Words Matter! | Let’s talk about postpartum body changes
“Damaged”
“Broken”
“Oh, no!”
And my personal favorite…
“I’ve never seen anything THAT bad.”
Words matter!
Especially in the context of postpartum issues, specifically prolapse.
I was talking to a client who had surgical intervention and she was told by the doctor that things were “damaged”.
Now THAT’S a heavy word choice.
Damaged to me means broken, things won’t get better. That makes me SCARED (which I can tell you can actually make symptoms worse, if your problem is overactivity)
IT DRIVES ME NUTS!
Providers, we really need to watch what we are saying to patients because we are scaring them!
Imagine, if you think you are damaged beyond repair, are you going to hold out hope for a return to normalcy? NOPE.
We are just making an already hard thing even harder for moms.
A lightbulb can be broken.
Your can can be broken.
A mom CANNOT be broken!
We need to be cognizant of the words we are using when we are talking to moms about the changes that have happened with their postpartum bodies.
Share with me, what experiences have you had with these situations?