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Welcome to Birth, Baby!, your go-to podcast hosted by Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly, seasoned birth doulas and childbirth educators from Austin, Texas. Join us as we navigate the intricate journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care, offering invaluable insights and expert advice. Through candid interviews, personal anecdotes, and evidence-backed content, we aim to empower families with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. Whether you're seeking guidance on prenatal care, birth planning, or navigating the early days with your newborn, we've got you covered. Tune in to Birth, Baby! and embark on your parenthood journey with confidence.
The information provided on this podcast is for general information purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your qualified health provider with any questions you may have.
Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast.
Reliance on any information provided here is solely at your own risk.
Welcome, this is Birth, Baby!
Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.
Ciarra is a birth doula, hypnobirthing educator, and pediatric sleep consultant.
Samantha is a birth doula, childbirth educator, and lactation counselor.
Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.
All right, welcome back.
We have Sabrina back with us, like we promised y'all, and she is going to expand on some of the things we talked about in part one.
So if you have not already listened to part one, or I think it's something about the history of birth and the village in the US, make sure you go ahead and listen to that before you listen to this one so you're caught up.
So today we're gonna talk a little bit more about the role of the community in birth, postpartum and beyond, and how we can improve.
What improvements we've seen, but also where we still need to go.
So thanks so much for being here with us again.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
I have so much fun with you guys.
I know, you guys, we talk before the recording starts and I'm like, wait, we should be recording this.
We've gotta start recording because I don't care if it's not formatted perfectly.
Like I want everyone to hear everything you have to say.
It's so fun.
I love talking to other people who are super into birth stuff because I'm just like, oh yeah, and, and.
And we can nerd out.
Oh my God, that's a little echo chamber.
Exactly.
It's so good.
It is.
It's excellent.
So today we're going to focus on the role of community and the village in both the birth experience, but I think really specifically in the postpartum experience and how that can really shape that for families.
So what role, when we're talking about the community at large, your friends, your family, your people, anybody nearby, what role can the community play in the postpartum period?
And how can it help new parents to adjust in their new roles?
You know, it's funny, as I just did a postpartum visit here this week, and one of the conversations we're having is like, okay, so if you feel nervous about asking for help for things, then make me the bad guy.
I will give you a list of things that you can post on the door that people see when they come in.
My doula said I have to say this.
You know, go ahead and make me the bad guy.
I don't have to talk to your aunt or your grandmother or whoever, ever, so you can blame me.
That's fine, but part of what needs to happen is, I don't ever want my clients to feel like they should be ashamed because the laundry is not done, the dishes aren't done, the house is a mess.
The first year, minimum, minimum, first year postpartum, if you manage to shower more than a couple of times a week, I'm impressed, right?
I mean, really, and it's just the having another human being attached to your body, especially if you're breastfeeding, having another human being attached to your body, where you have to feed them potentially every two hours is just so bloody draining.
No, I just had a prenatal with a family who they've already had one child and they're having their next.
And we were talking about how they're setting themselves up for postpartum time, like what's different than last time.
And they were like, we have a nanny for the infant to help us understand things and to help cook food for mom.
We have the nanny for the toddler so that if we need to nap when the baby's sleeping, she can help with that.
We have food that we're going to have somebody come and help us make and blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, okay, emotionally, kind of what are your, you know, what's your preparation?
And the dad said, we're just going into it this time, knowing that there's not going to be downtime.
Last time, I think we thought there would be downtime.
And that was overwhelming when we didn't get it.
And so we're just going and expecting that it is going to be all encompassing.
And I loved that because then they already are prepared that there's not a break.
There's not a true break, right?
And that's what you're saying is that it is overwhelming, not in a bad way necessarily, but it is a lot and it's okay that it's a lot.
I think that some people think if they feel like it's a lot, they've done something wrong.
Oh, totally.
And also, you have all the feelings, right?
Like I was talking to my client about this and I'm like, it is okay that you are grieving, that you don't have a moment to go take a breath and have some tea and like, you know, be yourself, because someone else's needs are superseding your own.
It is absolutely normal to be grieving that.
Like we were, you know, she was saying, she's like, I'm so, she's like, I thought I would be so happy and I'm just not.
And I'm like, that's normal.
You're not failing.
Like this is normal.
Feel the feelings and own them.
And if you get to the point where like, you're not feeling anything else, we definitely want to know, but understand that you're not a bad parent because you're having feelings about, a grief around losing your autonomy and recognizing this all encompassing thing you've signed up for voluntarily is going to take over your entire bandwidth for the next however many years, right?
Potentially the next 18 years.
It's kind of a big commitment.
I think too, like when we're thinking about like what is happening in that stage, we're not just talking about like the emotional piece of like you're hormonal because you just had a baby, which that part is huge.
