Ask The Doulas Podcast

Ever wondered about all those meal delivery services?  Are they worth the money?  Will they save you time and money?  Today we talk to Carrie, a client who uses a local meal delivery service, and Genevieve, the owner of Life Fuel.  You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hello, welcome to Ask the Doulas.  I’m Alyssa, and I am going to be talking with a couple lovely ladies today, Carrie and Genevieve.  Hello, ladies.

Carrie:  Hello!

Genevieve:  Hello!

Alyssa:  Carrie was on before because she is a client of ours who used us for birth and postpartum services, and then Genevieve is the owner of Life Fuel, who we’ve also had on before because we partner with you and your delicious, healthy meals.  So it just so happened that you and I were talking about another podcast, and you said, “I think one of my clients happens to be one of your clients,” so it just works perfectly to have Carrie here.  So I wanted to talk about, as a new mom, how has a meal delivery service helped you?

Carrie:  Oh, it makes life a lot easier, and I used Life Fuel before I got pregnant, so I was familiar with their meals.  But when you’re a new parent, you don’t have much time for cooking.  I love to cook, but right now, it’s just my husband and myself and our daughter, but it’s really hard cooking for two adults.  So that’s kind of why I initially started using Life Fuel because I would waste so much food just cooking for two people, plus all the time shopping and coming up with meals.  And I’m a really bad freezer, where if I put something in the freezer, I know I’m going to forget it, and my husband doesn’t like freezer meals.  Having Life Fuel, I could just pull it out, and if my husband would text me at 5:30 to ask what’s the dinner plan, I can be like, oh, we have this and this!  Let me look!

Alyssa:  It’s like a menu.  I have my own menu in my refrigerator.

Carrie:  And he’s like, oh, it all sounds good!  I’m like, okay, well, I’m going to go with what I feel like having tonight.  But it just made life so much easier.  Then, after having our daughter, you really don’t have much time, and you’re sleep-deprived.  If you don’t have time to cook, it kind of takes the joy out of cooking, and it’s more of just a chore.  And I never want cooking to be a chore.  I’ve used one other program in the Grand Rapids area, and what I like about Genevieve’s is that she all the nutritional information on there, so I know how healthy it is or how healthy it isn’t.  Usually, they’re very healthy.  Sometimes I want something that’s not so healthy; that’s when I order pizza or I make a grilled cheese sandwich or something like that.  But also, it’s a complete meal.  You’re not having just the entrée portion and then you have to figure out the sides.  You’re getting a full meal there, and sometimes the portion sizes are — I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but they’re big, so a lot of times, Mark and I can split the portions, and then we have lunch for the next day.  But really, it was the — you tend to think, oh, my gosh, I can’t afford meal delivery, but no, that was the biggest reason why I chose Life Fuel too was because it was saving me money.  I was wasting less, and it was a value.

Alyssa:  That’s exactly how I felt, too.  I looked at these and went, okay, for me to make a meal like this, I’m going to spend so much, because we have a family of three as well.  I’m wasting so much food just to buy all this extra stuff that I only need for two, so then I’m going to have to make this meal, like, three times to use all the stuff I bought, and we don’t want to eat it three times in a week.  And cooking just became a chore for me, like you.  I used to love it, but I don’t have time and I dread it now.  So coming home and just saying, these are my choices.  Like, today for lunch before I came here, I was like, what do I have?  Oh, beef Asian lettuce wraps?  Done!  That’s my lunch, and it’s delicious.

Carrie:  I think we’re going to have that for dinner tonight!

Alyssa:  And some of them are — depending on the meals, some of them have been big enough that my husband and I can split them.  Awesome!  Or I’ll eat half for lunch and then half for lunch the next day.  Some of them, I can totally gobble it all up in one meal.

Genevieve:  Actually, our nutritionist David, who’s been on your podcast before, has two young sons, so a lot of times they’ll be getting home kind of late, and he’ll just split a meal for his two sons and just say, “That’s your meal.”  It’s not technically a kid food, but a lot of it, his kids will eat, and it makes it super easy so they’re not starving while you’re trying to prepare something.  It can be used a lot of different ways.

Alyssa:  Yeah, it would be perfect for two kids, and I think the difference, too, like you said, between this meal delivery service and another, is that I don’t have time to prep it.  Some of them, you just get ingredients and you have to cook it yourself.  I don’t have time.  This is already done.  I just have to heat it up.  Sometimes, I don’t even heat it up.  Today with the lettuce wraps, I put the cold beef in the cold lettuce and dumped the sauce on, and it was delicious.  I didn’t even have to heat it.

Carrie:  I’ve never tried some of the bigger companies like Blue Apron, but one thing I like is that I can email Genevieve, and you respond so quickly.  So if there are any questions, you get it figured out really quick, and I don’t think you would get that with some of the bigger companies.

Genevieve:  Yeah, and that’s part of the reason.  We want to stay local to West Michigan.  A lot of people have asked us why we don’t ship through the mail, and that’s just not the vision for our company.  We want to know our customers and know their preferences and be able to adjust based on what people are asking for, and I think staying here and just staying local will really help us do that.

Carrie:  I think in my Notes section for you, I have that my husband hates eggplant.

Genevieve:  Yes, you do!

Carrie:  But I always order ala carte because I like looking at the different meals.

Genevieve:  Yeah, because you’ve gotten the eggplant lasagna a couple of times, I think.

Carrie:  Yeah, and I think it’s maybe vegan eggplant lasagna, and Mark was like, this is the most disgusting thing ever!

Genevieve:  I had a feeling that meal was just for you!

Carrie:  Yep!

Alyssa:  There have definitely been a couple my husband says no thanks to, and I’m all about it.

Genevieve:  I think the word “vegan” in general kind of scares males.  Like, you’ve had vegetables before, right?

Alyssa:  There’s just not a big slab of meat in it, so they don’t want it, right?  And I love that you have gluten-free and vegan and paleo options, because I can just look at that right away, like the pancakes that just came, and I know right away that we can have just by looking at the ingredients.

Genevieve:  And Carrie, I love what you said about less waste because I think that’s something people don’t think about when they’re doing their own meal prep or meal planning.  You end up going to the grocery store, and maybe you’re spending a little bit less than what you would spend on our meals, but are you utilizing all those ingredients?  Are they making complete meals for you?  Or are you ending up with a lot of leftover things that you don’t know what to do with?

Alyssa:  I think I would be spending more at the store.

Carrie:  I would be spending more, yeah.

Genevieve:  Well, you’re also being exposed to maybe a lot of things that you shouldn’t be buying when you’re at the grocery store.

Alyssa:  But then the fact that, like you said, it’s complete.  You have the fiber; you have the protein; you have the vegetables.  You have everything in there!  I literally don’t have time, if I’m making a meal myself, and I thaw some meat and then I’m like, oh, shoot, I also need to think about all the things I need with this meat.  I just don’t have the time and energy.  So it’s just done for me, and it tastes good and I don’t have to think about it.  Genevieve, where can we find you?

Genevieve:  You can find us at our website and sign up for meals there.

Alyssa:  And I know I’ve asked you before, but why are you called Life Fuel by Vault?

Genevieve:  We are a sister company of Vault Catering, which is also here in town.

Alyssa:  Gotcha.  And then we have coupons for new subscribers, too, right?

Genevieve:  Yes!  I can just give the promo code right now!

Alyssa:  Sure!  Tell us the code!

Genevieve:  You can get 20% off your first order by using the promo code FUEL20.

Alyssa:  Perfect!  And you don’t have to have a subscription, right?  You can go on and buy one meal on one day, or buy ten meals at once?

Genevieve:  Yeah, and our menu changes frequently, so a lot of people like to go on and peruse the different menu items and figure out what they’re going to want to eat that meat, so that’s totally an option.

Alyssa:  I need to get better at that.  I haven’t looked at the menus as much.

Genevieve:  Yeah, it’s a little bit more challenging when you’re a subscription customer because you have to reference back the menu for the week, but it’s totally possible to log in there and switch out the meals, and you can also pause a week, too, if you’re going to be out of town or something.

Alyssa:  Which I’ve done, and that’s great.  Anything else you want to say about the meal plans?

Carrie:  Well, just for your customers, what’s your radius that you ship to?

Genevieve:  We go all the way to Muskegon, so we do the Lakeshore, Grand Haven.  We do Kent County, Ottawa County, and Muskegon County right now.

Alyssa:   And you deliver on Tuesday and Wednesdays now?

Genevieve:  Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Thank you so much!

Alyssa and Cindy have a thoughtful conversation about what it’s really like to be mother and entrepreneur.  Setting realistic expectations and learning to be intentional with your time as a business owner and a mom is important.  Listen to see if they have tips for you!  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hello, welcome to Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula at Gold Coast, and we are talking with Cindy from Cindy’s Suds today.

Cindy:  Hey, how are you doing?

Alyssa:  Hey!  So in our last chat, we started, off the air, talking about our roles as mothers and business owners and how that’s totally different than just being a working mom.  Both have their own challenges, but we have our own specific set of challenges as mothers who own our own businesses.  So we thought maybe we would extend this conversation and see where it goes.   Let’s just talk about all the different hats we have to wear.  Our last conversation was about deodorant, and I had mentioned that I don’t have time to shower every day any more.  You know, that’s a luxury that I had, first of all, before I had a child, but even after I had my baby, I worked in an office, so I would literally get up half an hour earlier every morning to work out and then to shower.  I showered every single day.  I shaved every single day.

Cindy:  Not so much anymore!

Alyssa:  I look back now, and I’m like, why the heck would I waste all that time?  Now time is such a luxury.  If I can shower every two or three days, that’s good, and I also still hate it.  Now, I just feel like I’m wasting time every time I’m standing in the shower.

Cindy:  Same, yeah.  I feel the exact same way.  Because it’s not just the act of showering; then you’ve got to do your hair; you’ve got to dry off; you’ve got to quick put on a little bit of makeup, whereas if you don’t shower you can just kind of fly with yesterday’s leftover makeup.  I mean, it’s bad.  It’s bad, just the lack of time that we have, and I feel like we’re in a time right now where there are so many women that own their own businesses, which is so fabulous and it’s so wonderful, so I do think that a lot of women can resonate with what we’re talking about.  A lot of moms are picking up their businesses that they had this desire to this or that or they’re selling this on the side or that on the side, and I just feel like there’s a lot of moms who are entrepreneurs and business owners as well as being a mom, and to try to get it all in and have time for your work life, your mom life, your marriage life, your home life – it’s just a lot, and I think women are under more stress, being pulled in different directions, than we ever have been throughout history because there’s just so much that needs to be done nowadays.  It’s just different.

Alyssa:  Yeah, we’re redefining the role.  You know, in one of the groups I’m in, the mom brain group, I did a talk about guilt and how we manage guilt as moms, and it turned into everyone having these stories they wanted to tell, but the main thing I wanted to get across was we’re never really going to feel not guilty until we can shift the way we think about our roles.

Cindy:  Because I don’t think husbands feel that.

Alyssa:  And I said that.  I said, how many guys sit around and talk about dad guilt?

Cindy:  Never.

Alyssa:  None.  None.  And here we are; we’re guilty because now we own our own businesses and a lot of us work from home, so we feel like we should have all this extra time with our kids, but we feel guilty because instead, our kid’s in the playpen or the bouncy seat next to us and we’re on the computer, on our phones.  So until we can shift the way we actually think about our roles as mothers, as wives or partners, and leaders and entrepreneurs, we have to realize that what we’re doing is so awesome, and we are showing our kids that women can do this too, and we are strong and we are capable and we are providing for our families.  It’s not just Dad that has to do that.  And it’s also realizing that I’m a better mom because of these things that I’m doing for myself.

Cindy:  And I think, as with so many things in life, we’re not going to truly realize that until we look back.  I feel like hindsight’s 20/20, and when you’re in it, you just feel a lot of mixed emotions.  Am I doing enough here?  Am I doing enough there?  Do they feel my love here?  Is my work getting what they need from me here?  But I think when we look back, we can give ourselves that nod of approval and go, wow, I did do what I needed to do to make my business run well; to make my family run well; to make my children grow well.  But when you’re in the midst of it, it just feels like you’re living in this hurricane disaster all the time, and I feel like I’m treading water all the time because there’s no down time.  I hear people sometimes talk about “Oh, what’d you do today?  I read a magazine.”  I’m like, are you kidding me?  You got to read a magazine?

Alyssa: Do you see this stack of magazines right here?  This is how old?  September of 2017.  That’s how long that’s been sitting there.  I haven’t had time to read it.

Cindy:  My bedside table looks the exact same, so I completely get it.  But there’s so many things that we’re trying to juggle in a day that I think if we wrote down or if someone looked at all the things that we did, it’s like we’re living four days in one day.  We’re living our life as a business person and managing our business well and customer service and getting this out or that out, and then we’re managing our home life as best as we can, and are we eating together as a family?  Do we have all the events covered with our children going back and forth?  Am I seeing my spouse?  What about my kids; am I doing the activities that my kids need me to do?  Am I helping with schoolwork?  There are so many things…

Alyssa:  Not to mention the house is dusty, and there’s nothing in the refrigerator, and who’s making dinner?  It’s non-stop.  The to-do list never ends, I feel like.  I know that I’ve had to really scale back on the things that I feel like have to be done at home.

Cindy:  I have to.

Alyssa:  If you walked along my house and did a finger test, you’re probably going to find dust.  Five years ago?  Never.  There’s no way.  There never would have been dust; nothing would have been out of order.  My bed probably isn’t made.

Cindy:  My bed is not made.  I will tell you that.

Alyssa:  My husband will do it sometimes.  But I’ve had to realize that I just have to let go of some things.  These things do not need to be done.

Cindy:   And they don’t define you as a person, either, you know, and so I think we have to let go of some of those things that aren’t necessarily time-wasters, but when you have more time at home, you’re going to fill them with things that are the nitty-gritty details.  When you’re in survival mode like we are with businesses and families and children, you do.  You really start focusing on the important things, and you focus on your fires every day.  What fires need to be put out today?  And the detail things – you know, if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, they just kind of fall to the wayside, but then I think you also kind of shift your focus on the importance and what the important things are in your life, and you realize that having a completely picked-up house with no dust and always vacuumed – that’s not really what’s important to me at this point in my life.

Alyssa:  Right.  That doesn’t help me be a better mom, and it doesn’t help me be a better business owner.

Cindy:  Right.  And will your kids remember that?  No.  They’re not going to.  So they’re not going to remember these little things, so don’t let it make you crazy thinking that, gosh, I should have done this or done that.  It is not going to matter in the long run, and so little things like that, I think for our sanity’s sake, you just have to let go.  Because there’s bigger things out there; way bigger things.

Alyssa:  Yeah.  And we talked about wearing a lot of hats; you know, we are the business owners, so we are fielding the phone calls and the emails, and we’re also doing the marketing, and we’re also doing the events and the networking and the managing anyone who works for us.  It’s like there’s never, ever any downtime.  So even when you work from home – especially when you work from home – you never really get to walk away, but even if you work in an office and own your own business, you can kind of turn it off a little bit when you get home, but you never really can because if you get that phone call from that one person, you know you have to answer that.  So it’s a little tricky to really turn it off, and I’ve realized that I have – maybe it’s just a time.  Like, okay, 8:00 PM, or even earlier than that, because I want to do that before my daughter goes to bed.  So maybe it’s 6:00, and then I can turn back on at 8:00 when she goes to bed.  But I don’t even bring my cell phone back into that room with me because when I start hearing those rings and vibrations, and I’m like, uh-oh, emails are coming in or texts are coming in, and all of a sudden now I’m sitting there in front of my daughter looking at my phone when I should be focused on her.  Those are the things I don’t want her to notice.  I don’t want her to remember, Mommy was always on her phone.  So I have to be very intentional about leaving it in a completely different room because it is distracting.

Cindy:  Yeah, and I think what you just said is so important; the intentionality of making that choice.  So you make a choice that your phone does not take precedence over your daughter, and maybe not ever bringing it into the room when you have your bedtime routine or whatever.  Those are the things that are going to help us focus on the here and now for what we need to focus on.  So bedtime; it’s your daughter, you know?  Or while she’s at school or whatever, you’re giving 110% to your job and to running Gold Coast Doulas, and that’s where you’re at.  And so it’s really kind of taking these chunks of time that we have throughout the day and dedicating this chunk is for work; this chunk is for home; this chunk is for kids.  And we’re doing our best, you know?  My husband is also self-employed and so he gets it, and so that kind of is helpful, but on the same token, we’ve got two crazies, then, at home, because we both have our own businesses that we’re running, but at least he gets it.  But it’s tough.  It’s not easy, but I think just what you said about being intentional, about carving out spaces and time for the important things, and every single day, just kind of take a look at it like this – how am I going to balance today?  You can’t really – at least from my perspective, I don’t feel like I can plan out really far because I work best under a day-to-day kind of a guideline.  I mean, you’re constantly looking out in the future for work and for kids and family life, but when it boils down to how today is going to look, it’s just that one day, and it’s what’s unfolding today.  How can I give my best self today in this area or that area, and how can my children not feel like I’m being pulled in many directions, and when I’m working, how can my work not feel like I’m being pulled in many directions?

