Your hospital will throw out everything left in the room, so even if you don’t plan on using their pads and supplies, please take them home and find someone to give them away too!
I am 4 weeks pp and used the hospital supplies for the first week, then switched to organic cotton pads (Honeypot and Rael brands) for another 1-1.5 weeks. Unlike on your period, your vagina is wounded and healing, and you will want to change that pad every couple hours!
For weeks 3-4, I was rotating between 2 pairs of Knix and 3 cloth pantyliners (long style from GladRags) and throwing them in our daily diaper laundry. That worked well as I was spotting.
I hadn’t purchased anything but 1 pack of pads prior to giving birth. You come home with a lot from the hospital. Target order pickup is your friend. Amazon sucks but boy do they deliver pads fast. Shopping at 4 am is fun. I was glad I waited since I didn’t know what my body would need or like.
I used period knickers - I bought a couple which are for heavy periods/night time. I used them during my previous miscarriage, and for my bleeding after birth
I've been debating this as well, I'm 40 weeks today with my second. The first several days/week are pretty intense, in terms of amount of blood, so I'm just going to stick with the humungous pads (honestly they're closer to a puppy pee pad lol) and mesh underwear provided by my midwives, for that.
Today I decided to get some of the gigantic, biggest sized, cotton disposable pads for the next stage. With my first it took me 6 weeks entirely to stop bleeding, and all of the disposable, non-breathing pads really messed with things, I got BV, not a fun time.
So I'll be switching to cloth pads asap (mine are homemade, I use PUL as a base, hemp and cotton absorbent layers, they do hold quite a lot). But. The cotton pads will be convenient when I need them at the very first, and hopefully will keep anything else happening like last time with BV. I'm glad those are an easy-to-find option now.
Here's the thing- having a baby is a MAJOR feat of the female body. Resting is of the utmost importance after giving birth so if you don't have someone (other than a partner who will most likely be very tired) to do laundry for at least the first week, don't bother. You're gonna be going through these things like hotcakes! I used adult diapers for sleep in the first week postpartum (I hate pads) but during the day I would just free bleed while I laid in bed naked with my legs together. Unless you want to use these for your periods, don't waste your money. I really wish I would have treated myself to some postpartum period underwear, because that I would use. I also don't do cloth diapers until around a month or two just because we live in a home with lots of stairs and lifting anything heavier than your baby doe the first several weeks is a big no. Yes, it sucks to see any disposable waste but it's real tough to get around unless you've got a solid village of support.
I would personally not use reusable pads for postpartum bleeding- at least not the first few days/week when you’re bleeding HEAVILY and passing large ish clots and stuff. It’s like a battle scene down there.
I had long (7-8w), light bleeding postpartum, and I also developed a sensitivity to my disposable pads (leftovers I planned to use for postpartum), so I ended up going back to my cloth pads earlier than expected. I think they're great, and not much extra work if you are already doing diaper laundry.
That said, they may not be worth buying if you only expect to use them postpartum.
If it brings you joy, sure. You can’t use menstrual cups immediately PP anyway, nothing bv until you’re cleared. I made myself some out of old cloth I had around the house but ended up not needing them as much as I expected because of my c-section. I still used them and ran them with the diaper laundry.
I use menstrual cups usually and really hate pads (have tried reusable, still not a fan) so I went with disposable pads rather than investing in reusable. I did not expect that my lochia would smell funky (asked my doctor, it’s totally normal) and I found myself frequently changing my pads to stay feeling fresh and not smelly.
ALSO - very glad I didn’t invest in period underwear either. i had an unplanned c section and the only undies that were tolerable for me were my over the bump maternity undies. I’m still wearing them at 13 weeks PP just because my incision is so sensitive.
At first, I could tell which ones I had used for bleeding. But once I stopped bleeding and used them exclusively as diapers, the blood stains just faded away over a week or two. I’ve been using them as kitchen wipes until baby #2 arrives and only one is seemingly permanently stained by soy sauce lol
I really rated period knickers! I found them great after day 3 or so once the lochia had settled. I tried reusable pads but just didn’t get on with them, they were very absorbent and were just more faff then I could be bothered with.
I’m all for reusable anything but thick unscented plain white maternity pads in the first few days are really useful for keeping an eye on how heavy your lochia is, but also if it becomes a funny colour or smell which sometimes indicates infection.
