From: sander@cwi.nl (Sander Plomp)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: how long to feel back normal after pregnancy?
Date: 24 Jul 92 11:05:03 GMT

In article <mylene.711776752@swanee> mylene@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au (Mylene Pijpers) writes:
>Some months ago I just walked in the sun and I thought: YEP! I feel
>physically normal again, like I felt before Josanne was born. (Say
>8 months, she is 11 mo. now)

My son is 8.5mo and I'm feeling reasonable physically normal
again. Off course, there's the tiredness, partly because Cees is
still drinking once or twice every night. But at least I was back
to my pre-pregnancy weight in three months (but when I tried some
pre-pregnancy clothes I was shocked to discover that I wasn't
back to my pre-pregnancy figure :-). And now I'm even six kg's below
my pre-pregnancy weight (and a little too skinny) thanks to
breastfeeding with a restricted diet (no milk, dairy products, or
anything with milk in it, etc). I really enjoy dressing in sexy
clothes again.

What really made me consider myself 'normal' again was the fact
that I got my period back last week. Now that I'm ovulating again
I feel that my body is ready to contain another little one. Never
thought that once I would be very happy with my period!

>- What factors do you think are involved: during pregnancy, maternity 
>  leave, psychological factors, having more children, work before/after
>  birth, the newborn itself, the amount of work you have to do in
>  the house, and how do you think they affected your "extended recovery".

What helped with my recovery: maternity leave and parental leave.
In Holland we have sixteen weeks paid maternity leave (by law) of
which you get four to six weeks before birth and at least ten
weeks after birth. (I got seven weeks before birth and twelve
thereafter because Cees was three weeks late). I really enjoyed
the twelve weeks after birth to get used to the new addition to
the family.

After maternity leave I used my parental leave which allows you
to work half time for half a year. By law this leave is unpaid,
but my company pays half my salary for the time I'm not actually
working (which results in about 90% of your netto salary for only
50% working). I think it would have been difficult to work full
time at three months post partem. Now I'm going to work full time
from August 18th on, so we'll see how I will manage that.

The amount of work I do in the house has drastically decreased
since Cees has joined us. We have lowered our standards, but we
don't really like the chaos our household is. But then we'll
learn to live with that. At least the baby is happy, because he
doesn't mind the household, but he minds the playing and the
nursing and he gets a lot of both.

What still is not physically okay is my belly, which is still
dropping a little bit, when I'm going to lie on my side. It's not
like the first weeks (when it really was a terrible sight) but I
would like it to go away alltogether. Maybe I will have to
exercise more?

                                       Karen
                                       (mom to Cees, 8.5mo)

-- 
Sander Plomp                                        Internet: sander@cwi.nl
Newsgroups: misc.kids