Alyssa:  That’s one of the things I talked about, too, is really focusing.  So when you’re 100% focused on work, you can know that’s done.  This is done, so when I turn it off, and then it’s 100% focused on kids.  Otherwise if you half-ass it, basically, like if you only give 80% to your work that day, by the time it’s family time, that 20% is still going to be on your mind, and you can’t dedicate 100% to your kids.  So it’s really being – and I think again it takes time and it’s almost like exercising your brain to, like, figure out that you can do this, to really be intentional with your time.  And then I’ve also learned on the flip side that we get so busy that we forget to take time just for us.

Cindy:  That’s a huge thing.

Alyssa:  Yeah, because we’re so focused on business and family and household things that I’ve learned that it’s really okay to be selfish.

Cindy:  And I think even more so when you own your own business, you have to almost schedule in down time, me-time, because if you don’t, you will burn out.  And I’ve been kind of running this rat race too much lately, where I’m like, okay, I need to really schedule down time.  So I’ve got a massage on Friday because I know that I’ve been overdoing it and I know I need to just kind of reset that bar for myself because things like that; the half-hour drive will calm me down.  I scheduled it for an hour and a half, and this is kind of mean, but I don’t talk during my massage.  I love my massage therapist.  I’ve been with her for several years.  I don’t talk because I need to completely decompress.  And she said, “You’re my only client that doesn’t talk.”  I’m like, I can’t.  I need to just – this needs to be me.  So I think it’s really important to, like you said, whether it’s exercise or whether it’s whatever you do to unwind; meditating, getting a massage –

Alyssa:  Take a bath by yourself.

Cindy:  Take a long shower every… four days.

Alyssa:  Four days, yeah. When we have the time, right?

Cindy:  When we have the time!

Alyssa:  But I mean, it can be sometimes me just sitting down after a long day, after putting my daughter to bed and spending some time with my husband.  If I can sit and watch Netflix for 30 minutes –

Cindy:  What’s Netflix?  What is that?  I’m joking.

Alyssa:  Oh, my God.  You really are busy!

Cindy:  But no, I get that.

Alyssa:  Just to decompress.  And then I shut my brain off; I don’t look at my phone, and I can actually, like, if my eyes start to get drowsy, I’m good.  I turn it off, I go to sleep, and I’m good.  Otherwise, I can’t shut my brain off.

Cindy:  Right, and when you just said that, I have to remind myself all the time: if I see my husband watching Netflix, I get bitter.  I’m like, how can you watch TV and I can’t?  And he always tells me, “Stop.  That laundry will be there tomorrow.  Sit down with me.  Watch a show.”  And for whatever reason, I’m going back to guys: how can they do it all?  They turn it off and they make time for TV time, whatever.

Alyssa:  We have the same exact conversation, and I’m like, how can you be watching golf again?  And I’m muttering to myself, and if I do actually say something out loud, he’ll be like, “Join me.  Join me on the sofa.  Make yourself a drink.  Sit down.”  I’m like, “I can’t.”  Yes, I can!  I totally can!

Cindy:  We have this thing where we’ve got to use every single free moment to get stuff done.

Alyssa:  Well, I’ve realized I think he really values his own time and his time alone.  Must be more than I value mine.

Cindy:  Well, I think going back to the fact that men and women are so different: they don’t have that guilt, and they’ve learned to make time for themselves.  When they’re burned out, they know what to do.  They stop.  They watch TV.  They zone out.  They take a nap.  You just don’t find women doing that, or at least no one that I know does that, but I think it’s something that maybe we could even learn from them and learn to give ourselves a little bit of permission to take those breaks.

Alyssa:  Absolutely.  It’s okay to be selfish.  Selfish doesn’t have to be bad.  Take time for yourself; and again, it makes you a better mother if you can take care of yourself.  So schedule those times.  Like, on my calendar today, it says get outside because this is going to be one of the nicest days, but it keeps moving farther and farther down my calendar because more and more stuff comes up.  So I think I need to do more things like that, like schedule a massage where I have to be there at 10:00 AM.  Because otherwise, stuff always happens during the day.

Cindy:  It always, always will happen, and that will be the slot that you erase and pencil somebody else in.

Alyssa:  It keeps moving down and it probably won’t happen today.

Cindy:  We give because women typically give, but you know, we really have to allow ourselves to just rest, just like what you were saying; you have to have that self-care, but if we don’t, we will end up empty, and an empty mom, empty business owner…

Alyssa:  Has nothing to give to either.  Well, hopefully that wasn’t too much of a rant!

Cindy:  I know, exactly!  Just a good reminder!

Alyssa:  It’s a good conversation, yes, that you can do it all and you can do it effectively.  Just keep an eye on where all – you know, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, whether that’s all family or all business or all yourself.  Well, thanks for talking to me, Cindy.

Cindy: Yeah, thanks!  Always fun!

Alyssa:  Email us if you have any questions for Cindy or me: info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  And Cindy, where can people find you?

Cindy:  You can find our all-natural bath and body products at our website. You can also find us locally at Kingma’s and Harvest Health Foods.  We’re also scattered in a lot of great boutiques around the Grand Rapids area.

Alyssa:  And we will chat with you next time.

Cindy:  That sounds great.

Alyssa:  Thanks!

Today we talk to Dr. Kristi Artz, the medical director for Lifestyle Medicine at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids.  She is also the lead physician of the culinary medicine program and talks to us today about what a plant-based diet is and how it can work for your family.  You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, your host, and today I am talking with Kristi Artz, the medical director for Lifestyle Medicine at Spectrum Health, and she’s also the lead physician of the Culinary Medicine Program.  Hey, Kristi.

Dr. Artz:  Hi, Alyssa.  Thanks for having me!

Alyssa:  Yeah, thanks for taking time out of your day!  I hear you’re in the kitchen right now?

Dr. Artz:  I am.  I have three school-aged children myself, so it’s just about school pickup time, and they have after-school activities, and they need a healthy meal to keep them well-fueled.

Alyssa:  So I recently met you because Gold Coast is involved in the Spectrum Health Foundations LEAD program where we meet different people from different programs throughout Spectrum Health, and then we allocate funds to those.  And we met you because we were doing the culinary medicine program when we met you, and it was amazing.  And I’m so happy that I go that recipe book from you guys.  I have made the black bean brownies twice.

Dr. Artz:  Oh, excellent!  Yeah, those are delicious.

Alyssa:  My daughter loves them.  She’s vegan and gluten-free, so she’s just over the moon that she can eat these.  And I don’t care because there’s no sugar.

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, and it was so nice to meet you at that event, and we were thrilled to really just get in the kitchen and expose the program, the culinary medicine program, that we’ve been developing at Spectrum Health over the last year and a half and just to gain wider exposure as to what we can do in the program and how we’re hoping to reach people and really better educate, not only the community members and individuals, but also really involve nutrition more widely in how we train healthcare professionals and how we can integrate that in a more evidence-based way in the care of our patients.

Alyssa:  Yeah, it’s such an integral part of our overall health.

Dr. Artz:  Oh, absolutely.  I mean, what we’re really seeing as we care for patients is that a vast amount have diet-related illness.  With chronic disease, often the underlying trigger is, to a certain extent, genetics, but more so diet and lifestyle factors.

Alyssa:  Right.  Now, today we’re going to talk about raising a plant-based family, and I got to thinking: is plant-based a new term?  Is that just a new way to say vegetarian, or is it completely different?

Dr. Artz:  Well, I think as we look to the science of what a healthy diet looks like, I think a plant-based diet, specifically a whole food, plant-based diet, is really a better term than necessarily vegan or vegetarian.  You can certainly be a vegan, whole food, plant-based eater.  You can be a vegetarian whole foods plant-based eater, and there’s only slight differences.  You know, the vegan pattern of eating, obviously, would exclude all animal-based products, but a vegetarian eating a primarily plant-based diet would be consuming mostly whole-plant foods, lots of produce, beans, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, but maybe adding in a little bit of dairy at times or maybe adding in eggs if they prefer to do that at times.  So again, I think when we talk about diet patterns, I think it’s really pointing out what we want to be including in our diet, so more whole, plant-based foods.  That’s really why I like to use that terminology, and I think it’s more approachable for many people.  I know my experience as a doctor is that many people feel like — they have a gut reaction when you say vegan or vegetarian.  They feel that that’s not something that is attainable for them and their lifestyle or maybe their family, but I think when we start eating more plant-based or plant-forward is another term I like to use, I think people feel like they can make some of those changes, and it’s not too overwhelming.

Alyssa:  So plant-based doesn’t mean not eating meat?

Dr. Artz:  No, actually it doesn’t.  I think oftentimes it is becoming a loaded term, again, like many of these dietary terms that are often then put in a category where plant-based eating is exclusively vegetarian eating, and like I said, it oftentimes is, but it can include a small amount of well-sourced dairy or well-sourced fish.  But I do like to point out that there are real indications for many people, and oftentimes with certain chronic diseases, to really advocate for a vegan, whole food, plant-based diet.  And there’s also good science to support doing that for better planetary health, as well.  So it depends on what angle you’re coming from.  If you’re looking for a way to start to feed your family in a more healthy pattern, certainly a whole food, plant-based eating pattern would be definitely supported by science and what we know about what a healthy diet looks like in terms of those nutritional studies that we look towards for the evidence.

Alyssa:  I like the term plant-forward because you’re saying that it’s not 100% plant-based, which I think was the confusion I had between plant-based and vegetarian.  I’m thinking, what’s the difference?  You’re saying that it needs to be heavily plant-based, even if you do eat some meat here and there or go outside of that; that’s the focus?

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, the focus really should be how can you base your diet primarily around whole plant foods, and again that includes not only produce, fruits and vegetables, but includes nuts and seeds, beans, legumes, and whole grains.  So that should be the base of your diet, and when, again, you look to the evidence and the science of it, really, if you can achieve 90% of your dietary intake to be from a variety of whole plant foods, that leaves about maybe up to 10%, a little bit of wiggle room, and I think, again, that works really well for people who are healthy and trying to maintain their health and don’t necessarily want to remove all animal products.  The science would really support eating in that pattern; leaving, maybe, that 10% of wiggle room for inclusion of some high-quality dairy products or maybe some fish that they want to include for omega-3 fatty acids.  So yeah, that’s really what the science shows.  Now, I know we’re not going to be talking specifically about chronic disease, necessarily, but if you find that you’re affected by diabetes or hypertension or other cardiovascular disease, there really is an amazing body of research that supports eating an exclusive vegan, whole foods, plant-based diet, and that can be part of your care of your illness and it oftentimes can actually reverse some of the illness, as well.  So it’s really powerful.

Alyssa:  It is powerful, and I think it’s also, like you said, really scary for someone to think about completely changing their diet like that.  Is that part of the reason you started this culinary medicine program and have these amazing recipes, to tell people it isn’t as frightful as they think it might be?  That it might not be so hard, and they don’t just have to eat bland foods?  Because I looked through that recipe book, and it’s like, wow, there are so many great recipes.  You’d never know that every single one of these is healthy for you.

Dr. Artz:  Thanks for saying that, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the recipes!  Yeah, that’s really the premise behind the culinary medicine program is really, over the last 20 or 30 years, we’ve had a pretty dramatic shift in how people feed themselves, and more and more, it’s focused on convenience and not focused on cooking food in the home.  And as a result of that, foods that are oftentimes more convenient can very well be highly processed and contain lots of salt or sodium.  They can have a lot of saturated fat.  They can have a lot of preservatives and dyes and things that are going to create pretty widespread inflammation in our bodies, children and adults, and can put us at risk for those diseases that we want to try to avoid.  So culinary medicine also realizes that, as a program, that it’s one thing to have awareness of what the science shows or to have knowledge around what a healthy diet looks like, but you also have to know how to cook and prepare that food.  But you don’t want to spend all day, necessarily, doing that.  So what we have tried to really implement quite broadly at Spectrum Health is a program that allows for basic skills development in the kitchen as well as pairing that with some nutritional knowledge.  So when you pair the skill and the knowledge, you can really make positive changes in your own home kitchen.

Alyssa:  So who has access to the culinary medicine program?  Is it Spectrum Health patients who are, let’s say, battling diabetes or some of these other chronic illnesses?  Or could my mom off the street come in and say, I want to take a class and learn more?

Dr. Artz:  Both, actually.  We’re still planning and developing and really trying to see as we intentionally grow and expand the program that we’re really making it as accessible as we can to not only patients whose doctors want to refer them to classes, but also community members who are looking to the health system that they trust to provide programming that can really help them achieve better health and wellness goals than, maybe, they have set for themselves, if they’ve worked with their physician.  Excitingly, as of yesterday, actually, we just launched our webpages at Spectrum Health, so if you search for culinary medicine, you can actually reach us directly, and you can have access to all of our 80-plus recipes that are now online and available to anyone who wants to use them.

Alyssa:  Oh, awesome!  Good timing!

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, it was a lot of work getting that together.  We had great support in creating that webpage, and coming in January, and hopefully before that, we’ll be able to have this class listing up, but it will also be — the place to go will be that webpage on Spectrum’s website.  You’ll go to our website to find all of our recipes.  We also have some information sheets about how to build a healthy pantry, about vital nutrients or those plant nutrients that are represented by the colors that plants often have, whether it’s red or orange, and how those impact your health.  And then we’ll also have all of our class listings available there with online registration.

Alyssa:  That’s so great!  Do you think you’ll have anything for pregnancy, like specifically for pregnancy or postpartum?

Dr. Artz:  You know, we don’t have any specifically-designed classes for pregnancy or postpartum yet, although we’re in early conversations with a really awesome program through the Women’s Health CenteringPregnancy, if you’re familiar with that?

Alyssa:  I am, yeah.

Dr. Artz:  So we’re in early conversations how we can support the great work that they’re already doing with their group visits for pregnant moms.  But we will be launching a seasonal plant-based series beginning in January, and those classes are for everyone.  So if you’re curious about how to properly nourish your family, or if you’re a pregnant mom now and you’re wanting to learn ways to add more plant-based foods into your diet, that would be a great way to try out some new recipes, to learn some of that nutritional science as to why you may want to look more and more to a plant-based or plant-forward diet for you and your family.  So that would be a great way to get involved.

Alyssa:  Yeah, and did you say there are some tips on ways to kind of introduce this into your family?

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, so like I said, I have three daughters myself, and when they were very young and I was early out of my training program and residency — and my husband is actually a physician as well — you know, we were just trying to get by day by day and trying to feed our kids the best we could, but I think over the first couple of years of them being toddlers, we realized that kids get colds often and they get respiratory viruses or they get those irritating little GI bugs where they have a lot of vomiting and diarrhea, and how could we best support their little bodies and their immune systems so that they could be more resilient, for them to have better growth, better energy?  I’m an emergency medicine doctor by training, so all the nutritional training that I’ve undergone in the last decade or so has really been training that I’ve sought out personally and has been incredibly beneficial to how I practice medicine and also how I feed my children.  And a lot of that really transitioned us to a plant-based eating pattern for our entire family.  I would say that my children are not exclusively vegetarian 100% of the time, but like I said, that 90% rule: they eat plant-based foods; they’ll eat a lot of beans, and I would say that’s a really good place to start.  Beans have a great texture and flavor, and they have a great amount of fiber; they’re filling, and it’s not an ingredient that is often — I would say it’s underutilized with children.  It can be a great early finger food for toddlers if you squash them up a little bit so they’re not too round and a choking hazard.  Really, if we feed our children peas, which is great, you know, why not try a black bean or why not try a white bean and just get children used to those different tastes and textures?  And same goes with using fresh herbs or adding spices to your meals, and not the hot spices, but warming spices or cinnamon or things like that, really just exposing children to those textures, those flavors.  We eat a lot of soup in our house year-round, and that is a great way to start to transition to plant-based eating.  You can load your soup up with tons of vegetables and beans.  I like to make my own vegetable stock, and my do-it-yourself hack is to just keep a freezer bag, like a plastic freezer bag or a container, that you can store all the trimmed ends of carrots and celery and mushrooms and tomatoes and just pop them in your freezer, and then on the weekend or whenever you have an extra afternoon, let those simmer with just some water and a bay leaf, and you have a really nutrient-dense vegetable stock that you can then use for the base of your soup, or you can use it when you cook other whole grains or quinoa or things like that, as well.

Alyssa:  Oh, that’s great!  How long do you have to boil it or simmer it?

Dr. Artz:  You know, I always thought it was longer than I’ve discovered it needs to be, because we do this all the time over the winter, and I would say when I’m really in a pinch, I can simmer it at a pretty good simmer or a low boil for about an hour or so.  Then you strain it, and I get that really deeply-colored broth.  I think adding a tomato is always a great idea and adding some mushrooms, because mushrooms have these amazing nutrient properties, and that can be a tricky vegetable for kids to really want to eat a lot of, but mushrooms are incredibly healthy, and finding ways to even sneak those into a young child’s diet is a great idea.  A homemade vegetable stock is a really easy way to do that.

Alyssa:  I’m going to try it!

Dr. Artz:  Awesome, you’ll love it!

Alyssa:  Thank you so much for your time today.

Dr. Artz:  Sure!  Everyone, please use our recipes, connect with us, and let us know what you think or topics that you might be interested in.  We’d love to hear from you!

Alyssa:  We’ll talk to you next time!

Today we talk about sex.  How do you discuss it with your kids?  What’s age appropriate?  How much is too much information?  Cindy, a former PA, gives us some good advice on how and where to start the conversation with your kids.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa, your host, and I’m talking with Cindy from Cindy’s Suds again today.

Cindy:  Hello!

Alyssa:  Hello!  It’s lunchtime and we’re hungry.

Cindy:  We are!

