Kristin Revere and Maranda Bower talk about the importance of postpartum nutrition in the latest episode of Ask the Doulas. They also discuss postpartum planning during pregnancy.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin with Ask the Doulas, and I am thrilled to chat with my friend Maranda Bower. Maranda is the CEO and founder of Postpartum University, which is dedicated to empowering both mothers and professionals in redefining maternal well-being. With her extensive experience in biology, nutrition, and perinatal mental health, Maranda stands as a pioneering figure in the field. She possesses a profound understanding of the intricate psychological processes that underpin postpartum well-being. As a prolific researcher and accomplished author, including the best-selling book Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness, her impactful work extends globally. Maranda is also the founder of the postpartum nutrition certification program, which is the only functional nutrition certification dedicated to the unique period that is postpartum.
Maranda lives in her beautiful homestead in Alaska with her husband, four children, and many unruly chickens.
Welcome, Maranda!
Thank you so much for that introduction!
Yes, I am so excited to chat with you! You’re one of my sheroes in the field. I am all about postpartum planning, as you know from prior conversations, so our focus today is not only in prepping for the postnatal phase, but utilizing your wealth of experience in postpartum nutrition. So let’s get into it!
Yes, my favorite topics ever! First off, I really love being here, so thank you so much for the opportunity. And you know, we spend so much time preparing for the birth of our baby, which is incredibly important, but not very many of us plan for what happens after in the postpartum period, beyond let’s get the best car seat and what about the breast pump and make sure that I have all the clothes for my baby. But what about the mom, right? Where’s the planning for her health and her well-being? And what does that look like?
Exactly. I think starting with your book as an entry point, even pre-conception, not only in the early pregnancy stage, and it certainly would make a wonderful baby shower gift, as a way to really understand the importance of that planning and especially the nutrition aspect of things.
Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. And I’m a mom. I’ve got four kids. And I will tell you, reading a book in postpartum is probably the hardest thing in the world to do.
Yes! Absolutely!
I know I have a postpartum book, but I don’t recommend it in postpartum, right? If you’re in the throes of postpartum, yeah, it’s a great read. It’s going to tell you where to focus your time and your attention and how to get through it. But if you don’t have that handholding, meaning somebody there to help you and support you through all the things that you’re going through and helping you navigate the intricacies that is early motherhood and the sleepless nights and having to cook the meals and be in the kitchen. Most of you probably have toddlers at the same time. Again, I’m a mom of four; I get it. It’s hard! It’s really hard. So reading, preparing for your postpartum, is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend it if you’re in the position to do so. And we can also talk about, what if you are in the throes of postpartum? What can you do to kind of get out of feelings of stress and exhaustion, and what do you do when your body feels like it’s falling apart or you’re dealing with depression and anxiety? And we can absolutely talk about those things as well if you’d like.
Yes, certainly! Before we get into those aspects of not only nutrition but depression and anxiety, another thing that I would love to have you fill our listeners in on is your podcast, and that would certainly be a way for the postpartum moms who can’t focus on a book like yours to get some dedicated information on how to care for themselves.
Oh, yes, absolutely. And the thing about my podcast that I love, and I hear a lot of people love, is the short episodes. Nothing is over 30 minutes because we’re busy! And it’s actually geared towards providers and professionals who are in the field, which kind of gives moms the insider scoop of what’s really going on or what they should be looking for in support people in their lives.
Exactly, yeah!
And there’s so much good information about how your body is actually physically functioning, psychologically functioning. Like, what really changes? We all know that our body changes, but nobody tells us how it’s changing, and nobody focuses there, which is why I focus so much on postpartum nutrition and things like that, because our gut changes significantly, which changes our brain. You’ve got the gut-brain access there. It changes so much of our bodies, and when we understand those intricacies, then we can see, wait a second, the way we’re taught about what is healthy and how to eat during this time – like salads and smoothies, for example – are actually not beneficial to the postpartum body. Because we understand what is actually shifting and changing.
