pregnancy | Gold Coast Doulas

Saving for Baby: Podcast Episode #88

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Pregnancy / Alyssa Veneklase / birth support, gold coast doulas, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

Kristin talks to Paige, The Millennial Guru, again today about how to financially prepare for growing your family! You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Kristin: Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I’m Kristin, co-owner of Gold Coast, and I’ve got Paige Cornetet, the Millennial Guru, here with me for our second episode on financial tips. This one is focused on, once you’ve had your baby, how to really stock savings and plan ahead and make important financial decisions. So welcome, Paige!

Paige: Thank you! Thanks for having me on!

Kristin: Yes, it’s our pleasure! Fill us in, for those who missed the previous episode, a bit about what you do, and then we’ll get into your ideas for how our clients and audience can save.

Paige: Perfect, thank you. I started the business Millennial Guru, and basically, I do workshops and trainings focused on women as well as millennials. I’ve written a couple of children books focused on financial education.

Kristin: Fantastic. Yeah, I love your books, and you’ve got another one coming out?

Paige: Yes. This one’s called The Hen in the Pen, and it’s all about investments and understanding the difference when you eat your chickens, when you eat your eggs, and if you eat all your chickens, you don’t have anymore eggs left, so focusing on eating your chickens because they provide for your lifestyle and growing your flock of chickens.

Kristin: I love it! I can’t wait for it to come out. So tips — okay, so baby is here, and children are expensive?

Paige: What?! Yes, very!

Kristin: So let us know what you would recommend for our audience.

Paige: Oh, my gosh. I mean, that’s a good question; that’s a big question. I would say tips for moms: I think it’s really important to definitely have, like we talked about before on the previous episode — margin. So understanding that cushion of what it is, how much that you need for a rainy day fund, whether it’s an emergency or something that the baby needs that you didn’t know that you were going to need and they didn’t get it at your baby shower, whatever it is. Understanding what are the necessities, and then taking it even further, around the wants and needs. So understanding what is it that you need; what is it that your baby needs; what is it that your family needs, and then what is it that you want? What is it that your baby wants? And what is it that your family wants? Kind of differentiating those two, I think, makes a big difference.

Kristin: Sure. And they’re all the decisions of, do you leave your job and stay home with the baby, or do you look at in-home or a childcare center for daycare, and how do you maximize your income if you do return to work when all this money is going out for childcare, and what is the best situation for your family?

Paige: Totally.

Kristin: Short-term and then long-term.

Paige: Well, and I think you have to be honest with yourself, as well. I have a lot of friends who are having babies, and they’re either going back to work or leaving work and figuring out what that is, what that means to them. And I think that, as well as, yeah, your personal desires on top of, you know, what is it that you can afford, whether it’s daycare, whether it’s staying home, and how does that look for you? But I think being honest is the first step with yourself. And then on top of that is, what is it that you want, and what is it that you need? How do you need to provide for that desire?

Kristin: Yes. And then planning for college and other expenses and even — I mean, my kids are in sports and other activities, like theater, and all of the activities get pricey. My daughter started dance at age two, for example, and so you think of those expenses, and are you going to limit activities for children? What are you willing to budget for activities, sports, and so on?

Paige: Absolutely. Well, it’s interesting you say that about activities. My family had a saying. It was called GUTS, and it stood for Golf, U Pick, Tennis, and Swimming. So those were the four activities that we were allowed to do, so golf, tennis, and swimming are things you can do until you’re 80, so they’re life-long sports. Even if you don’t play it, you still have to learn it and do it. And then the u-pick was just, whatever it is that you wanted. So I loved dance. I loved ballet; I loved jazz. And I had to do it. So even though it was u-pick, since there was four of us, my dad was, like, well, your sister has to do it with you, too, in terms of coordination and carpool and schedules. It’s time and money.

Kristin: That’s what it’s all about, yes.

Paige: My sister, Brooke, she didn’t love dance as much as I did, but she did love the vending machine that gave candy at the bottom of it, so I was able to convince her to do one more year because there was skittles and candy that we could get right after. Her want was candy; mine was dance.

Kristin: It’s all about compromise.

Paige: Exactly.

Kristin: And then looking at other things outside of kids’ activities and just — you had talked in the previous podcast about maximizing your time, talents, energy, and so on. So outsourcing your household things, whether it’s getting your groceries delivered by Shipt or having a housecleaner come in, or a postpartum doula, which I highly recommend! Get some sleep! What are your priorities? So tell us about some of your theories in maximizing and how to figure out what might be more beneficial to outsource.

Paige: Yeah. I think just the things that you mentioned are really great, but understanding what is it that takes you a lot of time and what are the things that you don’t like to do that you can outsource? So I would say, yeah, I love the grocery delivery. If you want to work out, too, who is going to take the baby so that you can be physically active, or is there a place like the gym that you can bring your baby to so that you can work out while the baby’s there? So I think figuring out what are your lists of goals; what are the things you need? Definitely sleep! Number one is sleep, and then we can talk about food and physical activity. It’s understanding that, what that is that you need, and then going, okay, so if I need sleep, let’s hire a doula so that mom can get some rest. Okay, now that I have the sleep — food. I need healthy food. Using outsourcing; people bringing food, meals. Communities, whatnot; Shipt.

