Sarah Marie shared her personal birth and maternity leave stories in this informative Ask the Doulas podcast episode. She gives listeners tools and resources to better plan for birth and baby on the emotional vs. physical level.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am thrilled to be chatting with Sarah Marie Bilger. Aside from being the owner of Entering Motherhood, Sarah Marie is a mom of two, wife, and birth and postpartum doula. Sarah is certified as a postpartum nutrition professional through Postpartum University and holds a doula certification specifically centered around VBAC preparation through the VBAC Link. Sarah Marie loves capturing motherhood moments through photography and is an active member of Birth Worker Academy. She is the host of the Entering Motherhood podcast. After an unplanned Cesarean with her daughter in 2019, Sarah Marie quickly realized the lack of support and misinformation surrounding pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Later noticing she had postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, and was needing to work through some past trauma, she sought out any help she could get her hands on and began healing as she navigated motherhood as best she could.
Welcome, Sarah Marie!
Hi! Thank you so much for having me! I’m excited to be here!
I’m excited to chat! Our topic today is the mental preparation that is needed for the birth as well as the postnatal phase. Let’s get into it!
I think this is super important because it’s so much a part of my story and really what happened in my situation and what I see in clients and so much of what I feel we’re lacking right now because there’s so much physical preparation. Do all the squats and eat this way and all the doing. We don’t really focus on what it takes to mentally prepare for not only birth but the postpartum phase as well.
Yes, I 100% agree. At Gold Coast, one of our primary classes that we teach is HypnoBirthing, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, the mental preparation that is involved in that class, whereas some classes are focused more on the physical end of things.
Yeah, that is one thing that I took during my VBAC and something that I recommend to clients, even first time parents, because it really helps you drop into that space to focus on what you need to be doing and it helps just block out any sort of external factors that might be happening.
Exactly, definitely. And then as far as your personal story, how did you utilize some of those mental tools, not only for your labor, but also in the motherhood phase? We are mothers all over again, whether it’s baby one or baby three.
For my first – my daughter was born in 2019, and she was an unplanned Cesarean. I had my water break first. That was the first sign of any sort of labor. All of my birthing classes and people had said, oh, your water is not going to break like in the movies, and it’s not going to be the first thing that happens; don’t worry! And so when it did – and that’s what happened. I think what was playing over and over again in my head was, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be happening. And I couldn’t get out of that loop of, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. And I didn’t have the tools and the resources that I have now and that I teach my clients of how we can really flip it around, and even if something unexpected happens, we can navigate and figure out what our next move is going to be. And so Hypnobabies, HypnoBirthing was something that I took for my son’s birth, my VBAC. And also just really exploring the what-if’s on a deeper layer of kind of understanding, if this does happen, how are we going to approach it, or what is that going to look like? And if something goes not necessarily according to plan, how can we navigate that moving forward without being flustered or upset? The same has really flowed into my motherhood experience and how I raise my children and how we navigate different things that happen at home and just all those little things that maybe you didn’t necessarily plan for but happen anyway because it’s life, and we’re not supposed to know everything that’s going to be happening. How can we really approach it with a better mindset and a more optimistic outlook?
Yes, and not let fear get in the way, even with a prior birth experience that wasn’t the way you had envisioned.
Right.
Very helpful! Let’s lean into a bit of your mothering journey. Now, you mentioned utilizing some of the similar tools. Is that more in those stressful moments, utilizing visualization or breath work? Can you walk our listeners through some examples?
Yes! I think for me, a lot of what was going on in my early motherhood experience was a lot of anxiety, a lot of the unknown, a lot of, well, what does this mean, or how do we handle this. I’ve never done this before. And I think it was just – you know, I went to therapy for the first time in my life, which is useful for, I would say, most people, even if you go for a short duration of time. And it allowed me to really just get deeper and ask questions and see what was going on internally as opposed to just how I physically was feeling or looking. And it allowed me to really just think about, what am I doing, and do I want to be continuing to do this? You know, I was having those thoughts of, like, what if she goes over here and how does this happen? Am I doing this right? And I think it really just helped solidify and build that confidence that I needed in my motherhood journey and allowed me to feel more confident in the things that I was doing and know that the choices that I was making were the right choices at the time and the right choices for our family specifically. And so I think that’s a lot of what I really try to instill in new moms. You’re not going to know everything. You’re not supposed to have it all figured out. But be confident in the choices that you’re making and really root back to, why do you want to do that. I think when we have our minds made up of why something is important to us, it’s a lot harder to really break away from that or teeter on the line of, like, should I do this? Shouldn’t I do that? And I think that can carry through in a lot of different aspects of our motherhood experience.