And you're tired because you're not sleeping because you have a baby who's waking up all the time.
All of that is huge.
But there's also an actual practical standpoint of you have to stretch and grow because there's a whole other human that you have to meet the needs for.
You have to do their laundry.
You have to feed them.
You have to clean up after them.
And you have potentially other children or partners or other people in your household that you are also managing as well.
Even if you aren't the default caregiver in the house, you are still managing some aspects of those things.
So there's physical growth that has to happen to be taking care of all of these things that we're taking care of.
And then there's also that emotional piece of, we have a new human, I'm a whole new person.
Like what we talked about in the last episode of we've been through this monumental shift in our lives of giving birth and creating new life.
And so you are a new person.
Your brain is wired differently now than it was before you had that baby, no matter if this is your first, second, third or fourth.
And so you're a new person and having to adjust to your new life, both in the practical standpoint and the emotional, mental, brain standpoint.
One of the things I like to tell my clients too is, I'm an anatomy nerd, so I like to tell people about all of like how your body works and such.
And like our capacity for healing our bodies happens, like our production of human growth happens in the third and fourth stage of sleep.
And so you really don't get into that until you're in about the like 90 minutes to two hours.
And so one of the reasons that it's so important for people to get a chance to have someone come in and give them a break so they can actually sleep for a solid two to three hours, is because your body's ability to actually repair itself happens during that period.
And it's one of the reasons that you're so fatigued a lot of the time, you know?
And it's part of why we talk about like, I was talking to a friend about belly binding and your core, just even from the perspective of can my core muscles even support me and hold me up?
Like if you don't have additional support on a physical perspective, nevermind your emotional village and all of the different things, like your core is like no longer wrapped around the baby so it doesn't have a thing that it's holding up.
So you fatigue faster, right?
Because your muscles are learning how to do all that stuff.
There are so many things that are about like your personal infrastructure that have to be thought of and addressed proactively because we don't have this big village and we don't have this big group that we used to have.
We don't have multi-generational families that are there to help support those things.
And so when we're in like a bigger, broader community of chosen family and things along those lines, I think it's really important, especially if it's groups where maybe you're having the first baby in your group or you have just a few, or maybe the person who has had children is the only person in your group who knows anything about what you're about to go through, is it's important to kind of share the, hey, heads up, like what's actually helpful is not for you to come over and bring cocktails, like come over and do laundry and don't talk to them, right?
Like come over and like clean the house.
If you don't want to do it, send someone to do it, right?
If you want, I mean, Mealtrain is amazing, I will say.
Like my partner had brain cancer and we had a Mealtrain to start with.
And I realized like not everyone can cook.
And sometimes help is unhelpful, right?
Where you're like, now I have all this food that I like is not good.
It's not like, postpartum does this to you, pregnancy does this to you, but so does any sort of catastrophic illness.
It changes the way you taste things.
So things you might've loved beforehand now tastes terrible or are not to your taste anymore.
And you don't want to be the person who complains about the things someone spent time cooking and doing.
So finding ways to communicate what's appealing, what food delivery services, what things that are good still.
And don't, I mean, even with like, if you have a NICU baby, having a conversation with a neighbor who had a micro-preemie, just like one pound, so tiny.
Oh my God, and there's so much involved in a micro-preemie.
And I reached out to her, because I live in an artist colony, and so a lot of us don't have children.
And there's a lot of people here who don't understand what goes on with that dynamic.
I'm like, I know you don't really know me, but I'm going to leave food at your front door.
And I just need to know what you don't like.
And also, I just be aware that I will not be adding lots of spice or alliums or anything like, no garlic and onion, because I know that it can change the taste of the milk.
And the babies have such a hard time with eating when they're that little, that any sort of milk, any sort of change is going to be challenging.
And she just like burst into tears.
And she's like, I don't, nobody understands, because I'm at the hospital all the time.
And there's so many unique journeys with being a new parent that helping our community equip themselves with resources so that we can actually be support and not be make it more challenging is I think something that is becoming a parent.
It's really important to do.
It's not a one size fit all solution.
Yeah, you know what I think is a real gap here that we have or maybe even roadblock that we have, and it could be outside of the United States, but hey, this is where I live and this is what I know about.
We're so afraid as a culture to ask for help.
It's almost like it's a sign of weakness to ask for help.
That's American culture at the heart of it, the rugged individualism, like, no, I can do it all by myself.
Or even if I don't feel like I can do it all by myself, how am I going to be perceived if I ask?
Or like, what if I'm rejected?
What if somebody says no?
So when I'm teaching classes, in the fifth class, we talk about the postpartum period and we just touch on it.
We have a whole class you can do that's about the newborn and postpartum period.