Kristin: Yeah, special food delivery services that are local, as well as national, that you can get food delivered to your door, which is also a time saver, and if you can get specialty diet needs because a lot of people may need to cut out dairy or have certain allergies if they’re breastfeeding their baby and need to make some adjustments to their regular diet.

Paige: Exactly.

Kristin: So other than that, what are your other tips when you’re looking at — you’ve got this baby. I mean, there’s college, obviously. That’s a big one.

Paige: Yes. Well, I would say education, just in general, is an important one to be thinking about because, okay, they’re going to preschool. Now they’re in middle school. All those different levels of schooling, and what does that look like? Where do you live? For example, Michigan has a really great public school system. Where I grew up, Florida, does not. So what does that look like where you live, the state? What works for you? Would you want to send your kid to, like, a Montessori — I grew up there, so I’m a big fan of Montessori — and if you do, what does that look like? So I think education is definitely a priority and planning for that, as well as just, not only education for paying for that, but education for your child from you because you are a teacher, as well, to your children. And so are there things that you want to teach your child? For example, I just have coffee this morning with a good friend. She has a two-year-old, and she’s, like, what is education? I want my daughter to go to a great college and — but she’s like, but I want her to have access to a lot of experiences like they’re going to spend a month and a half in Hawaii with her brother to really understand — and she’s like, I’m bringing my daughter with me. I’m so excited because it’s important for her to see the world is bigger than just West Michigan where she lives. So education, I think, in the whole sense of the word, is definitely very important on many levels for your children.

Kristin: It’s not just planning for college. You’re looking at, will it be a private or parochial school that you need to reserve funds for, or is music education? You would lump that into the education category? Same as sporting activities, for example?

Paige: Yes, as well as experiences, too, right? So let’s say travel is very important to you and you want that to be important to your children. Are you going to be providing for those experiences that are very educational but maybe aren’t necessarily around schooling?

Kristin: So when you’re planning your family budget, how does all of that fit in?

Paige: Well, I think it depends on each family, of course. So each family has, you know, from different jobs, different means, different lifestyles, different priorities. But the one thing that we all have in common is time. So we all have that equally, and I think that understanding where is the time going and what is it that your children are going to be doing? For example, like you said, different sports; activities. What’s important to you? What’s important to the child? What’s important to give them exposure to? And then I think if you can do that and set that overarching as a bigger picture, it kind of will fall into place and you can start planning for that more strategically.

Kristin: So how can people connect with you individually if they want to set up a planning session or hear you speak? You have many appearances with your book releases coming out and so on.

Paige: They can email me at paige@millennialguru.com. Or you can call me and contact me at 616-443-1000. Or they can go to my website or any social media, Millennial Guru.

Kristin: Thank you so much for being on!

Paige: Thank you! Thanks for having me!

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The Millennial Guru: Podcast Episode #87

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / gold coast doulas, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

Paige, The Millennial Guru, shares some savvy saving tips to help you think about priorities, wants, and needs and how to budget for them. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Kristin: Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I’m Kristin, co-owner, and I’m here today with Paige Cornetet, and she is known as the Millennial Guru. Welcome, Paige!

Paige: Thank you! So excited to be on the show today!

Kristin: Yes! Tell us about why you started Millennial Guru. You’re also an author. Fill us in, since you’re a local Grand Rapids resident and business owner.

Paige: Absolutely! So I started the business with the intent in mind of how to help my generation. I’m a Millennial, too, so full disclosure, I’m a Millennial helping the Millennials. It was about how to help my generation understand themselves and dive in a little bit further, as well as teams. Obviously, when you get out of college, you get a job and you go to work, and you work with a different type of generation of people, so yourself, as well as different generations, and kind of how to bridge that gap with the different generations. What does that look like with different technology, with different concepts, with different philosophies. I think the most important thing with who I work with is starting with yourself. Who are you? What are your talents? What are you good at? Then, once you understand that fully, how can you express that to your team and understand your team members and their talents.

Kristin: I love that!

Paige: You, yourself, is kind of the thought and the basis of the philosophy for my business. Then it kind of led into not only understanding yourself but also understanding your wealth. Those kind of go hand in hand. I wrote a bunch of different children’s books, and it was really fun. It was with the intent of, okay, so I’m helping my generation understand about themselves and also about their wealth and that the themes are and the concepts and the understanding. Then I was thinking, how can I help the even younger generation, the kids, the little guy, understand at even an earlier age. They’re not going to necessarily understand themselves yet, but they can understand themes and concepts of their wealth or their future wealth.

Kristin: My kids have one of your books, and they love it!

Paige: Yay!

Kristin: So as far as focus, how can people who are local to you connect and figure out, even if they’re not ready to have kids, maybe how to plan for their future of wanting a family, wanting a house/

Paige: Yes! First of all they can connect on the website or my email, paige@millennialguru.com.

Kristin: And you’re very active on social media. They can find you on Instagram, Facebook, everywhere.

Paige: Exactly, all of the above. I think that, first of all, they can connect with me, and then we can have a bunch of different conversations. I do workshops, on top of that. It’s understanding first what you’re good at and what that looks like for you. So, for example, one of my talents is Maximizer. I love doing many things at once, meaning killing many birds with one stone. That’s the high pressure life, and how I do things is make sure that I’m covering a lot of things. It’s kind of for the greater good, the excellent. So I bring that to my business and also my personal life, as well. So when I’m investing, I want to maximize my return. I always want to maximize; what is the best way that I can do it to get the most out of it? That’s how I do things, including my goalsetting. As an example of a big goal, I have three siblings, and I wanted to go on a trip with them each individually this year, which is a lot of trips. My 30th birthday is coming up, and so I thought what if I can just do a whole sibling trip and we can all go together and I can check all those boxes off at once? We’re about ready to do that. We’re going on a safari in Africa, the four of us together, soon. That’s an example of how understanding yourself and how you approach things can apply to you professionally, to your goals, your personal goals, your business goals, and to your future financial planning goals.