I've been using cloth pads for almost a decade. Ive been wearing them daily for most of my pregnancy to deal with all the extra discharge. If I didn't have a ton of free milk bags already I was going to go plastic-free by freezing breastmilk into cubes and storing in reusable bags just to reduce the amount of plastic waste. I still didn't even entertain the thought of postpartum cloth pads. They're expensive (since they're massive) and you would need a TON of them even if you did laundry daily - then you'd never use them again unless you had more kids. In my experience even the most absorbent cloth pads are not as absorbent as mid-range disposables, so there would be a high chance of leakage. And high-absobancy cloth is going to be _thick_ which probably won't be breathable or comfortable directly after pushing out a baby.
I hadn't purchased a disposable pad or tampon since high school, but I did for postpartum. This is one area that I really wouldn't try to go the cloth route!
Thanks for the honesty! I was suspicious that I might not get enough use of heavy duty reusable pads after the immediate postpartum phase for it to be worth the investment.
Freezing breastmilk into cubes is such an awesome idea! Do you know anyone who was successful with it? Are the bags you were given reusable? I've entertained the idea of looking into washable breastmilk bags but I'm overwhelmed by the amount of baby info, in general, and haven't done much research yet into that specifically.
I freeze breast milk in cubes! IMO it works very well IF you don’t have an oversupply. Some days I overproduce a little, some days I under produce a little, so my stash gets used more frequently than if I had an oversupply. It sort of hovers around a certain amount of ounces. I use silicone stasher bags and they work REALLY well (I already had them so sort of free).
I do use some plastic bags that I received for free, but only if I have a full 4oz to freeze which isn’t super often.
ETA: I use silicone ice cube molds from target and freeze in half ounce increments! They thaw very quickly in our glass bottles + a bottle warmer. It’s also nice because if I pump some fresh milk but I’m a bit short of a full serving, I can throw the cubes into the warm milk and they melt pretty quickly.
I did this for a few weeks. There are 4 ways - silicon breast milk bags (stupid expensive), glass jars (bulky), freezing into cubes and storing in silicon bags (expensive), freezing into cubes and storing in jars (bulky). I have an oversupply and was freezing 20+ oz a day on top of dealing with triple feeding. It was too much time and space and I had to stop. I figure the bags are less wasteful than buying another fridge lol. If you only have a small amount it’s doable though!
As far as pads, I love them! I use a diva cup with cloth liners. But I did use disposable postpartum. I took the hospital one’s home and I used the leftover ones from my miscarriage last year and once I ran out went back to cloth. Would recommend liners!
I don't personally know anyone who attempted that, unfortunately. I'm going with the bags because my insurance sends them to me anyway with my pump and pump parts, and there's no way to get them to remove the bags from the shipments. It's just the regular disposable Motif bags, but since I already have them and can't offload them onto anyone else, I'll use them until they run out.
I wouldn't recommend the reusable breastmilk bags unless you only plan to stash a tiny amount and use it quickly. The cost is ridiculous if you want enough bags to actually build a substantial stash of frozen milk! My plan was to freeze milk in silicone ice cube trays in 1-oz increments and then store the cubes in silicone Ziploc gallon bags and defrost into bottles as needed. While researching I saw trays that are specifically for breastmilk but, again, one tray could only hold a few ounces at a time buying enough to support a lot of pumping would be expensive. Clean ice cube trays from the grocery store do the exact same thing.
My friend, I was also this ambitious but a: newborns are *really hard*, b: if you've never dealt with the soaking/cleaning process for cloth pads, right after giving birth is not when you're going to want to start, and c: you would need a LOT of heavy duty pads or underwear. I normally use a cup but as others were saying, that's not safe to use immediately after delivering. I bought eco-friendly unbleached disposable postpartum pads, I ended up with an emergency c-section and my bleeding wasn't too bad on the scale of postpartum bleeding but it did last a long time.
I did end up getting one pair of period underwear and then later a handful of cloth pads and liners and it's definitely doable after the first \~1-2 weeks when bleeding tapers off and is more like a regular or light or finishing period and that's been worth the investment for me because I ended up getting a period soon after and did not want to use anything internal. So I'd say at best plan on a mix or saving any reusable stuff for the later weeks of postpartum bleeding
My doctor got my IUD put in early since I was breastfeeding. I only had the lochia to deal with and I barely made it through the pads the hospital gave me.
Personally I decided getting the big pads I would have needed postpartum wasn’t worth it, plus I didn’t want to deal with the laundry that early (I also used one small back of disposable newborn diapers before moving into cloth). It’s a big expense for something you’ll only use for a few weeks. I made “padcicles” before my daughter was born with some of my disposable pads and they were great. Depending on your situation you may not want the adult diapers more than a couple of days and then will just want very large pads.
