Ghee for Postpartum Recovery: 6 Ways an Ayurvedic Doula Uses It
One of the first thing’s I grab when I begin working in a new mother's kitchen is ghee.
After my own births, how I cared for myself was minimal at best. I learned from my own imbalances what a body needs after birth, and only later understood how much of that recovery begins in the kitchen.
Today ghee goes into almost every meal I cook for the mothers I care for in Los Angeles, Paris and throughout the world.
Why I start with ghee
Birth can leave a woman cold, dry and depleted. In Ayurvedic postpartum care, we call this excess or imbalance in the vata dosha, the quality of air and space, running high. Ghee is warm, oily, heavy and stable. It is the most direct counterweight I have in the kitchen.
I am often asked about protein. Protein matters after birth, and modern postpartum advice is right to name it. In my practice I begin one step earlier. Food first becomes rasa, the nourishing fluid that carries nutrients through the body. The Charaka Samhita names breast milk, stanya, as a product of rasa, and rasa goes on to build rakta, the blood.
This is why I care so much about a mother's first foods: they shape her milk as much as her own recovery. So I start with ghee and warm, soft food from the first day, and bring protein in once her digestion is strong enough to break it down.
How ghee works in the body
Ghee is clarified butter, slowly cooked until the milk solids separate and are removed. What remains is a pure fat that even a tired digestion can handle.
Ayurveda also treats ghee as a carrier. Spices and herbs cooked in ghee travel deeper into the tissues, which is why I warm almost every spice in ghee before it goes into a meal.
6 ways I use ghee in the first 42 days
Warmed, on its own, in the first days. A small spoon of warm ghee is one of the first things I offer a mother after birth.
Stirred generously into her porridge. Porridge is one of her first foods. Ghee turns it from filling into nourishing.
In her first rice pudding. Soft rice, warming spices and more ghee than most people expect.
To bloom the spices for kitchari and dal. I warm cumin, ginger and ajwain in ghee before the lentils go in, so every meal supports her digestion.
As panchakola ghee. When her digestion needs more fire, I use ghee infused with a blend of five warming spices.
As her healthy fat through the whole window. Fats support lubrication, cleansing and hormonal rejuvenation in the weeks after birth, so ghee stays in her meals long after the first days.
How much I use
I start small and build as her digestion strengthens. If she feels heavy or sluggish after a meal, I use less. The right amount is the amount she digests well, and that changes week by week.
The ghee I choose
If I am not making it myself, I look for ghee made from organic, grass fed butter. I
Every recipe in my cookbook is built this way: warm, soft, oiled with ghee and layered day by day. It is the food I cook in my clients' homes, written so that you, or whoever is cooking for you, can make it.
References
Charaka Samhita, Chikitsa Sthana 15.17, on breast milk (stanya) as a product of rasa.