The universal love language of postpartum cultural dishes North Star Journey

Mother’s Day celebrates a special human bond. Food plays an integral role in most mother-child relationships, especially in the very first days after birth as a mother recovers. 

Cultures around the world celebrate this special time in different ways. This Mother’s Day, we explore how three cultures focus on the mother during postpartum recovery and how their foods reflect wisdom and lessons passed down the generations.







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Mexico: ‘I feel like my grandmother is with me again’
On an early March afternoon, chef Alexia Pettersen cooked in her client Allison Alexander’s kitchen in St. Paul. Pettersen is also a doula. In that double role, she prepared dozens of freezer meals ahead of the due date for Alexander’s second child.  

The two women cooked traditional recipes Pettersen and her mother learned from her abuela, her grandmother. She remembers when she was a girl when her abuela would visit their south metro home from Mexico. 

“And every day she was in the kitchen making food, and my mother learned from my grandmother so she can make these foods for my dad and our family,” Pettersen said. “I learned a lot of that from her, but it was also learning a lot from my grandmother and she passed away just before we got married and had kids. So all of this just reminds me of her in so many beautiful ways.”


Now she passes on that legacy to a new generation of mothers.

“I think there is a little bit of that grandmother or mother’s touch that we all have in one way or the other that makes food just taste better,” Pettersen said. “So even if we try to recreate some of these recipes, it may not always taste the same because it was created with love by someone else.”

Pettersen started her business Hola Postpartum in 2017. She makes meals in her clients homes to make sure they’re well-nourished, because as she put it “moms are really good at caring for other people before they start caring for themselves.”

On this day, Alexander learned about staples of Mexican cuisine she had never tried.  She watched as Petterson chopped nopales or cactus pads for risotto. The doula said they are good for rehydration and essential for post-pregnancy.  


This time, Alexander feels more prepared for postpartum recovery with Pettersen as her doula. She said people underestimate the importance of good nutrition.

“Everything from going to the bathroom, to sleeping, to your mood, to emotions… even when you think of postpartum depression,” she said. “I think that nutrition plays a huge role and how we’re taking care of our bodies, and that’s why I think what Alexia is doing is so amazing to support moms at every stage of the process.”

Just weeks after this freezer-filling session, Alexander welcomed her newborn into the family on March 27. 


Pettersen said her own postpartum recovery left her feeling isolated.  In Mexico, usually the women in her family would come and support the new mother during labor and after. But she was in Minnesota and most of her family still lived in Mexico, making travel plans difficult and expensive. 

However she remained connected to her roots, and her abuela, through the food she ate.

She remembers eating caldos, broths with floating bones. Also dishes of chiles and vegetables, barley horchata, sopas, albondigas, tacos and more. She said they helped her heal physically and emotionally. 

“It was like this continuation of this generation that feels sometimes a little lost being kind of in Minnesota, and not having all my family around me all the time,” she said. “In that way, and having that culture, and it’s a part of who I am that I miss often.”


Across the metro in Minnetonka, two other of Pettersen’s clients — Claire Lukens and Lukas Carlson — are adjusting to the arrival of their newborn son, Crosby. During Lukens’ first pregnancy, she suffered from po