5 nourishing foods to include in your Postpartum Recovery Diet
- Postpartum Health
Postpartum nutrition is the key to having a great postpartum recovery, supporting your healing, energy levels, mood and hormones.
Many of us are entering into postpartum with our nutrients stores already depleted from pregnancy because of the huge nutritional needs that comes with growing a human!
Childbirth can also be very taxing on the body, whatever way your baby comes. I’ve had both a c-section and a VBAC so I know that either way, there’s physical recovery involved, it will just vary for each of us.
And then we really want to be supporting our hormonal recovery. After birth there are some huge shifts with our hormones, so being mindful of how we can support our hormones to rebalance is really important.
By eating the right foods, getting the right nutrients you can accelerate your postpartum recovery, have more energy, better mood and enjoy the postpartum stage even more.
What nutrients do we need for postpartum recovery?
We want to be focusing on those crucial nutrients that are often depleted during pregnancy. Zinc, Iron, B12, Essential fatty acids, choline, iodine and selenium.
You can get these nutrients easily through a whole food diet with a wide range of fresh produce and good quality animal products. Here’s some of my favourite foods for postpartum recovery that I make sure to include in my postpartum meal plans.
Fatty Fish
This conveniently packs a lot of those key nutrients into the one food! Essential fatty acids, Iodine, zinc, b12, iron, selenium as well as healthy fats and a great source of protein!
Eggs
One of the best mama foods! These are one of the highest sources of choline, essential for our brain health (baby brain!) and function. Eggs are also a good source of iron, b12 and vitamin D and a nice easy source of protein.
Bone Broth
Give us allll the collagen thank you! Bone broth is incredibly healing thanks to its collagen promoting amino acids and gut healing gelatin. You get an abundance of nutrients in an easy-to-digest form which makes it perfect as part of a postpartum recovery diet.
I like to freeze it into ice cubes and pop into my dinners!
Liver
I know I know, gross. But once you get past the ick factor, liver is actually one of the most nutrient dense foods there are! It is a fantastic source of choline and rich in iron so it’s helpful for mamas low in iron or if there was a lot of blood loss during childbirth.
I find it easiest to consume by pureeing it, freezing into ice cubes and adding to mince dishes (you can’t taste it). Or you can buy freeze dried capsules (I got my iron levels up very quickly with these!)
Seeds
Technically not one food but seeds in general are one of the easiest ways to add a hefty dose of minerals to your meals. My favourite are hemp and chia seeds which are loaded with iron, zinc, calcium, essential fatty acids and magnesium! Pumpkin seeds are a great source of iron and zinc.
Add them to your baking, smoothies, sprinkled on toast and salad.
Focus on the quality
By focusing on the right foods we can replenish nutrient stores from pregnancy and support our recovery, immune system and hormone balance.
I recommend your postpartum recovery diet be centred around an anti-inflammatory approach to healthy eating, really focusing on the quality of your food over the quantity.
Our body needs a lot of support to regulate, recover and rebalance after pregnancy and childbirth. Having an idea of what we need to focus on is a great foundation for that recovery.
I have tons of recipes on the blog that incorporate these foods and can give you some inspiration and ideas. Best of all, they are all incredibly quick and easy, designed specifically for new Mamas to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible!
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