An interview with Kati Hovikari, our Co-Founder, in Vauva-lehti highlights just how challenging postnatal recovery can be. For Kati, the experience changed her values, goals and profession, and she now devotes her time to helping other mums.
New mums are often unprepared for the aftermath of childbirth and postnatal complications can come as a shock and a surprise to many. Postnatal care is still one of the most underdiscussed areas of medicine and it is only lately that we’ve begun to talk about the experiences of postpartum women.
With conditions like pelvic girdle pain, prolapse or diastasis recti, women often think what they’re experiencing is normal and don’t seek help until their condition worsens. Many women have weak or injured pelvic floor muscles but haven’t paid much attention to these things until related problems like pain or incontinence crop up.
The typical postpartum hospital stay is less than 72 hours and women are usually sent home with extensive resources about their babies and little guidance about how they can care for their own bodies. Routine postpartum care for mums usually consists of just one visit with the doctor at around six weeks, and earlier antenatal midwife visits are largely focused on the wellbeing of the baby.
Through ´didactic´ one-size-fits-all postnatal care and information, postnatal women are often not recognized as individuals with very different paths to recovery. The downside is that when everyone is treated the same, we run a risk of failing to spot individual circumstances and complications, as happened in Kati´s case.
Inspired by our own postnatal experiences and adamant that we need to pay more attention to women´s postnatal wellbeing, we set out on a journey to provide other mums with the help we wished we had. We love being mums and now also feel proud to be able to play a small part in the lives of other mums out there.
Laura xx
Co-Founder, Lola&Lykke