Mama Mend is a postpartum healing herbal product (made by yours truly, Santosha Birth and Wellness) that was designed to be super effective, super easy and hassle-free to use. It’s like a tea you make for the bathtub and you soak in its awesomeness after childbirth to accelerate the healing process and feel better faster.
Santosha’s founder, Jaime, was inspired to create this product after the birth of her own daughter. She wasn’t thrilled with the available postpartum sitz bath herb products available on the market. Some were small tea cup size herb bags meant to create a bath-sized herbal soak. That didn’t seem right. Others were loose herbs and a lot of filler, a high price tag and the hassle of measuring and clean up. That didn’t sound like fun. Jaime ended up making her own herbal sitz bath product, using her knowledge of herbalism and her first hand knowledge that healing mamas need SIMPLICITY. She vowed to offer a better product to other mamas.
So she created Mama Mend, which adheres to the herbal recommendations made by top herbalists and midwives in the country. It uses the right amount of herbs to the right amount of water. It smells delightful. It is super effective. It’s easy to make (can you pour water?) and it requires VERY little clean up. It’s also eco-friendly and all of the product materials are reusable—there is even a hair tie for keeping your hair dry in the bath!
But that is not really what we came to talk about today on the blog. We’re here to talk about how to enhance Mama Mend to make it even more awesome. We would have done all of this for you ourselves but it wasn’t practical or economical to our clients. But we want you to have all the juicy information we have so that you can heal fast and feel good!
Mama Mend Boosters
Most of the boosters you can use to increase the healing benefits of your postpartum bath are grocery items you can find around your house or things that are cheap and easy to buy from a local shop.
Salt
Many sitz bath herbal products on the market have some kind of salt in them—usually Epsom salt or sea salt. This is awesome—except for this: everything we have read suggests that in order for salt to be truly healing in a bath scenario you need a few cups, not a few teaspoons. So it’s great in theory that some other products contain salt, but they don’t contain enough. We thought about adding salt to our mix, but it really just serves as a filler if you aren’t getting a therapeutic amount. And we didn’t think offering you 10 cups of salt with your cute little Mason jar of herbs would have been ideal.
So, the good news is that salt is easy to come by and it is cheap! You can buy sea salt or Epsom salt on Mountain Rose Herbs (a GREAT herb company) for $3.50 a pound. You can also pick it up at places like Target.
Epsom salt offers many therapeutic benefits—it supplies magnesium and sulfates, relieves muscle aches and pains, relives headaches and other body tension, flushes the body of toxins, reduces inflammation, relieves constipation, heals wounds, and aids muscle and nerve function. Energy workers also acknowledge that Epsom salt can cleanse the subtle energy body and help you feel better on a deeper level.
Sea salt does much of the same—balancing the electrolytes in your body, reducing muscle soreness and swelling, and accelerating the healing process.
We suggest adding 1 to 2 cups of salt to your Mama Mend bath.
Garlic
Garlic can be incredibly healing—it is antibacterial, antiseptic, and astringent. Adding those to the bath can aid in healing traumas, including tears and episiotomies.
Peel the cloves of one bulb of fresh garlic. Add them to a high-powered blender with 2 cups of lukewarm water. Blend on high speed until you get a milky liquid in which the garlic is well blended. Strain through a strainer (or use a muslin bag from your Mama Mend jar). Pour this garlic “milk” into the bath along with your Mama Mend.
Do not use the garlic preparation in peribottles or compresses, as it can irritate the skin at this potency.
Oatmeal
A certain popular postpartum sitz bath herbal product includes organic oatmeal, which is known to be soothing to the skin, relieves itching, and encourages healing. Colloidal oatmeal is what is sold in stores, but it comes with a decent price tag if you are going to use it often. You can make it yourself very easily at home and add it to your Mama Mend bath if you so desire. Oatmeal baths are also great for diaper rash and other skin complaints.
Here’s how to make colloidal oatmeal at home: take 1 cup of organic oatmeal (can be unflavored instant oatmeal, quick oats or slow cooking oats), mix in a coffee grinder or small high-powered blender until you have a very fine consistent powder. You’ll know you’ve grind it enough when the ground oats readily absorb water and give a milky look when added to warm water.
Add 2/3 of a cup of this colloidal oatmeal to your bath along with Mama Mend herbs for a silky smooth, soothing, moisturizing, calming bath boost that is great for your skin and your healing bottom.
Please note that Mama Mend use does not require any of these boosters to work its magic—Mama Mend is full of amazingly healing herbs that are perfect and quite adept at healing tissues after childbirth.
Did you know that Mama Mend is also great for any kind of skin complaints, muscle pains and soreness, swelling, and more? Did you know that Mama Mend is safe for babies and kids? We’ve used it for infant rashes, chicken pox, summer insect stings, dry skin, and sore muscles. It also heals the umbilical cord site in newborns.
If you are interested in purchasing Mama Mend, please visit our etsy shop here. Mama Mend is also available locally in the Twin Cities, see our list of retailers here.
