Five ways to support your nervous system in the fourth trimester
The fourth trimester doesn't get talked about enough. Everyone prepares for birth. Very few people prepare for what happens to them afterwards.
If you're wired and exhausted at the same time, struggling to switch off even when the baby sleeps, or just quietly not yourself - that's not weakness. That's a nervous system that's been through a lot and hasn't had the space to recover.
Here are five things that actually help.
1. Prioritise warmth
Cold activates the nervous system. Warmth regulates it. Warm drinks, warm food, a hot water bottle on your belly, a bath when you can get one. This sounds too simple to matter but it really does. Most traditional postnatal practices across different cultures centre on keeping the mother warm for exactly this reason. Your body is listening.
2. Slow your exhale
You don't need a full breathwork practice to feel the difference. Just making your exhale longer than your inhale is enough to start shifting your nervous system out of stress mode. Breathe in for four counts, out for six or eight. Five minutes of that while the baby sleeps is not nothing.
3. Let yourself be held
New mums spend so much time holding - physically, emotionally, practically - that receiving care can start to feel unfamiliar. But your nervous system needs input too. A long hug. Skin to skin with your baby. A friend who just sits with you. Bodywork or energy healing. Being held isn't a luxury. For a lot of women postnatally it's genuinely what's missing.
4. Reduce decisions where you can
Decision fatigue hits hard in the fourth trimester. Every tiny choice - what to eat, whether to go out, what the baby needs - pulls from the same depleted resource. Simplify where you can. Have a default. Let someone else decide sometimes. It sounds small but it adds up.
5. Name what you're carrying
If you had a difficult pregnancy, a stressful or traumatic birth, a hard feeding journey - that doesn't just disappear because the baby arrived. Your body holds what your mind hasn't had time to process. Finding a way to name it - talking, writing, working with it through the body - matters more than most people realise. You're not being dramatic. You're being honest.
If you're looking for something that holds all of this in one space - the warmth, the breath, the being held, the body-led processing - that's what Held is for. A 1:1 healing session for mums and babies in the first nine months, shaped around what you and your baby need on that day.