But one of the things that even if nobody's signing up for those other classes, I want you to know is write a list.
Kind of like you said, you say blame it on me.
I tell them in prenatally, write a list of two minute activities that if somebody comes over, wipe down the counters with these Lysol wipes.
Do a little scrub brush of the toilet.
Tiny little things that take two seconds.
Unload the dishwasher, but put all the stuff on the counter, please, because I don't want you to put my stuff away and I don't find it for two weeks.
So you put those things on there.
And then when someone comes over and says, oh, what can I help with if they do, which I hope they are, instead of just saying, oh, it's okay.
If you want to, you can still say, oh, you don't have to do that.
But my doula made me make a list and it's all fridge.
If you want to help, you can go pick one of those items.
Because then you're not having to be as vulnerable to be like, would you please wipe down the counters?
You're giving them a list of things to choose from.
We can do it or not.
But I think that the hardest thing is, even if people want to help us, we have a hard time accepting it.
We don't want to say, if somebody says, I'll bring you a meal, and they don't ask, do you have any food allergies or do you have any sensitivities or are there things that you just hate?
Like if you put mushrooms in it, my husband's not eating it.
He says he can still taste it even when you take them out, whatever liar.
So if you, they're not asking you to be vulnerable enough to say like, yes, thank you so much.
And also, can you make sure it doesn't have gluten?
You know, or like, yes, but I'm dairy free.
It's really hard to do.
And so we have to kind of get over ourselves a little bit and be willing to take our wall down and ask for the help or receive the help.
And what are some things, like some concrete things that you could give advice to a neighbor, a best friend who maybe doesn't have kids yet or doesn't really know?
What's like a few things that you could say, if you do these, this would be really helpful, something tangible.
So the list I like to give is, I want a list of your favorite restaurants you like to eat at and the things you prefer to buy.
Like, what do you like to eat?
What do you know you like to eat?
What was good during your pregnancy?
Okay?
Always a load of dishes, a load of laundry, take out the trash.
Those are so hard and they make such a difference.
Change the sheets on the bed.
And the pregnant person or the person that just had a baby should not be doing those things.
Like that is an activity they should not be bending over.
They should not be squatting.
They should not be doing that for that period of time.
They shouldn't be lifting the bag of trash.
So not only are you helping them by serving them so there's not an item to be done, but also their body thanks you.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then, you know, for the family members who want to come and hold the baby, go shower.
Go take that.
Okay.
So the baby's good for 15, 20 minutes.
Go take a shower and just be alone until the baby starts to fuss.
Like, I'm good, you know, I'm grandma.
I'm whoever, like, go take care of yourself and breathe and be an adult human who is not attached to another human for 20 minutes.
Right?
Where you have a moment to kind of get that because you feel like you're just kind of a feeding vessel for the first year.
And it is really challenging.
Right?
And it's also hard to admit, like, no, I see, actually, I see a lot of, I shouldn't want to be alone.
Like, why?
All human beings need a minute to reset.
All of us need some alone time.
We need time to think about something other than that.
And most of us are so tired in the postpartum period that even acknowledging that what's happening is that you're tired and you need to not be touched for a few minutes is really, really important.
Like, or if you want to be touched, it's that you want to be touched in a way that it's about nourishing you, not feeding someone else or caring for someone else.
Yeah.
It's one of the reasons I think that postpartum bodywork is so important because there's so little, like, I'm doing this just for you to feel good, not for you to care for other people.
Oh, man, this isn't even what we were here to talk about, but I'm going to go into this piece, too.
Like, being touched out by your constantly being needed physically.
So it's so hard to give to your older children who are needing physical support sometimes, to your partner who may want to be intimate, maybe not even sexually intimate, just, like, love on you, hug you, you know, and you're like, my breasts are leaking, get away from me, and finally nobody's touching me.
And I think that people don't realize that's a normal thing.
Like, that is not a normal thing.
And confession, like, for me, and this was the past six weeks, but, you know, with my daughter, I knew I wanted to stay home, I wanted to do all the things.
And then seven and a half years later, I had my son, and I did go back to work at six weeks for two days, and then I came home for another four weeks before I went back, because it just was not sustainable for us.
And I, my stepdad took care of my son, which was very sweet, but he also had never taken care of a newborn, and he was like, I go get a job and give you the money so that you don't have to work because I don't know if I can do this.
So, but in that time, what I realized was I was only working half days, and I felt guilty for wanting to go to work, felt guilty.
Like I wanted to stay home with my daughter.
What's wrong with me?
Why am I wanting to go into the office?
And it was because my brain was being stimulated in an adult way, and I wasn't just tummy time and black and white pictures and singing songs, like as much as I loved my kid, I needed that adult space.
