and created using the mother’s energy, her body, her food, her oxygen, her thoughts, feelings and emotions.
It is an incredibly powerful process on a conscious level for all women to have a baby but also on the unconscious level it is even bigger.
 
If you were to really look at the pregnancy process in this way you can understand why a woman after giving birth might be exhausted.
However it is not just on a physical level that she must now recover but on an energetic and spiritual level as well.
 
We all know what it feels like to have a really busy exhausting day at work or climbing a mountain for 6/7 hours and we all know how much energy it can take out of us to complete and recover from such a task. Now imagine the level and intensity of energy expenditure a woman must go through to create a child.
Nine months without a second’s break.
That’s 6720 hours of constant energy usage over 280 days all of which is spent on a process that’s happening alongside her own life’s experiences.
 
Needless to say this is a huge undertaking.
An undertaking that requires an effective and appropriate recovery process.
 
As the mother’s main focus has been on herself, her baby and pregnancy whether she knows it or not her body is getting a lot of direct attention from both her conscious and unconscious mind.
Not to mention a lot of conscious attention from her friends and family also.
 
When the child is born everyone’s attention including the mothers is now on the child that is now OUTSIDE her body as a separate entity.
 
Another way to understand this is:
For nine months her energy was on herself and all of a sudden her energy is now on something  else separate from herself.
 
This in effect creates shock in the mother’s mind and body as it can feel like there is a sudden drop in energy or love for herself or a sudden “depression” which simply means a “pressing down” of one’s feelings of life force or joy.
 
If your energy is your life force and you direct this life force by focused attention.
Then by shifting your attention from yourself to something else all of a sudden the outcome can feel like a sudden loss of life force or what most people refer to as depression.
This feeling following childbirth is referred to as post natal depression but now from learning more in relation to what’s going on at an energetic level it can be more effectively be known as postnatal exhaustion.
 
We must help support our women and children during this immense energetic process.
Understanding that childbirth is not just a physical process is paramount.
There is a life force, a spirit that has occupied your being to develop into what you will soon  call your child.
This spirit requires spiritual, emotional and mental support along with physical and nutritional support throughout its journey into being.
 
The more support and knowledge it receives from our awareness as parents the better for both the child and the mother.
We may not know how the creation of a child occurs but something within us does, supporting this intelligence is our responsibility.
As the saying goes:
“the answer never struggles with the question, it is only I who struggle with the understanding”