Yes! So where to begin?
I don’t know. I just dropped a big bomb there!
Let’s try to simplify and give our listeners who are in the early postnatal stages or could be in pregnancy and want to understand some easy ways to focus on getting the correct nutrients, minerals, and eating the right foods in the postnatal phase.
Okay, so if I may, maybe we can start with this question and wrap it around or put it into the question of how do we plan for postpartum, if we’re pregnant.
Yes, let’s do it!
And there’s a couple of things that I highly recommend. If you’re able to, if you’re in a position to where maybe you’re pregnant or you’re planning to be pregnant, to start really looking into how do I take care of myself during this postpartum time. And the first thing that I absolutely recommend is to just really take assessment of your life, where you are, how you’re living in your life. What does your lifestyle look like? Are you able to sit down and relax? Is that a possibility for you in your life? Are you constantly saying yes to the things that you really want to say no to? Is your life so busy that it’s really hard to step away? Deep, right? But sometimes, oftentimes, we don’t get real with this. Or we say, well, yeah, of course, because I have lots of family and I have kids to chase after and I’ve got this and this – and then we get overworked and we get exhausted just thinking about it, rather than actually dealing with the situation at hand, which is – that’s not sustainable.
No, and that leads to depletion, and as you had mentioned earlier, anxiety, depression, lack of sleep.
Absolutely, all contributing factors. But if we don’t get real with how we’re living our lives, our lives are going to push us down very quickly. We are going to fall flat on our faces, and it’s going to hurt, and you’re going to burn out. You’re going to get sick, and your life is going to force you to pay attention to it, especially in postpartum. And that’s why often you see that depletion, the exhaustion, the hair falling out in giant clumps. We see hormone imbalance. We see depression. We see anxiety. All of those things, they’re going to come raging through. So make sure you’re addressing that and you’re getting real with that. And that’s probably one of the hardest things to do is just really get real and say, okay, what is it that I need, and how do I step back? How do I say no in a way that feels good for me and maybe doesn’t hurt other people’s feelings, or whatever the case may be. And I’ll tell you, when you are pregnant and postpartum, it’s like the ultimate excuse, so use it to your advantage. “I’ve got kids, I’m sorry!”
That’s step one. Step two is really, really looking at, okay, how am I going to nourish myself after growing a human being in my body? That is no small feat. As a matter of fact, I think it’s one of the biggest feats that we will ever accomplish in our lifetimes, to be able to grow life, give birth to life and sustain a baby with our bodies for many women. And that’s just – it is miraculous that we are able to do such a thing. And we have to know that it took all of us to make another baby, to make a child. And in that, we have to step back and say, okay, well, if it took all of me – like, really, what did it take of me?
And I will tell you, nutrition is one of those foundational pieces that are really coming to life. A lot of women are starting to understand what nutrition does, and we’re seeing it with the market of supplements and food products and things like that in postpartum because it does make a difference. It makes a big difference in the way that we feel. Nutrient depletion is a real issue. Over 80% of women will experience it in their postpartum. And when you’re depleted of nutrients, your body cannot function. Your hormones cannot regulate. You cannot heal your body. You cannot produce the breastmilk that you need to and the formulation that it needs. The composition of your breastmilk changes. A lot of people don’t like to talk about that. Breastmilk is still the absolute best for your baby, but it does change things for us when we are depleted. And if we’re not getting the nutrients that we need, we’re going to feel exhausted. Our gears are going to feel like they’re grinding.
Thyroid issues – one in seven women will experience thyroid disorders in their lifetime. That statistic jumps up to 22% in postpartum. They’ll experience postpartum thyroiditis. That’s significant, right? We’re almost at one in four there. One in four women will experience a thyroid disorder. And it’s not because – and this is what I always tell people. We think often that, well, of course my thyroid isn’t functioning right. I just had a baby. This is what I hear from providers all the time. And I hear from moms, because they’re listening to their providers.