Alyssa:  So hopefully you don’t hear our stomachs growl.  We are going to talk about a topic today that probably doesn’t pertain to families with babies, but even for me with a five-year-old, it’s something I’m thinking about.  You with teenagers have definitely gone through it, and that is talking to kids about sex.  And it’s interesting how young kids begin to ask those questions.  When my daughter was three, I got the first, “Mommy, how do babies get in your tummy?”  And at that age, literally, my explanation to her – we were driving in the car, and I had no forewarning, of course, right?  So I was like, well, daddies have sperm; mommies have eggs, and when they meet, it makes a baby.  And she was like, “Okay.”  That was literally a good enough explanation for her, so I’m like, oh, my God, when is level two coming?  What do I have to explain next?  She did, when she was four, asking something like, well, how does the baby get in there?

Cindy:  What did you say?

Alyssa:  What did I say?  I think I just said, well, remember how I told you about the sperm and the egg, and they have to meet?  And she didn’t ask anymore.  So she was like, no, I didn’t remember that, so in her mind, that was an explanation.  So we haven’t gotten there yet, but she’s five; I don’t know when she’ll ask again.  But you have teenagers.

Cindy:  Talking to your kids about sex is the worst thing ever.  And it’s the scariest thing ever because you feel like you don’t want to give too much, but you don’t want to give not enough.  And the thing that I’m learning as my kids are now reaching adulthood and beyond is that I probably should have started the conversation earlier, and I probably should have revisited it so casually that it was not a big deal.  Because when you have “a talk,” and maybe when they’re between the ages of nine and eleven, you have “the big talk,” you’re building it up in your head.  It’s probably awful for your kids to sit down and hear about it.

Alyssa:  Because they don’t want to hear about it, thinking that your mom and dad have sex.  That’s probably the grossest thing you could ever imagine.

Cindy:  Absolutely, yeah, they’re probably wanting to stick needles in their eyes!  But now in hindsight looking back, I’m like, oh, I can see where – I have some friends that are so very open that I’m kind of like, oh, my gosh, I’m a little uncomfortable.  But their kids seem to roll with sex talks better than my kids who would run away with their hands over their ears.  “Okay, okay, got it, got it got it.”  Like, they’ll ask me something completely random, and if it has anything to do with sex now, I feel like they’re like, “Okay, got it, got it.”  Whereas I’ve got some friends who were like, “Oh yeah, okay, so you know…” And they lay it right on the table, and their kids don’t bat an eye because they’re so used to Mom and Dad being so open about it.  So it seems like you have to do what’s right for you as a family.  Some people naturally are going to be more conservative about how comfortable they feel talking to their kids about sex, and some are going to be more open, but regardless, it’s a conversation that has to happen over and over and over.

Alyssa:  Not just once?

Cindy:  Not just once.

Alyssa:  I never really got a sex talk, and when I did, it was one time and very – it probably lasted all of 20 seconds, and it was super uncomfortable, and then there was nothing else.

Cindy:  Right.  And I think that’s what a lot of us grew up with because who wants to talk about sex to their kids?

Alyssa:  I’m really not afraid of it; I just don’t want to do it wrong.  And so when she asked me at three, I was caught off guard, but I feel like I’m going to be very open about it without divulging too much.  Like, I’m not going to tell her different positions when she’s six years old, but…

Cindy:  Right, and I felt too, as a PA, I was going to be very open about it, and my kids are more private.  They’ve always been more private.  They don’t change in front of each other, and we’ve got two boys that share a room that they make the other person go out.  They’ve always been like this, so that’s just their personality.  So I’ve had to kind of work with them.  I’m more open with talking about anatomical, factual type of information because that’s medical-minded for me, but the whole key is, I just feel like you have to do it in stages enough and have it be talked about enough where it’s not going to come out as a one-time shock and then okay, that was your 20-second sex talk, and now good luck.  So there’s lot and lots of great resources out there, and there’s lot of great books.  You can get them at the library; you can get them at different bookstores.  Books that talk about what’s appropriate at three?  What’s appropriate at five?  What’s appropriate at seven?  And kind of read them all.  Even if you have a ten-year-old, read what’s appropriate at three because you may not have talked about what’s appropriate at three.  And if you start talking to a ten-year-old and they’ve not gotten the three-year-old information…

Alyssa:  You’re still going to lose them.

Cindy:  Yeah, that’s just going to be over the top.

Alyssa:  That’s a good idea.  So I need to go buy a couple sex books?

Cindy:  Buy some sex books because there’s a lot out there, and you can pick and choose as a mom what working is comfortable for you.  I personally would definitely say use anatomical words.  Do not do fake words like “this is your boo-boo.”

Alyssa:  My daughter knows it’s a vulva.

Cindy:  Perfect.

Alyssa:  The other day, I was like, “What is this little wad of toilet paper on the floor?  Why didn’t you throw it away?”  She was like, “Oh, that was stuck in my vulva.”  It’s like, okay, still, I’m glad you found it, but it needs to go in the trash can.  But you know my parents’ generation. She was talking about her vagina one day, and my mom was like, “Did you hear her?  She just said vagina!”  I’m like, “Well, that’s what it is.  What do you want me to call it?  Her hoo-hah?”

Cindy:  Exactly.  Don’t go there because our kids are smarter than we think, and if we start using dumbed-down words, they could potentially have a dumbed-down version of what sex is.  You don’t want that.  You want to be a straight shooter with them.  The other thing that – and this is an aside, too, is the whole sex talk and starting at super young, just being very age-appropriate with what you’re saying, but start the conversation.  You’ve got to just have that conversation.  It’s got to be comfortable and natural and it’s got to be something that flows kind of woven through your whole parenting.  It’s got to be consistent.  The other thing that we are facing now that we didn’t have in our time growing up is that pornography is everywhere.

Alyssa:  Readily accessible.

Cindy:  And when we were grown up, you had to search out pornography.  And now you have to flee from pornography, and it’s a very, very different world.  They could be innocently on Snapchat or Instagram or Facetiming their friends – whatever they use computer-wise, and every family has their own boundaries for what they are comfortable with for computer time, but it is literally out there everywhere.  So you would be naïve to think that they don’t know and that’s a problem that they’re not going to run into until they’re in junior high.  Oh, sister.  It’s a problem that’s happening super, super early and young because it’s just everywhere.  So you’ve got to start thinking now about if you want to have on internet blockers or some kind of an accountability blocker on your computer or on their phone.  Be careful with giving your kids phones.  Every kid has a phone, but now looking back, I’m like, gee, that was like handing a time bomb to your kids.

Alyssa:  Open access.

Cindy:  It’s open access, whereas when we were growing up, you literally had to search it out.

Alyssa:  Well, we didn’t have the internet, so it wasn’t even like Google searching it.  It was like, oh, under the bed, or my friend’s brother found some.

Cindy:  Right, my uncle in the bathroom cabinet.  I mean, it had to be something that was physically sought out, and now your kids are needing to physically remove themselves and flee from something that is so out there.  So that’s, I think, part of the whole sex talk, too, is when you’re doing the sex talk with your kids, make sure that you’re establishing a guideline of what you feel is healthy for their sexual relationships with themselves and with others and within their family because it’s out there and they will get exposed to it.  And if you don’t talk about what your healthy normal is, they will have a different idea of what normal is from what is out in the world.

Alyssa:  We’ve had to have the masturbation conversation way early with my daughter because she’s a humper, and you know, we just had to say, totally fine.  I know it feels really good.  Do it in your bedroom.  She was still napping at the time in school, and we were like, you don’t do that at naptime at school.  This is a private thing.  I don’t care what you’re doing; just make it private.  And I’ve actually started calling it the humpty dance.  She’ll tell me; like, mommy, I want to go in bed and do the humpty dance.  I’m like, that’s fine, but if I see her starting to do it, like while I’m scratching her back at night, I’m like, no, babe.  That’s for you to do by yourself.  You don’t want mommy or daddy or any friends around.  You do that on your own time.  So she knows, like, I’m going to go in my bedroom and I’m going to hang out by myself for a little bit.

Cindy:  Yeah, and you know what?  You’re not shaming her either.

Alyssa:  No, absolutely not.

Cindy:  Exactly.  And that’s the whole thing; if it’s not – if you don’t establish that hey, that’s totally fine.  Go in your room; it’s just a private thing, then she could have other ideas imprinted on her from what she sees out there.  So the fact that you’re giving her a safe place and –

Alyssa:  Permission.

Cindy:  Permission, and that it’s just something that you do in private, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

Alyssa:  And she has no idea at this point that it’s even related to sex.  All she knows is that it feels good to her and she wants to do it, so fine.  Right now, until you ask more questions – again, you know, we’re walking a fine line of, she’s five.  She’s very naïve right now, and I want her to be that way.  I’m not going to give her the sex talk yet just because she’s a humper.

Cindy:  She’s not asking questions yet.  But you still want to have enough – even things like oh, Mommy’s breasts are sore because – you know, if she hits you funny, “Oh, honey, that hurts my breasts because women get sore in their breasts when they get their period,” or whatever.

Alyssa:  She knows about that, too, yeah.

Cindy:  It’s a conversation so that nothing is all of a sudden blurted out and they’re like, I just got hit by a fire hose.

Alyssa:  That leads me to the conversation of having periods because I have a daughter, and I’ve been very open with her about things and changes in a woman’s body and even breastfeeding, you know, like you get a baby and they automatically come with a bottle.  So from a very young age, I was like baby’s hungry, and I’d stick the baby on her little booby instead of giving the baby a bottle.  But I grew up, again, getting zero, having zero conversations about anything sex, periods, anything.  My mother told me at one point that you had to be sexually active to use tampons.  And I found out later as an adult when I confronted her and said, “Why did you ever tell me this?”  “Oh, that must have been something that Grandma told me.”  I’m like, so you’re giving me –

Cindy:  1940s advice?

Alyssa:  She was born in, like, 1920!  Are you kidding me?  So I am probably a little bit on the opposite spectrum of being very, very open about what’s going on, and she knows what a tampon is.  She knows what a period is.  She knows why.  She’s like, why does that happen and when will that happen to me?

Cindy:  Well, you’re normalizing it.  If you kept it secretive, when you start having secrets, that’s when you start questioning, well, why is it secretive?

Alyssa:  Right, and then she’s going to ask her friends instead of me.  And this is natural.  There’s nothing secretive about it.  But I remember in 7th or 8th grade, my girlfriend Alison coming up to me in the hall and asking for a tampon, and I was in shock.  I’m like, oh, my God.  She’s having sex!  You know, we’re like 13 years old, and that’s all I could think about.

Cindy:  Poor Alison!

Alyssa:  And I don’t know how I found out, but I went to the store by myself and bought tampons.  I went through three or four of them before I figured out how to use it.

Cindy: Same with me, yeah.  I know, it would just be so much easier if as a parent you could say, hey, you know, this is what you do, this is – I actually even had a friend that showed her daughter how to use it.  She was like, yeah, this is what you do.  So easy.  And her daughter was like, oh, okay.  You know, I stood outside the bathroom door, like, “Can I help?  Can I talk you through it?”  She’s like “No!  There’s directions right here!”  I’m like, I know, but I went through, like you, three or four before it went in comfortably, and I was like, oh, it’s not sitting right.  “Can I help?  Can I talk you through it?”  “No, get away!”  So each person’s going to be different, but if you’re starting out being super open about life and about sex, that’s the best way to be because now there’s not going to be fear or stigmas or they’re going to come to you, hopefully, versus –

Alyssa:  Yeah, that she doesn’t have to feel like it’s this bad thing that she needs to seek out porn on the internet and be secretive about it.

Cindy:  And you’re not seeking out porn.  It will find you.

Alyssa:  Right, right, that’s true.  It just happens.  I know; it happens to me when I’m just Googling something.  Oops, okay, I shouldn’t use that word, I guess.  But especially in the birth world, like looking up stuff for breastfeeding, and all sorts of crazy stuff comes up.

Cindy:  So just talking about talking about it and keeping open, but at your stage in the game, I would just check out some sex books from the library and pick and choose what feels good and familiar for your family and just be consistent with having the talks.  And not making it a big deal, because when you make it a big deal, now they’re going to think it’s a big deal.  But if you’re just talking about it regularly like life, because it is life, it will be received better.  I think it will be a healthier transition because it’s not fun, regardless, talking about that with your kids, but if you have some tools in your back pocket about, well, I’m going to say this, and this is what I feel comfortable saying at this stage in life, and giving a little bit more information as they get older, that’s probably the best route to go.

Alyssa:  I’m going to put that on my to-do list.  Get sex books from the library.

Cindy:  There you go.

Alyssa:  Well, thanks again.  It’s always so fun talking to you.  So Cindy is with Cindy’s Suds like I mentioned before.  We’ve talked to her a lot, and in case you guys haven’t heard, you can find her online and at a bunch of great local stores in Grand Rapids.  You can find your stuff in Rockford also, now, too, which I might need to check out that little baby store.  What’s it called?

Cindy:  It’s called Bridge Street Baby, and they carry primarily baby clothing through 24 months.  Super cute store.  They’ve got Cindy’s Suds products there.

Alyssa:  Well, thanks for joining us.  You can email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  You can listen to our podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud and we are also on Facebook and Instagram.

What should empathy in health care look like?  Why do parents so often have negative experiences with their health care providers?  Today we talk to Martelle of Mothership about empathy training and what her website provides for new parents.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud. 

Alyssa:  Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa, co-owner of Gold Coast Doulas, and today I’m here with Martelle of Mothership.  Hello!

Martelle:  Hello, Alyssa.

Alyssa:  So for those of our listeners who have no idea what Mothership is, can you describe it in a nutshell?

Martelle:  Sure.  So Mothership is a new nonprofit, and we’re focused on empathy and empowerment in healthcare for parents.  We’ve spent some time over the last two years trying to figure out how we can best do that, given all of the other great programs and organizations that are around town and in the state and nationally, and we are focusing on two programs.  One is a digital platform and community for parents that’s facilitated by parents who also happen to be health professionals, so it’s this health education platform where you can find information and support in the form of Q&A sessions, support groups, and curated resources based on your own family’s experiences and what you need.  We also train health professionals on empathy and empowerment and building connection during health practice, and all of our health professionals on the platform will be trained in this curriculum.  It’s called Mothership Certified.  We also train health professionals outside of the platform as well, including many of the Gold Coast doulas.  Many are Mothership-certified now.

Alyssa:  Yeah, several of us are.  So I think from an outside perspective, this website is really a draw for parents who are looking for resources, but then Mothership also helps the community healthcare providers to become more empathetic towards the people they are working with?

Martelle:  Yes, that’s the goal.

Alyssa:   Yeah, we did the training with you, and correct me if I’m wrong., but you kind of specifically tailored ours to be around doulas?

Martelle:  Yes.

Alyssa:  And I know there’s one specifically for lactation consultants or if you’re a group of nurses.  So it’s kind of in your best interest to have a group of people who are somewhat like-minded to that you can gear the training towards them?

Martelle:  Ideally; however, most of the topics are fairly universal.  The tailoring happens related to the different examples and what we focus on and the different activities and some of the detailed topical discussions.  But the general framework is really applicable to any group, so if you have folks that are working in the same office but may not be the same type of professional, that can work too.  We also are able to tailor it, like you said, specifically to a certain kind of profession.  But it’s designed to meet needs of a range of health professionals because it’s designed as a parent-centered training.

Alyssa:  So let’s say we have a group of nurses.  For somebody who still is going, hmm, I still don’t quite understand this, what does empathy training look like?

Martelle:  Sure, yeah.  Sometimes it’s hard to talk about this because a lot of people in healthcare are already very empathic.  People go into health professions because they want to help people, but unfortunately, the health system is often designed against them, where we’re not given very much time with our health professionals.  We’re putting a lot of burden with paperwork and completing tasks, which is all really important for other reasons, but it makes it really hard sometimes to build connection in that short amount of time that you might have to engage with the patient or with the client.  We did a lot of feedback sessions with different health professionals about what kinds of information and resources would be helpful for them, and we decided that we wanted to create a training that would put together, in one day, many opportunities for reflecting on the current practice, your current practice, including different topics.  We’re talking about many different topics related to empathy, empowerment, and connection, and focusing on group activities so that you can really think through how it applies to your own work.  For example, we do an introduction to empathy and compassion and set the stage for the whole day about what it means to be empathetic.  We do a section on self-care because when you’re hurting or struggling, it’s really hard to provide empathetic care, even if you are an empathic person.  If there’s a lot of other stuff going on in your life, it can sometimes be hard.  So we do a section on self-care.  We do a section on cultural and emotional intelligence.  We do a section on implicit bias; a section on storytelling; a section on building connection through facial expressions, gestures, spatial relationships, and intentional verbal communication.  So it kind of touches on a little bit of everything, and we drew from psychology and human behavior, and we also intentionally drew from the field of design, specifically human-centered design, because they actually in that field have a lot empathy tools that we have integrated into some of the other content throughout the day.

Alyssa:  Yeah, that part was interesting to me.  The way you’re facing somebody or how close or how far away, and if you’re far away and hands crossed — all these weird little things that make such a difference.  If you’re a healthcare provider and you’re standing either above or below – I’m really tall so I’m always above, but I don’t even realize it if I’m crossing my arms, which I normally do, because I have long arms, and it’s like, where do I put them, you know?  I could be giving off an impression of being standoffish or I think I’m better that them or who knows what, right?  Just by my body language.