Kristin: What are your priorities? If travel is a priority before having children, how do you save for that and craft out the time in a busy work schedule? Life in general is busy.

Paige: What? It is?

Kristin: Right? And then saving for a family if that’s something they desire, as well as checking off those boxes of travel and things that they want to get accomplished.

Paige: Absolutely, and I think you said that really great. Priorities means establishing what are your wants and what are your needs. Once you have the needs covered for you, you also have to think about the needs when you have a family. What are the needs for the kids? What do they need? What are their wants? First, if you can do it with yourself: what do I want? What do I need? Planning financially for that will help make it easier going forward when you do have a family and you have kids. It’s like, okay. Do I want those really cute little baby shoes for them, or do they actually need them? They’re really cute and they’re Instagrammable, so…

Kristin: So much of life right now is the Instagram filters and photos!

Paige: And they do grow, so eventually, they probably won’t need those shoes. It’s things like that.

Kristin: And you also travel quite a bit. We have listeners from all around the country, and you do workshops and speaking engagements?

Paige: Yeah. It depends on who and what and how and also where, but I’m mostly in Eastern standard time. That’s kind of where I stick myself a lot. It’s a little bit easier for myself. Again, my Maximizer can’t help it. Let’s just stay in the same time zone so that I don’t have to catch up on sleep! But yes, I’m all over. I do a lot of speaking engagements and workshops, mostly focused around yourself and your wealth.

Kristin: And we had talked ab bit when we met up for coffee recently. You do some strategy session for entrepreneurs like myself and helping small businesses maximize their wealth, personally and for the business itself.

Paige: Absolutely. It’s interesting that you say that because I’ve been thinking about that a lot as myself being an entrepreneur. Where is my margin? Where is that space where I can have creative development for that, and where is the space that I can have financially, as well? So the margin has been kind of at the forefront of helping entrepreneurs. Where is that cushion — and margin is the word that I use for it, but you could use a lot of different words — of financially, and so feeling that way or distributing or redistributing things, as well as your time and energy as an entrepreneur. Are you doing it all?

Kristin: Yes, or can you outsource?

Paige: And that goes back to families, too, right? If there are certain things when you’re having kids or having a family, what can you outsource? Who can you use to rely on, if it’s a community or if it’s grandparents. Extra set of hands!

Kristin: Yes, we’ll have to talk about some of that outsourcing for families in our next episode. We’ll have you on to talk a bit more about savings when you have a newborn. And again, if people are interested, they can find you at your website.

Paige: Thank you so much!

Kristin: Yeah! Thanks for being on!

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Stress Mastery: Podcast Episode #85

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / birth support, gold coast doulas, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, sleep deprivation, stress and pregnancy, tandem nursing

Deb Timmerman, RN, DAIS, CSME speaks with us today about her new certification in Stress Mastery. What does that mean, you ask? It’s all about learning positive ways to handle stress and actually master it, instead of letting stress take over. Listen to see how this can help parents throughout pregnancy and postpartum. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on Itunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa: Hello, welcome to Ask the Doulas Podcast. I am Alyssa Veneklase, and I’m so excited to be talking to Deb Timmerman today. I haven’t seen you in so long!

Deb: Hi, Alyssa, it’s great to see you, too!

Alyssa: For a little while, we had you teaching a prenatal stress class here, and then life and business just got kind of in the way, and we haven’t scheduled any more, but I loved that class. You have so much good information about stress and how stress affects the body, but now you have some new certifications where you’re actually talking about how our bodies need stress to a certain extent; is that correct?

Deb: I am. So I think maybe the first place to start is, why the prenatal stress education? I’m a member of the Michigan ACEs Initiative Education team, and that’s not a formal name, but a couple years ago, Michigan got some grant money to bring the ACEs study — ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences study — and the consultants who were involved in that study, they actually set up a agreement for them in Michigan to use the ACEs science to see how we could change the way we’re delivering healthcare in Michigan. So the ACEs study is all about things that happen in childhood, like dysfunctional household, abuse, neglect, and you basically get a score for the ten questions that are on this little survey, and what they found was that the higher your score, so if these things happened to you from 0 to 18, the more likely you are to have emotional, physical, mental health issues as you age, and it even cuts time off your lifespan. As they began to do further studies after that, they found out that some how we deal with stress actually affects our genes and is passed on when you have a baby. That’s a long answer to that, but I think it’s really important because it’s where kids get their start, and if you don’t know about that, you can unknowingly pass on certain things to your kids.

Alyssa: You are in this high-stress environment while pregnant. It’s affecting your baby?

Deb: Yes, it is.

Alyssa: And I remember the movie. It was called Resilience?

Deb: It’s called Resilience, the science of stress, biology of hope. Or maybe that’s backwards; biology of stress; science of hope. Anyway, you can find it, Resilience, and there’s a trailer out. Yes, really interesting movie.