Exactly. I’m really happy that you talked about your personal journey with anxiety and depression because I feel like it’s being talked about more, but not often enough. And the fact that you sought out therapy for the first time. What were some of the signs that you noticed that it was beyond the typical baby blues and that you needed additional support?
I had gone back to work. At that time, I was working as a mechanical engineer, and I had gone back to work at eight week – nine weeks postpartum. So I had eight weeks off for the Cesarean. I took an extra week off of vacation. And so at nine weeks, we dropped our daughter off at daycare, and I started back at work. And I think up until that point, I was really just existing and going through the motions of trying to navigate everything and trying to figure out what was going on. I didn’t really take the time to stop. And so when I went back to work, again, it was just one more thing that was just, you know, I’ve just got to make it through the day. I’ve just got to go and pump and do all these things. And I can’t remember exactly at what point – maybe it was about three months postpartum or so. I was just crying on my bedroom floor, and I was like, who am I? What am I even doing? What is going on? I don’t get to see my daughter at all. We would come home and it would be bedtime almost for her. And so it was just like this really big shift, and a lot of people talk about the identity shift and new things that are happening and everything like that, but it was so much more than that because I was really just struggling with like, is this even what I want to be doing? Why am I feeling so strongly about all of my emotions and all of my feelings and everything that’s going on? And my husband just kind of looked at me like, I don’t know. He was kind of lost for words. I had never felt like this in my life, and I just really said, I think I just need to talk to somebody. And it was just a lot of very strong feelings, and I’m proud of myself for really being so self-aware that I could put myself in that space of saying, like, okay, well, let’s just try therapy. Let’s try all the things. I think I’ve always been a go-getter in that kind of stuff. If something’s not working, I need to fix it and solve it and put the pieces together.
That’s the engineer in you!
I was like, this doesn’t seem like how it’s supposed to be. And I know that there is all the untalked about conversations and the parts that nobody tells you about, but this was just so much more of an internal struggle. I really didn’t know who I was or what I was doing or what I wanted. So going to therapy was super helpful for me to really solidify those thoughts and have a professional to speak to.
Yes. Very helpful. And you mentioned taking an extra week off, but you were working in a male dominated field. What was it like? You talked about pumping and that back to work environment. Of course, there’s the childcare and the struggle we have right now, being in a childcare crisis for working families. So much additional stress happens with that return to work.
Yeah, I think for me, I was very fortunate because there was another mom who had literally just gotten back from maternity leave right before I left, so she was just a few months ahead of me on her journey, and we sat right next to each other. So as soon as I came back, I had a pumping buddy. I had somebody who was literally going through it with me. And then a couple months down the line, at one point, four of us were sharing the room. But it wasn’t for the mom before me – we had no place to pump. There wasn’t a designated lactation room. There wasn’t anybody that had asked or needed one before us. And so she really pioneered that in our office and said, hey, look, we need somewhere to store our milk. We need a private space with no windows, no way of seeing in. We need somewhere that we can pump. We need outlets. We need all these different things to efficiently be able to do that. And so they set us up in a room downstairs with a little mini fridge and there was a table. The sink was actually outside of the room, so we had to kind of bring all of our pump parts into the other room, but it was so nice to have that designated space. If we didn’t ask for it, I don’t know really what would have been done. But yeah, it was something that we really had to explain to them and say to them, this is what we need to exist so that we can efficiently store our milk and pump.
And then the daycare was right across the street, so I was able to go there at lunch. I was only pumping a few times a day and then physically going over to the daycare and nursing my daughter at lunch.
That’s amazing.
That was really nice, and it broke up my days. But if we had a meeting or something going on that I couldn’t make it over there, it was kind of hard to go the full work day without seeing her.
Of course! So how did you make the big transition to birth and postpartum work from being an engineer?
It was a journey. It was a lot of just – again, going to therapy and starting that journey of saying, what is it that I really want to be doing? I think for engineering, it was kind of the thing of, I was always really good at math and science. I was always really good at schoolwork. I was able to get things done and accomplish all of that stuff, but it was never something that I was truly passionate about. It was just something I was good at. And I always say that I just kind of fell into it. It just sort of worked out, and I don’t regret any of it. I learned so much being in the field. I met my husband, who’s a mechanical engineer as well, at college. A lot of good came out of it, but it was never something that I said, like, oh, wouldn’t it be so cool if I did this, or am I truly passionate about this? Work was work, and I went, and I did it, and I was good at it. But in becoming a mom, I needed to have more of a passion for my work, and more of a – you know, if I’m leaving my children to go and do this, it has to be worth it. And so I bounced around a bunch of different ideas. I started my podcast in 2021, and that really just sparked off the conversation around birth and postpartum. I enjoyed talking about it, and my whole motherhood experience. And I enjoyed communicating with different birth workers and digging into all the research and finding out as much as I could about every different aspect of birth and postpartum. And in doing all of the research and all of the knowledge that I had gained, I really just focused on doula work because it felt the most connected to my purpose of what I’m really supposed to be doing. Now, it’s been five years of a stretch of figuring out what I wanted to do, and now this is what I do full time. I do birth and postpartum work, and I just love it. I feel so called to it, and I just feel like this is what I was meant to be doing all along. It was just a journey of getting here.