Martelle:  Right, exactly, and what’s really interesting is that there’s not really a perfect formula on how to provide the most empathic experience that builds trust and connection.  What we try to do is provide tools to folks that participate in the training because not every idea or every practice is going to make sense for every single person participating.  Sometimes you might be more challenged based on the way that your particular clinic might be set up.  It might be set up in a way that makes it really difficult to use spatial relationships and certain gestural and body language because it’s out of your control, so maybe then you’re more focused on that intentional verbal communication because you’re sort of making up for the spatial relationship that might not be there.  What I mean by that is maybe you are in a position where you are towering over someone, and you’re not able to meet them at an eye-to-eye level for whatever the reason may be.  So the goal with the training isn’t that we have all the answers; it’s that we want to provide a range of tools that people can use in their practice.  And what I will say, also, is that I think in general, these ideas and these topics of patient-centered care and then trying to look at things like spatial relationships and certain types of verbal communication — these are trending right now, which is really great because the reason that we put this together is that we heard from a lot of families that they weren’t always having the best experience.  Some people had great experiences, so that’s great, but not everyone is having great experiences, so we saw that there was value in doing this.

Alyssa:  Do you have some examples of some experiences that you’ve heard of?  And then I want to know why Mothership; why did you choose that name?

Martelle:  Sure, yeah.  So I’ll give you one of the examples of an experience that wasn’t ideal, and this was from a mom that we interviewed for our blog.  We gathered information from all over the place.  We did in-depth interviews with some people; we also interviewed people for our blog, if they were just able to write in some answers for us and share.  And because this one was written for our blog, I’m able to share it, whereas some of the other ones were a little bit more personal and people weren’t as comfortable sharing.  But this one, I can just start with a quote.  So this mom says: “They made us wait for over three hours after four sleepless days in the hospital and breastfeeding challenges.”  So this was at her follow-up pediatrician appointment.  “The doctor came in and decided to give the baby a bottle, saying something about people wanting to ‘feed babies with spoons and droppers like damn goats, and there’s nothing wrong with a bottle.’  I remember I just sat there with tears rolling down my eyes, feeling like a huge failure.”

Alyssa:  So she was having some breastfeeding struggles?

Martelle:  Yes, and the way that the pediatrician engaged with her was not the way that she was looking to be engaged with.

Alyssa: No, I don’t think anybody wants to hear that kind of feedback or attitude, right?

Martelle:  Yeah, and I think some of this also has to do with changing — I mean, this particular example just sounds terrible regardless of what context you put it in, but millennial parents, in particular, are really looking to take ownership of their health and the health of their families.  I’m a millennial, so I relate to this personally, but I don’t want to make my decisions based on my own personal experiences and anecdotes.  But market research also shows that millennials are not really looking at their doctor to tell them what to do and manage their care in the way that previous generations have.  They’re looking to their doctor as a source of information, a source of support, but ultimately, they’re looking to be empowered to make decisions, informed choices, based on credible information and empowering support; that’s what they want.

Alyssa:  That doctor didn’t make the cut.

Martelle:  No, no, no, did not make the cut.  That’s one of the stories.

Alyssa:  So you just heard story after story after story of these new parents; and was it especially mothers?

Martelle:  It was especially mothers.

Alyssa:  Saying, “They’re making me feel this way,” or, “I feel like a failure before I’ve even started.”

Martelle:  Yeah, it was confusion and conflicting advise and judgement and not necessarily getting the advise and information that they felt was really personalized to their unique experience.  Another really interesting thing that came out of our discussions with parents was that there’s a lot of emphasis on the baby, which is really great, but not the whole family as a unit, like what makes sense for the family as a unit.  What makes sense for Mom and Baby, versus this is the best thing you need to do for your baby, but does that make sense holistically for your family?  And for a lot of the families that we talked to that had challenges, it was sort of this tension between what they thought they needed to do and what actually made sense for them, and so they were feeling this conflict and these feelings of failure as a result.

Alyssa:  Well, and there’s no one right answer for every family, so when you have a doctor who says, “This is what you do for this,” and that’s it…  I think that’s why we loved this so much as doulas because it changes every day, and every family’s so different, and you can’t just give one family one answer, and you have to take the time to listen.  So we thought the training was amazing.

Martelle:  Great.  I’m so glad to hear it!

Alyssa:  There’s been some stuff I’ve read and seen and talked to you about and seen on social media about your fundraising campaign.  What does that have to do with Mothership?

Martelle:  Sure.  So we’ve been working on Mothership as an organization, and we’ve been researching and developing our programs for the past two years as volunteers.  So this has been a very grassroots volunteer initiative because it’s resonated with a lot of people, and it’s been great because people have jumped in and offered their time and their talents to be able to create the training and the platform that we’ve been working on.  But now we need to, especially with the platform, put it out there and test it in real life with moms and with health professionals, and we need to collect data and do evaluation, and that takes a little bit of money.  Thankfully, not a ton of money, but enough money.  So we recently launched a crowdfunding campaign.  Our goal is to raise $12,500, and this is to run the pilot of the platform for one month with, hopefully, around 100 families; maybe up to 150 families.  It will support six to seven dieticians who are moms, and they’ll be teaching virtual classes, hosting support groups, live Q&A sessions, curating resources, blogging.  We developed a customized search tool that makes it really easy to find information and articles from anywhere on the internet that have been endorsed by these different mom dieticians, meaning that if you really like one of them or a couple of them really resonate with you, you can go into our search tool and search for the resources and information that they endorse, and it’s not necessarily just stuff that they did.

Alyssa:  So it’s kind of funneling your Google search into a trusted filter.

Martelle:  Yeah, exactly, but someone that you can trust both on a professional level because they’ve been training but also on a peer level.

Alyssa:  They’re moms, too.

Martelle:  They’ve been there.  They know what’s going on, and that was really important to us.  Something that came out early on in our research and development: one of the moms we interviewed said to us that her best mom friend is also a nurse, and she said, “She understands me and she doesn’t judge, but she also has medical knowledge.”  So that was a really unique and wonderful relationship, and we wanted to create that experience for more parents because we want people to be able to know and trust the health professionals that they’re getting their information from because they’re looking to get to know them.  So it’s a way that you can find things that are more relevant to you and your personal experiences.  We hope to grow in topics, but in the beginning, we’ll be focusing on nutrition for fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and early childhood.  So we’re really focused on food and nutrition in the first round of this work, and the dietician moms involved have a range of their own personal experiences.  Some of them have kids with food allergies; some of them have food allergies themselves; some of them have had really picky eaters; some of them have had fertility challenges.  Some of them, even though they’re dietitians, were completely confused by nutrition for pregnancy and postpartum.  Very relatable stuff; feeling, postpartum, like how do I get back to my normal, healthy routine now that I’ve just been in this other stage in my body?  Replenishing those nutrients, that kind of thing.  That’s a long story to say that we are really excited to finally put this platform into real life with real-life moms and future moms.  And so we’re doing this crowdfunding campaign to do that.  And the way that it’s structured is kind of like a Kickstarter campaign, meaning that if you make a donation, you get a reward for backing the campaign, so some of the rewards are a recipe PDF from all of these dietitian moms.  We also have tote bags, because who doesn’t love another tote bag?  But the most exciting from our campaign is actually participation in the pilot.  So if you back the campaign at a certain level, you can participate in the pilot.  You can also gift participation to other people, so if you have a friend or family member who might be interested in participating, you can gift it to them.  Or you can just generally support, and then we will be recruiting families.  So if you’re out there and you think this sounds really interesting but might not be in a place to back this campaign, we’re also recruiting families to participate in the pilot.  It will run in November.

Alyssa:  Let me boil this down to make sure that we all understand.  Your pilot program starting this platform is going to focus on nutrition, and that’s why you have the dieticians?

Martelle:  Yes.

Alyssa:  And you want to get all these families involved.  Part of it’s just to start getting feedback and seeing how this is working and what’s not working, and then you’ll start phase two, whatever that looks like, later?

Martelle:  Yes, exactly.  The goals of this pilot are to get feedback from families so that we can improve it and make sure that it’s meeting the needs of the modern parent.  We’ve been doing feedback sessions so far, but this will be the first time that all of the pieces happening at once.  So we’ll hopefully be gaining some information about that.  The second piece is that it will help us collect some data so that we can seek out additional grants, partnerships, sponsorships, to sustain an equitable nonprofit business model where everyone has access.

Alyssa:  We still haven’t talked about why you call it Mothership.  Where did that come from?

Martelle:  It actually came from one of our board members who is in design.  He was just doing a brainstorm for us of what could we possibly call it, and some of us were like, Mothership, that’s really great because it’s really strong.  People think of things that are really strong.  It’s connotes a headquarters or a foundation which is kind of what we wanted to create.  We wanted to create this headquarters for empathic and empowering resources and support.  And then also it has the potential to redefine itself into something that’s friendship or kinship, related to parenthood or motherhood with Mothership, so we decided yeah, let’s give this a go.  We checked out the trademarks, and no one had it in this space, so we were like, okay, we’re going to go forward with this.  But I’m curious what you think of the name, because it can connote a variety of different things.

Alyssa:  I like it.  It’s not one of those I see Mothership and know what it is right away.  But I like the friendship, the kinship; down the road, having all these other “ships.”  I think it’s really clever.  I like it.  For everyone who’s interested or wants more information — let’s say it’s a pediatrician’s office who would love to have the staff takes this empathy training; if it’s someone who wants to help with the fundraising campaign by donated money or if they’re a family who can’t afford it but wants to get involved.  Are there three different places those people have to go, or do you send them all to one?

Martelle:  It’s pretty much all coming to our website, so you can go to our website, which is ourmothership.org.  On the dashboard on the top, you can see the campaign; you can see our program, so you can see Mothership Certified as an option.  And then you can just generally see more information about Mothership.  We also have a pretty active Instagram account; also Facebook, but more active on Instagram if people are interested.  So that’s @our.mothership on Instagram.  And if anyone is really interested in talking more about it or sharing their experience, we’re always interested in interviewing more families for our blog.  We’ve got some great families up there already.  But we’re one of the things we teach in our training is storytelling and the value of storytelling, so it’s something we try to keep up with in general with our organization as well, so if you’re interested in being interviewed for a blog, if you’re interested in participating in the pilot or in the training, go to our website.  You can also email me directly.  I’m the contact on the website.  It’s going to go to me, anyway.

Alyssa:  Thank you for your time!  Hopefully you get some feedback from this.

Martelle:  Yeah, thanks so much, Alyssa.

Alyssa:  Good luck with everything!  We will talk to you guys again next time.

Today we talk to David Fisher again.  He is a dietician and helps plan nutritious meals for LifeFuel in Grand Rapids.  We asked him to give us some pointers specifically related to children and getting them to eat healthily.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hello.  Welcome to Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, your host, and today we’re talking to David Fisher again, who is a registered dietician.  So last time you were here, you mentioned you have two little boys.  They’re one and three?

David:  That’s right.

Alyssa:  So as a dietician, what do meals look like in your home?  Are they even allowed to eat cereal?

David:  So I will add the caveat that I’m a very busy dietician, and for that reason, cereal does make an appearance at times in our home, yes.

Alyssa:  I’m glad.  I’m glad, so this will be realistic.  You have a realistic expectation of a busy parent with kids, who you want them to eat healthy, but — you know, there’s always a “but…” So how do we as parents — because I’m busy, as well, and my daughter loves cereal.  She would eat cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I would let her.  But I try for 80% of the time.  I have an 80/20 rule.  We’re try 80% of the time, we try to be really, really, really good, knowing that there’s going to be times where she’s going to have a cupcake or at school something will come up.  But how do you manage that?

David:  Yeah, I mean, your approach sounds appropriate.  The most important thing for people to understand is that you control what you offer and when you offer it.  And the kid controls whether or not he or she eats it.  You have no control whether a child eats a food or doesn’t.  You control whether it’s presented to the kid or not.  So it’s very important to start right away, like when you are introducing foods to a kid.

Alyssa:  Like at six months?

David:  Yes.  Just set the precedent that the family eats together most of the time; not every single day, but almost every single day, and the kids get the food, the same food that Mom and Dad eat.  And if they eat it, good.  If they don’t, they’re going to be hungry.  Kids do not starve themselves, as long as you’re offering appropriate foods.  You can’t expect a two-year-old to eat a kale salad; that’s unreasonable, but you can expect them to eat healthy foods.  Now, the first time you say, “Oh, you don’t want to eat that?  What do you want to eat?” or “How about this thing that’s much yummier?”  That was a big mistake because that kid knows now that there’s another option.  And so if I take him over to Grandma’s house or something like that, they’re going to know right away if that’s something they can get away with there.  And that’s fine, but at our house, we eat together, and these are the foods we’re eating.  Feel free to eat them, and if you don’t, that’s okay.  So with our three-year-old, he is a very good eater.  But he will sometimes get up because he wants to go play or something, and if we say, “Are you full?” he says, “Yeah, I’m full,” — which he might not be.  So okay, you can go play.  And he’ll go play, and an hour or so later, “I’m hungry.”

Alyssa:  Story of my life!

David:  Right.  So what we do is we pull out the plate of food, the exact same plate he had before, and say, “Here’s your food.”  And I don’t know that we’ve ever once offered some different food later at night, because if we did that, then he would never eat his dinner and he would always eat the other thing later.  And he almost always will eat that dinner later, and I will remind him, “You’re hungry because you didn’t eat earlier.”  And so I think we have, with that approach, with not offering something else, we’ve been pretty successful with that.

Alyssa:  What about with your one-year-old?  What is he eating?

David:  So he’s the same.  Texture becomes important for them because obviously I can’t serve him a whole grape or something like that; it would be dangerous for him.  But he always ate with the family, even before he was able to eat.  He would sit up there with us, and then as he starts to eat really soft things, he’ll be there with us.  And at very first, when they’re six months or seven months and they’re first eating, you may not be able to serve them exactly what you’re eating.  Sometimes you can because you can puree it up or use a baby blender with the food that you’re eating, which is a great way to do it.  Other times, we would, for us personally, we might use some baby food jars or some pureed-up food that we had made the weekend before or something like that, and he would sit at the table with us, and we would kind of feed him and eat.  And that slowly transitioned into him eating what the family’s eating.  But a one-year-old appropriate version of it, so maybe the carrots that we had, for him, are pureed up.   And then eventually he needs less and less modification, and now maybe I just have to cut it up in little pieces or something like that, and he can feed himself.  So he’s always been integrated into the family dinner, and he’s transitioning to just being able to eat like we are.

Alyssa:  What about food allergies?  We found out at around two that our daughter had some — not severe allergies, but she got really bad eczema and tummy aches, and it was the majors: gluten, dairy, eggs.  It’s really hard to find foods for her.  If I just make a mound of meat and veggies — she can eat meat and veggies, basically.  But I feel like I was making two different meals often, and then it got to the point where I was like, “Oh, you can just have this.  You can just have the chicken nuggets or something,” which I know are bad, but she couldn’t eat what we were eating.  I don’t know; what do you tell parents?  Or even if the adult has a food allergy, and they’re the only one in the home: how do you deal with that?

David:  It can be difficult.  I think I would try your best to get everyone eating the same foods when possible.  You can make it clear; oh, so-and-so can’t have this food because she has a food allergy, and kids will understand that eventually.  But I would try not to have separate meals for different people when possible.  And food allergies are kind of difficult, though, because it can be difficult to say, does this person have one and will they outgrow it?  A lot of times, they’ll outgrow it.  That happens, too.  You just try to get the family eating the same thing when possible.

Alyssa: I probably need to do a better job of that.

David:  It sounds like you’re working hard at it.

Alyssa: Trying!

David:  Give yourself credit.

Alyssa:  Trying!  So if you could give parents one piece of advice, besides, you know, eating together at the table, which I think is just good for family in general, and then eating the same thing, is there any piece of advice with nutrition?  What are, in general, kids lacking right now?  What are they missing out on?

David:  So the important thing with kids is just offering them healthy foods, and kids will typically choose to eat the amounts that they need over the course of a week or so.  In any given day, they might eat a lot or a little, and that’s okay.  If they’re offered healthy foods, they will eat what they should be eating.  I don’t worry about kids who are offered a variety of pretty healthy foods.  If kids are starting to be limited — and I see this with parents who are limiting them.  “Oh, he won’t eat that.”  Well, he’s never tried that, right?  So try not to be the one who’s causing your child’s limited diet.  Encourage those healthy eating habits, and the kid will be fine.  If you start introducing a lot of processed and sugary foods, and the kid starts to eat a lot those, that’s when I would start to worry about missing some nutrients.  But outside of that scenario, I don’t really worry about malnutrition in children in the United States.

Alyssa: Good.  So, obviously, it’s best to get our nutrients from fresh veggies and fruits, but what about supplements?  I know that these gummy vitamins for kids are just loaded with sugar, too, and are they even getting the nutrients that they need?  Do you have any thoughts or recommendations on these supplemental vitamins for kids?  And even adults, I suppose?

David:  Yeah, so I’m not aware of research with children and vitamins.  I would have to look into that topic.  From a theoretical point of view, I don’t see why a child would need that if, you know, with the caveat of what I said previously.

Alyssa:  If they’re eating healthy?

David:  If they’re eating a relatively healthy diet, there’s not any reason why a kid would need that.  So I wouldn’t choose to do that.  If there was some circumstance where you were having trouble getting enough healthy food into a child, or maybe a disease state like cystic fibrosis or something where you have difficulty absorbing foods, then maybe we would talk about targeted nutrition supplements, but I wouldn’t head that direction outside of that, personally.