Alyssa: It is. Tell me about your new certifications and this new idea about stress.

Deb: Okay. I was an ACEs kid. Out of ten, my score was six, and when I learned about that particular piece of data in my life, it clarified everything for me.

Alyssa: And six is high?

Deb: Six is high, yes. Anything over four, it really increases your chances and your risk level. So I had a lot of health issues when I was in my 40s. I fell down a flight of stairs on my summer vacation, had a bad injury from that. But also was extremely heavy. I weighed 321 pounds, and I was on diabetes medication and high blood pressure pills, and I had a really high-stress job. And my family life was nuts. So I happened to go to a conference, a nursing conference, and heard about this, and it was like I had discovered something really critical. It was like the missing puzzle piece for me to figure out why I reacted or had the habits that I had, and as I started to travel down that road, I became really interested in sharing that information with people because I think it’s key. We spend a lot of money on the back side of health, taking care of chronic illness. My thought was, wow. This made a huge difference for me. What if I could share that information with folks?

Alyssa: And it’s probably worth noting that you are an RN?

Deb: I am an RN.

Alyssa: And that’s what you were doing in your previous life?

Deb: I did, and I didn’t know about that particular study at that time, and I wasn’t — I mean, they cover the stress response in nursing school, but not to the point with all the brain science and all of that. So in the last 20 years, they’ve made huge discoveries, and it’s super interesting.

Alyssa: When did you leave the nurse world?

Deb: Four years ago, I left the nurse world and started my own practice, but I had trained as a healing touch practitioner. In 2009, I started that, and I don’t remember when I finished, but I was never able to use that in a private practice, but I did in my buildings. I was a nurse manager in both of my previous jobs, and I found that when you teach people those self-care skills, it really changes your culture, and it made us care about each other. When we care about each other, we do better with our patients and the folks that we’re charged with caring for.

Alyssa: So you taught the other nurses or the patients?

Deb: Eventually, we did teach nurses healing touch at the hospice, which was my last job, but there are all kinds of other really cool interventions that you can do to build capacity for stress management, and those are the things that we worked on. You mentioned the stress certification. I’ve been a diplomate of the American Institute of Stress for a couple years, and you get that designation based on the amount of training that you’ve had regarding stress and how you’ve used that to help other people, and at the end of last year, this little thing came in my email box, that they were doing a beta for this stress mastery educator certification, and I got invited to submit an application. I was one of 40 people throughout the world that was chosen for beta one, and we worked with Heidi Hannah. She’s a Ph.D. researcher and stress mastery educator and teaches at Harvard, and she has all these other amazing professors and Ph.Ds. who share this information, so I was super interested and hoped I would get selected just because I thought it would be really neat to learn from these people. And it has been beyond my wildest expectations.

Alyssa: What is stress mastery?

Deb: We talk about stress management like we have to manage stress, but we actually need some stress in our life to help us grow, learn, and adapt. And when we master something, it means that we learn to dance with it in a positive way, and we use it to fuel positive change versus working on controlling what’s going on in our life. So I actually now help people build their capacity versus teaching them how to manage it.

Alyssa: Build my capacity to deal with stress instead of trying to reduce it or eliminate it?

Deb: Yeah. The way we do that is through evidence-based practices like the healing touch that I did. That was one thing I had under my belt, but since then, I’ve become a Tai Chi Easy Practice leader. That’s all about Qigong breathing and moving meditation. I’ve also gotten a certification in mindfulness and meditation. Breathing and some of those other key interventions that we can do on a daily basis throughout our day are really what helps stop that stress reaction and helps us build that capacity.

Alyssa: What if somebody is like you before with a really stressful job and a stressful home life? All these stressors: you don’t want people to try to eliminate some of that? You just want them to learn effective ways to cope?

Deb: Well, I don’t think that you really — coping means that we have to continue to deal with it, and yes, you do have to decide what you’re going to work on first, and there are certain areas of life that you’re going to have to make some decisions about and maybe pare down, or maybe that job is really horrible for your health and it’s time for you to move on. So we do validated stress assessments to figure out what areas of your life and out of sync and where your stress issues come from so that you can make good decisions. Oftentimes, when you’re in the midst of it, you just know that the world is falling down around you, and you don’t have any clarity about where that stress is coming from.

Alyssa: So how do you differ from a therapist or a counselor? Or do you also kind of work that in?

Deb: I would say I work in tandem with a therapist or a counselor. I’m not going to talk to you about all the things that happened to you in your childhood. I don’t get into all of that. We use the ACEs screen as a way to help you recognize how your stress patterns developed and then look at the different areas that are out of balance in your life, and then I’m going to teach you how to do a daily practice to help yourself not be so triggered. Triggers and tamers, I would look at; what are you stress triggers; how can we work with that; what kind of language are you using with yourself. That negative stuff breeds more negativity. How can we switch that around to help you have a more positive outlook? I do a lot with breathwork. It is one of the easiest ways to get that stress reaction to moderate and to get you into that rest and digest state so that you can think clearly. The way the brain is organized, the brain’s number one job, priority one, is safety. It’s always scanning, looking at the environment, trying to figure out how to keep you safe. The stress reaction is what keeps you safe. It gives you that juice, that bolt, of adrenaline to get to safety. But when you’re stuck in that feedback loop and that’s your whole life, you really can’t think and use the part of your brain for higher executive functioning because that feedback loop kind of gets in this little track. Do you know those people in your life, where they’re kind of stuck in that? Things are always falling down around them. Some of the exercises for building capacity are to be able to get that to shut off so that your brain can actually rewire and build new circuitry for that. That’s capacity-building.

