What To Put In A Postpartum Care Kit: After Birth Care

Postpartum care kit and after birth essentials: Having a postpartum care kit ready to go before baby arrives is an essential part of your after birth care. We recommend a postpartum care kit for each bathroom of your house, or at least one for the downstairs and one for the upstairs. That way you won’t need to traipse upstairs every time you need the bathroom… no small feat when you’ve just birthed a small human. Here’s a list of all the things we recommend for a postpartum care kit.

The Arrival Survival Postpartum Care Kit includes all the essentials to help new mamas heal.

1.  Maternity Pads

We kid you not, you can never have too many of these. We recommend a combination of overnight pads, which you can use for the first seven to 10 days when the bleeding is very heavy, and some extra long regular pads, for when the bleeding lessens. Most women bleed for around four-to-six weeks but the heaviest bleeding will be for the first two weeks.

2. A Soothing Perineal Spray

Vaginal tears, an episiotomy and hemorrhoids. Tick, tick and tick again! For most women, whether you’ve had a vaginal delivery or not, you are going to experience discomfort, soreness and pain down below. The mere thought of taking a pee is likely to fill you with dread, but fear not because a good perineal spray will help with the pain. We always pop a bottle of Natural Birthing Company Bottoms Up Spray in our Arrival Survival Care Kit. Key ingredients are Arnica, Witch Hazel and Lavender, and you can spray it on before, during and after you use the toilet for a bit of relief. All together now: ‘Ahhhh!’

3. Postpartum Care Kit Herbal Sitz Bath

You can blend this yourself or buy it ready made but either way it’s a great way to soothe the perineum and ease discomfort after childbirth. We particularly like MumBubHub’s Postpartum Bath Soak ,which is made with all the best ingredients including Yarrow,  Witch Hazel and Comfrey. We include a jar of this fabulous product in our Arrival Survival Postpartum Care Kit.

4. A Peri Bottle

This water-squirting miracle is a must for any new mamas. In case you’re not familiar with it, a peri bottle is a plastic squirting device which you can fill with warm water and then when you squeeze, a jet of water will shoot out the nozzle and help you to cleanse your lady bits and ease those ouch moments when you pee. If you’ve experienced vaginal tearing, swelling, itching, hemorrhoids, or if you’re just feeling sore down there, a peri bottle is your new best friend. One postpartum hack is to save some water from your Bath Soak, pour it in the bottle and then keep it in the fridge until pee time. Oh the sweet relief!

5. Maternity Pants

Birth is beautiful, but it sure is messy, as you’ll discover in the early days of postpartum. Whether you give birth vaginally or have a C-section, you’ll bleed and it will be at its heaviest in the first few days postpartum. We always give a give a big thumbs up to MumBubHub Disposable Maternity Pants, which have a sanitary pad feature that’s ultra absorbent.

All items are featured in the Mama Hug Arrival Survival Care Kit

Words: Catherine Sullivan is a mum of two, a freelance journalist and the co-founder of Mama Hug.