But I felt like I was a better mom when I came home because I was engaged.
I didn't feel burnt out, and I felt so burnt out staying at home.
That was not, I thought, I'm so abnormal, you know?
No, it was very normal.
But the problem that we have in our culture is that we don't have the infrastructure to allow that to be, you know, to be viable for 11, 16-year-olds.
It's all or nothing.
Yeah, it is.
It's all or nothing.
We need more infrastructure for child care so that people can have adult experiences and interactions and like not feel bad and also not have to choose like, okay, if I don't go back at six weeks, then we lose our home.
Yeah.
Like all of my disability and care is done.
I had no pre, I had no need leave at all.
And so I was like, I have to go back at six weeks.
Like I already did six weeks of no pay.
And I came back and after two days, hopefully nobody from my old job listens because I wasn't supposed to tell this part.
But at the mark when I went back after two days, my boss looked at me, the owner of the company and he was like, you don't need to be here to you.
And I was like, I have to be here.
And he goes, I'm sending you home.
And I was like, I can't go home.
I have to be here.
And he said, don't tell anybody, but I'll pay for you to go home for another four weeks.
Like I got no pay for my first six weeks.
And he's like, I'll pay you the next four weeks for you to go home.
And that's the only reason I got to do that.
You know, and not everybody has that.
And we need better things in place because we community can help us, but they can't, they're not going to pay our bills.
You know, and that's, that's just, I feel like that contributes like that desperation and the lack of ability to be resourced contributes to how, how healthy the family is, how everything works and all of those things, because you feel so torn between like, okay, so if I don't ignore your needs and go to work and do the thing and like ignore how my body is recovering and all of that stuff is like, I, I, we're going to lose our home.
We won't be able to eat.
I won't be able to care for you.
And so the beings being stretched between like impossible decisions means that you, you are not the best parent you could be.
You know, we were talking before we logged on to this, this one about, I can't find it, but I will, I will find it at some point.
I read an article about a study in Norway where they were studying crime rates and how they could affect lowering crime, especially in, in youth.
And what they came to was, why don't we spend the next, you know, period of time, say 10 years of the study investing in the postpartum period, because we find that the children who are less likely to commit crimes are better connected with their families, right?
So how can we, how can we foster better connection and helping your families?
And in investing in the postpartum period, what they found, and by investing, we mean, you know, nine months to a year worth of, of postpartum paid postpartum leave for both parents and returning to your job without losing your position, without it being a detrimental thing to have taken the time off to care for your child.
And health care that is paid for and is good quality health care where the caregivers come to the home and check on you and make sure you have everything you need and that if you want a breastfeed that is successful, that your child is healthy, that your home is resourced and you have all the food and things you need, right, that whole infrastructure.
So there is no stress for the parents about whether or not we can survive having a child.
What they found is their crime rates went down profoundly.
It's one of the reasons that their crime rates are going down and that's why there's a continual emphasis on investing in the postpartum period because parents who are relaxed and bonded with their children are better parents.
Those children feel loved and resourced and safe in their home.
They care more about what their families think of them and what's going on with them and they know that their resources that they need will come from their family.
And so they are more likely to have healthier, structured lives that are about community because their internal community is really well resourced.
And we have studies now showing that this is true.
We have studies showing for many other countries about investing in the postpartum period.
It has long standing, helpful effects on society as a whole.
And there's benefits to that on society as a whole.
And not looking at that is foolish in my mind.
And not investing in that is not investing in our future.
And also, you know, it's one of the reasons we have declining birth rates because it is not safe to have a family because we don't know if we could survive the break it takes to have the child.
Because it requires two incomes for most families to survive.
And one of those incomes has to go away for a minimum of six weeks.
Then what are we supposed to do about that?
It's so much.
And I think that there's two different things to be thinking about here.
One, how can we, as people who are supporting births, be pushing to make those changes?
And we can have a whole entire conversation around what that can look like.
But I think the simplest answer that we could say for today is start talking about how you can get involved in local policy and change and advocating for that within your own communities by talking to legislators, voting in even the little elections and things like that.
But then I think there's the other side, and I think what's probably going to be more something that you can do yourself right now is we know that this is the framework that we do unfortunately have to work in.
So what can we be doing to make it the best that it can be working with what we have?
So then we have to start thinking about, okay, well, she does have to go back to work at six weeks because that's what her family's income requires.
So as a friend, what can I be doing to support my friend who has to go back to work?
I have the benefit of being a business owner, so I do have flexibility with my schedule.
And so I could go pick her baby up from daycare and bring the baby to her for an hour a day.
One of my good friends, she did have to go back to work soon after her child was born, and I was staying home with my kids at the time, so I was able to take care of him for her.