Alyssa: Do you think everyone in general could benefit from some sort of practice?

Deb: Absolutely.

Alyssa: It’s not just the high anxiety, panic mode — I mean, I think we all feel it at some point, right? So even if you don’t have it on a daily basis, you’re noticing it — like you said, what are your triggers? So how do you — we talked a little bit about prenatal. What about a postpartum mom who has sleep deprivation working against her, as well, and then maybe new triggers that she didn’t even know existed before, who says I don’t have time to do Tai Chi with you. Are you crazy? I can’t do Tai Chi and meditate. How would you help a mom who came to you and said, what can you do for me?

Deb: I would tell a mom like that, what did you do to take care of yourself before, and what are you doing now? Typically, when a new baby comes in or there’s a child, they take first priority, and oftentimes, moms are trying to work and take care of this, and the demands are huge. So first we would walk through, what are you doing now? What did you love? What do you have time to do? How can we structure something so that you give yourself some attention every day? We’ve all heard that adage, you can’t give from an empty cup. That’s super important. Your child, from zero to three, learns from serve and return, and you need to have the energy to show up for your child every day so that that child learns to feel safe with you, cared for, and loved. If you don’t have that ability for your child, then you’re going to be suffering with problems further on down because your child develops anxiety, sleep issues, all those things.

Alyssa: And what do you mean, develops from serve and return?

Deb: Babies mimic what we do to them, the cooing, the eye movement, hugs, kisses. That’s serve and return. When you’re munching on your baby and nuzzling, that actually builds their neural circuitry and helps them feel safe. It’s a normal part of development. We used to think that babies got all their neurons and they were never going to get another one after they were born, and what you had, if you didn’t use, you would lose. There’s a little bit of truth to that. What gets paid attention to develops, and what doesn’t eventually kind of gets pruned away. There’s a process actually called pruning in the brain. But we know that neural circuitry actually develops now from our experiences and the things that happen in our world around us, so you want to create that loving, safe environment for your baby, and if you come home stressed out and you have nothing else left to give, are you doing the right thing for that child?

Alyssa: So zero to three is really, really important?

Deb: Very important!

Alyssa: Into my brain is popping this video I saw where a mom gives a sad face or a mad face and the baby mimics that. There’s an actual study, and I’m forgetting the name of it.

Deb: I don’t know that particular study, but the Center for Child Development at Harvard does a lot with that serve and return, and they actually have a campaign going right now. I’ll post that link on my website, and you can look at that if you’re interested. Lots of wonderful videos about how the brain develops and why that’s so important. Back to the mom: trying to figure out what she can do within her day to recharge her batteries is super important. Actually, I just met with a mom this morning. I think her little guy is four, and then she’s got one that’s maybe two. And she said that they just went through a period of stress where their family dog was sick, and they had some financial issues, and their older one started acting out. My question to her was, and what was going on in your household? She said it was chaos, and then she looked at me and goes, oh, crap, he saw that, didn’t he? So yes, that is exactly what happens. And their job is to build a relationship with you, so if you can’t be present, they’re going to act out because they’re trying to get their needs met.

Alyssa: They notice everything. My daughter is six, and nothing gets by her.

Deb: I think I saw a picture with her meditating someplace when you were off, and I thought, wow, Alyssa, that’s awesome. What a great skill to teach your child!

Alyssa: Well, it’s amazing even in schools now; I think they know the importance of this. They’re teaching yoga. They’re teaching mindfulness. They’re teaching meditation. And even if it’s only once a week — I never had that as a kid.

Deb: Well, and when it becomes part of what we do as our daily practice, it becomes easy. It becomes habit. So then it’s not like you have to spend all this time on self-care. You have it integrated into your day. That’s really my job; to teach you how to discover all these different practices that might speak to you because what you love isn’t necessarily going to be what someone else loves. Figuring that out, and then how do you work that into your day, and how do you sustain that for long term?

Alyssa: That’s the hard part, especially as a mother. My days are never the same, so I would love to be able to say, from 9:00 to 10:00 AM every day, I’m going to do this. Doesn’t happen. I mean, on top of that, I’m a business owner, too, right, so the day just gets more hairy. But having someone say, okay, well, let’s figure out something that can work for you. If you can’t do it at 9:00 today, let’s do it at 8:00.

Deb: The newest research that’s out there is that you should start your day with that practice before you even hop out of bed, and my favorite go-to is a guided meditation. It’s the thing that always made me feel really good, and it’s the thing that I teach because I love it. There’s lots of them on YouTube, and the cool thing about YouTube is you can pick the amount of time that you have. Maybe today you have five minutes, and tomorrow you have ten, but building that and scheduling that into your week. And then because there’s so many different ones, you could pick the rate of speech, the kind of voice. Like, I have one that I love at night. It’s an Aussie guy who does a sleep thing that’s maybe 26 minutes. I’m never awake by the end of that. I usually wake up the next day and it’s still frozen on my iPad. It’s wonderful.

Alyssa: For someone who has never experienced a guided meditation, you could choose some with or without talking? Or do they all have talking?

