The data to show mamas need more time in bed than you think!

My pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery data from Oura 💫

I used Oura to track sleep through my pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Tracking like this taught me a lot!

First, I learned I needed 12+ hours in bed each day in the first trimester in order to have good sleep and readiness scores.

It seemed that I could either do one extended sleep, or I could do a normal 8-9 hour sleep and take a late morning/ early afternoon nap to get the total.

If I did either of those sleep patterns, my scores would stay pretty high.

More importantly, I wouldn’t feel as nauseous or tired on those days!

But if I pushed myself to be “normal” and only get 7-10 hours of sleep, everything got worse.

Next, I learned third trimester sleep interruptions are significant!

But since I had already learned so much in the first trimester about how important it was to stay in bed as long as I felt like I needed, these sleep interruptions weren’t as unpleasant as they might seem.

Actually, since this was my fourth baby, I really enjoyed all these middle of the night wakings to enjoy the quiet and love my growing baby apart from the normal bustle of the busy home.

Here’s what it looked like to spend nearly 12 hours in bed and only get 8.5 hours of sleep.

And if you haven’t taken it yet, here’s the class I taught about The Surprising Good News About Sleep Interruptions in Motherhood.

I also learned that from everything Oura can see, labor and birth are just pretty normal events.

Honestly, the data from my day in labor (story here—yes, it was idyllic) looked pretty much like any other day.

But I noticed Oura tracked my golden hour as “restorative time,” and I thought, “How sweet is that?” And how very true.

Finally, I learned bedrest and meal-trains are amazing for postpartum.

I never made a specific circadian, or any, postpartum plan in my first 3 pregnancies, and while I don’t have the data to see what those recoveries looked like, I know this one felt smoother.

Nesting is real and postpartum recovery takes longer than 6 weeks

Check out my “readiness” dip in third trimester during May, my pre-birth “nesting” energy boost in June where my readiness went up (also, I started maternity leave early, ha). Finally, here’s also the data showing it taking more than 6 weeks to balance out after childbirth (baby arrived at the beginning of July).

This validates what I used to tell the families when I was a postpartum doula: have professional help like a postpartum doula still, or starting at ~6 weeks if you can.

The first month, a good maternity care system, friends and family will be all about giving attention, food, energy and help to the new family.

At six weeks, mama gets that 6 week pat on the head from her midwife/OB saying more or less “all is well, you did it, and goodbye forever unless you get pregnant again.”

And unpaid help tends to fizzle out around 6 weeks.

Grandparents, after the initial rush, especially seem to disappear after the initial visit until baby starts doing social smiles and being more ready to be held and spoon-fed and played with.

Meanwhile, during this 6 week to 6 month gap, mama is probably at the lowest point in her recovery, more tired and (if a first baby) more isolated and unfree than she has ever been in her adult life, plus her husband has gone back to work (or possibly, she is going back to work herself).

That postpartum low is really low, as you can see, even in a good postpartum like I had.

So if you know a mama around 1-6 months out from giving birth, it’s still a good time to drop by with warm food and energy to help with the laundry even if it isn’t still the super-exciting newbie stage.

Final thoughts:

Thank you, Oura for an amazing dataset!

If you are interested in Oura sleep tracking, check out Mollie Eastman’s Oura cohorts.

Here’s the podcast I did with her, and you can find her contact info in the post:

I also do a limited number of 1-1 consultations: