Three Tulsi's Tea Journey Through Pregnancy – and Beyond

Nine months ago, I gave birth to the most beautiful little boy – our second.  He was so fragile and helpless, so tiny and vulnerable.  Now, as I write this, he’s crawling around the living room floor, trying to knock absolutely everything over and stuff it in his aching toothless mouth.

It’s been quite the journey getting to this point – and part of that journey was ‘tea’.  When I became pregnant, I discovered a whole world of tea, herbal and fruit infusions was now off limits.  For instance, I tried drinking a fennel blend to deal with terrible bloating pains in the first trimester.  It worked – but I wound up in hospital that evening for bleeding.  It thankfully turned out to be a false alarm.  However, I learned that fennel is in the parsley family and, as such, has a centuries-old history of being used as a natural abortive.  It’s entirely possible that the fennel was not responsible for my bleeding, but it left me paranoid and I wound up avoiding both parsley and fennel for the duration of my pregnancy.

A further complication was that almost every herbal blend on the market contains liquorice.  That’s okay in small doses, but too much liquorice can lead to hypertension, something common and dangerous in pregnancy.  I never had to worry about this before, as I naturally have low blood pressure; but suddenly my eight cups a day of such infusions no longer sounded like a good idea.

The question, then, was: what could I drink?  And: what infusions would actually be good for my pregnancy?

Ginger Tea – The Cure for Acid Reflux

An absolute must turned out to be ginger tea.  I struggled with relentless acid reflux.  Antacids tasted like glue and made me feel sick.  It’s also not good for the body to have too much of these medicines; it can even cause further acid reflux!  So I learned to avoid eating foods that triggered the acid (almost everything I love to eat, sadly – I later celebrated the birth by binging on berries, after seven months without them) – but I also read that ginger could help keep that acid at bay.

Unfortunately, most of the ginger teas on the market are full of other ingredients like liquorice (I’ve already covered why that was a bad idea) or lemon juice (which would make the acid worse).  I found myself thinking, Why doesn’t anyone do a tea that’s just ginger?  I then thought, Hang on…that sounds familiar…didn’t we review something like that?  Indeed, we had: T2 Just Ginger!  It was a lifesaver during my pregnancy.  It’s nothing but chopped up dried ginger pieces, pure and simple.  True, I could have chopped up real ginger myself and brewed that, but that is a task I didn’t have the time or energy for while working all day in an office, heavily pregnant – especially not with the quantities I had to drink to combat that burning feeling in my throat.

T2 Just Ginger is a little pricy, at £7.99 per box, but I found that one teaspoon could be re-brewed three or four times throughout the day.  Drunk prior to snacks and meals did the trick for me all day, in combination with avoiding those high-trigger foods.  I cannot recommend this tea enough, for those of you suffering from the same symptom – though admittedly I was sick to death of ginger by the end of my pregnancy!  Now that the baby is born, I may never drink this tea again, but that’s not T2’s fault.

Drinking Tea to Bring on Labour

I went into irregular contractions on a Sunday evening.  They stopped by Monday morning, but my waters broke shortly after.  A midwife did a home visit and told me if I didn’t go into labour within the next 24 hours, I would likely need to be induced, to avoid infection to the baby.  This made me anxious, as I had hoped for a home birth – something not possible with induction.

I considered raspberry leaf tea, as is the age-old tradition.  I had in mind Heath & Heather’s Raspberry Leaf variety.  However, we had none in the house.  My husband considered going out and buying some, but decided instead to give me Yogi Tea’s Choco Chili, on the basis that I had been drinking it shortly before the initial contractions on Sunday evening.  This tea contains cocoa shells (caffeine-free and therefore safe in pregnancy), cinnamon, liquorice (okay if I was just having one cup for the day), ginger (fabulous), black pepper, carob, anise, barley malt (watch for this, if you’re on a gluten-free diet), cloves, cardamom, ginger oil (again, brilliant), vanilla extract, vanilla beans – and chili pepper.

Tradition tells us eating something spicy will help bring on labour.  I can’t vouch for the truth in this – but I can say that contractions restarted shortly after I had this tea again on Monday evening, and our son was born Tuesday morning – at home, as planned.

The Best Tea for Post-Delivery Contractions

Something no one tells you is that you continue to have contractions after delivery – first, to deliver the placenta, and then each time you breastfeed.  This is nature’s way of contracting the uterus back down to its original size (and making you slim again!).  Unfortunately, it’s incredibly painful in the first few days after the birth, and your options for pain relief are limited, as any drugs you take are fed to the baby through breast milk.

My solution?  Tesco’s Finest Pure Peppermint Leaf pyramid bags.  This tea loosened and relaxed my stomach muscles, and aided digestion through my recovery, acting as a natural pain killer each time I had one of those spasms.

Surviving Those Sleepless Nights…and Days

The challenge with breastfeeding is that no one can help you with it.  Newborns feed 9-12 times a day, for up to an hour at a time, which means you’re feeding almost nonstop (or, in my case, literally nonstop for anywhere up to 8 hours at a stretch).  With a schedule like that, when do you find time to sleep?  Plus, I don’t know about you, but I was in a constant state of anticipation – listening out for cries, even if my husband was looking after our son in another room – expecting to be woken for feeds.  The result was that even when I miraculously got time for a nap, I found it difficult to shut down.

I combatted that problem with Pukka’s Love infusion, made with chamomile, limeflower, elderflower, marigold petals, liquorice root, rose flower and lavender.  It is instantly calming, especially sipped slowly while hot.  I had mine while the baby fed (just be careful to hold it well away from your baby, so you don’t spill hot water on him/her!), which meant that by the time he finished feeding, the tea had worked its way into my system and I was much more relaxed.  Then I could climb into bed and snatch an hour or two of rest before our son woke again.

Nine Months On…

Now that our beautiful little boy is eight months old, there seems to be a competition between him and his eleven-year-old brother for who can make the most noise and commotion.  There’s no fighting it; I’m going to lose.  But as long as they’re not destroying things, a good hot drink instantly dissipates the stress.  And I have no idea why, but the baby always opens his mouth wide with delight when he sees me pick up my mug and drink – perfect for when I’m trying to get him to accept a spoonful of mashed-up vegetables and rice.  That’s right: drinking tea is helping me wean the baby.

What makes me happiest is that I’m done breastfeeding, and I’m getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, so I can drink whatever I want – at last!  This means Ginger Tea and I can get back to trying new things and writing more reviews for this site, and I can grab a bag at random from the tea cupboard in our kitchen and just see where it takes me.

Better still, I finally got to use that Tea Lovers Masterclass gift voucher my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day!  Watch this space for a write-up of that incredible day.

I couldn’t have made it through the last 17 months without my tea.  If you, too, found tea indispensable to your pregnancy / childbirth / baby journey, we’d love to hear your stories in the comments box below.  And be sure to subscribe to this blog to read more stories and reviews!

Until next time….