Deb: A guided meditation typically is something that helps cue you by voice to pay attention to your body in the here and now, and there’s all different kinds of scripts out there, but for someone who’s just beginning, I think a breathing thing, a couple minutes of breathing, is really good, and then after you get comfortable with that, you can explore. We know that the brain needs 10 to 20 minutes of that prime-timing in the morning, but truly, any time you can do 30 seconds or more with focused attention on that effort, it’s still beneficial to your body.

Alyssa: My Apple watch actually does that for me. It will tell me when to breathe.

Deb: Yeah, it has a breathing app. Perfect.

Alyssa: So that alone, if I do it — most of the time, I’m somewhere that I can’t do it and I just dismiss it.

Deb: If I was working with you to coach, I would talk about what you already have in place, and we would work on building that. How could you work that into your day, and really, even if you’re in a meeting, you could excuse yourself, go to the restroom or whatever, if you were that committed, or reset your watch or program it so that it works around your meetings. Those are all things that you can integrate into your day.

Alyssa: I love it.

Deb: It’s easy.

Alyssa: I mean, it is. We just find excuses of why we can’t or shouldn’t. I just feel like we’re always full of excuses.

Deb: Well, I think that’s what I’ve appreciated being part of this stress mastery educator process. Heidi is wonderful at being able to package things in a way that are easy and doable. Three steps to getting your stress mastered: assess, appreciate, adjust. Figure out where you’re out; appreciate what you can learn; and then those tools to adjust. And then the BFF model, so yeah, being your own best friend, but it really stands for breathe, feel, and focus. It’s really that simple. We make it difficult because we think it’s this thing that has to take a lot of time. What takes time is changing the habit, but once it gets integrated, then it’s easy.

Alyssa: And then coming full circle here, working that in to your daily practice and having your children see that as part of your practice, right?

Deb: Yes.

Alyssa: Because then they are like, oh, this is just something we do.

Deb: Yes. Last week, I actually taught teachers how to look at their own stress, a group of 20, to look at what was happening, and they got to choose the track that they wanted to be in, so at the start of the two days that we were together, why are you here? My mother in law is driving me crazy; I need to figure out how to get hold of my stressor. At the end of my day, I have nothing left for my family. Starting with the ACEs piece that we talked about and recognizing how they developed the way they look at stress. What were the patterns? What are their triggers? It was really beneficial for them. Many of them have ACE training otherwise in their classrooms, but they don’t know how to apply it to their own lives. I mentioned that puzzle piece for me. That was it. Okay, now that I understand how I developed it, now I can shift because I can appreciate how I got where I am and make those adjustments. It makes it a whole lot easier than someone saying, oh, I have to do these ten things today because I have to manage my stress. At the end of the two days, it was so fun to go around in the circle and to hear them say what they learned about their own issue and what their one takeaway was going to be and how they were going to integrate it. You can throw out everything you’ve done and say that you have to start with ten things, but the reality is, we don’t have time for that, and it needs to be graduated. You start with one thing, two things, three things, and pretty soon, you start to feel the shift, and then you’re motivated to do the rest of the work. So yes, they’ll go back and model that, hopefully, for their students.

Alyssa: For their classroom, yeah.

Deb: I taught some interventions, some Tai Chi interventions, moving meditation, breathwork, short meditations. You don’t have to come up with all the stuff on your own. There are tons of resources out there. My job is to just share those resources with you and have you pick what you want.

Alyssa: Tell us how people find you. I know you have a website.

Deb: Yes, and you can follow me on Facebook. Deb Timmerman is my name. I’m on LinkedIn. Same thing, Deb Timmerman, RN. And then on my website.

Alyssa: And people can find you there?

Deb: They can find me there.

Alyssa: Ask questions?

Deb: Ask questions!

Alyssa: And set up a consult?

Deb: Yep, sure can!

Alyssa: Is it just kind of like booking an appointment? And what do appointments look like — 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 20 minutes?

Deb: I typically offer an assessment or at least a meet and greet first to find out if we’re even compatible in working together. That’s usually a 30- or 45-minute, either online; we can do a Zoom call, or we can meet in person if you’re local over coffee, and finding out what your goals are. What is it you hope to learn? Why did you call me? What’s your reason? What’s your motivation? And then I would recommend, based on that appointment, what I thought was a good strategy for us and how long that might take and what that would cost, and then we would work together.

Alyssa: Excellent. Are you covered by insurance or not?

Deb: We are not at this point covered by insurance, but I think that’s going to change because there is a big shift with all this ACEs movement, and they’re all getting on board. Yeah, but in terms of investment, I think — my job isn’t to stick around forever. It’s to give you those tools so that you can go on your own, and if you need a little check-up now and again, that’s easy to do. We offer all kinds of online resources for people, and a podcast. There are medications on there that you can do.

Alyssa: What’s your podcast called?

Deb: It’s called Mindful Moments.

Alyssa: How fitting!

Deb: Those podcasts, there’s always a little nugget of information. Usually, they’re short, 7 to 8 minutes, but there’s a couple that are 20, like if you need a longer relaxation and have time.

Alyssa: I will have to look it up myself! Thanks for sharing!

Stress Mastery: Podcast Episode #85 Read More »

Preparing Your Body For Pregnancy: Podcast Episode #84

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / gold coast doulas, high-risk pregnancy, postpartum depression, postpartum doulas, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

Dr. Nave now works with queens through her virtual practice Hormonal Balance.
We talk this time about how a woman can prepare her body for pregnancy. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa: Hello! Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas Podcast. You have Kristin and Alyssa here today, and we are excited to be back with Dr. Nave, the naturopathic doctor at Health for Life GR.