Alyssa:  So as long as your kid is eating pretty healthily, you probably don’t need to try to force a vitamin down them, too?

David:  That’s my opinion, yeah.  And in adults, we do have research that says that taking multivitamins don’t really help your health.  But the interesting thing is that there’s kind of confounding variables, so people who tend to take multivitamins are healthier than people who don’t.  So what you want to be is the kind of person who takes a multivitamin — but you actually need to take the multivitamin.

Alyssa:  Right, it’s kind of like a placebo effect.  We don’t really need it.  I take one every day, but yeah, I don’t notice a difference in my health.  But I’m already a pretty healthy person.

David:  Yeah, exactly.  And it’s not unreasonable to take one.  It’s just that we don’t have data proving that it’s helpful, and we have some pretty large-scale studies.  But it may be helpful for you to feel like you have your bases covered, or even for someone to take one a couple times a week or something is not unreasonable.  It won’t harm you.

Alyssa:  Is this another market to just make money?  Is this, like, this whole multivitamin thing just to make us spend more money, to make us feel like we’re going to get healthier?

David:  Largely, yes.  But sometimes it can even be a distraction, and so I discussed before about eating food that’s close to the way it came out of the earth, and that’s where I start with every single person that I would talk to about nutrition.  Because they’ll come to me and say, “I’m taking my folic acid; I’m taking this; and I’m using my protein shake, and I’m still not meeting my goals of muscle gain or weight loss or whatever it is.”  And it’s like, hold on.  You’re getting distracted.  What’s your food intake?  How close is your food to how it comes from the earth?  If we answer that question, then we’ll come back to this stuff.  Don’t get distracted.

Alyssa: T hat’s interesting.  It is a distraction, because I know my doctor would tell me I don’t get enough protein, so I’m taking a protein shake, but why am I not eating more protein, right?  The look — if you could see the look he just gave me!

David:  I am almost a physician’s assistant, so I will be prescribing things like this, and it is tempting for someone to say, well, take this targeted protein supplement or vitamin or medicine.  But we can address those problems a lot of times with food itself, but it takes a little more work on the part of the doctor and the patient, too.  Now, I do sometimes use protein supplements.  Just to be clear, there can be a time and space for some things like that.  I don’t want to say that they’re never useful, but they’re not the basis.  I want to add one more thing, if I may, about involving kids in eating.  If you involve a kid in the process of food, you’re much more likely to get their buy-in on eating a food.  And so this can go as far back into the food process as you can get them involved.  So I have a garden, and I helped my son pick out some seeds that we were going to plant.  So he was involved from the earlier possible step of picking which peas we were going to plant and helping us plant them.  Then he sees them grow; he can pick them, and usually he eats them while he’s standing right there in the garden, but then when he’s in the kitchen, he can help us cook, and now that he’s three, he old enough to actually help a little bit.  He’s definitely going to eat that food when it comes to the table.  He cuts the asparagus out of our garden, and he will definitely eat it, whereas if he just sits at the table and I just throw some asparagus on his plate, he might be like, what’s that?  I’m not going to eat that.  But he’s invested, so it’s important to get that process started.  Get kids in the kitchen.  In fact, I was at the farmer’s market, and they were giving out little kid knives.  I don’t know if you’ve seen these, but it’s a knife that a kid can use to cut vegetables or anything, and it really works, but it won’t come them.  And so now he loves to come in with me and help prepare dinner.

Alyssa:  That’s a really good point.  We had Katie from Kitchen Stewardship on our show.  She’s all about getting kids cooking in the kitchen because when they cook their own meals, they’re more likely to eat it.  But I’m glad you mentioned the garden, too, because I did the same thing with my daughter.  She helped me plant the seeds, watched them grow, and she’ll literally pluck a carrot out and go rinse it off in the house and just eat it like Bugs Bunny.  And I told her that we can eat beet greens and lettuce, so she’ll walk up and say, “Mommy, can I have a beet green?”  And my friends will look at me, like, did she just ask if she could eat a beet green?  I’m like, girl, you eat all the beet greens you want!  Yes, go!  So it’s true; if they’re in it from the beginning of the process, they’re much more invested.  “I grew these, Mommy, they’re mine!”

David:  And conversely, you mentioned having sweets or something sometimes.  We certainly have them sometimes, too, and so they have their place, and they’re kind of special.  Sometimes we’ll walk down to the ice cream shop.  We’ve discussed that it’s not somewhere we go every day, but sometimes we do, and we enjoy the heck out of it.  And then maybe sometime in the future, we’ll go again.  So those things are fine in their place.

Alyssa:  Right.  Okay, I’ve got some thinking to do with how I get my daughter to eat some meals with me.  But actually, some of the LifeFuel ones, she’s been eating.  Like those pancakes, she loved.  They were gluten-free vegan pancakes, and then she loves meat, so she just devoured the meat, too, so yeah, I probably need to order more specific ones like those that she will eat.  Well, thanks for coming in again.  It’s been fun.  And Genevieve, will we have you back on sometimes?

Genevieve:  Absolutely!

Alyssa: Okay.  You didn’t talk on this one.  Probably no one knew you were here!

Genevieve:  I’m just hanging out in the background.

Alyssa: Genevieve from LifeFuel.  Since you are here, why don’t you tell us your website and how to find LifeFuel if they’re interested in ordering?

Genevieve:  Yes, the website is lifefuelbyvault.com.  You can order meals weekly.  We will deliver them to your house, and they’re healthy and delicious.

Alyssa: I can vouch for that.  You can always find us at goldcoastdoulas.com, Instagram, and Facebook.  And you can listen on iTunes and SoundCloud.  Thanks!

Today we talk with Iona Ruiter of Pilates in East.  She specializes in pelvic floor health, prenatal and postnatal pilates, and diastasis recti.  She gives us an in-depth look at the health of your pelvic floor and what exercises actually work.  You can listen to this podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.  Be sure to check out our Facebook post for before and after pictures!

Alyssa:  Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am your host, Alyssa Veneklase, and today I’m excited to be talking to Iona from Pilates in East.  Hello!

Iona:  Hello!

Alyssa:  Thanks for coming over here on this very hot day.

Iona:  Thank you for having me.  I don’t have central air, so this is great!

Alyssa:  Is it cool enough?

Iona:  Today has been a little warmer than other days, but in here, yes, it feels great.  I always love going to work, as well, because we are air-conditioned in there, as well.  But home, not so much.

Alyssa:  Yeah, it’s not a hot pilates.

Iona:  No, no.

Alyssa:  Tell me a little about Pilates in East because I only found you through social media because somebody was talking about what you specialize in.  So we love, at Gold Coast, talking about pelvic floor issues and all these things that a lot of moms deal with, sometimes even during pregnancy, but then very commonly afterwards.

Iona:  Yes.  So at Pilates in East, in general, a lot of the group classes are more fitness-based.  Some people will have some issues with herniations of disc and osteoporosis, things like that, in our group classes, but personally, myself, I specialize in pelvic floor health, prenatal pilates, postnatal pilates, and diastasis recti.  But I actually discovered I had diastasis after the birth of my son, and he just turned four.

Alyssa:  And explain what that is for somebody who hasn’t had it.

Iona:  It’s becoming very common, so I think a lot more people are starting to learn what it is, but it was always defined as the separation of your abdominals, your rectus abdominus muscles, but that’s actually an inaccurate description of it.  It’s actually the extreme thinning of your linea alba, which is the connective tissue between the rectus abdominus muscles.  So it causes the abdominals to come apart, but it’s actually the connective tissue in between being extremely thinned.  And it doesn’t come back together after birth.

Alyssa:  Is that just from the stretching?

Iona:  Yes and no.  So that can be an underlying issue, which it usually is, and then that stretching and the pressure on the abdominal wall from giving birth and the growing baby creates this extreme thinning where it doesn’t come back.  There’s also umbilical herniations which is very common with the diastasis, and that is where there is a tear in the linea alba, and your intestines can actually protrude out of the fascia, which is the linea alba.  It’s the connective tissue; it’s called fascia.  And that is supposed to be repaired only through surgery, but I am a big advocate for natural healing.  I believe the body can do wonderful things, and I think the mind can do wonderful things, as well, and I think that’s one of my problems with my own journey of healing.  I think I have a lot of anxiety, and I focus a little too much negatively on it, but the results I’ve seen on other women has been amazing.  And honestly, the results I’ve seen in myself have been pretty amazing, as well.  I have photos that I actually brought here, too, that we can look at after, because it is pretty amazing to see the before and afters, and I really like to document because I think for someone to see the results, sometimes we don’t always feel the results, but to see the results, I think, speaks volumes.

Alyssa:  We could even post those or post a link if you have them somewhere if you have approval to show those.

Iona:  Yes, I did get approval from someone who I did two private sessions with, and then there’s something we call a magic green ball.

Alyssa:  I see it right there.  It just looks like a green ball, so what makes it magic?

Iona:  It’s actually a myofascial release ball, so the first thing I like to start with – this is postpartum pilates, but I do this with women while they’re pregnant, as well, because it does help to relax the pelvic floor area, open up those hips a little bit, get them ready for birth.  But it’s especially essential for the postpartum recovery.  It’s a myofascial ball, so what that means is it’s a ball used to release the fascial tissue and smooth it out and help the body to realign because when we have pulls on our muscles in certain areas, it causes misalignment.  And most of us probably go to chiropractors.  If we’re doing a more natural birth, I feel like chiropractic care is very important.  I go to a chiropractor, as well, but one of the things with chiropractic care is it’s only your bones.  They’re not doing anything for your muscles.  And if your muscles are overly tight and working too hard in certain areas, they’re going to create that pull and pull that bone back out.  You know, there’s only so much.  So the ball really helps to release those overly-tight muscles.

Alyssa:  I’m picturing being on my stomach rolling around on it.

Iona:  So there’s an oblique release, which is essential for the recovery of the diastasis, as well.  I can’t do that one on prenatal women, but I do that one on postpartum and on menopausal women, as well.  For any woman with pelvic floor issues, the oblique release is amazing.  You can also do psoas, which is your internal hip flexor.  It is tight on a lot of people, especially if they’re runners and things like that, but it’s inside of your hip, and it’s really essential.  It helps with the function of the core and pelvic floor, everything.  All of that is connected.  We do release work on glutes, which is your butt, and the hamstrings, which is the back of your legs.  I also do release work on sacrum, which is a really important one for me.  I have some sacrum issues, which is the little triangular bone in between your left and right hip.  The tip of your sacrum would be your tailbone, and then the base of the sacrum is right around where those dimples on people’s backs are.  And then I’ll do all the way up and down the spine, doing some release work there, as well.

Alyssa:  And what does that mean, doing release work?  With this ball?

Iona:  With the ball.  So you actually roll on it or you just hold a pose with the ball in an area to do release in that area, and it’s amazing.  My obliques before I used this ball were very overly developed, and that’s partially because of my rectus abdominus muscles being weakened and overly stretched from my diastasis recti, and this ball has released my obliques so much.  And you notice, like if I show you pictures of me, with my belly button, I had a little bit more of a pull to the right, and so I’ve been doing this release work on my sacrum and the oblique release.  My right side’s much stronger; I have to hold that for a lot longer, but my belly button’s becoming more uniformly round, and that’s one of the things in the pictures, when I show them to you and then if we post a few of them, you’ll notice the difference of people’s belly buttons.  It’s really pretty amazing because there’s so many pulls from these muscles and everything.  So there’s a lot of realigning the body and releasing.  That kind of goes hand in hand, and then I put in some movement work for exercises that people can do at home.  They’re really gentle, easy.  I do all this stuff every night, and it takes me probably — I’m pretty quick at it now because my body has released more in areas, but it probably takes about 15 minutes to a half-hour, so it’s easy.  It doesn’t require a lot of time.  And, you know, you can keep adding on and making it harder, and then the more that your separation comes together or the better your pelvic floor health becomes, then you can eventually join group classes and everything.  But if there is enough interest after this podcast, I’d be more than willing to do some private group classes and if anyone wants to reach out to me, we do special pricing and everything with the more people we get for pelvic floor health, the diastasis, and everything like that.

Alyssa:  So what do you do with this magic green ball for pelvic floor?

Iona:  For pelvic floor, it’s very similar because, again, everything is kind of connected.  So with the diastasis recti and pelvic floor, really, the main source of fascia on your body is the thoracolumbar fascia, which is the fascial tissue along the center of your back, more or less.  And it fans out, and fascia really covers your entire body, and then there’s little pockets in the fascia, and that’s where your muscles lie.  But the thickest, largest part of your fascia is along your back, so that’s why it’s so essential to do that.  But then that fascia wraps around your pelvic floor and comes up to the linea alba, so if there’s some kind of disruption in the back of the body, the pelvic floor, or the front, it can cause the diastasis; it can cause some pelvic floor issues.  There’s just all these little contributors because the body works in funny ways, and everything’s really connected.  It really is, and it’s funny because a lot of times, even in my group classes, I’ll do stretching and I’ll just have everyone lift one arm up, and they’ll be like, oh, my gosh, why does that stretch feel so different?  And when I first started pilates, we’re always like, oh, don’t — people when their cores are weaker will lift their shoulders up, and it’s like, oh, your shoulders aren’t connected to your abs; you need to keep them released, but the thing is, everything’s really connected where these nice long lines and this fascia is all connected, it’s just the muscles might not be connected.  So releasing all of that one.  But a big one — some big stuff I do with pelvic floor work is I like to do a lot of working those external rotators of the hips.  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of clam exercise.

Alyssa:  No.

Iona:  It’s where you lie on your side and your knees are bent.  Your feet stay flat together, and your legs are about a 90-degree angle, so they’re straight out from your hips.  And you have to make sure that your top hip does not roll back.  That’s very important because if it does you’re not giving yourself the exercise you need, but you just work by opening and closing that top leg.  That’s a great pelvic floor exercise, and everyone listening could do that at home right now, even.  But realigning the body, again, really does help with getting everything to function as it should.  So that’s why the myofascial ball is so important, or the magic green ball, as we call it.  But the pelvic floor release is another great one for pelvic floor issues because, again, just because someone has pelvic floor issues doesn’t mean that they have a weak pelvic floor.  It just means it might be weak in certain areas.  There’s certain areas overworking, probably, and other areas underworking.  So we want to get it to work together, and so that pelvic floor release is really important to that.  I love squats.  I think squats are another great thing.  It’s a natural pelvic floor engagement, just lifting up every time you stand back up, but making sure you come up all the way tall.  A lot of times I watch people do squats, and they come up, but they don’t come up all the way.  That last little bit’s important, just for your whole entire body, for your kneecaps and everything, getting that last little lift.  But yeah, those are just a couple simple little things that people can do at home and everything with that.

Alyssa:  I’m curious about that.  You have a deflated balloon looking ball.

Iona:  Yeah, so this is called a soft gym ball, but yes, it’s deflated.  A lot of times with pelvic floor issues, as well, and possibly with diastasis recti, just all kinds of postpartum issues, we’ll place this in between their thighs, but not their knees.  You want it pretty high up, closer to the pelvis.  And we don’t ask people to press into it, but your legs naturally will press in and engage.  So if I have someone doing a bridge, which I think everyone knows what a bridge is, probably — a pilates bridge is a little bit different.  It’s not so extended; your ribs stay in.  But a lot of times if people have weaker pelvic floor, their knees tend to fan out as they do a bridge.  Their legs don’t stay inward, and so it creates this uneven tension in certain areas, wrong muscles overworking, weaker muscles underworking.  So if you place this ball in between, you can’t open your knees out because you’ll drop it, but you’ll notice this natural inner thigh, your adductors, working, which is going to help work the muscles inside the pelvic floor and everything as well, because all of that is attached to different areas of your pelvis.  In the past, women were always told to do Kegels to strengthen the pelvic floor, but looking at this photo of your pelvic floor, there’s actually two layers of your pelvic floor.  The two areas are your pelvic diaphragm area and then your urogenital triangle.  So the pelvic floor is more intricate than a lot of us realize, and when you’re doing just a Kegel, you’re only working actually the superficial muscles of the pelvic floor, which would be more of the urogenital triangle.  So if you’re doing that, you’re really just strengthening the sphincter area, but there’s all these muscles here that aren’t really engaging.  So this would be the pelvic diaphragm, which actually, it’s called the diaphragm because like our breathing diaphragm, it actually does move.  So another good exercise for people with pelvic floor issues is pelvic tilts, so getting on hands and knees and then bringing the tailbone to pubic bone, pubic bone to chest.  That’s a really good movement of the pelvic diaphragm.  It’s getting to move; it’s getting to slide, so you’re getting kind of a Kegel, but you’re getting more than a Kegel because you’re actually exercising the entire pelvic floor, especially by adding that little bit of tilt.  And that’s something pregnant women can do, as well, because that will help if your baby is either occipital-posterior or breech.  So those pelvic tilts are really important, and I think they’re just important for women’s health in general.

Alyssa:  Now when you do the pelvic tilt, I’m picturing like a cat-cow, but you don’t have to do so much?

Iona:  Yeah, you’re actually not going to be going between the cat-cow.  It’s more of a hands and knees, and then you just want to really let your neck relax.  If it wants to hang down, that’s fine.  Just let your upper body relax more, but then your body is going to be more in a neutral position, so more of a flat back.

Alyssa:  And try to just move your pelvis?

