A contented, rested mother matters more than a wreck who does everything by the book

Today we bring you an interview with Andrea Borková, a postpartum doula, about how to be less tired during motherhood, how to put yourself first and find yourself. It is easy to say, but Andrea has concrete tips and experience from practice.

Andrea is a woman, a pioneer, a mother of two, a wife and a postpartum doula. She accompanies pregnant women so that their entry into the period after birth is as pleasant as possible. She also works with women in 600nedelí, the time when they most need support and reassurance about their own competence. For all mothers she creates the MATKOVANIE motherhood support groups, where in a safe circle of women they can share their feelings and views and inspire one another. Caring for women is her calling. You can find more at 600nedelie.sk.

Our readers and customers who are on maternity leave are probably most interested in how to recharge and prevent tiredness. So we will talk mainly about these subjects, and I will ask you right at the start: to what extent do you think tiredness in motherhood is natural?

When a woman becomes a mother, many new things she does not know happen in her life. A new stage combined with hormonal changes means a woman feels enormously tired. The body released a huge amount of energy and brought a new person into the world, so tiredness is natural. But if it drags on for a long time, something is not right.

What do you advise your clients about how and where to recharge?

We most often start with food and mindset. When the baby is in the world, a woman focuses on it 100 %. After the birth, though, she forgets that she is a person too and has her own needs. That she should sit down and eat. While breastfeeding her energy output is doubled, and if she does not focus on her own eating she will start to run down over time, not necessarily losing weight, perhaps even gaining it, but the body will be running on empty. It is drawing on reserves, and we do not want that while breastfeeding.

Generally speaking, a woman breastfeeds for at least a year, and for that year she needs a good enough diet. If she does not have a supportive environment and enough confidence as a mother, it happens that she puts herself last.

How should a mother put herself first?

It is a process. I always say to women: imagine you are on a plane, you are a mother, you are there with your children and something happens. You put the oxygen mask on yourself first and only then on the children. If I do not look after myself, I will not be able to look after my children well either. Every woman has to find her own way.

What factor other than insufficient food and sleep do you think contributes to tiredness?

When our (first) child is born, a change happens not only in the woman’s life but also in society. A new little family comes into being and, from my observation, such a new family isolates itself from other families. Sadly, often from their own as well. We forget what a win it is to live in a community. A mother would be far less tired if she were able to connect with women and families of the „same“ blood group.

A community of the wrong people with the wrong mindset can tire us out just as much as poor sleep or food.

What do you see as the basic principles of eating for a woman after birth?

Warm food

After the birth, as I mentioned above, a woman has lost a large part of her energy. She needs to catch up on sleep and replenish with food. She also needs warm food. Warm porridges and soups, because she is bleeding and the body is cleansing itself (similarly to during menstruation). A woman needs food that warms her. Psychologically she needs food she likes. I certainly do not recommend that a woman experiment after giving birth. Later yes, if she wants, but after the birth of a child she should continue with the eating pattern she had during pregnancy. The main thing is that the food is warm. Even in summer it is more suitable to eat warm rather than cold things. I am not saying a woman cannot have a salad 3 days after birth, but ideally with a warm flatbread, red lentil is fine. It is also about digestion, fibre and replenishing energy.

One excellent warm dish is our nutty chicken. The recipe is also built around simple, single-ingredient basics. ?

Healthy snacks

Another key principle is snacks. What we eat between main meals, what we fancy and what can give us a lot of energy. I strongly recommend my clients prepare or buy such snacks in advance. For example quality dark chocolate, like your Powerlogy ones – it is enough to keep a bar by the bed, you do not even need to eat much of it. Besides chocolate there are other snacks such as prunes, apricots and dates. Dried fruit is full of energy and sweet and tasty on top of that. But again I stress, it is good to prepare these snacks in advance, deliberately, so that I do not have to reach for a wafer bar or a dry roll. Pregnancy lasts 9 months; that is the time when I can prepare or preserve things.

Your 70 % chocolate is an excellent solution. Without milk and without gluten, but with big crunchy hazelnuts. Simply a tasty snack. ?

So have a plan! Besides snacks, do you also recommend vitamins and food supplements? They can help with tiredness and exhaustion too, only not all of them are suitable for breastfeeding mothers. Or are they?

Every day I answer questions about whether I recommend collagen, magnesium and so on, because the packaging says pregnant and breastfeeding women must not take them. I am not a doctor, but if a woman has no difficulties, I see no reason why she could not have magnesium or collagen.

So you are saying a warning on the packaging of a food supplement should not automatically be taken as a stop sign? Similarly to drinking coffee and alcohol?

That sentence on the packaging is protection for the manufacturer, because there probably are no data on how the given supplement acts on breastfeeding and pregnant women. So it is the precautionary principle – it has not been tested and it is not known what it will do. But that does not mean it will do something bad. In my experience collagen is perfectly fine for breastfeeding women too.

It is similar with coffee. If a woman drinks quality roasted organic coffee, once a day is fine in my view. I always advise my clients: first of all, get to know yourself, forget the stereotypes, take a blank sheet of paper and write on it:

This is my motherhood and this is how I imagine it.

Write down how you want it and tell yourself how you want to do it. A contented, rested mother matters more than a wreck who does everything that is recommended. It is similar with supplements, coffee or a small glass of wine while breastfeeding.

Powerlogy collagen tastes good and has a clean composition. It contains only hydrolysed collagen, nothing extra. No additives, no artificial preservatives or flavourings. One recommended dose (10 g) contains 9 000 mg of pure collagen.

It sounds like banal advice, but I can imagine it can be a very powerful tool for any mother. Especially a first-time mother who finds herself in a new stage of life and suddenly everyone around her is an expert on motherhood.

Yes, that is exactly what I went through. I was lost. I did not know who I was or how I wanted things to be, and I hung on every person who recommended something to me. You have to take it as a journey and a process. Everyone finds her own way. But she has to step out of her comfort zone. By sitting at home and isolating herself she will not work anything out. Or rather, it will be harder and take longer.

How do you avoid being lost? I can imagine many women get annoyed when you tell them to get to know yourself and find yourself.

We are taught that when we have a problem we take a pill, it gets solved and we move on. Someone comes along, says a miracle sentence and suddenly I am „found“. But it does not work like that. You have to deliberately step out of your comfort zone so that we work out who we are…

So how am I supposed to find myself?

Do you want to find out who you are? You can go to a therapist, you can go to a coach, you can come to my motherhood support groups. That in itself is a journey… If you feel inside that you want to find out but the right time has not come yet, then surround yourself with people who inspire you. There is nothing wrong with not knowing yet. Everyone is a different type. But we come back again to the need to put yourself in the foreground. A tired mother is tensed up. She is tired partly because she does not allow herself to be important to herself, to put herself first and to relax. We can also put ourselves first by letting others look after us.

We allow it, or we ask, to be looked after.

When someone looks after me and takes an interest in me, it beautifully helps me realise my own importance. It can be the trigger for finding yourself.

Control over the child, the compulsion to have everything under control. To control even things I am not able to influence or control. That is what makes us live life tensed up. And that, let’s be honest, is very exhausting.