And I will tell you, that is so far from the truth. Yes, we have babies, and our bodies create babies. That is actually what it’s biologically designed to do, and our bodies do everything they can to find homeostasis, which is a fancy word for saying it tries everything it can to find balance, to find normal. And those symptoms are symptoms of something wrong, and we know that when we are experiencing depletion, when we’re not getting enough protein, when we’re not getting enough fat, when we’re not getting enough vitamins and minerals, we can develop postpartum thyroiditis. It’s actually symptomatic of that. Depression and anxiety in postpartum mimics symptoms of depletion of very key nutrients.
So we have scientifically proven that when we are depleted of key nutrients, we will feel the symptoms of thyroid disorder, hair falling out in clumps, aching joints, exhaustion, fatigue, depression, anxiety, mood swings, hormone imbalance. These are not normal things in postpartum. Our world has called them normal because they happen so frequently.
And certainly with breastfeeding and pumping moms, that depletion is intensified because of all of the work the body does.
It’s exacerbated, right? Yeah, and it just spirals out of control, and you end up severely depleted, right? And I will tell you, a lot of women are like, well, I thought I was able – and I’ll break this myth real quick because I know your audience will probably love it – they say, if I breastfeed and I don’t eat – I see this often – or I feel like I’m eating, and I’m breastfeeding a lot, but I can’t lose any of the weight – it’s because your body is in a state of starvation. It feels, because it’s so depleted, that it’s starving, that it’s holding on to every bit that you’re giving it in an effort not to crumble and crash on itself. And so if you really want to lose the “baby weight,” which I never recommend as a focus whatever. It’s not a basis of health. We need fat on our bodies to grow babies and sustain babies and all of the things, and to be healthy. Actually, our hormones regulate with fat. So there’s a whole myth out there to bust on that one. But oftentimes when women come to me and they say, well, I can’t lose any of the weight, I tell them it’s likely because you’re starving of nutrients.
Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense, and as postpartum doulas, we are making sure that our clients stay hydrated, that they’re snacking, that they’re eating healthy food and not just focusing on the casseroles and lasagnas that are brought to them. The nourishing food that is going to heal them, and if they are breastfeeding or pumping, help give their babies the nutrients they need, as well.
Which is not an easy task. And this is why I love talking with doulas and educating those people who are in the field, who are doing the hardest work. If you’re in the home, if you’re holding mama’s hands and walking her through that process, not only is that hard work – it’s such a sacred journey. I got started doing this work as a doula myself, and it’s by far one of my most favorite. I just love – I have a special place in my heart for doulas, and I know that they work that they do is so important. That’s why I love helping them understand what is really transpiring in the body. And things that we’re often told, like salads and smoothies, are actually not helpful. It’s not just about how many nutrients a food holds, right? It’s actually more so about how is that food able to digest in the body. What’s its bioavailability of nutrients, which is a fancy way of saying, can my body actually digest those nutrients and use them? And for a postpartum mom, often the answer is no. So then it becomes, okay, well, what is the most nutrient dense food that is easily absorbable for a mom? Salads and smoothies are not it. It’s going to be broths and stews and congee, high fats, high protein, lots of cooked vegetables, so very rich in nutrients which are cooked, which increases the bioavailability of food, which means you’re just drinking liquid nutrients, which means it’s easier on the body to digest and the body is not exerting extra energy to digest the foods. That in itself is a whole episode, but that is such a key component to healing in the years after having a baby.
Exactly, Maranda, and that is why traditional cultures have always focused on warming foods in the postnatal phase.
It’s so interesting when we look at what we know in the science, which is very little. Women’s healthcare in general is so understudied; it’s not even funny. It’s actually very concerning. And when we look at what is actually available and out there for science right now in this very moment compared to what we see in traditional cultures around the world who have been practicing these things for eons, since the dawn of time, we can see the correlation. They connect. They match. It’s kind of funny; maybe we should stop listening to all of the science and start going back to the traditions of our world and our cultures because they really have it down.