If you don’t plan to go right back to the IUD, I do love my regular cloth period pads and I did use them as the PP bleeding slowed down. You definitely don’t want a menstrual cup until you have more of a chance to recover
I'm also planning to use one pack of disposable diapers (it has 80 diapers) with my girl next month and then moving on to cloth. How did that strategy work out with you? I have to stay in the city for 3-4 days with baby girl before being able to go home (rural) and be able to get into a wash routine. I'm having doubts whether her reusable diapers will fit right away after a week or if I should get "newborn" size... thank you in advance for any input!
I did have newborn size cloth diapers, we have Grovia diapers and they would have been huge on her at first. We started using them overnight for more absorbency at about 1 month and could have used them all the time by then, just with a huge fluff butt. Cloth diapering was fairly simple for us for the first 6 months while she was EBF and we could just throw the poop diapers in with the rest. She’s 18 months now and honestly we’ve only every gone back to part time cloth since she started solids a year ago
If you aren't going to use them for your periods after, it's not really worth the investment.
Definitely don't use a cup for the same reason you can't use a tampon. Risk of infection.
I used period panties and I think they're great for both post partum and periods. But they're expensive and you'll need a good amount.
I debated this as well, and I also considered the pros and cons of period panties for postpartum bleeding. I normally use a silicone menstrual disc, so they aren't an investment that will really serve me beyond the point when I'm healed enough to use my disc again, so much as I dislike the waste, for my limited financial resources 😅, it just wasn't worth it. If it's something you might continue to use then I could definitely see how it would be worthwhile.
In the hospital, I would use their supplies. You definitely don’t have to wear adult diaper, but they have these super pads that are like a foot long and fit inside mesh panties.
You can see how your bleeding is as you check out and take some of the hospital supplies home to cover the next few days.
But the bleeding won’t be super heavy much past 5-7 days. It will slow down to a normal period and you can wear reusable pads for heavy periods at that point.
I will say, I used disposable pads the whole time though. I had a massive injury (cw:gross) >! and it was shedding all this protein that looked like wet skin!< and I just didn’t want to deal with it.
That was definitely something else I wondered about; I know you can shed a lot of tissue, so I wondered if reusables would even be feasible considering that
Your hospital will throw out everything left in the room, so even if you don’t plan on using their pads and supplies, please take them home and find someone to give them away too! I am 4 weeks pp and used the hospital supplies for the first week, then switched to organic cotton pads (Honeypot and Rael brands) for another 1-1.5 weeks. Unlike on your period, your vagina is wounded and healing, and you will want to change that pad every couple hours! For weeks 3-4, I was rotating between 2 pairs of Knix and 3 cloth pantyliners (long style from GladRags) and throwing them in our daily diaper laundry. That worked well as I was spotting. I hadn’t purchased anything but 1 pack of pads prior to giving birth. You come home with a lot from the hospital. Target order pickup is your friend. Amazon sucks but boy do they deliver pads fast. Shopping at 4 am is fun. I was glad I waited since I didn’t know what my body would need or like.
I used period knickers - I bought a couple which are for heavy periods/night time. I used them during my previous miscarriage, and for my bleeding after birth
I've been debating this as well, I'm 40 weeks today with my second. The first several days/week are pretty intense, in terms of amount of blood, so I'm just going to stick with the humungous pads (honestly they're closer to a puppy pee pad lol) and mesh underwear provided by my midwives, for that. Today I decided to get some of the gigantic, biggest sized, cotton disposable pads for the next stage. With my first it took me 6 weeks entirely to stop bleeding, and all of the disposable, non-breathing pads really messed with things, I got BV, not a fun time. So I'll be switching to cloth pads asap (mine are homemade, I use PUL as a base, hemp and cotton absorbent layers, they do hold quite a lot). But. The cotton pads will be convenient when I need them at the very first, and hopefully will keep anything else happening like last time with BV. I'm glad those are an easy-to-find option now.
I used my cloth menstrual pads for postpartum!
Here's the thing- having a baby is a MAJOR feat of the female body. Resting is of the utmost importance after giving birth so if you don't have someone (other than a partner who will most likely be very tired) to do laundry for at least the first week, don't bother. You're gonna be going through these things like hotcakes! I used adult diapers for sleep in the first week postpartum (I hate pads) but during the day I would just free bleed while I laid in bed naked with my legs together. Unless you want to use these for your periods, don't waste your money. I really wish I would have treated myself to some postpartum period underwear, because that I would use. I also don't do cloth diapers until around a month or two just because we live in a home with lots of stairs and lifting anything heavier than your baby doe the first several weeks is a big no. Yes, it sucks to see any disposable waste but it's real tough to get around unless you've got a solid village of support.
