Your Hormones Postpartum (And What to Do About Them)

Your body goes through a lot of changes during and after pregnancy and your hormones aren’t exempt from these changes. We discuss what happens to your hormone levels during the postpartum period and how to regulate them here.

Even before you see that positive pregnancy test, your hormones are hard at work to get your body ready for your pregnancy journey. The hormones progesterone and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) tell your menstrual cycles to stop and focus on creating cells that will become your baby instead.

As these hormones shift, you start to experience those well-known early pregnancy symptoms such as nausea and fatigue. Once you give birth to your little one, your hormones make a huge shift again and leave you with a wild roller coaster of emotions.

Because your hormones can be so unstable during your postpartum period, our team at the Atlas Health Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada, offers hormone replacement therapy to level out your hormones and boost your well-being so you can focus on caring for your new baby.

In this blog, we discuss exactly what happens to your hormones postpartum and how hormone replacement therapy can help.

Understanding postpartum hormone shifts

Throughout your pregnancy, estrogen and progesterone levels continually rise. These hormones are responsible for the release of serotonin and dopamine, two neurotransmitters that regulate mood and help you feel calm and happy. When you give birth, you have a huge rush of endorphins, resulting in a natural high.

However, over the next few days, those endorphins wear off and your estrogen and progesterone levels plummet. To counteract these declining hormones, your body produces extra oxytocin which is also responsible for giving you those strong parenting instincts. The hormone prolactin will also kick in to help with milk production.

The stressors of taking care of a new baby, learning a new schedule, and missing out on sleep causes the hormone cortisol to skyrocket, which can take a toll on your mood.

All of these fluctuations can leave you with a slew of overwhelmingly negative feelings.

Hormone replacement therapy to the rescue

At the Atlas Health Institute, we offer bioidentical hormones to help balance out fluctuating hormones during the postpartum period. This can help you get the sleep you need and reduce the negative feelings you’re experiencing.

Bioidentical hormones are made from plants and have the same chemical makeup as the hormones your body naturally produces. They come in the form of rice-sized pellets that our team inserts underneath your skin. The pellets slowly release the hormones into your body for seamless treatment.

About 3-6 months after you’ve had your baby, your hormones should start going back to their baseline levels. Once you’ve reached this milestone, you can start weaning off the bioidentical hormones.

To learn more about how bioidentical hormones can help you during the postpartum hormonal shift, contact our team by calling our office at 702-778-5900 or by scheduling an appointment online.