By Melissa Philippe, Afro-Indigenous Traditional Midwife + Holistic Wellness Practitioner

Postpartum care is sacred. It is spiritual. It is ancestral. And yet, in modern Western culture, it is often treated as an afterthought, a brief “recovery” period instead of the profound rite of passage into the rest of your life as it truly is.

As a traditional midwife and holistic wellness practitioner, I believe it’s time we shift how we tend to birthing people after birth. Postpartum care must evolve beyond the checklist and return to the sacred.

One powerful way to do that? Through the integration of holistic, culturally rooted practices.

Why Holistic Care Matters in the Postpartum Window

Holistic postpartum care recognises that a new parent is not just healing physically. They are being reborn emotionally, spiritually, hormonally, and energetically. The fourth trimester postpartum window, especially the first 40-60 days, is crucial for recovery, bonding, rest, and reconnection.

When we ignore the holistic dimensions of this phase, we risk leaving families depleted, anxious, disconnected, or unsupported. But when we centre wholeness, we open the door to more profound healing, ancestral remembering, and generational transformation.

What Does It Mean to Offer Holistic Postpartum Care?

To me, it means we as birth workers, birth keepers/doulas, and wellness practitioners hold space in a way that is:

• Culturally Relevant: Honouring traditions, herbs, foods, and spiritual rites from the client’s lineage
• Spiritually Grounded: Creating room for rituals, reflection, prayer, and energetic support
• Emotionally Safe: Validating the emotions and identity shifts of parenthood
• Physically Restorative: Supporting rest, nourishment, and body healing through natural means
• Communally Held: Tapping into the village, not just the individual

It’s not about adding more. It’s about deepening the care.

Examples of Holistic Practices That Transform Postpartum Support

Here are just a few of the holistic elements I weave into my postpartum offerings, and that anyone can consider incorporating:

Herbal Steams & Sitz Baths

Plants like mugwort, lavender, calendula, or yarrow can support perineal healing, womb release, and spiritual clearing.

Ancestral Nourishment

Offering warm, grounding foods that support lactation, organ recovery, and nervous system balance, such as bone broths, healing porridges, or native teas.

Energetic Clearing & Womb Healing

Holding intentional space to help the birthing person release birth trauma, ancestral weight, or emotional heaviness from the womb and pelvic space.

Postnatal and Me Ceremony

Creating a small home-based (or location of your choice) postnatal massage, bath and prayer ceremony for both mom and baby to commemorate your transition.

Sound Healing & Guided Breathwork

Using tuning forks, soft drumming, prayer, or meditative breathing to help regulate the nervous system and encourage presence.

Community Mapping

Helping clients map who their “village” is, who brings meals, listens, does laundry, and supports the spiritual, emotional, and practical.

So… Why Isn’t This Already Standard?

Because we live in a system that sees birth as clinical and postpartum as invisible.

Westernised models of postpartum care rarely account for the cultural, spiritual, or emotional dimensions of recovery. And birth workers, often underpaid and undervalued, are seldom trained or compensated to hold space holistically.

But that’s changing. Because we’re changing it.

🌺 A Call to the Birthworkers

If you’re a postpartum birth worker, I invite you to ask yourself:

• How do I care for the whole person, not just the physical body?
• What ancestral knowledge do I carry, or can I learn, that supports postpartum healing?
• What spiritual, herbal, or cultural practices do my clients already know and trust?
• How can I create spaces where rest, ritual, and remembrance are non-negotiable?

Holistic postpartum care isn’t a trend. It’s a return. A remembering. A revolution.

🌿 Final Thoughts

Incorporating holistic practices into postpartum doula care isn’t about “doing the most.” It’s about doing what’s most meaningful. It’s about honouring birth as more than a moment and postpartum as a sacred portal.

It must begin at the root to truly change the culture of care. And postpartum is one of the deepest roots of all.

Want to learn more about holistic postpartum care, Rooted in Wisdom?