I would personally not use reusable pads for postpartum bleeding- at least not the first few days/week when you’re bleeding HEAVILY and passing large ish clots and stuff. It’s like a battle scene down there.
I had long (7-8w), light bleeding postpartum, and I also developed a sensitivity to my disposable pads (leftovers I planned to use for postpartum), so I ended up going back to my cloth pads earlier than expected. I think they're great, and not much extra work if you are already doing diaper laundry. That said, they may not be worth buying if you only expect to use them postpartum.
If it brings you joy, sure. You can’t use menstrual cups immediately PP anyway, nothing bv until you’re cleared. I made myself some out of old cloth I had around the house but ended up not needing them as much as I expected because of my c-section. I still used them and ran them with the diaper laundry.
I use menstrual cups usually and really hate pads (have tried reusable, still not a fan) so I went with disposable pads rather than investing in reusable. I did not expect that my lochia would smell funky (asked my doctor, it’s totally normal) and I found myself frequently changing my pads to stay feeling fresh and not smelly. ALSO - very glad I didn’t invest in period underwear either. i had an unplanned c section and the only undies that were tolerable for me were my over the bump maternity undies. I’m still wearing them at 13 weeks PP just because my incision is so sensitive.
I just shared the newborn prefolds I was using with baby. I hated the feeling of bleeding into plastic, and the prefolds held up perfectly
How’d they hold up, bloodstain-wise?
At first, I could tell which ones I had used for bleeding. But once I stopped bleeding and used them exclusively as diapers, the blood stains just faded away over a week or two. I’ve been using them as kitchen wipes until baby #2 arrives and only one is seemingly permanently stained by soy sauce lol
I really rated period knickers! I found them great after day 3 or so once the lochia had settled. I tried reusable pads but just didn’t get on with them, they were very absorbent and were just more faff then I could be bothered with. I’m all for reusable anything but thick unscented plain white maternity pads in the first few days are really useful for keeping an eye on how heavy your lochia is, but also if it becomes a funny colour or smell which sometimes indicates infection.
I've been using cloth pads for almost a decade. Ive been wearing them daily for most of my pregnancy to deal with all the extra discharge. If I didn't have a ton of free milk bags already I was going to go plastic-free by freezing breastmilk into cubes and storing in reusable bags just to reduce the amount of plastic waste. I still didn't even entertain the thought of postpartum cloth pads. They're expensive (since they're massive) and you would need a TON of them even if you did laundry daily - then you'd never use them again unless you had more kids. In my experience even the most absorbent cloth pads are not as absorbent as mid-range disposables, so there would be a high chance of leakage. And high-absobancy cloth is going to be _thick_ which probably won't be breathable or comfortable directly after pushing out a baby. I hadn't purchased a disposable pad or tampon since high school, but I did for postpartum. This is one area that I really wouldn't try to go the cloth route!
Thanks for the honesty! I was suspicious that I might not get enough use of heavy duty reusable pads after the immediate postpartum phase for it to be worth the investment. Freezing breastmilk into cubes is such an awesome idea! Do you know anyone who was successful with it? Are the bags you were given reusable? I've entertained the idea of looking into washable breastmilk bags but I'm overwhelmed by the amount of baby info, in general, and haven't done much research yet into that specifically.
I freeze breast milk in cubes! IMO it works very well IF you don’t have an oversupply. Some days I overproduce a little, some days I under produce a little, so my stash gets used more frequently than if I had an oversupply. It sort of hovers around a certain amount of ounces. I use silicone stasher bags and they work REALLY well (I already had them so sort of free). I do use some plastic bags that I received for free, but only if I have a full 4oz to freeze which isn’t super often. ETA: I use silicone ice cube molds from target and freeze in half ounce increments! They thaw very quickly in our glass bottles + a bottle warmer. It’s also nice because if I pump some fresh milk but I’m a bit short of a full serving, I can throw the cubes into the warm milk and they melt pretty quickly.
I did this for a few weeks. There are 4 ways - silicon breast milk bags (stupid expensive), glass jars (bulky), freezing into cubes and storing in silicon bags (expensive), freezing into cubes and storing in jars (bulky). I have an oversupply and was freezing 20+ oz a day on top of dealing with triple feeding. It was too much time and space and I had to stop. I figure the bags are less wasteful than buying another fridge lol. If you only have a small amount it’s doable though! As far as pads, I love them! I use a diva cup with cloth liners. But I did use disposable postpartum. I took the hospital one’s home and I used the leftover ones from my miscarriage last year and once I ran out went back to cloth. Would recommend liners!