And I was able to bring him up to where she was working and do some of that with her so that she could keep breastfeeding, so that she wasn't reliant on the pump all the time, especially when she felt like the pump wasn't working well and the baby needed to get the milk out better than the pump would.
And all these different things.
I was able to be that person.
Not everybody has that ability, but thinking through as a friend or a family member, what things can you do to help?
And then, as the expectant person, as the postpartum or pregnant person, being humble enough to accept that help, like we talked about, is huge.
One of the things that I think is important to practice, and it's really just, I studied for, was for starting my life, I studied to be a drug and alcohol counselor for a while.
And we had this exercise in the process where you had someone compliment you and or offer to help, and you just had to say thank you.
And just sit with it for a minute, and not respond, and listen to your internal process around that.
Because it is really bloody hard to not be like, no, no, it's okay, it's okay.
But no, and this is part of the thing.
Like we do this exercise in my prenatal stuff.
I'm like, I just want you to stop for a minute.
I'm gonna say, I'm gonna come over and clean your house, and you're just gonna say thank you.
No, you don't have to, because that's what comes next.
Oh no, it's okay, you don't have to.
Exactly, and I'm like, I want you to feel your feelings, and I want you to become aware of them, because you have to learn how to accept help.
So I'm gonna make a bunch of offers that we're gonna work through your discomfort.
And I'm like, you can only say thank you.
You can only say, oh, that's it.
And then the other thing too is like, okay, so take a minute before you go to sleep, instead of running through all the things that you didn't do right, I want you to intentionally think of something that happened that was good, however small, because our brains tend to focus on the track of like, this terrible thing happened and I didn't do that.
Like, no.
We have a negativity bias, yep.
Yes, yes.
So like, you say thank you, you fix that moment in your brain and you stick with it and review it.
This is therapy, y'all.
This is straight up therapy where we're getting out here.
So good.
But it makes such a difference because we're conditioned to say, no, no, no, no, no.
Even when you're not okay and you know you're not okay and you want, oh, our first gut reaction is, oh, no, no, no, it's fine, it's fine.
And also understanding done is better than perfect.
And they're not gonna do it the way you would do it, but done is better than perfect.
That's right.
And find the place, like the, okay, let's put stuff on the counter rather than put it away because I don't want to find my T-balls in the bathroom.
Which is literally a thing that happened to me.
Like, how did that happen to the bathroom?
I don't know how that happened to the bathroom.
That is obviously a dish, but okay.
Mitigating the unhelpful help for what's helpful and getting like, okay, even part of it being done means that it's one less thing for me to do when I have low to no resource.
And these are things you can set yourself up for prenatally.
You can label the cabinets where your dishes go so that people know where to put your dishes so they don't have to put them on the counter.
I would also say, if you're gonna do that, recognize if your friends, if they're visual people or they're like kinesthetic people, because sometimes pictures make them more successful than words, because they may just, I have a lot of friends who are really like neurodivergent.
So I'm like, I'm gonna put a picture of what belongs in here, because you don't understand what the word is, and that's fine.
Plus it'll work when you have teenagers who are like, I don't know where the dish goes, or if you have a husband who doesn't know where anything goes ever, even though they also live in your house.
And they do that to themselves all the time.
Yeah, it's the silver bullet, guys.
This is gonna really improve your lives.
Take the picture of them on the inside of the cabinet.
This is what it's supposed to look like.
I love that.
Exactly, and then I think the other side of this is as the friends, what can we be doing?
So what things would you say for community members?
What are characteristics of helpful versus unhelpful support?
And what kind of concrete items would you give them to focus on?
So I think the first thing to understand is postpartum is full of all sorts of feelings and none of them are wrong.
Okay, and our assumption when you have not had children is that it's all rainbows and butterflies and everything is beautiful, and you should just be happy, happy, happy all the time.
And that is nothing like what postpartum is.
There is a whole process of grieving.
There's massive change.
There's fatigue and exhaustion and all of these things where you're still, it's all mixed up with this string of like, I might regret today that I did that, but later on today, I'm just like, baby, smile at me and I'm so happy.
And it's a little bit crazy feeling a whole lot of the time.
And it's important to not assume what you think the person is feeling.
Let them tell you without judgment.
Because if they feel safe to share what's going on for them, then they will be safer asking for help.
So asking, how are you really, like what's going on?
How are you feeling?
And what is the thing I can hold space for?
Is one of the most valuable things, I think.
And then really realistic, like you were saying, here's a two minute list of things, like physical things that I wanna not have to ask for help for.
Because there's no more capacity in my brain.
My brain is drained and I need to not have to ask.
These are just, this needs to be done.
