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My First Forty Days Postpartum After Baby Number Two
Over the first forty days, women need to recover and heal. How can we accept the slowness of this process? Here’s one key tool that helped me do that.
Trauma, Sex, and Somatic Experiencing: How to Better Understand Birth and the Postpartum Periods — Episode #094 With Kimberly Ann Johnson
Kimberly Ann joins me to talk about the experience of childbirth and the crucial postpartum period, when time to heal is a necessity, not a luxury.
Top Ten Podcast Episodes of 2018: Pregnancy, Parenting, and Postpartum Health
A lot of milestones for our podcast: we turned one in October, and overall we released 63 new episodes in 2018 (92 episodes overall). As we get closer to our hundredth episode, I wanted to take time to look back and reflect back on the journey we’ve been on. What I gather from the most-listened-to episodes is that people are hungry for the truth. The real stories of parenting, motherhood, and postpartum recovery. These are the episodes that resonated.
From Doctor to CEO: A New Vision for Healthcare — Episode #091 With Robin Berzin
“I had my son on a Tuesday, and I was on calls on a Friday—but I was home, and I was not in fundraising mode, and I was not out doing meetings, and I was not going into the office. I was both focused on enjoying these first couple incredible weeks of his life and also healing. At the same time, I had this pressure breathing down my neck of completing the raise.” — Dr. Robin Berzin shares her story of becoming a CEO after years in medical practice as a doctor.
Postpartum, Round Two (What I Didn’t Understand Last Time)
I’m four weeks in to my second time with this newborn phase. Today marks the first day easing back into life’s demands. Here is what surprised me about maternity leave, the second time around.
Fostering a Community of Breastfeeding & Pumping Mamas — Episode #079 With Amy VanHaren
Amy VanHaren uncovered a need in her personal life, and a creative idea was born. While she loved breastfeeding, Amy had no choice but to get back to work six weeks after her son was born.
Building a Postpartum Support Team & Roadmap to Recovery — Episode #062
What can you do during pregnancy to prepare for the first weeks and months after you’ve given birth? How can you build your own support team to get through the challenging period of brand spanking new motherhood? What might a roadmap to recovery look like?
Postpartum Recovery: Being an Athlete Before & After Pregnancy — Episode #061 With Dr. Shefali Christopher
If you’re a new mom and working out is a big part of your identity, you may be itching to regain a sense of normalcy. But it’s important to remember what your body just went through and give yourself the time. Physical therapist Dr. Shefali Christopher shares her own experience in her postpartum body.
Postpartum Recovery: Healing, Being a New Mom, and Nutritional Health — Episode #059 With Lily Nichols
We place a lot of emphasis on planning for the perfect birth and making sure that our bodies are healthy during pregnancy. But what do we need to recover after the baby arrives? Lily Nichols shares her postpartum journey, discussing her extreme caution around physical exertion and the nutrients new moms need to heal damaged tissue and meet the energy demands of breastfeeding.
Postpartum Depression, Daycare and Whether or Not to Be a Parent — Episode #051 With Kathleen Shannon
What if you’re doing everything right—exercising, eating right, self-care and meditation—and you’re still not okay? After Kathleen Shannon gave birth to her son, she appeared to have it all together. But she just didn’t. Though she didn’t realize it at the time, Kathleen was suffering from postpartum depression.
Your Body — Episode #050
We have complex relationships with our bodies. Women harbor certain expectations and assumptions about what our bodies are supposed to look like and what they are capable of. And it can be tough to come to terms with the reality when it doesn’t quite line up with what we had in mind.
Three Lists Every Postpartum Mama Needs (an Easier Way to Ask for Help)
The first few days and weeks postpartum are challenging. Not only are you resting and recovering from the massive feat of bringing a baby into the world— but you’re also transforming in your relationships. Alongside this, I found that communicating clearly to others and setting good boundaries was also quite hard. How do you communicate to those around you what you need and want? How do you tell them how to help, and when it’s too much? In this post I want to share a strategy I love for preparing for your postpartum period: writing out to-do lists for other people ahead of time. Here are three lists you can use in your own planning.
How to Prepare for the Postpartum Overwhelm: My Favorite Three Lists — Episode #046
When you’re a new parent, people want to help. But they don’t always know what to do. And you won’t always know what to ask for – that’s where the 3 Essential Postpartum Lists come in.
Preparing for the First 30 Days Postpartum After a C-Section
Recovering from a C-Section is worlds different than recovering from a vaginal birth. Here are 9 steps you can take to be prepared before your birth and during your recovery.
Preparing for the First 30 Days Postpartum: What to Buy, Research, and Say
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Intuition, Empowerment, and Creating Yourself Anew as a Mother — Episode #010 With Steph Jhala
Stephanie Jhala enjoyed a healthy, medically uneventful pregnancy. But at the very end of the planned home birth, something went wrong. Her baby was not breathing. After a transition to the hospital, Steph’s newborn daughter was on put on life support in the NICU, consigned to a cooling sack and connected to countless tubes. Doctors predicted her death. But Stephanie knew instinctively that her daughter would be fine. And she was right. Her daughter improved by leaps and bounds, and is now a thriving, feisty 10-month-old. How did Steph access that intuition? How does she continue to trust and cultivate her mind-body connection on a daily basis? And how is she using the tools she learned in her business as a leadership consultant to become a leader in motherhood? In this episode we talk about intuition, deep listening, observation, and checking first with yourself as a source of wisdom.
What If I Am Not a Good Mother?
There were 10 of us. I came first and helped raise the rest. I did not want my mother’s life. I did not want to alternate between being pregnant and breastfeeding for twenty years, nor did I want the underlying lack of autonomy and choice that represented to me. Yet still, her legacy and example ran deep, and I was always sure that whatever edition of motherhood I might someday desire would come easily to me. I wasn’t prepared for what actually happened.
How We Fail Our Friends The Most
There is one thing that has disappointed me more about motherhood that I’ve been struggling to to put into words. It reveals the cracks and the gaps in the way we’ve built our society, in the way we culture, in the way we show up for each other.
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