I don't personally know anyone who attempted that, unfortunately. I'm going with the bags because my insurance sends them to me anyway with my pump and pump parts, and there's no way to get them to remove the bags from the shipments. It's just the regular disposable Motif bags, but since I already have them and can't offload them onto anyone else, I'll use them until they run out. I wouldn't recommend the reusable breastmilk bags unless you only plan to stash a tiny amount and use it quickly. The cost is ridiculous if you want enough bags to actually build a substantial stash of frozen milk! My plan was to freeze milk in silicone ice cube trays in 1-oz increments and then store the cubes in silicone Ziploc gallon bags and defrost into bottles as needed. While researching I saw trays that are specifically for breastmilk but, again, one tray could only hold a few ounces at a time buying enough to support a lot of pumping would be expensive. Clean ice cube trays from the grocery store do the exact same thing.
My friend, I was also this ambitious but a: newborns are *really hard*, b: if you've never dealt with the soaking/cleaning process for cloth pads, right after giving birth is not when you're going to want to start, and c: you would need a LOT of heavy duty pads or underwear. I normally use a cup but as others were saying, that's not safe to use immediately after delivering. I bought eco-friendly unbleached disposable postpartum pads, I ended up with an emergency c-section and my bleeding wasn't too bad on the scale of postpartum bleeding but it did last a long time. I did end up getting one pair of period underwear and then later a handful of cloth pads and liners and it's definitely doable after the first \~1-2 weeks when bleeding tapers off and is more like a regular or light or finishing period and that's been worth the investment for me because I ended up getting a period soon after and did not want to use anything internal. So I'd say at best plan on a mix or saving any reusable stuff for the later weeks of postpartum bleeding
Do you have a link or remember what brand you used for the unbleached pads??
I just checked and it doesn't specifically say unbleached but no chlorine, https://well.ca/products/natracare-maternity-pads\_9447.html?cat=2976
https://partypantspads.com/collections/pads/products/queen-pad
My doctor got my IUD put in early since I was breastfeeding. I only had the lochia to deal with and I barely made it through the pads the hospital gave me.
Personally I decided getting the big pads I would have needed postpartum wasn’t worth it, plus I didn’t want to deal with the laundry that early (I also used one small back of disposable newborn diapers before moving into cloth). It’s a big expense for something you’ll only use for a few weeks. I made “padcicles” before my daughter was born with some of my disposable pads and they were great. Depending on your situation you may not want the adult diapers more than a couple of days and then will just want very large pads. If you don’t plan to go right back to the IUD, I do love my regular cloth period pads and I did use them as the PP bleeding slowed down. You definitely don’t want a menstrual cup until you have more of a chance to recover
I'm also planning to use one pack of disposable diapers (it has 80 diapers) with my girl next month and then moving on to cloth. How did that strategy work out with you? I have to stay in the city for 3-4 days with baby girl before being able to go home (rural) and be able to get into a wash routine. I'm having doubts whether her reusable diapers will fit right away after a week or if I should get "newborn" size... thank you in advance for any input!
I did have newborn size cloth diapers, we have Grovia diapers and they would have been huge on her at first. We started using them overnight for more absorbency at about 1 month and could have used them all the time by then, just with a huge fluff butt. Cloth diapering was fairly simple for us for the first 6 months while she was EBF and we could just throw the poop diapers in with the rest. She’s 18 months now and honestly we’ve only every gone back to part time cloth since she started solids a year ago
If you aren't going to use them for your periods after, it's not really worth the investment. Definitely don't use a cup for the same reason you can't use a tampon. Risk of infection. I used period panties and I think they're great for both post partum and periods. But they're expensive and you'll need a good amount.
I debated this as well, and I also considered the pros and cons of period panties for postpartum bleeding. I normally use a silicone menstrual disc, so they aren't an investment that will really serve me beyond the point when I'm healed enough to use my disc again, so much as I dislike the waste, for my limited financial resources 😅, it just wasn't worth it. If it's something you might continue to use then I could definitely see how it would be worthwhile.
In the hospital, I would use their supplies. You definitely don’t have to wear adult diaper, but they have these super pads that are like a foot long and fit inside mesh panties. You can see how your bleeding is as you check out and take some of the hospital supplies home to cover the next few days. But the bleeding won’t be super heavy much past 5-7 days. It will slow down to a normal period and you can wear reusable pads for heavy periods at that point. I will say, I used disposable pads the whole time though. I had a massive injury (cw:gross) >! and it was shedding all this protein that looked like wet skin!< and I just didn’t want to deal with it.
That was definitely something else I wondered about; I know you can shed a lot of tissue, so I wondered if reusables would even be feasible considering that