Yes, agreed. Absolutely. There is a lot of focus on supplements and fast fixes. What’s your take on the best way to absorb the nutrients, outside of food?
When we start looking at what’s really happening in the gut, we recognize that if it’s hard for a body to digest raw food, for example, like a salad, it’s going to be hard for a body to absorb a manmade pill. And we see a lot of studies coming out on supplementation and that it actually might be more harmful than it is good, because what we’re doing is we’re taking components of a food. We’re taking out vitamins. We’re taking out minerals. And what we’re leaving is the rest of the nutrients that are so synergistic to the food itself. When you are digesting a potato, you’re not just digesting the vitamins of a potato. It’s not just like here’s your vitamin A. Here are the vitamins in the potato. It’s all of those components of the potato that actually make it supportive of digesting each other. When you start looking at nutrition studies and dietetics, you’ll recognize that many nutrients work together to help each other digest and become bioavailable in the body. The opposite is also true in that some nutrients don’t work together at all. And so when we’re consuming this giant multivitamin full of things, it’s kind of funny because a lot of those things are not conducive. They don’t work together. They fight with each other, and they’re not going to be digested. They’re going to be literally flushed down the toilet, a complete waste. And I love specific supplementation, and the way in which I love supplementation, I will tell you, that I think is so powerful and so necessary for the body, especially in postpartum, because again, the postpartum body needs a lot of support. Lots and lots of support. The first thing we think of, well, supplements will be the easiest route. But I want to tell you: herbs are the easiest route. Herbs, because they’re so nutrient dense and very easy to digest. We can either take them not necessarily in supplementation form, but in tea form. That, my friend, is how you get the boost that you so desperately need, and it’s something that you can feel right away.
And for those who are really deficient – maybe you’re experiencing anemia, which is so common postpartum. Taking liquid supplements, liquid food-based supplements, that is going to be your friend. Don’t take pills. If you can find a liquid supplement for whatever it is that you specifically need – because again, it’s not a one size fits all. I’m just telling you some general things, but for every person, it’s very different. There are liquid supplements that are available to you that, if you can’t get with food or enough with food, then you can absolutely take liquid supplements. But I will tell you, herbs are by far so sustaining. They’re something that we can grow in our own backyards if we really wanted to, which is why they’re not on the market as something that can really help us. There was a study that was done on Prozac versus St. John wort, the herb, and which one was more effective. And it was actually kind of a joke that this researcher was joking with another researcher saying, hey, I bet we can just study this and throw it under the water and everybody would stop going to St. John’s wort for depression support. And what they actually found is that it works significantly better with far less symptoms. It was a massive study and it was absolutely amazing. But they can’t market it. You can’t go and market that because people can grow it in their own backyards. It’s not grown in a lab. It’s not something that – you know, when you look at science, how is it a pill formed? Well, it’s usually by somebody who comes in to a market and says, I’m going to invest my money in this, and there’s going to be a return on that money, and we have to pay the scientist and all of that. None of that gets to be done. Nobody’s going to invest in that because you’re not going to make anything because you can grow it in your own backyard, which means that you’re in control of that.
And there’s so many other components, too, that we can get into. We need a series.
We do! It could be a six-part series just for expecting families and then a three-part for birth and baby professionals!
To answer your question a little bit more thoroughly: oftentimes what we’re looking for in those quick fixes is how do we fit everything into this lifestyle that doesn’t support us, and that goes back to the first question, really getting clear about what in your life is not working for you. Because if you’re just going to insert a baby into this crazy, busy life that most of us lead and expect that it’s not going to take a toll and then just try to throw in a bunch of quick fixes, it’s going to fail.
Right. So for the birth and baby professionals who are listening, would you fill us in a bit about how they can expand their knowledge on postpartum planning and nutrition?