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And frankly, a lot of partners are not used to doing those things, and the things that you normally do, and they need to be responsible for, and like, I don't want to have to ask you, did it get checked off today?
Get a dry erase board and make check marks for the wheat, so we know, because we're both exhausted.
Did this actually happen this week?
I don't remember.
Put showering on there, so your partner recognizes, it's been three days since they've showered.
I need to take the baby, and you need to go shower, and maybe go walk outside for a minute, because you need to do that.
And those basic self-care things really help other people track, are you actually getting some of the basic self-care things?
And self-care is, did I have a moment without someone else hanging on my body?
Did I eat an actual start to finish, eat a meal?
Or did I just get five bites and walk away?
Which is so common, and it really affects how successful your breastfeeding is, it affects your ability to heal and how resourced you are.
Did you actually finish an entire bowl of something?
Did you finish it?
How much water have you had?
And how do you track that?
Like for my clients that have a really hard time tracking water, we get really big water drugs that are marked, or we do multiple water things in the fridge.
So if they prefer something cold, so they can see, did I drink them all today or not?
And their partner can see, did they actually make it through three things of water today?
We don't know.
Yeah, and are you even gonna remember?
You surely won't remember.
So having check boxes in place like that is great.
Yeah, and it's just giving yourself an infrastructure and resources to see like, am I able to keep up with and take care of my basic care?
Means that you are more equipped to care for the others.
And it helping the people in your life recognize if you've actually managed to get those things done, it's not a failure.
If you haven't, I'm overwhelmed and there's a lot going on.
There's a huge change and I'm recovering from a major physical incident in my body.
Yeah.
And I think part of it too can be being bold enough, like as the friends and the family to push in, to say, hey, have you showered today?
You need a minute to yourself.
Go do this.
I am going to hold down the fort for you and to push in, hey, it really feels like you're struggling right now.
Let's talk about it.
Like I think sometimes as friends and family, we don't want to like call people out and then be wrong, or we don't want to embarrass them or things like that.
And when it comes to birth and postpartum, there's so many other things going on.
There's so many balls in the air that that person is juggling.
Sometimes we do just need to step in and say, it's not, this isn't working.
We need to do something.
You need to go take a shower.
You need to eat some snacks.
I was talking, I had a postpartum visit yesterday with a client and we were talking about her nutrition and how well she'd been eating since she had her baby.
And she was like, you know, I just haven't been, like breastfeeding is not going well and I'm not eating very much.
And, you know, my person that was supposed to be supporting me is injured and not able to help out right now.
And all these different things were going on.
It's like, okay, well, let's like, we need to get you some food friend.
Like, let's talk about that.
And, you know, hey, partner, make her a snack basket, put it next to her bed and make sure you're refilling it regularly because she needs to be eating.
And that's going to help with the breastfeeding and her mental health.
And hey, you get two hours a day where she's going to go take a nap.
That's your, you're on duty, you know, thinking about those things and really just, I mean, honestly, just pushing.
You got to push in, you got to push in.
You can't wait for mom to ask for help all the time.
Because we are not programmed to do it.
We are not programmed to do it.
And to, you know, we have this like weird story in our culture that will somehow magically just know all the right things and it'll be perfect and magical.
And it's not.
Yeah.
It's a learned skill.
Breastfeeding, chestfeeding, all of those things.
That's a learned skill.
And it is not easy and it's different from baby to baby.
Amen.
I heard a lactation consultant once say it's the same dance, but a different partner.
Even if you've done it once before, yes, you're doing that same dance again, but this partner may dance a little bit differently.
And I want to touch on, and I want to do a whole episode with you about the LGBTQIA plus community and how some of these things may be affected differently and some things to be aware of.
If you are a friend that's not in that community and you're trying to support someone that is, or if you're a doula that is, or whatever.
But can you at least touch on how someone that's part of that community is, what challenges they may face when building their village or someone that's in that community and isn't wanting to have children, but has friends that want to have children.
How do, is there something that they need to be extra aware of and what are those challenges?
Well, so there's a whole other layer added to the idea of like, yes, we worked really hard to get here.
Like when my wife and I were first looking at potentially having a child, like the, and this is just before she got diagnosed with cancer.
So we had cancer in some of the babies.
So that was the whole thing.
But not a fair trade off.
But it costs between 30 and $50,000 to get pregnant when you are in a, in a queer family.
And one of the reasons that we were looking at, like doing, you know, IVF and having a, having a donor that goes through a clinic and nevermind the whole donor stuff, there's a whole dialogue with that.
But if you don't have the protection of, it comes through the doctor and comes through the whole donor channel, then in California, at least that donor has parental rights to your child.
So if you don't have that, like, okay, this is someone who's gone to a donor clinic and donated through the clinic, that you're then receiving it through the clinic.