Dr. Nave: Thanks for having me again!

Alyssa: Thanks for coming again! Last time, we had an amazing conversation about a woman’s cycle, and today, we want to talk about actually preparing your body for pregnancy. What do you want to say?

Dr. Nave: Well, that ideally, we would start a year ahead.

Alyssa: One year ahead?

Dr. Nave: One year ahead.

Kristin: Does that mean they should be off birth control one year ahead, or would you advice getting off of an IUD or birth control pills in advance of that year? That’s my question because that’s something that is commonly asked.

Dr. Nave: That’s a great question. Even though ideally I say a year, if a woman wanted to, say, get pregnant in less than a year, then I would suggest, if she’s coming off of an IUD that has hormones in it or an oral contraceptive, to stop taking it at least three months before starting to try to conceive. That’s because the oral contraceptive and the IUD with hormones is basically producing the hormones that your body should be responsible for making, and what women often find is that once they stop using those — because, basically, it’s suppressing the body’s own production of hormones. She’ll find that she doesn’t have a period for an extended period of time, and I would also want her to detox her body and make sure that she’s pooping regularly, that her hormones are being made at an optimal level, and basically establishing what the normal and optimal cycle should look like.

Alyssa: So if you’re preparing your body for a year, then that means you can stop at three months? So the three months is just a part of the year? Twelve months ahead of time of when you would ideally like to be pregnant, you’re going to talk about what to do; but then three months before, minimum, is when you should get off a hormonal birth control pill or IUD?

Dr. Nave: Yes, because it gives your body time to normalize your cycle and it prepares your body to actually hold a baby so that it can grow.

Alyssa: So then what do we start doing at twelve months out

Dr. Nave: It’s basically a multifactorial approach. It’s stopping the things that interfere with your hormones, like oral contraceptives or getting the IUD removed. Also cleaning up her environment, so skin care products, household items, household cleaning supplies, being more environmentally aware of the things that she’s using, the foods that she’s placing into her body.

Kristin: If she’s coloring her hair and things like that?

Dr. Nave: Right, if she’s coloring her hair, nail polish, things like that. And then we would also want to address nutrition. A lot of the foods that are really accessible, like going to fast food or going to a restaurant, are foods that promote inflammation. They tend to be higher in trans fats and refined sugars, which are all shown to increase inflammatory products in the body. We want to reduce that by making sure that the woman is eating more whole foods. When I say whole foods, I mean from the earth; no one processed it. If you’re getting it frozen, that’s fine too, as long as someone didn’t already make it into a meal, so that you have more control and autonomy over what is being placed into your body.

Alyssa: What does inflammation do to affect fertility?

Dr. Nave: With inflammation, we have more cortisol. We have dysregulation of blood sugar. We have greater likelihood of mental and emotional disorders. It wreaks havoc on us.

Alyssa: It’s a lot of what we talked about last time with the cycles; if you’re not having a regular period, your cortisol levels could be too high, and that disrupts everything else?

Dr. Nave: Right.

Alyssa: And inflammation kind of does the same thing to your body?

Dr. Nave: Right, and things that can influence inflammation is not just the food that you eat, but being in a constant high stress environment and not managing that effectively or not having tools to really take care of yourself and having self-care. Self-care is not selfish the way that people typically think of it as being, but more so, it’s nurturing. Nurturing of yourself. Think of the year leading up to pregnancy as rediscovering yourself, as reconnecting to who you are, and getting in the mode of, “I am ready to carry a baby to full term. I am ready to add a new life to my life.” It’s getting connected to that. Also processing your past traumas. Mental and emotional health is absolutely important with regards to getting ready to conceive. Ideally, I wouldn’t want someone to be seeing conception as a solution to a relational issue because it probably won’t be, and it will probably exacerbate a lot of those things. So during that year leading up, it’s dealing with your past traumas, whether they be related to a miscarriage previously; processing what happened and how it affected you, not just trucking along to get pregnant again, but really fully processing it. Not necessarily living in it, but not pushing your emotions aside because they are valid. Whatever you haven’t dealt with — and this is not guilt any woman by any means — but whatever we haven’t dealt with, that influences the baby. That influences the baby’s risk for depression and anxiety. It influences the genes and their susceptibility to different types of conditions. In that year, by you taking care of yourself, you’re taking care of that baby in advance, as well.

Alyssa: The baby you haven’t even had yet?

Dr. Nave: The baby you haven’t even had yet; you haven’t even conceived yet.

Kristin: So what if a woman is a constant dieter? How do you handle women who are, say, on a fad diet, if they are wanting to conceive?

Dr. Nave: I really like the book Intuitive Eating. It’s written by two dieticians, and before mindfulness eating was a thing, these two dieticians came together, and they were like, diets don’t work. Diets are a lie, and I completely agree with that. If you think that, oh, I don’t have enough will power — you’re not the one failing. The diet is failing you, because they weren’t built to work. They’re not sustainable, at least the diets that people often purport. Now, I would like to reclaim the term diet, because diet just means eating.

Alyssa: What you’re eating, right?

