What your baby is doing
Your baby can now focus best at ~20–30 cm — the exact distance to your face during feeding. Mutual gaze releases oxytocin in both of you.
Source: Brazelton & Nugent, Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (4th ed., 2011)
Your healing body
Lochia shifts red → brown → yellow/white. The 2025 Canadian Postpartum Guideline encourages daily pelvic-floor muscle training (reduces urinary incontinence) plus accumulating light-intensity activity — walking, gentle mobility, activities of daily living. Progression to MVPA is gradual, individualised and symptom-based.
General info — not personalised medical advice.
Maternal mind
You are not 'getting back to normal'. You are becoming someone new — Daniel Stern called it the motherhood constellation; Aurélie Athan calls it matrescence. Identity reorganisation is the work of this period.
Source: Stern, The Motherhood Constellation (Basic Books, 1995)
You & baby
Your baby cries, you respond. You smile, they widen their eyes. These tiny loops build the secure base described by Bowlby and Ainsworth.
Source: Ainsworth et al., Patterns of Attachment (Erlbaum, 1978)
For your partner
Sleep deprivation drives conflict. Trade night shifts where possible, and remember Gottman's finding: 67% of couples report sharp drops in relationship satisfaction in the first year — turning toward each other small bids is the antidote.
Source: Gottman & Gottman, J Family Communication 5(4), 2005 — Bringing Baby Home
Milk, bottles & beyond
Frequent evening feeds aren't a supply failure — they're a supply signal. Prolactin is naturally higher at night, and night feeds drive long-term capacity.
Source: Kim et al., J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2017) — Circadian prolactin in lactation
Infant sleep this week
Circadian rhythms aren't online yet. Bright daylight by day, dim warm light at night, and night feeds in the quietest version of the room you can manage.
Source: McKenna & Gettler, Acta Paediatrica 105 (2016) — Breastsleeping & evolved infant sleep
60-second prompt
Name it out loud. Tiny gratitudes lay down memory in a sleep-deprived brain.
Developed and curated by perinatal psychologists, family & couples counsellors, doulas, perinatal health & fitness specialists, and IBCLCs / lactation consultants. Educational — not a substitute for medical care.