“I had my baby six weeks ago and just got my period…so it’s not fair!”
While this is technically possible, it’s not common if you’re exclusively breastfeeding. If you don’t breastfeed and take steps to dry up your milk quickly after giving birth, you can expect your period to return within 6 to 8 weeks after giving birth.
If you are exclusively breastfeeding, however, you may not have a period for the entire duration of your breastfeeding relationship, whether that be 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, etc.
More often than not, when I hear of someone suddenly bleeding at 6 weeks after a week or two of no bleeding, the culprit is often overactivity.
It took nine months for the uterus to stretch and the placenta to grow and go through all the changes of pregnancy. Not all of these will be recovered within 6 weeks.
Your body can be “tricked” around 3-6 weeks after giving birth – you may feel more like yourself, stronger, less bleeding or none at all, you feel anxious to continue your normal activities or exercise regimens. All the while, you still have a soft, healing area inside your uterus. You may have seen the image of the paper plate showing the size of the placenta on social media attached to your uterus, to describe the need to rest and rest after giving birth.
So if you are 5-8 weeks postpartum and your bleeding has stopped, please continue it slowly. You may see some bright red bleeding again after excessive activity. You can go for a short walk or do yoga, but let’s wait for any serious activity until your body has had plenty of time to heal.
Also, remember that breastfeeding is not a safe form of birth control. You may or may not know when you ovulate for the first time after birth so just be aware of resuming intercourse at some point. If you’re used to a particular method of birth control or fertility monitoring, you’ll still need to do that if you want to wait some time before getting pregnant again.
