Jeya Angelique Lorenz
Jeya is passionate about health, healing and the mystical essence of life. She is co-founder and director of a psychedelic retreats business running safe and legal psilocybin retreats around the world and now is also a mama to a baby boy. Jeya has been living in Costa Rica but recently relocated to London/the USA.
HOW WAS YOUR POSTPARTUM EXPERIENCE?
My Post-partum experience was incredibly challenging. I gave birth in Costa Rica where I was living at the time. Our dream home birth ended in the Hospital but I was still able to deliver naturally. I found pregnancy extremely challenging. Much more challenging than I ever could have imagined. My mental health suffered greatly, as did my relationship with my partner. We fought constantly and I felt highly anxious and depressed for a lot of my pregnancy, thankfully this all went away after birth. However, before I gave birth I felt exhausted and traumatised by my pregnancy experience. I don't feel I went into birth and post-partum feeling particularly relaxed and energised, which probably didn't help my post-partum nightmare month. From day 1 breastfeeding was a real challenge - I couldn't get my baby to latch properly and after a while we figured out that nipple shields were the only way to get him to feed. However by day 5 post-partum I developed incredibly painful mastitis. I tirelessly tried EVERYTHING to get rid of it, but it persisted and no matter what happened I just couldn't get rid of it. I then developed it in my other boob at the same time. Meanwhile my baby would feed for an hour to an hour and half every time, indicating he wasn't really getting enough milk through the shields. I developed a fever and was unable to function too well. Eventually I went and got my breasts drained with a needle as an abscess had formed and started taking antibiotics (as well as intramuscular antibiotics that my partner had to inject in my ass). However, this too persisted and did not get better, plus navigating the health system in a foreign country was presenting huge challenges. Eventually I had developed sepsis, at 4 weeks post-partum I ended up having surgery on each breast and got given the right antibiotics. The recovery from this was a little rough but in conjunction with the recovery I saw an amazing lactation specialist who helped me get feeding sorted without the nipple shields (which it turned out had been the cause of the mastitis). I had daily vitamin IV drips and slowly my boobs and my health began to recover. Since then, the journey has been smooth sailing for the most part!
“Discovering your strength:
My experience of pregnancy, birth and postpartum were all to be totally honest - very challenging. There were days post partum where I was recovering from birth, exhausted in ways I didn’t know were possible and suffering fever, excruciating breast pain, desperate to feed my baby properly and suffering sepsis. If you had told me this is how it was going to be for me prior to living the experience, im not sure I would have been able to fathom how I would get through it. But through the experience I had, I found deep wells of strength and resilience that I had never known I had. I felt so proud that I made it through the experience I had and my partner was able to step up and show up for me and for our son and look after us in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. It was incredibly healing for our relationship and I feel stronger now than I ever have before. ”
HOW DID YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR POSTPARTUM?
My post partum preparation was minimal - I had my mum present for the birth and for the 10 days post-partum and I'm not sure what we would have done without her - she cooked and cleaned, we also had the most amazing doulas who came almost every other day to support us with a few practical things.
IF YOU WERE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN ID THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY, WHAT LESSONS DID YOU TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE?
If I could go back I would prepare for my postpartum journey with the support of a doula who could prepare lots of nourishing intentional foods for me, and I wish I had spoken with a lactation consultant way before I gave birth.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU PASS ON TO MOTHERS SOON TO BE POSTPARTUM?
Given my particular story - my advice to new mums would be to really research breastfeeding and find yourself a REALLY good lactation specialist ahead of the birth that can come and support you from day 1.
