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If You Work Hard Enough You Can Do Anything, Except Get Pregnant: A Journey Through Infertility — Episode #118 With Lucy Knisley
Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother, but when it was finally the perfect time for conceiving, it turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages and her eventual successful pregnancy was plagued by health issues and led to a dramatic near-death experience during labor and delivery. She chronicled this experience and more in the book that she recently wrote called “Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos.” The book is funny and terrifying and informative and useful and real and raw, just like our conversation with Lucy today.
Optimize Your Fertility + Heal Your Body. Episode #108 with Lisa Hendrickson-Jack
Lisa Hendrickson-Jack shares about taking the time to learn about and understand our cycles, optimize our fertility and gain information about our bodies.
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.
Let’s Stop Asking Pregnant Women If They’re Excited About Being Pregnant
The other day, I heard myself say, “Are you so excited?!” to a friend that’s 8 months pregnant. Why are the questions we are asking pregnant women so bad? I HATED getting that question because the answer was always no. Here are a bunch of better questions we can ask each other.
Third Trimester Pregnancy Anxiety—the Good, Bad, and Hard
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Caffeine, Alcohol, and Television: What’s True? — Episode #080 With Emily Oster
Is it really the end of the world to have a cup of coffee in the morning? How about wine? When economist Emily Oster got pregnant, she also got curious about the advice she was getting. Some recommendations were based on her age alone, and sometimes she found it difficult to get any answers at all. So, she started digging into the data.
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.
Mantras for Birth (and Life)
This year, I’ve been playing around with more mantras and affirmations, or words of encouragement that I repeat to myself. By consciously choosing the words we use, I think we can gently encourage ourselves in new directions. I share some of my more personal mantras I’ve been mulling on as I go into the tender space of welcoming a new person into our lives, on the precipice of giving birth again.
Celebrating Rest, Leisure, and Laziness
This letter is as much a note to myself as to all of you: taking time to nap, to rest, to say no, and to cross things off your to-do list without doing them (or destroying the to-do list altogether!) is about as badass as you can get in a world that glorifies overwork and overdoing.
Turning Inwards: Vulnerability
Two things happened to remind me that my body is changing, yet again, and I’m tilting into the third trimester: First, on an innocuous Thursday, as I was stepping out of the shower, I failed to lift my food up high enough to step over the bath edge. My foot caught in the shower curtain, a tangle of filmy plastic sheeting and soap suds, and I ripped a hole in our shower curtain. Then, on a walk in the woods with a friend, I went down. Pregnancy, for me, has brought with it a heightened sense of vulnerability and fear, especially in the last trimester.
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.
High-Risk Pregnancy and the Mind-Body Connection — Episode #049 With Parijat Deshpande
We often hear of high-risk pregnancies without a full understanding of what these new mothers and parents are facing. Parijat Deshpande, a high-risk pregnancy expert, shares her personal experience as well as her advice for navigating a safer pregnancy experience.
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.
Life Happens — #045
Even if you planned every moment down to the last second, there is always an element of unpredictability that can come into play: life happens. How can we embrace these unexpected curves, breathe, be patient and see what comes next?
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