Iona:  Yeah, and just move your pelvis.  A lot of times when people do cat, it goes into their upper back, which is called their thoracic spine, and it’s more of the lumbar spine which is your lower part of your spine.  But again, it’s more of the pelvic floor and the tailbone, sacrum, hip area that’s moving.  So it’s a really easy cue, and it’s one I learned when I did my pelvic floor diastasis course, but it’s just coming into hands and knees and then bringing tailbone to pubic bone; very gentle; you’ll feel a little glute engagement as well.  And then pubic bone to chest, where your low back should go more flat.  Because our backs — if you look at anyone standing, their low back naturally dips in.  That’s the natural curve of the lumbar, but you’re getting your low back to come more flat.

Alyssa:  So all of this stuff — let’s say someone hears this and says, oh my gosh, I have to do this.  You only do these in private classes, or you also kind of talk about it in group classes?

Iona:  So the great thing about Pilates in East is we are given kind of an outline for our class on how every class has to go, so there’s certain things we have to do.  We have to do arms, legs, standing, abs, things like that, but we are given free rein on what we do, and we all have our own specialties and different things that we’re interested in, so all of our own personalities come across in the classes.  And then the other great thing is every single class, we kind of have, whether people realize it or not, a little lesson that we talk about in the beginning of class, and we kind of stick with that for our theme as we teach the class.  So there’s other parts of the body — if you have low back pain, there’s this area along your spine called the multifidus, and that’s something I really like to do as well because I suffered from low back for a little bit after the birth of my daughter.  She liked to be held a lot, and the way we hold our children isn’t always the best for our body, even if you’re doing a baby carrier.  It can be hard, so the multifidus is a nice way to create more length in your back to help cushion.  You can kind of think of it as the balloons that they do balloon animals with, and you think of them being one on either side of your back.  And a good way to find your multifidus is if you place your fingertips on the center of your spine, so where you feel the bony part that protrudes, that’s your spinous processes.  And if you just slide your fingertips off to the side where it dips in a little.  And then the best way to feel is actually if you walk around.  You can feel the muscles kind of puff, puff.  Do you feel that?

Alyssa:  Yes!

Iona:  So that is your multifidus.  There’s more superficial muscles that are working, as well, but if you just think of when your drawing your abdominals in, puffing that area out just a little bit, even just breathing in and then exhale; just gently think of that area that you just felt puffing out a little bit.  It creates more space in that low back because that area typically is stronger.  It does run all the way up along your spine, but people don’t usually feel it up here.  But the low part of the back is usually stronger.  Those muscles are usually bigger, as well, so it’s a great way to feel less discomfort in the low back and everything as well, just thinking of that puffing up of the balloons or of the multifidus.

Alyssa:  It’s always funny when an instructor who knows what they’re talking about says something little, like puffing.  If you had just told me to puff up the back of my back — like, what?  And then you feel it and you move, and you’re like oh, okay, yeah, I do feel myself puffing up.

Iona:  That’s a hard one for a lot of peoples, so a lot of times I will have everyone feel it first, if I know it’s going to be something hard for everyone to comprehend at first.  It’s like, okay, I know most people are not visual learners; they’re hands-on learners, so how can I teach you where you feel it, and then see the outcome; get to understand that connection and everything.  One thing a lot of women do notice that have had a C-section is numbness down low, and part of the reason is — so we were talking about fascia earlier, and the fascia — think about looking at a piece of meat.  So the red part is the muscle, and then the white part is actually the fascia that we call fat.  So the fibers — we all know that meat has fibers, so there’s a direction; you know, when you’re cutting your beef.

Alyssa:  Against the grain or with it.

Iona:  Exactly, exactly.  So that’s the direction of your muscle, and our muscles are the exact same way.  They have these fibers that are in certain directions.  Your fascia is exactly the same way, so they have directions that they move and lie.  And just like our skin, our fascia, and the rest of our body, it’s all made up of a lot of water.  Now, what happens is when your abdominal wall and your fascia and your skin is cut into, everything — if you think of a book, where everything is this smooth surface where the pages are, and I’m thinking more of a soft-cover book, everything has this nice directional line.  If you end up being cut with something, like you have an appendectomy or a C-section, what happens is that fascia, as you put it back, it doesn’t live in its nice place.  It’s put together so that — almost like if you were to put your fingers together and lace them together, that’s how it normally is, and then when you’re cut open, it’s almost like putting your knuckles together.  So you notice that it doesn’t really fit.  So you really want to break that scar tissue up, so one of the first things I always ask women with a C-section is, do you massage your scar?  Because that is the number one most important thing that you could possibly do after having a C-section.  And it’s really a matter of when it feels comfortable for you.  They say your skin takes a full year to heal, and I think you can massage your scars sooner than a year, but if you don’t feel comfortable for a year, that’s completely okay.  You can start by just using two fingers and rolling the area that the scar is, but the best way is to actually get your fingers into the scar and then pull up or pull in towards the center line of your body.  Obviously, me doing it on someone is the best way to show someone, but yeah, with C-sections, diastasis is actually very common after that, as well, because of the uneven pull of the fascia system.  And that’s what I had actually learned with my diastasis, because I for the longest time was like why did I get this?  Why did I get this?  Everything I read says women over the age of 35 that are not fit, you know, have weaker abdominals.  I’m like, I’m a pilates instructor; my abdominals were strong.  I’m 32 years old.  I shouldn’t be having this issue.  Why am I having it?  And when I did the course that I had taken, it answered a lot of questions because I had also noticed a lot of women with C-sections having the diastasis, and what I didn’t realize is one, I had my appendix removed when I was seven, so that caused uneven pulls on my fascial system.  So my body had to find new ways to kind of move and shift.  The skin had to find new ways to pull, and the muscles, too.  And then I actually was in a car accident at 17 years old where my sacrum was fractured diagonally from the top all the way to the opposite side.  So my sacrum ended up not living in the place that it should have, which caused uneven pulls because you don’t get sacrum surgeries or things like that.  People do hip replacements, but they don’t do actually surgeries on the bones themselves.  You can’t do anything, and you can’t put your pelvis in a cast, so…

Alyssa:  Were you just sitting on a donut?  What did you?

Iona:  Yeah, when I had the car accident, I was given a claw to grab things, and I was given a donut to sit on, and that was basically it.  Yeah, so what I found was my body wasn’t aligned as it should, and that’s why that myofascial release, again, is so important.  So women with a C-section or anyone who’s had back surgeries, it’s really important.  They’re going to be more prone to a diastasis as well or maybe pelvic floor issues, things like that, because of that all being connected and wrapping up and around the pelvic floor.

Alyssa:  That makes a lot of sense.  Well, I think it’s encouraging for moms to know that if they have pelvic floor issues or even have back issues or have issues with their abs, that they don’t just have to deal with it or they don’t have to go get surgery, or there’s at least some options to try for a while.  How do people find you?  Is the best way through the website?

Iona:  The website or my email.   People email me a lot, or you can message me on Facebook.  That’s always a lot of people messaging me on Facebook through Grand Rapids Natural Parenting and a bunch of different sites, but my name is Iona Ruiter, so you can Facebook message me.  Otherwise, iona.ruiter@gmail.com is another great way, and that’s just my personal email that I use for the studio and everything like that.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Hopefully we can get some interest through this.  I know that once we click stop here, I want to have you show me a couple things.   Thanks so much for joining us today!

Iona:  Thanks so much for having me.  It was great.

Alyssa:  Hopefully you guys will look her up!  As always, you can find us at www.goldcoastdoulas.com.  You can email us with info or suggestions at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  We are on Facebook, Instagram, and you can listen on SoundCloud and iTunes.  Thanks!

Alyssa and Cindy from Cindy’s Suds talk today about common newborn skin issues.  Ever heard of cradle cap?  How do you prevent diaper rash?  Do babies really get pimples? You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hello!  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula, and I’m excited to talk to my friend Cindy again today from Cindy’s Suds.

Cindy:  Hey, how are you?

Alyssa:  Hey, good!  So I just taught a newborn class the other night, and in that class, I have a section where we go over common illnesses for babies that a lot of babies get and freak parents out.  Cradle cap, baby acne, and diaper rash are three of the ones we go over.  And I was thinking that, because your products are so amazing and you have the healthcare background as a —

Cindy:  Yeah, Physician’s Assistant.

Alyssa:  You would have some good ideas and you can tell people what is cradle cap really, and why do babies get baby acne, and then how your products can actually help.  Let’s start with cradle cap because it’s so weird.

Cindy:  Cradle cap is so weird, and especially to a new mom that’s never experienced it before, you’re thinking what in the world?  My kid has this scale on his head, and it looks so awful and so gross.

Alyssa:  It’s like a really disgusting form of adult dandruff, and it turns yellow.

Cindy:  Actually, that’s what it is.  That’s exactly what it is, yeah.  So the medical name is seborrheic dermatitis, and it’s just scaly, yellow flakes.  It looks so gross, and you can get it not only the hairline; you can get it on the eyebrows, behind the ears, kind of patchy; anywhere there’s hair, you can get it.  It’s typically a self-limiting situation where it’s just going to slowly get better on its own.   We don’t necessarily know why babies get it.  A lot of babies do.  The worst thing to do, and the thing that moms want to do, is pick off those little scales because it’s gross to you, but that’s the worst thing to do because you can bleed and then you can get a secondary infection from picking and bleeding on their little scalp.  So you’re better off leaving it alone, and it usually kind of gets better on its own.  You can use some symptomatic treatments, though, and one of those things is you can just use our healing salve and you can kind of goop that on their scalp and let it sit, and then slowly, over a few applications — and when I say few, it could be a few weeks of doing something like that — it will slowly soften and get better, and they’ll grow out of it.  You can do the same thing with coconut oil; I’ve heard people use that with decent results, too.  Our healing salve just has other benefits and other herbs in it that also kind of help in the healing process, but certainly, if you have coconut oil at home, certainly try that first, if you want.  But it’s just something that is going to be more of an unattractive phase for a while.  It’s not anything dangerous, harmful.  It’s nothing that they’re going to have for the rest of their life.  It’s typically self-limiting, and it’s just their little bodies are going through so much change, and it could be hormone fluxes, they’re saying, just from —

Alyssa:  I heard the other day it could be the first sign of a food allergy.

Cindy:  And then also it could have a component of a fungal infection, too.  They just really don’t know, so they’re kind of grasping at straws, and they’ve always kind of not known.  So it’s just one of those things where they’re — you know, this decade, they’re saying, oh, could be food allergies.  Last decade, they’re saying, oh, could be fungal.  It’s just one of those things that are fairly common for newborns, but also, you know, you’ve got mother-in-law going oh, you’ve got to pick that or treat it, and I’ve also heard a lot of people say use a baby comb and comb it off, which is kind of the same thing as picking, unless you’ve softened that area first with the coconut oil or with the healing salve.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I tell people if you use coconut oil, and a very soft-bristled, like baby toothbrush, and go very, very lightly in small circles.   And it’s like you said; it could take weeks, but it’s just a slow process over time.

Cindy:  Right, and you never want to do that dry.  So you never want to dry brush or dry comb.  It’s always after that coconut oil or healing salve has settled into the scalp and softened up some of those plaques, and then just try to get rid of it really slowly.  Or even a washcloth; you can kind of just slowly go over their scalp with a washcloth, but it’s not a quick fix.  So plan on this being a several weeks-long process, and also know that it will go away.   Don’t listen if someone says oh, you need to wash them more.  Babies, in general, you really shouldn’t bathe unless you’re doing it maybe once a week, but they don’t need to be bathed.  Their pH is changing; their skin is just adjusting to being part of this world instead of in the womb, so there’s so many things going on.  You don’t need shampoo, and that’s the last thing that you should be using anyway.  That’s a whole other topic, but stay away from any of those “baby shampoos” or baby this, baby that, because —

Alyssa:  Adding chemicals and petroleum to your baby’s poor, delicate skin is not a good idea.

Cindy:  Yeah, not a smart idea.  But anyway, that’s seborrheic dermatitis, also called cradle cap.  It will go away; it just looks ugly.

Alyssa:  So what about baby acne?  Is it actually pimples?

Cindy:  It actually is, and that’s the funny thing.  It’s leftover hormones from Mom, and so those still are circulating in baby’s immature body.  Their oil glands are still immature, so you’ve got a combination of Mom’s hormones raging out of baby and slowly fading out, and then baby’s immature skin system and sebum production and oil production is immature still, and so you end up with acne.  And this too will go away, but it’s also — it almost always happens when you’re ready to take those first one-month pictures, two-month pictures, and all of a sudden, you’re like, my beautiful, fair-skinned baby is like a teenager!  And it almost always happens, and they say about 40 to 50% of babies get this, so it is super, super common.  It also will go away.

Alyssa:  Don’t touch it; don’t pick it.

Cindy:  Don’t pick!  Don’t pick!  Sometimes, though, just like in regular acne, you will have spots that flare up and look more red and look irritated and almost look like they’re getting infected.  That would be a good time to use our healing salve because that’s a natural product.  It will help to decrease any early infection that’s starting.  It’s going to be an anti-inflammatory for those spots on the face.  You can certainly use it any point during the baby acne phase, but you don’t need to.  That’s more of a mom thing; we’re like, I feel like I need to try something.  You can certainly try it; you can certainly use it, but you don’t need to.

Alyssa:  It’s best just to leave it alone.

Cindy:  It’s best to leave it alone, and do not pick.  I’m a picker, and I love to pick, and it was so hard not to pick.  I think it’s because I’m a PA, and it’s part of what you do.  You get to do things like that at work.  But don’t pick because it will scar, and you don’t want to do that to your baby.  There’s also something called milia, which look like those under the skin whiteheads that you can sometimes see on the nose and cheeks and sometimes forehead.  That’s something different, and that’s also just like a trapping of skin cells underneath the surface of the skin.  That also will go away, but it’s not baby acne.  They’re two separate things.  They both will go away on their own.  It’s just more — especially for a new mom, it’s kind of unnerving to see this facial change and these skin changes happen to your baby because it’s such an outward sign, and you have people always commenting; strangers, mothers-in-law, whomever: oh, my kid never had that!  What are you using?  What aren’t you using?  So just know — I just would love to give moms the confidence to know that this is natural; this is normal; this will go away.  If they need to use something on it, something natural like a coconut oil or our healing salve would be great and fine, but you do not need to.  It will go away on its own.

Alyssa:  And what about diaper rash?  Because that — I’d say probably 100% of babies at some point, whether it’s just a mild diaper rash — you know, the biggest thing I tell my students in class is just to keep baby’s butt dry; after a shower, even after wiping with a wet wipe.  You’re putting moisture on the baby’s butt, and then you cover it with this dark diaper.  Now you have this dark, damp, moist environment to grow bacteria and get a diaper rash in.

Cindy:  Absolutely.  So diaper rash is pretty ubiquitous for when you have kids.  It can start early on.  With some kids, it doesn’t start until after they start solids because of the whole transition of what that is doing to their GI tract, but you will probably experience diaper rash at some point.  Like you said, the biggest challenge is keeping that area dry, and if you notice any pee or poop, you’ve got to change right away.  If you’re cloth diapering, same thing; you’re going to have to be more on top of it if you cloth diaper because there’s not a barrier like in the disposables, so you’ll just need to be on top of it and just constantly changing.  It’s short-lived in the grand scheme of life.

Alyssa:  Three years feels like forever.

Cindy:  It certainly does, but in the grand scheme of life, it will get better.  As they get older, they obviously don’t go as often, but you’ve got to be on top of it, especially when they’re really little, because their skin is so immature and it cannot fight those early fungal infections that can lead to bacterial infections, and it’s usually a combination.  Like if you get a rip-roaring diaper rash, there’s usually going to be some kind of a fungal component just because, like you were describing, damp, dark, stuff just left there; that’s the perfect growing conditions for any kind of a fungus or bacteria.  So after you do a diaper change, if you can just kind of air-dry with your hand waving before you diaper, or if you can just let them have a minute of some air time to dry that off, that’s the best.  If you’ve already kind of gone over the threshold of darn, we now have a breach in the skin and we now do actually have a diaper rash, reach for something natural.  Our diaper balm and healing salve are amazing.

Alyssa:  What’s the different between the two?

Cindy:  The only difference is the base oil, so the healing salve has an olive oil base, and the diaper balm has an almond oil base.  The only reason why we made two is so that moms had a visual so that if they wanted to always keep a dirty can by the diaper changing table, they had a color visual because that color is yellow, whereas the healing salve color is a greenish-blue, label-wise.  But they’re the same product; they work the exact same.  It’s just a different base oil, and it’s just more or less just so mom has a visual to keep one “clean” vs. “dirty” for a diaper change.  But if you do get the rash, actually, you can be very liberal with putting that diaper balm or healing salve on their bottom.  The great thing about it is it’s not going to sting when you put it on; it’s not going to sting if you wipe it off; it’s going to keep a nice barrier that’s going to start healing that skin, especially if it’s broken.  New moms, too, they freak out, as we all did, when they have their first diaper rash that’s now excoriated and bleeding.  You feel awful as a mom, and it could just be the simple fact that you were stuck in traffic and you realized baby’s pooped in the backseat and you just can’t get home in time, and then it happens.  It happens to all of us, so don’t do a guilt trip, moms.  Unfortunately, we just live this kind of a pace right now where you can’t physically be there sometimes every single second when they go, but as soon as you notice it, you clean off; you air-dry a little bit, and then use a healing salve or diaper balm very liberally on the diaper rash, and you will notice a huge improvement.  Just make sure that you’re continually keeping up on those diaper changes and applying the salve.

