Postpartum Planning: Identifying your tiers of support
An excerpt from our Postpartum and Return to Work Planning Go To Guide
My baby is 11 weeks old today, and coupled with moving through my own postpartum for the second time, we’ve also just released our Postpartum & Return To Work Planning Go To Guide. So as you can imagine, postpartum is on the mind. Postpartum currently IS my mind, I guess you could say?
And in over 60 interviews for Ready or Not, there is one thing I’m certain of. No matter what form it comes in — whether it’s paid or unpaid, whether it’s friends or family, whether it’s medical specialists or a doula — we all need support in motherhood. I’m sure you’re sick of the phrase ‘it takes a village’ but, to me, there’s perhaps never been a truer statement.
In collaboration with expert Naomi Chrisoulakis, our 85-page Go To Guide goes deep into preparing properly for your postpartum and return to paid work, so here, I wanted to share one of her brilliant strategies: identifying your tiers of support.
The conversations to have and things to consider three months prior to giving birth: your tiers of support
Three months prior to giving birth, start getting more concrete about your tiers of support.
What are my tiers of support?
The ‘tiers of support’ is a concept consisting of three tiers:
Your inner tier consists of the people who you're really, really comfortable with. These are the people who are going to be reliable practical and/or emotional support people.
The middle (community) tier might be people that you work with or your next door neighbours. These might be the people that would contribute to a meal train.
Consider your third tier your professional support. This might look like a cleaner, your obstetrician, acupuncturist, women's health physiotherapist, postpartum doula, osteopath, and other specialists you might need to lean on who have expertise in a specific area.
It’s important to note that you need all of these tiers. Many mothers and primary caregivers believe that a supportive partner and parent is enough, and while this is an amazing start, you need to think of broader support networks.
It’s great if your partner shares the load evenly with you, but sometimes you’ll want them to take the baby so that you can rest. Who could help pick up the load when it comes to food, cleaning, shopping and so forth outside of your mum and partner? Who will you turn to if breastfeeding becomes a challenge, your partner is too sleep deprived to properly support you and your mother is out of town?
This is why we need to consider and prepare all three tiers of support.
And don’t just think about it — use this page from our Go To Guide to write it down!