You will bleed for weeks. Plural. And the hospital pads are fine for the first day but after that you need something that doesn't rearrange itself in your underwear and rip out pubic hair. You also need cold/soothing. Enter: Mom Diapers.
Who This Is For
Anyone recovering from a vaginal delivery who wants to stop bleeding through their pajamas and also wants their perineum to not be on fire. If you had a c-section, the ice pack section probably doesn't apply but the pad situation still does.
What We Actually Did
I used all of this with both Cleo and Mouse. Bought some things once, re-ordered others multiple times. The stuff that made the cut here is the stuff I actually reached for, not the stuff that sat in a basket looking aspirational.
Mom Diapers
These are the best postpartum option I've found. I used them with both kids and bought way too many boxes, which turned out to be the right amount.
Change them as often as you would a regular pad. Otherwise you will give yourself diaper rash. Not good.
Giant Pads
This is the upgrade to your Mom Diaper especially if you're out and about. When you need to pee you can ditch the pad and still have the diaper on without needing to do a full swap. Seems like overkill until you're managing pad and baby in your arms while peeing in a public bathroom.
These are not your everyday pads. They're huge and absorbent and I promise they are better than using the old Overnight Pads you have in the back of your bathroom cabinet. ALSO they can be great as a diapering hack especially if you have one of the wipe-clean changing pads like the Peanut or the Hatch. Stick one of these suckers under the general diaper area and it catches any blowout mess and can just get tossed into your diaper pail.
Ice Packs (Disposable)
At the hospital they made ice packs out of baby diapers (rip open the top, shove ice cubes into the absorbent part) and those were great. But at home you don't have a nurse handing you a fresh one every hour, so these are the next best thing.
Frida Mom's ice pads are a pad and ice pack in one. They're not cheap, which is annoying because you'll go through them fast. But also they're worth it. Put a few boxes on your registry and keep them next to the toilet.
The "not cheap" part is real. You can DIY padcicles (I made a batch before Cleo was born and then never used them because every time I remembered they existed I was already mid-change and my toilet is not next to my freezer). But if you want something that just works out of the package with no prep, this is it.
Ice Packs (Reusable)
The Frida Mom ice pads are great but they're single-use and add up. These ice packs are reusable and just slip into your underwear. You don't have to take your pants down to attach a pad, which is more valuable than you think it is.
I used these with Mouse and really liked them. The catch is the same "trekking to the freezer" situation, but the fact that you can slip them in without a full wardrobe change makes them way more likely to actually get used.
Get the sanitary sleeves that go with them. Without the sleeves they're just a cold pack pressed against healing skin, which is not the vibe. With the sleeves they're rational.
The One Thing Nobody Tells You
The pad-to-ice-pack-to-diaper layering system sounds insane when you're reading about it pregnant. Then you're postpartum and you're doing it without thinking. It becomes automatic in about two days. And then one day you realize you only need a regular pad and it feels like graduation.
For the full postpartum recovery breakdown (witch hazel, peri bottles, pain management, all of it), check out Postpartum Recovery: This Sucks (But You'll Be Fine).
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