Alyssa:  So not only does it start to heal; it also kind of creates a barrier, right, so when they pee and poop next — it’s like water and oil don’t mix, so it kind of just rolls off.

Cindy:  Absolutely, so it’s creating that barrier so that you’re not going to have that skin-to-poop contact, and poop is quite acidic, especially once they start getting any kind of a solid.  But it’s acidic, and so that’s what’s going to start eating through and irritating that super-sensitive skin.  So be vigilant on doing your diaper changes; dry off before you re-diaper.  You can use the healing salve or diaper balm preventatively and just put a little barrier on, if you want to.  You don’t need to.  I would probably just not, if it were me.  It’s one more thing to do.

Alyssa:  Probably start it when you notice early signs.

Cindy:  Right, when you notice the redness, that’s when you should start using it.  And then if it gets really, really bad, you just goop it on.  You’re just kind of dabbing it on; not wiping, but more of a dab, and just be really careful to just keep doing those diaper changes so they’re not ever sitting in any pee or poop.

Alyssa:  And it’s hard because, like you said, when they’re little, the pee all the time, and you’re literally —

Cindy:  It’s like a drizzle sometimes.

Alyssa:  And you’re like, oh, I don’t want to change a diaper again; I just did, or these diapers cost so much money, so I get it for families who are like, I can’t change the baby’s diaper twelve times a day.  You just have to be really careful.

Cindy:  Really, really careful, yeah.  Or maybe cloth diapering would be a better alternative since you can rewash those diapers.  You’ve got to find what works best for you.  Some people could not do cloth diapers for the expense because there is a big expense up front for those.  Some people think that disposable is a bigger expense.  You just have to do what’s right for your family, whatever you want to do, but you just have to be on top of it, and you really should have some kind of a natural diaper cream, diaper balm there before it’s too late because it will happen.  So be a little bit proactive and have some at the ready for when this will happen to your baby, and don’t beat yourself up over it.  Just realize that, okay, I may have been even a half hour of sitting in poop if you’re in the car, that will really wreak havoc on their bottoms, so just got to be on top of it, and it’s something that we all struggle with.

Alyssa:  Yeah, and it does not make baby happy at all.  Baby feels it.  So people can find your products at Cindy’s Suds?

Cindy:  At www.cindyssuds.com, and if you live in the Grand Rapids area, we are carried at Harvest Health and Kingma’s, Hopscotch, Bridge Street Baby in Rockford.  So you can find us in several Grand Rapids locations.

Alyssa:  I was looking for your stuff at Harvest Health a while back.  I went with my daughter, and I was walking up and down these aisles, like what the heck, and they were like, can I help you, ma’am?  I’m like, yes, I’m looking for Cindy’s Suds.  “Oh, she has her own little area over here.”  I was like, all right, Cindy!  You had your own little display under the front wall.  It was really nice.

Cindy:  Yeah, it’s nice.  They’ve been great.  We’ve been partners with Harvest Health for years, and so it’s just been fun just to work with them over the years, and they have a display on an endcap for us and kind of a separate area, so if you can’t find it at Harvest Health or Kingma’s, they will gladly show you.  It is there, and both of those stores are amazing local stores and they carry almost all of our products, and they carry a nice, large display.  So we are there, so if you can’t find us, just ask, and they will gladly point you in the right direction.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Thanks again.  Email us: info@goldcoastdoulas.  You can find us online, www.goldcoastdoulas.com.  we’re also on Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and iTunes.  We’ll talk to you next time.

Today Alyssa and Cindy of Cindy’s Suds talk about ways to minimize your bath products.  Can we get by with just one lotion?  Can we use soap as shaving gel?  Find out on today’s episode!  Listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hello!  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am your host, Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula, and I’m talking with Cindy from Cindy’s Suds again today.  Hey, Cindy.

Cindy:  Hey, how are you?

Alyssa:  Today we’re going to talk about minimizing all the products.  So I am very much a minimalist, and it drives me crazy that when I open the drawers in my bathroom, I have ten different care products and probably three different face lotions and three or four different eye creams.  I just have so much stuff.

Cindy:  Stuff, yeah.  And they each promise something a little bit different, and so you feel like you need it.

Alyssa:  Yes, like, oh, I need to try that, or oh, this face cream has zinc oxide, and then I try it and my face turns purple, so then I don’t like it anymore.  So now I have to buy a new one, but I don’t want to throw that one away because it probably cost $20 or something.

Cindy:  Exactly, yeah.

Alyssa:  So, yeah, I have drawers and drawers and drawers of stuff, and I’ve been very intentionally trying to minimize all this extra stuff that I have.

Cindy:  It’s funny because I’ve been doing the same thing at my house, too.  We’ve had kind of a crazy year, like I’ve shared with you, and it makes me so happy to just go through a drawer and just dump it all and very carefully hand-select the five things that I use out of that drawer of fifty.  So I’m totally with you on that.

Alyssa:  I have a mom who will take anything, so she loves it when I give her stuff that I don’t use anymore.  That’s kind of what I do as my backup plan.  But I love that I’ve found you since partnering with you at Gold Coast.  I absolutely love your products.

Cindy:  Thanks.

Alyssa:  So my daughter, as you know, because of food allergies, had really bad eczema.  The healing salve and the body butter for her is amazing, and whether it’s just dry skin, whether it’s the eczema, whether it’s a sunburn, anything.  When I felt that body butter, I was like, oh my God.  I’m in love.  So now we order eight at a time online when I get online, and I love it.  You know, even for Mother’s Day, I loved the almond so much that I got it my mother and my mother-in-law, the almond body butter.  You know, just that you can have this one little thing to use as your one lotion.

Cindy:  For multiple uses, right.

Alyssa:  And then with the unscented one, I can put a very small amount on my hands and actually use it on my face.

Cindy:  Exactly, yeah.

Alyssa:  So just going through and trying to minimize.  I still need an eye cream; I still need a sunscreen for my face.  So there’s things that I need, but I don’t need three different options of each.  And we use your soap now in the shower.  For some reason, I thought I wouldn’t like having a bar of soap.

Cindy:  Were you a body wash person before that?

Alyssa:  Yeah, I used this Dr. Bronner’s that can be used for anything.  It’s super simple.  But for some reason, I like having a bar of soap.  I never thought I would.  And I use exfoliation gloves, so I just put that soap right in between there, and it gets all sudsy.

Cindy:  Yeah, so that works great for increasing the suds.  I’ve done stuff like that, too.  So I just use our bar of soap for everything, and it doesn’t matter what I’m using it for.  You can use it on your face, use it on your body.  You can shave with it.  It produces a great lather for shaving for both women with their legs and guys with their faces.

Alyssa:  I haven’t tried it for shaving yet.  Then I could get rid of my shaving cream.

Cindy:  You can get rid of your shaving cream, yeah.  It’s amazing for that.  Plus, it also, being natural soap, it’s going to moisturize your legs much better than regular bar soap would.  So use it for shaving – guys, too.

Alyssa:  And you won’t get a razor burn?

Cindy:  Heck, no.  Never.  Never, never, never.

Alyssa:  So how sudsy does it have to get?  I’m just picturing this, like – oh, razor going on my legs…

Cindy:  Tomorrow, you do it and then you tell me.  And you’ll be like, oh, I didn’t realize.  Yeah, and that’s kind of a misnomer, too.  You don’t necessarily have to have suds to shave well.  When you’re using a natural soap, there’s so many good emollients in it just with the products.

Alyssa:  And you don’t have the sodium laurel sulphate, which produces the fake suds, right?

Cindy:  No, no, no, exactly.  So it’s not going to suds up like a crazy sudsing product.  I mean, if you use your exfoliation gloves or if you use a brush, like guys use brushes to create lather, you can certainly do that and make it look more sudsy.

Alyssa:  What do you mean, a brush to create a lather?

Cindy:  You know how guys use a brush when they shave?  So the same thing with our soap.  You can use our soap with a brush to do the wet shaving that guys do, and all you do is you get that brush hot and just swirl, swirl, swirl a couple times on top of your soap, and it creates a lather with just the mechanical action.

Alyssa:  And you rub it in your legs and your armpits and whatever.

Cindy:  You can, but that’s the whole thing.  If you want to, if that makes you happy to get the suds, awesome.  Totally do it.  But you don’t need to.  You can just rub it between your hands, and whatever small amount of lather you get, just the fact that it’s a natural soap, it’s going to be great for shaving.  So just try it tomorrow and tell me how you’ll like it, and you’ll be like, ding, one more product I can get rid of; throw it into the trash.  And also too for guys – like my husband is practically bald, so he has a little bit of hair on the sides and he keeps it super short.  He just uses the soap.

Alyssa:  There’s no need for shampoo and conditioner, right?

Cindy:  No.  So you just use the soap on your head.  And guys with short hair, too – I mean, you have short hair, but I would probably still not use –

Alyssa:  I was going to ask you.  I have short hair…

Cindy:  I wouldn’t just because when I’ve tried it – I have very long hair, but you can try it.  It might feel tacky.  But for guys that literally have, like, stubble hair, it’s perfect and easy, and it’s also one less thing that you’re buying because you’re just really trying to get the oil off your scalp.  So it works great for guys who are bald to near-bald.  They don’t need any kind of special shampoo with chemicals in it to make you feel like you’re getting sudsiness on your head.  So yeah, the soap is so multipurpose.  Then the tip that I was going to give you: so when I wash my face, I just get lather in my hands, and I sprinkle a little sugar in my hands inside the lather, and then I use that on my face.

Alyssa:  Oh, for exfoliating.

Cindy:  So it’s an exfoliation, and sugar also helps to seal in moisture.

Alyssa:  What?

Cindy:  Yeah.

Alyssa:  Is that why you see sugar scrubs?

Cindy:  Right, yeah.  And we have a sugar scrub too, but for my face, I just wash with our bar soap, and I sprinkle some sugar.

Alyssa:  So do you keep a little jar of sugar in your shower?

Cindy:  Not in my shower; next to my sink, I do.  I really do.  It sounds silly, but that’s what I do when I wash my face at night.  I don’t do it in the morning.  I don’t do it twice a day.  I just do it a night.

Alyssa:  Interesting.

Cindy:  So you have the soap that you can use for multiple things: shaving; washing; if you have short hair or balding hair, you can use it for that.  Our one jar of healing salve, you can use that for so many things, like you mentioned: cuts, scrapes, burns, sunburns, poison ivy.  Use it like you would a Neosporin if you’re trying to get away from petroleum-based products and chemicals.  Try the healing stuff first.  What did I miss?  Diaper rash; regular rashes.  A lot of kids even ask for it, like, “I want boo-boo cream,” because they know it works.  They know that it feels good.

Alyssa:  And it doesn’t sting.

Cindy:  It doesn’t sting, and kids know.  You know, if something stings, that kind of is a little red flag.  Why is this stinging?  Something shouldn’t sting if you’re using it on your skin.  So yeah, so there’s another easy product to kind of hit a bunch of others right into the trash.  You don’t need to have a certain cream for rashes and a certain cream for poison ivy and a certain cream for scratches and bug bites.

Alyssa:  Which is what I had for her when we found out – you know, the dermatologist just says, well, it’s eczema; put cortisone cream on it.  So I had three different types of cortisone cream, and I had probably three different types of body lotions which were all horrible for her.  Now, literally, I have the body butter and the healing salve, and I have a tiny little bit of cortisone cream for when it get really, really, really bad.

Cindy:  For the flares, exactly.  And if you are a true eczema sufferer, that cortisone can be your saving grace when you have a flare-up of it.  So I’m not one of those that are like, “It’s all or none.  You have to just use natural.”  There is a place and a time for everything, and I would certainly hang on to your cortisone because if you need it, man, a couple days of that brings you right back to square one, and you can then continue using the healing salve and keeping that skin healthy.

Alyssa:  That’s exactly what we do.

Cindy:  Yeah, you don’t want to get rid of that because there is definitely a place to use it, but you don’t need all of those jars and ointments and blah blah blah.  So it’s all about really trying to think through what’s healthy for me; what’s good for me.  And on that level too, and I know you’re very into this, if you have too much stuff around, that makes you feel unhealthy because you just feel stressed and anxious about all the stuff.  So that not only is helping on a physical health level by choosing healthy products, but also mentally, you’re clearing some of that clutter from your mental awareness, and that, too, just allows you to breathe easier.

Alyssa:  I’m all about the clearing the clutter.

Cindy:  I know.  Right?

Alyssa:  Now I need to go back to my bathroom drawers and rethink all the clutter that I thought I got rid of, but it’s still pretty bad.

Cindy:  I know, yeah.  It’s kind of a constant process.

Alyssa:  Yeah.  Well, I think everyone needs to go and start with one drawer.  Pick one of the three drawers in the bathroom; just pick one, like on a Sunday afternoon or something.  Just start to – here’s stuff I don’t need.  Here’s maybe stuff that’s not necessarily good for me, and what am I going to replace it with?

Cindy:  The other thing that I’ll say real quick is that if something is a year old or older, pitch it.

Alyssa:  Really?

Cindy:  You really shouldn’t hang on to things.

Alyssa:  Because of bacteria growth?

Cindy:  Bacteria growth, yeah.  Even if it’s store-bought.  And a caveat to that: if it’s a strictly oil-based product, like our healing salve, an oil-based product that is nothing else.  Anything with water in it really should be used up within a year.  But if it’s an oil-based product, no water added, those are good for two to three years.  But if you’re looking at anything that you’ve bought conventionally and you look on the ingredients, if there is water in it, it’s going to have to have a preservative, and in that situation, you really should pitch it if it’s been a year.  Makeup, too.  Makeup can get nasty bacteria, too, after a year.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I’ve thrown out makeup before.  And I wash my brushes a lot, too, because I think that’s probably – that grosses me out too.

Cindy:  Yep, super smart.  Yeah.

Alyssa:  A little bit of germaphobe in me, as well.

Cindy:  You know, that’s probably why you’re so healthy.

Alyssa:  All sorts of issues.  Well, cool.  Thanks for coming again.  Tell people where to find you.  They probably already know, but let’s tell them again.

Cindy:  Okay.  You can find us at www.cindyssuds.com, and you can find us locally at Harvest Health, Kingma’s, Hopscotch, Bridge Street Baby, and there’s several other vendors in the Grand Rapids area that carry us in smaller amounts, as well.

Alyssa:  Cool.  Check them out.  And as always, you can find us at www.goldcoastdoulas.com.  Email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.  And you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and iTunes.  Thanks!

Ever wondered what the difference is between a 3D and 4D ultrasound?  Are they safe?  Today we talk to Jessica from 4D Moments to answer all these questions!  You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hello!  Welcome to Ask the Doulas podcast.  I am your host, Alyssa Veneklase.  I am co-owner at Gold Coast and also a postpartum doula.  Today we’re talking to Jessica from 4D Moments.  How are you, Jessica?

Jessica:  I’m great.

Alyssa:  So we recently connected because we were going to do an event together, and then we got talking a little bit more.  And I would love for you to tell our moms more about your service.  And I’m curious, too, because I don’t know much about you.  Is this your business?

Jessica:  I am the owner.  I’ve been open for just over five years in Kalamazoo, and then I’ve been coming to Grand Rapids here for the past three years.  And we’re now in our own location on Alpine in Grand Rapids.

Alyssa:  Which I visited to pick up your lovely fliers.  It’s really nice.  Tell us about your facility.

Jessica:  There’s just one scan room.  People, when they walk around the corner, they typically go, wow, because we have a big, very nice, regular mattress bed.  Moms always comment on how comfortable it is.  And it’s kind of high up because I’m tall, so I like to be able to reach them well without leaning, so they’re kind of like a queen on that bed.  And we have a nice couch in there and a bench; we can bring in several chairs.  We can seat eight to ten people, and I’ve had more than a dozen or more, if they want to squeeze in, so that everyone can enjoy it.

Alyssa:  Wow, so they bring their whole family?  And if there’s other kids?

Jessica:  Yes, kids of course are welcome!

Alyssa:  Fun!  So what’s the difference – your brochure says 3D and 4D ultrasound.  What’s the difference between those two?

Jessica:  3D is a still image, like the color baby pictures that you see on our website and our brochure; that’s a 3D image.  4D is when you put that to time, so it’s like the video version of that.  So the fourth dimension is time.

Alyssa:  Okay.  So do you have different packages, then, if people want just 3D; if they want both?  Do you actually print out pictures?  What does that look like?

Jessica:  Yes, 3D and 4D come together.  You can’t get one without the other.  We do have different package options; some that are just 2D because there are some stages of the pregnancy where 3D/4D isn’t the most attractive because Baby is small and skeletal.  So early on in the pregnancy is not always the best time for that, so we do have some 2D options, just the black and white, regular ultrasound that you get at your doctor’s office.  And then we have several options for the 3D/4D.  You can get those anytime from 12 to 40 weeks, but the best time for the 3D/4D facial videos and pictures is 28 – 32 weeks.  Anywhere from 24 – 36 weeks is usually very good.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I remember doing that with my daughter, and she just wouldn’t budge.  She was turned the wrong way and I couldn’t see her face, so I had to go again.  How often does that happen?

Jessica:  Yeah, that happens about 10% of the time that you come and the baby’s just in a bad mood or sleeping and will not move or is tougher than I am and I cannot make them get their hands out of their face or their feet out of their face.  So we just have a courtesy to bring you back one time for no charge to try again.  Most of the time, that works great.  We just catch them on a better day.

Alyssa:  So what made you get into this?