Oh, my goodness. I do offer a lot of resources. You can go to my website. I have some free handouts that you can use for your clients. And you will learn a ton just going through those handouts yourself. And I also offer a certification program for that. It’s actually the only functional nutrition certification program for postpartum. There are other programs out there that lump pregnancy and postpartum together, and I am just – I do not agree with that because once we understand those physiological and psychological changes that are occurring in postpartum – yes, birth and pregnancy kind of go together, but we can’t lump them together when we’re talking about nutrition, when we’re talking about a lot of things related to the changes that are occurring in postpartum. I think for one, making sure that you are really educating yourself, for those providers who are listening in and those doulas and advocates, making sure that you’ve got the right information. And then passing that along to your clients. You don’t have to be the doula or the provider who cooks meals. If you want to, perfect. That’s amazing. You can absolutely do that. There’s a lot of people who are doing that and have to be that person to do that and make a difference. But I will tell you that not talking about nutrition is leaving a lot on the table for your clients to try to figure out themselves, and if you’re not talking about nutrition, your clients are going to experience all of the things that we say are typical and normal.
I always say, I want to leave my clients feeling better that I am out of their home and I’ve done my time supporting them than having to rely on me to get what they need. If they feel like, wow, that was such a transformative experience, having Maranda here, being my doula, supporting me in my journey, and I feel like I have all the tools I need to support myself without her here – that’s a game changer. That’s a life changer. That mom is going to go share with all of her friends what she learned. She’s going to share all of your information, everything. I don’t want a mom saying, please don’t leave me. I don’t know what to do without you.
Right. The goal is to work ourselves out of the job and have our clients feel confident and able to handle this transition, whether it’s baby one or five, without support. So yes, I totally agree.
Yeah, and nutrition, again, the foundation to all of that. If you’re not talking about nutrition, your clients are missing out.
Right. Nutrition and rest, I feel, are the two most important things. And as you mentioned, in that planning phase, finding out really what motivates you, how to ask for help, what your lifestyle is and how it’s going to change after baby – those are all important questions.
So any final tips for our listeners, Maranda?
Oh, my goodness. I feel like we talked a lot about planning for postpartum and maybe even helping your clients plan for postpartum, but what about those clients who are already in the throes? And I think the same is also true – like, all of these things, and I do want to say, it’s never too late to heal. I have lots of moms who have come to me two, three, four years postpartum and it’s still possible to heal. If you’re a doula listening in, or a provider, that means that you still can help moms heal during this time, especially with nutrition. And I think finding somebody who can help you and walk you through that process of learning what it means and helping you either – if you’re a mom in the home, helping you and literally holding your hand. I know as a mom of four, this is exactly what we needed. We kind of made a shift, I think, in the doula world where we were offering a lot of – or just in the mom world, too, of like, well, I’m going to go find a coach or I’m going to go find an online doula to help walk me through and provide the education. I think that’s great. It serves a purpose. But there’s something incredibly valuable and purposeful and necessary about having that extra support on hand. And so if you’re able to get that, I will tell you, not a single mom says that wasn’t worth it. But every single mom says, I wish I would have done it. There’s always regret for not having it. There’s never any regret for having it. So if you’re in a position to have the support on hand, to help you navigate what it means to shift your lifestyle so that you don’t have to say yes when you want to say no or to streamline how you clean your house, for goodness sake, because that can make a huge difference, or whatever it is that you’re going through that trips you up, that gets your frustrated, that you just need support with – especially with nutrition – then having that support system in place is so necessary.
It is, definitely. How can our listeners connect with you? You have Postpartum University. You’re on social?
Yeah, I would say the best place – if you’re listening to this podcast and you love podcasts, come listen to me at the Postpartum University podcast. You can find us on all major channels. Come listen in. Come learn. Come connect with us there. That’s probably the best place.
Excellent. And then as far as your book, Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness, where can our listeners pick that up?
Straight on Amazon. That’s the best place to get it.
Excellent. Well, thank you so much, and I will have to have you on again, Maranda!
Thank you so much for your time and attention! I’m just so grateful for being here.
I’m grateful for you! Take care!
IMPORTANT LINKS
Birth and postpartum support from Gold Coast Doulas