So $500 a vial minimum for sperm.
So thousands and thousands of dollars to get there.
So think about, like, many of us don't have the resource to pay for the support, postpartum, to start with.
And it takes so much investment just, if you're buying a house every time you have a child, right?
So you're choosing, having to be really choosy about, like, do I have the resource to ask for help for this thing?
Is there a way?
And then also in a lot of our communities, families are not common or it is challenging or people are questioning why you would even do that.
And then never mind the, like, depending on where you're at, the medical community may or may not be supportive or helpful.
Like, when my partner was sick, I had to carry around our marriage license.
We're in California, in Los Angeles, in a hospital that is very, like, queer supportive, and I still had to prove my right to be there and advocate for her.
Eventually, they had me on the record and had me as a person.
But if I was a man, they wouldn't have even asked if we were really married, if I was really her partner, if I was really that person, right?
And so you have this, like, advocating for your child, advocating for your partner, going through all these things, and knowing, like, just the basic interactions.
Like me having to explain to my doctor, like, I don't need birth control, I'm good, right?
I have the best birth control in the world.
And knowing, like, we don't have to...
The best birth control in the world.
But I mean, like, we shouldn't have to keep having this conversation.
I'm safe from sperm, don't worry.
Mark me safe from that.
Mark safe.
But it's that thing of, like, when you go to an OB, and the first few conversations and screening conversations define whether or not you feel safe talking about what your lived experiences are.
And having to advocate for yourself on a whole new level in your medical experience, which is already hard in birth, and then advocating for your family that may not look right.
If you have body dysmorphia, if you're someone who identifies as non-binary or as trans or has a different experience, doubly hard because you are having what is often gendered as a very female experience, even from the, like, I don't see myself as mom.
I see myself as dad or as parent, and I don't want you to refer to me as how's mommy doing in the labor because it just messes with my mental health.
And all of those conversations means that the queer community tends to not get the medical care they need during pregnancy, in delivery, all of these things, there's a lot of a lack of care because they feel unsafe in those situations.
And then broader community and broader village, a lot of us don't have a luxury of having children.
And so there's not the same sort of resourcing that is in the straight community because all of these things are geared toward getting a gendered experience and it looking in a specific way.
So a lot of the time our communities aren't equipped to how can we support you through this experience?
And there's grief in postpartum period.
That's just part of that process, right?
You are becoming a new person.
It is not easy.
And there's a grieving process around that.
And when you worked so hard to get there, the feeling like you don't have a right to grieve is just so much heavier.
And the people around you are going, well, why are you sad?
You invested like an entire house worth of money in this and all of this time and suffered to get here.
Like you don't have the right to have a hard time.
Right.
You don't have the right to have all of this.
You asked for this.
You tried so hard to get here.
I think even straight couples that go through IVF, I think have that issue too.
Because it's like you asked for it.
What do you think was going to happen?
Are you lucky?
Lucky you are.
Yeah.
And it's that whole dialogue of understanding like, okay, yeah, yeah.
And also I'm a human being who's going through a major life change.
And it is hard.
It is very hard.
It is worthwhile.
It is valuable.
It is important and not something that we regret doing most of the time.
Right.
There are times when we regret doing it because we lose some aspect of ourselves in the evolution of becoming a parent.
Yeah.
And that's how evolution works.
You shed things.
I mean, it is hard.
I'll give a quick example.
Like, I have a friend, it's actually a friend of my aunt, who she and her wife wanted to have a baby.
She really wanted to carry.
She really wanted to be the gestational parent and just wasn't working.
She was older and her body just was like, no, thanks.
Sorry about your luck.
It's not you.
And her wife did not want to do like that was just not her jam.
But she did.
She was like, I'll take one for the team.
And that was very hard for her because this wasn't even her desire.
She wanted a baby, but she didn't want to be the caring parent.
And then it was very hard for her wife because she wanted so badly to do that.
And she was struggling with not feeling like she wanted to be connected, but kind of felt left out.
And like, I'm not feeling that from the inside like I wanted to.
And so there's so much emotional stuff going on behind the scenes that even someone else in the LGBTQ+, IA+, community may feel like they understand because I'm part of this community.
But like, you still may not even understand the unique dynamic of what's going on in that family.
You know, there's just so much that can go into it.
The human experience is so varied.
And I think the thing that's really, really important is to just understand that our all of our feelings are valid and have and are going to you're going to have all the feelings.
Everything is going to happen.
That's that's one of the extraordinary things about creating a family is you get everything in much larger doses than you thought you were going to get.
And and holding space for the people in our community who are going through those things, recognizing like, yeah, you're going to have all the feelings.
Yeah.
Sometimes all at the same time.
And that's okay.
