Sometimes I end up doing posts here on Mommies Home.net that come from me researching questions this Mommie has. This is one of those posts, as I ended up with one heck of a headache yesterday. I was in more pain than labor:-) That being said, what can those headaches be caused by after child birth?

Well, one of the first things is an epidural headache. This is when the epidural needle goes to far into the spine and punctures the dura of the spine. I saw one of these on that show Bringing Home Baby, it looked horrible! As the chances of getting this are 1 in 200, and my headache didn’t start up until around 10 days out, this obviously wasn’t the cause of my problem.

Tension headaches could be the next culprit on my list. Stress (and I have stress!) coupled with lack of sleep, caring for a newborn and being overall overwhelmed could definitely be taking a toll. As I am proud to report, our newborn sleeps very well, waking about 2 times during the night to get a feeding. His feedings are quick, so my lack of sleep sure feels minimal. Not sure if this is what my throbbing headaches could be from, but I know stress definitely doesn’t help.

The last easily identifiable cause for the near migraines is the lack of water. We were told in the hospital that some high percentage of all headaches are caused by lack of hydration. Even though I’ve been trying to get a good amount of water in me, as I need it to keep my milk up, it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to do.

That being said, I think it’s probably a combination of stress and hydration that are at the core of my headache problems. Hormones also have a large role to play, as they always do with any new mother. All of these factors need to be kept in check after a pregnancy in order to take care of yourself properly. Guess I have to go drink some water while listening to Enya….