Welcome back to the blog! We’ve already discussed how to use essential oils for babies, but what about using essential oils for postpartum? What does the research say? Let’s dig in.
Overview
Essential oils can help with a bunch of different things postpartum. My goal is to help you prepare a practical “toolbox” of sorts so that you’re equipped to handle postpartum well.
We could talk about herbs and essential oils all day long, but I want to give you a brief guide to this. I don’t have the time or money to collect an essential oil arsenal. I want to have 3-4 quality essential oils that I can keep on hand to make postpartum recovery easier.
Here are some essential oils and herbs to keep on hand:
- Orange oil
- Lavender oil
- Frankinsence
- Ginger root
Postpartum Mood Swings/Depression
I found several studies (see here and here) indicating that essential oils can be a great way to help prevent and treat postpartum depression and mood disorders. Lavender oil helps to relax and calm. Meanwhile, orange essential oil helps to promote relaxation and cheerfulness.
Frankinsence can help aid in brain clarity (see this study). It also reduces depression-like behaviors in rats, according to this study.
Breast Engorgement
When your milk comes in, be prepared to be a little bit sore. It’s not terrible (after all, you’ve just gone through childbirth, so this pain is pretty mild in comparison). However, there are some natural treatments that you can use to help manage the pain for a couple of days.
This Egyptian study concluded that cabbage leaves, warm ginger, and olive oil massage helped significantly with engorgement.
This study concluded that ginger compresses also really help with breast engorgment. If you have fresh ginger and can make a hot compress with that, go for it. Here’s a recipe that’s pretty standard.
Vaginal Healing
This study noted a significant improvement when lavender oil was used on healing episiotomy wounds. Women reported less pain and faster healing when they used lavender oil.
This study also reported that lavender oil helps to prevent infection and promote healing.
Note: don’t apply undiluted lavender oil to open wounds. Instead, add it to your bathwater, or to your sitz bath.
Insomnia
This study concluded that orange essential oil, when taken internally with a glass of water, helped prevent insomina in postpartum women. The study did caution, though, that more testing needs to happen before this is a widespread recommendation.
In Conclusion
Emotional stability, breast engorgement, vaginal pain, and insomnia were a few of my biggest challenges postpartum. These are some things I’d like to try the next time I have a baby. Hopefully you can find them helpful.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you in the comments. What was your biggest struggle postpartum? What herb or essential oil do you think should be on this short list?
Until next time,
Lynette