And it's normal.
You are not broken.
Yeah.
And how can we support people getting through that?
You're such a beautiful human.
Like, I just feel so blessed that you're on this podcast with us and willing to share your knowledge.
Are there any resources or, you know, because I mean, I don't know that the answer may be no.
I'm just throwing this out here at you.
Are there any resources that are people to be received by all over the US for expectant parents or even for people who want to be supportive of parents?
Are there any?
Is there anything?
You know, and this is this is the thing.
I think there's a lack of resource.
Yeah.
And this is why this is so important.
It's one of the reasons that I wanted to be on a podcast.
And we want I wanted to talk about this, because I think we need to we need to commit to building more accessible resources.
I know here in Los Angeles, the Gay and Lesbian Center or the Aubrey Lord Clinic, they sees sees everyone, whether you're straight or identify in the queer community.
And they're all about like inclusive and supportive health care, which is amazing because they're all trauma informed care providers.
And the conversation right now is finding ways to help people who want to build families in a way that makes it more accessible.
And that's open to everyone.
I think trauma informed care is really, really important, especially when you're going through your childbearing years.
I know that our goal in 2025 is to start building more community resources and having meetups and free workshops and classes and things.
And it's one of the reasons we wanted to connect with more people across the country to start sharing resource, because I think that what you guys are doing and what we're all doing in these communities is so vital to helping people thrive as parents and not just survive parenthood.
Oh, preach.
Let's thrive, not just survive.
Surviving is the bare minimum.
And if you are part...
The bar shouldn't be on the floor.
And if you know someone who is pregnant, if you are...
I'm sorry.
I'm going to just call to action.
Check in with yourself, because if you know someone that's pregnant and you have done nothing to support them emotionally or physically, step up.
We have to do better for each other.
We cannot just let people who are able to hire someone to help them have help.
We have to.
If your neighbor is pregnant, you need to go offer help.
Maybe they won't want it and they won't receive it.
Hopefully, there are some tips from here that you'll be able to take away.
You can't just let people do this on their own, because they will.
They'll stay quiet and they just won't ask for help.
And we have to have a community that is thriving together.
At the very least, go leave food at someone's door and just tell them, you don't have to talk to me.
I'm just going to leave food at your front door.
Yeah, like, text them a Starbucks gift card, text them a door.
You don't even have to have their email address.
You can just send it straight to their phone, y'all.
You know how happy that makes me?
I've been blessed with really amazing friends.
And sometimes when I'm having a tough day, I'll get a Starbucks card to my phone, or Ciarra will send me cookies, which just never fails to fill my heart with joy.
She was having a real bad day, and I sent some Tiff's treats with some ice cream, and she was teaching and I was like, it was delivered and I know that you're teaching a class, but you might want to break because I think that the ice cream is going to melt.
That's true.
It's so good, guys.
One of my best friends sent me, she's like, look, I know you're a pie girl, so there's a place called Pie Hole here.
And she's like, so I just had them hanging on your front door.
Don't leave them there for too long.
Pie!
Pie on the front door.
So smart.
My husband's pie.
He loves pie.
Pie on the front door, guys.
My birthday, my niece and I share our birthday.
She's the day after me, so we have something like 10 pies for our birthday.
We just saw...
This is...
I don't care.
We're going to chat for just a second.
Y'all can listen.
We had a...
For, you know, wedding tasting, you do cakes and all of that, some people.
Well, my husband and I were watching a show the other day and the couple was doing cake tasting.
And he goes, what are they doing?
And I was like, cake tasting?
He goes, did we do that?
And I was like, no, you wanted pie.
And he goes, oh, that's right.
And so he got pumpkin pie because we had our wedding the week of Thanksgiving.
And I had a friend make me a gluten-free cake, and that was my wedding cake.
But he was like, I kind of feel like we missed out on the cake tasting.
I was like, you wanted pie.
Cut it out.
Sure did.
You could still have a pie tasting.
Eyehole is funny.
That is a great name.
Oh, it's amazing.
Not a sponsor.
We are not sponsored by Piehole.
If you want to purchase treats.
If you end up in Los Angeles and get a chance to do it, don't miss it.
You'll love it.
All right.
Yeah.
Thank you so much, Sabrina.
You are a wealth of knowledge, and we are going to have you back if you will come back.
You let me know.
I love talking to you guys.
Say again real quick how people can find you.
What is your web address?
And that sounds like I'm 90 years old.
Our school website is ipsb.com.
So it's the Integrative Psychostructural Bodywork.
And my email is Sabrina at ipsb.com.
So we're out here in Los Angeles, and we're going to be doing all sorts of stuff.
And we can't wait to meet you all.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!
Thanks again to Longing for Orpheus for our music.
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