Right! And many of us get into birth and postpartum work from our own personal experiences, whether they were positive or they were challenging. I didn’t enter the doula space until I had my second child, but I had hired doulas.
Yeah, I had no idea what a doula was until I got pregnant with my first. That’s how out of touch – I had no idea about the birth community and everything. I just figured, oh, I’m pregnant. I’m going to go to an OB. I’m going to have a hospital birth. That’s what your options are. That’s why I feel even more lit up and passionate about it because I want people to know what all of the different options are and all the different possibilities, and it’s not this world that we live in. It’s very practical, and there’s so much a part of doula work that can be helpful for any kind of birthing experience.
Right. And with my first birth, I didn’t know – I knew what doulas were, but I didn’t know how to find them in my area. They weren’t that popular. My daughter is going on 14, and I knew about them after her birth, getting more engaged in the breastfeeding community. And that was my first call once I knew I was pregnant again was to doulas I had met through some breastfeeding activism. But I agree, back in the day, it was seen of more of a crunchy thing. And even in TV and movies, doulas are still sort of given those labels and associated more with homebirth or unmedicated birth. But doulas support all locations for birthing and all types of birth and certainly the postpartum doula role is even less familiar to many than the birth doula role. I love that you are a professional in both areas and you’re also focused on nutrition, which again, we’ve learned so much about the depletion that results in the deficiencies in minerals and vitamins and nutrients after having a baby, but certainly during pregnancy. I’d love to hear a bit more about why you were led to focus on the postpartum nutrition.
Yeah, I think that was part of my healing journey with my first. It was something that really kind of drew me in because I was thinking I was doing all of the things to heal properly, and it still just didn’t seem like things were clicking. And so again, I just went into the research of it and really tried to understand, why am I still not feeling back to – I’m not saying back to yourself, but just feeling like I can really heal in the way that I felt like I needed to. And when I focused on my nutrition and I really learned about all of the different deficiencies and what could be going on, I just felt so much better. I was seeing the work physically in myself change, and so I just felt like I needed to shout it from the rooftops and say, there’s something to this, and there really is a science behind it of how we need to be nourishing ourselves during pregnancy and especially in the postpartum period. I completely 180’d my experience with my second. When you talk about postpartum hair loss, for example, I was losing a lot of hair with my daughter and a lot of just that – I would say common experience that we’re seeing now with, oh, yeah, you lose your hair; this is normal. And while it’s common, I wouldn’t say that it’s normal. You have to really evaluate what is going on and how much hair loss are you experiencing. Maybe it is a nutrient deficiency and it’s not something that should be occurring in the magnitude that it is. I didn’t lose nearly as much with my son. I mean, you lose hair every day, but not in the amount that I had with my daughter compared to my son. And I just felt so much more myself, quickly, and I felt like the healing and nourishing side was happening so much more that time around. It’s something that I share with my clients and something that I really try to instill in them, to honor their body during that time, to rest, to heal, to eat nourishing foods, something that’s comforting and warm and soothing, to be replenishing their body during that time.
Yes, exactly! And especially for pumping and breastfeeding moms, you’re even more deficient, and so that focus on nutrition can help prevent some of the anxiety and depression. As you mentioned, hair loss; the tired feeling that doesn’t go away.
Yeah, absolutely.
I could talk to you forever, Sarah Marie, but we are running short on time. I would love to circle back to our topic and see what final thoughts you have related to mental preparation for birth and postpartum.
Yeah, I think really just trying to tap into that intuition. I know sometimes that can be difficult for a lot of us to really trust ourselves and trust the process, but just doing little steps here and there to try and listen to that inner voice and listen to what your body is telling you and what your baby is telling you and really just hold on to that mental preparation of birth and the postpartum experience because there’s a lot to be unpacked and a lot that we can open up to if we really tap into that and allow ourselves to honor that time and experience all that birth has to give us.
Excellent advice! Thank you, Sarah Marie! So how can our listeners connect with you?
The easiest way would be to head over to Entering Motherhood. That is the podcast that I host, so wherever you’re listening to this podcast, you can search Entering Motherhood, and you should be able to find it there. I also have a website, enteringmotherhood.com, and I am most active on Instagram @entering_motherhood.
Excellent! Thank you, and I hope we can connect again soon!
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