Jessica:  I was looking for a new business to start.  We were selling a different business and looking for the next idea, and I found the one over in Detroit area that just totally captured me.  I’m the mother of eight, so…

Alyssa:  Eight?

Jessica:  Yes, eight!

Alyssa:  I did not know that about you!

Jessica:  Yes!  And so babies are kind of my thing, and I just loved the idea, that this could be a non-clinical, just a fun way to bond and spend time with the baby.  You know, we can involve the grandparents, the older brothers and sisters, and just make it a fun thing rather than what the doctor’s office has to do with all the clinical stuff.  So we get to skip most of that and just make it fun.  So I started my own over here in Kalamazoo and now in Grand Rapids.

Alyssa:  So what’s the reason most parents come to you?  Are they looking to find out the gender, or do they normally do that at the doctor, and then they just want a picture from you?

Jessica:  Three main reasons; the two most common are just they want a good picture of their baby’s face.  The second biggest reason is to find out gender early.  We recommend 16 weeks; we’re able to find it over 99% of the time at that age.  We find it at 15 weeks and 14 weeks, too, with a lower percentage of chances, but still, over 99% accuracy no matter what.  We’re not going to make a call unless we can get it right.  And so that brings a lot of people in because, you know, you’re a pregnant mom; you wake up, you all of a sudden have to know what you’re having today.  And so once they come in for that and then they see the office and how comfortable it is and how nice it is, most of the time I get them back later in their pregnancy.  The third reason that’s less common is those who just want to come in at that 12 weeks and get a great picture of their baby in 2D so they can announce it to the family.  Or just peace of mind, if they have to wait until their 20 weeks to get one at their doctor’s office.  They just want to see their baby and feel better about it.

Alyssa:  Have you had a mom come in often, like more than one or two times?   What’s the most that someone’s come in for an ultrasound?

Jessica:  Not counting bring-backs, which are the free returns, probably about four is the most; four paid visits.  We don’t want you in every week; that’s not what we’re here for, but you know, they come in maybe early to find the gender, and then a month later, they can’t wait to see again, and then they’re getting close near the end, so they come again.  Plus we have a two-visit package as one of our options, so that’s automatically two if they do one early, and then they might want to do it again later.

Alyssa:  So for a mom who wants to see their baby more often like that, maybe three or four times instead of one, are there any safety precautions or anything they need to worry about?

Jessica:  Great question.  There are no safety concerns, especially after 12 weeks.  Ultrasound is just soundwaves.  It’s completely safe.  There are many medical conditions that require you to have to do it every day later in pregnancy.  Doctors know that it’s completely safe for the baby and for you.  There’s never, ever been an injury after 12 weeks of an ultrasound on a baby.

Alyssa:  I’ve heard people say that they think there’s radiation.  That’s absolutely not true?

Jessica:  Not true, and the 3D/4D is the same soundwaves.  It’s not like stronger soundwaves or something more dangerous.  It is not any different than just soundwaves.  You can feel vibrations coming through the probe, like the mom sometimes can tell when the machine shuts off and stops running or freezes because the vibrations stop.  Your baby does often – I think that they can tell when I’m there sometimes because they feel those sound vibrations hitting them, but it’s just sound; just soundwaves.

Alyssa:  So what’s the process?  If we had a mom who wanted to get an ultrasound, what do they do?  Call you?

Jessica:  They can call.  They can go to our website and request an appointment or just a contact through our website, and then I’ll get an email and either give them a call or an email back.  Or they can go to our Facebook page.  We have a very active Facebook page.  We run a contest every month for a free ultrasound.  Right now, we actually give two away every month.  Or you can contact me and message me through Facebook.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  And what’s your website?

Jessica:  It’s www.4dmoments.com.  Our Facebook page: just search 4D Moments.  And our phone number is 269-384-2229.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Well, thanks for coming.  We’re excited to partner with you.  We’ve been giving away your information to our moms at classes and stuff.

Jessica:  Great!  Thanks for having me.  I really appreciate it!

Alyssa:  Sure!  As always, you can find Gold Coast on our website, goldcoastdoulas.com.  Email us with questions about this or suggestions for different topics.  Our email is info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  You can find us on Facebook and Instagram, and you can listen on iTunes and Soundcloud.  Remember these moments are golden.  Have a good day!

Today Cindy and Alyssa talk about some summer safety tips including water safety at the beach and pool and tips for avoiding a sunburn.  You can listen to the complete podcast episode on iTunes or Soundcloud. 

Alyssa:  Hello.  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I’m so excited to be here with my friend Cindy again from Cindy’s Suds.

Cindy:  Hello.

Alyssa:  Hi.  Today we’re going to talk about a very relevant topic because it’s summer time and everyone’s swimming.  We’re going to talk about water safety.

Cindy:  Great.

Alyssa:  I was recently at a pool party for the 4th of July, and my friend and I both have five-year-olds in the water.  We’re very conscious about making sure somebody had eyes on them at all times because it can be really scary.  I know you have a personal story.

Cindy:  I actually have several, and the thing that is so crazy about that is that at pool parties, I look around and I see moms hanging out with moms, and no one’s watching the kids.  And it really, really freaks me out because drowning is a silent activity, and that’s what most people don’t realize.  Most people think, because it’s portrayed on TV by splashing –

Alyssa:  Splashing, yelling.

Cindy:  Hands in the air, “help, help.”  But drowning is silent, and I’ve witnessed several near-drownings just with my own family, friends, things like that, and it’s something that will stick with you forever once you see it initially.  It first started out when I was growing up.  I’m quite a bit older than my sisters, and I had to take my sisters to swimming lessons when they were little.  And all of the moms were chit-chatting; they probably had cocktails, and they were all in a little circle.  There was one pool instructor in the water with eight or ten kids, and I’m watching the kids.  I’m obviously young, so I’m not hanging with the moms.  I’m just sitting, focusing on the water, and my sister, actually, just slipped right below the water.  The pool instructor had her back to her.  The other moms were happy doing their little mom chit-chat, and I just remember my sister’s eyes boring into my eyes.

Alyssa:  From under the water?

Cindy:  From under the water, slipping slowly under the water.  And I just – it took a second, and I’m just thinking, there’s nobody around.  Nobody’s paying attention.  And I jumped in the water, pulled her out, got her out.  She was hysterical.  She was coughing up water, and it was so scary.  And none of the adults were any the wiser.  Obviously, after I jumped in, they were like oh, what happened?  But no one saw it because it’s so silent and it’s so quick.  And it just happens in the blink of an eye, and if you’re visiting with your girlfriends or have any kind of distraction, like we all do, you could miss something that could potentially be such a tragic incident.

Alyssa:  Did your sister ever go back to swim lessons?

Cindy:  She did, but it took some convincing, obviously, and she was scared to death because she was trusting that people were going to watch her.  She was little.  She didn’t know.

Alyssa:  How old was she at the time?

Cindy:  I want to say she was probably around your daughter’s age, five or six.  Maybe a little bit younger, but right around that age.  And so it was just that image, just burned into my mind.

Alyssa:  I can tell you can still see it.

Cindy:  Yeah, I can visualize it.  It’s right there, and this was at least 30 years ago.  It’s just something that is seared in my mind.  And then it happened with our own kids when were taking them to swim lessons.  You turn your back for a second, and there’s one instructor with a bunch of kids.  They can’t possibly watch all the kids, and kids are playing games and goofing off.  The same thing happened with one of our kids, just kind of doing that quick slip below the water, but because their hands are right near the edge, it was super easy to reach down and pull them up.  But the whole point is that as moms, we have to be aware that drowning is silent, and you have to have your eyes on your kids all the time.  Even when they’re older, if you’re in a lake, lake waves and undertows and rip currents are a very real phenomenon, and just because you have older kids, that doesn’t give you the license to just all of a sudden mind your own business and hang out with your friends.  You’ve got to treat water safety with such high regard all the time, no matter how old your kids are, no matter how great of a swimmer they are.  It’s something that is just such a scary potential that you have to have your brain on all the time.  You’ve got to have your eyes focus on your kids.  If you are with girlfriends, that’s fine.  Just don’t look at them when you’re talking.  Just watch the water.  You can still visit, but you’ve got to have your eyes on your kids, and that’s just something that I learned unfortunately early on just with the experience that I had with my own sister.

Alyssa:  I don’t know if it was an article I read or a podcast I heard, but a gal had a similar circumstance where her child actually did almost drown, to the point of resuscitation.  She is adamant about, first of all, water safety, teaching kids to swim, but also, if you’re having a party, you hire a lifeguard.  Whether that’s a 14-year-old kid from down the road, but somebody who’s job is to watch; I know there’s five kids in this pool: I’m going to count five heads all the time.

Cindy:  Yep, continually making that count, all the time.

Alyssa:  And I thought that was such a brilliant idea.  Even this 4th of July party where there were only three kids in the water and you think it’s easy to manage.  I was very adamant, like I said, about either I was in the pool with the kids, or the dads were in the pool: somebody was always in there with them, watching them.  But it’s so easy just to get caught up in grilling, go pour a cocktail, you know, there’s 800 reasons that you turn your back to the pool.

Cindy:  Absolutely, and none of those are bad reasons, but you have to realize that this is a very, very serious problem that could potentially happen if you’re not aware, and you just have to have your awareness on high alert whenever you’re around water, especially with those younger kids that haven’t gone through proper swimming lessons yet and they just don’t know.  You’re not out of the woods, obviously, if your kids can swim, because of the other things we just talked about, but especially before they’re strong swimmer or before they’ve gone through swim lessons, you’ve just got to have your eyes on your kids all the time.  And also kids that aren’t yours.  I’ve been at the beach before, too, where I’ve grabbed little kids right out of a wave that toppled them and they were just continually spinning and spinning.  I’ve pulled them up, looked around – where’s Mom?

Alyssa:  I’ve done the same thing at the beach.

Cindy:  You know?  Yeah.

Alyssa:  And actually, on the opposite end, I saw a very old man who had fallen and the waves kept coming up, and he couldn’t get up.  And I’m watching and thinking, is he just lounging in there?  What in the world?  And it didn’t take very long for me to realize that this man had been knocked over by a wave, and I ran to him and pulled him up.  But just keep your eyes on everybody!

Cindy:  Be aware!  Yeah, and it’s like you just said, it’s not just your own kids, because unfortunately, other moms or other people, if they’re elderly, they just may not be able to sustain their grounding and the waves that we have at Lake Michigan.  And you hear about drownings all the time.  It’s not something that is unusual.   We live by a wonderful body of water, but it’s also to be highly regarded because it can be very dangerous.

Alyssa:  Teaching your children water safety early is crucial.

Cindy:  It’s huge, yeah.  Crucial, crucial.  And also just making sure that as a mom or any parent that’s there, you really should just, even if you want to say, hey, you know, I’m chatting with you, but my eyes are going to be facing the water, and just kind of set that as a rule with whomever you’re going to the beach with, even if it’s just your spouse and you.  Just say, hey, you know, let’s just watch the water and talk.  We don’t need to look at each other to talk.

Alyssa:  And I always say, hey, I’m going to go use the restroom; you keep your eyes on her.  Let them know when you’re leaving and that it’s their responsibility until you get back.

Cindy:  Absolutely.

Alyssa:  So on a lighter note…

Cindy:  I know, that was so heavy!

Alyssa:  I know, it makes my stomach turn just thinking about it.  But sunburns.  I’m adamant with my daughter’s skin because she so fair-skinned.  She can get a nice little tan, but I’m going to turn 40 this year, and you start seeing all the wrinkles and seeing all the damage that I did to myself as a kid sitting out in the sun literally with oil on me.

Cindy:  Oh, yeah.  We used to do baby oil on a rooftop with one of those tin foil-ish blankets under us.  Really?  What were we thinking?

Alyssa:  Why didn’t people tell us?  So bad!

Cindy:  Well, you don’t know what you don’t know.  I mean, at the time, that’s what it was.  You wanted to get as dark as you could.  Burn, because it will turn into a tan.  But obviously we know better now, and we now can take what information is available and apply it to ourselves and our children.  And so obviously when you’re at the beach – or anything outside, but the beach and water are going to have more of that reflective sun damage that occurs just because of the nature of sand and water.  But sunscreen really needs to be something that you’re pretty careful about putting on.  The safe sunscreens nowadays, they’re saying really the safest bet is just to use a mineral-based sunscreen like a zinc oxide.  Titanium dioxide is also kind of like a cousin to that.  They still are saying that zinc oxide is still the best.  So just read labels; see what you’re putting on.

Alyssa:  I think, too, with zinc oxide, it’s hard because you don’t want to look white.  Sometimes it makes your skin look purple, so it’s hard to find one that rubs in really well and doesn’t leave this white film all over, which there are a couple I’ve found.

Cindy:  You’ll have to let me know, because I’m in the process of still trying to find those.  I know a mutual friend of ours has – Kitchen Stewardship, Katie, has a lot of great information on sunscreens that her family has tried.  So we’re going through some of those now to try them on our family to see if they work for our family.

Alyssa:  They’re probably on her list.  In fact, I think they are.

Cindy:  Perfect.  So we’ve gone through several of those, but even just over the 4th of July, my kids were freaking out because I only had brought the zinc oxide, and they’re like, “Why are we white, and we can’t rub it in?”  So I’m like, “Well, sorry, deal with it!”  And my kids are all older.  They are almost 15, almost 17, and almost 19.  So they’re on their own as far as, you know, guys, you’ve got to be responsible, especially my almost-19-year-old.  She’s an adult.  I’m not going to make sure you have your sunscreen on.  I’m going to remind you, like I always do, because the mom part never is gone, but I kept reminding them, “Guys, you’ve got to reapply.  You’ve got to reapply.”  And that night, I had three lobsters, burned, burned, burned badly.

Alyssa:  Is it because they didn’t want to use the zinc oxide?

Cindy:  Probably.  They said they reapplied, but when you’re in the water, you do need to reapply frequently.  It needs to be something that you’re constantly doing.  You dry off with a towel; that mechanical action of towel-on-skin pulls off the sunscreen, so it is something that you need to be conscientious of reapplying all day long.  Plus, we were outside from 10am till 10pm on the 4th of July, so there were many factors.

Alyssa:  Finding some shade in the midst of a long day like that, too, is key.

Cindy:  Right, it is key.  I myself was sitting under a little umbrella because I don’t like being in the sun, so I’m sitting there watching them all, going, “Guys, sunscreen!”

Alyssa:  The sunscreen police in the corner.

Cindy:  Yes, exactly.

Alyssa:  So what did you do for them after the fact?

Cindy:  Thankfully, as many of you know, I have a natural bath and body company called Cindy’s Suds, and so we have a plethora of products at home that I was able to just slather on over and over.

Alyssa:  So would you use the healing salve?  Is it the best?

Cindy:  My top two, and it’s interesting because my kids when they’re burned don’t like the feel of healing salve on their skin because they feel like it makes them greasy.  I prefer that feeling when I’m burned, but they do not, so they prefer the unscented body butter.  The first ingredient in the unscented body butter is aloe vera gel, so that also would make sense as to why for them they prefer that feel.  It’s cooling, and when you put it on, it decreases that skin temperature.  So it’s interesting to me because I have always preferred the healing salve, and my kids prefer the unscented body butter.  But they’re both amazing, and I was slathering their poor bodies with whichever one we had laying next to them.  We probably went through a jar each for each of the kids because they were so badly burned.

Alyssa:  That’s literally to the point of blistering and peeling, right?

Cindy:  Yeah.  Right now, they’re all in the peeling phase.  And yeah, we’ve all done it, but it’s something that is so preventable, and that’s what I shake my fist at and be like, “You all know better.  You all know better.”  I’d much, much rather have you prevent with the sunscreen than to be reactive and now putting on healing salve and body butter because you’ve burned yourself and now you’ve got the consequences of how that feels and what damage it’s done to your skin.  So yeah, so the healing salve and body butter are both amazing at clearing up sunburn and helping it to transition to skin that is not so damaged and burned.  It decreases the body temperature on the surface because you can just feel that heat radiating from those burns.  So either one of those works fabulous, and it’s kind of just more of a personal preference if you like that one feel versus another feel.  And regardless, your skin’s going to be absorbing it so quickly because it is so damaged and so burned, so whatever you’re doing, just make sure that you’re repeating and reapplying and keeping that skin covered to try to help that transition of severe burns to getting that skin healthy again.

Alyssa:  So moral of our story today is prevention and being proactive.

Cindy:  Exactly.

Alyssa:  So for summertime, sun and fun –

Cindy:  Just be aware.

Alyssa:  Be aware of everything.  Cool.  Well, I know we’ve told people before how to find you, but what’s your website, and tell us the stores locally that carry your products.

Cindy:  So the website is cindysuds.com.  We are carried in Harvest Health stores, the Kingma’s stores, Hopscotch, a couple stores in Lowell, Mi Hometown Furnishings and the Lowell Ace Hardware.  We’re now carried in Rockford at a new baby store there, Bridge Street Baby.  I think that covers the local stores, so yeah, stop in.  They carry the majority of our products, and you’re supporting local when you’re purchasing through our local retailers.

Alyssa:  I love your stuff.  I’m a fan.

Cindy:  Thanks.

Alyssa:  So thank you again for coming.  We’ll talk to you again soon, and if anyone has questions for us or for Cindy, you can always email us: info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  Find us on our website, www.goldcoastdoulas.com, Facebook, and Instagram, and you can listen to our podcast, Ask the Doulas, on iTunes and Soundcloud.  Thanks!

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