Dr. Nave: Right, right. And so if you view your diet, if you view your food, as nourishing yourself, as honoring yourself, you fully immerse yourself in the experience of eating, like smelling the food. You eat with your eyes first, so viewing it; it’s appetizing. You smell it; you taste it. You savor the textures that are in your mouth and the flavors that are bursting on your tongue and really immerse yourself in that and sit in that and be mindful. Then you have a greater connection to yourself. You are then more apt to tell when something isn’t going well. If a woman is a fad dieter or is using food as a coping mechanism, we would then assess what is food giving you that you are not at this time receiving. And so talking about that, having her read the Intuitive Eating book, because it goes through what type of eater are you, and reconnecting yourself to that intuitive eater, because as children — have you ever watched children eat? They do not sit. They get up, they eat what they want, and then they go back around and play. At some point, we lose that ability to tell when we’re hungry or when we’re craving something and really honoring that, and intuitive eating is all about getting back to that. SO I would definitely work with her and address, when did this first start? What is it giving you? What is it not giving you? What is your motivation for doing things in this way? Because what is encouraged by the media as what a healthy weight looks like is very cookie cutter, and I’m all about individualized care. If you look at someone’s bone frame and they’re really thin and they have big bones and they look sick or they don’t feel well, that’s not good.

Kristin: And then fitness is obviously a big question many of my birth doulas clients have. What should they do in preparation? If I was with them for the first delivery and then they want to conceive again, what would be an acceptable form of fitness as you’re trying to conceive? What should you do to get your body ready for birth and postpartum time?

Dr. Nave: If you’re already exercising, just maintain it. Don’t go overboard. Don’t become sedentary. Moving your body at least ten minutes per day — ideally, thirty minutes, but that thirty minutes doesn’t have to be in one chunk. Being consistent is more important than doing things really hard and really intense in a short period of time, so if she’s already exercising, just keep doing it. You’re doing great, Mom. Now, if she’s excessively exercising, that could be another thing that’s causing amenorrhea.

Alyssa: Yeah, I’ve had friends who have been extreme athletes who just don’t get their period.

Dr. Nave: Right, because all the hormones are being turned into something else as opposed to getting turned into progesterone and having adequate levels of estrogen so that you can bleed. And I know some women are, like, oh, I didn’t bleed for a really long time and I’m so happy, but…

Alyssa: Our bodies do this for a reason, right? It needs to happen.

Dr. Nave: Right, it needs to happen. When you shed the old — think of it as shedding the old. It’s a new month; I’m shedding the old from last month.

Alyssa: It’s like a natural cleaning, almost. It’s like a detoxifying — yeah, just — it seems like anything else that stores up in your body that needs to be shed can create toxic levels of something.

Dr. Nave: Right, absolutely. It can create adverse symptoms. Having too much estrogen is not the best thing in the world. Last time, we talked about estrogen dominance and how that can influence having more PMS symptoms like bloating, for instance, and being more weepy on your period. If you’re not having your period, then you’re basically reabsorbing the estrogen and that could by your PMS looks that way. But I digress.

Alyssa: I have one question before we move on to whatever you want to talk about next. Even with, like, what we’re putting on our body and our environment — so there are things that are called hormone disruptors, things that will disrupt your hormones, right, like in the products that we’re putting in and on our body?

Dr. Nave: Yes.

Alyssa: What do you know about that?

Dr. Nave: Those are parabens or phthalates. They’re actually made from crude oil, which is refined and you can get parabens and phthalates. You get mineral oil from it; you get the gas that you put in your car from it. All of these things come from this product. Why parabens and phthalates are an issue is that, basically, they act like estrogens. Then that can be part of the estrogen dominance. It can also affect increased risk for breast cancer. It can affect mental and emotional health because remember I said that estrogen can increase weepiness or having a lower mood on your period. Ovarian cancer; you have an increased risk for that because it’s an exogenous estrogen. It acts like estrogen; technically it’s not estrogen, but our bodies respond to it in that way, which can also lead to extra weight. On the topic of weight, if you want to lose weight before getting pregnant, you would want to do that in a year before trying to conceive because with exposures to things like parabens or phthalates, which — technically, they’re solvents, so you would usually pee them out; however, if you have higher levels of them or if you’re being continuously exposed to it, our bodies store it as fat. Then, when you’re trying to lose the weight, you’re releasing it back into your bloodstream, which can create symptoms like headaches or feeling really lethargic when trying to work out. It’s not necessarily because you’re working too hard, but it could because your body is working on detoxifying or biotransforming these things so that they’re no longer toxic to you so you can pee it out and poop it out.

Alyssa: So if you need to lose weight, that needs to happen before this twelve-month timeframe of detoxing before you get pregnant?

Dr. Nave: It can happen in that twelve months. You can start it before that because then you don’t have as much to do during the twelve months.

Alyssa: But it should be one of the things that you’re thinking about a year ahead of time?

Dr. Nave: Yes, because there are so many things that we use on a daily basis that, if we really thought about them, I think most of us would be scared to leave our homes, but we have to live, you know. We need things in order to live efficiently and not work as slow, I guess.

Alyssa: Well, if you think about the chairs we’re sitting on. These are as eco-friendly as we could find, but the majority of them — there’s sprays on everything. I looked at the new pajamas I got my daughter, and it said the flame retardant — it said that I can’t wash it in soap because the flame retardant will come off. I was like, no. I’m washing it. I’m washing all the flame retardant off, actually. But you don’t think about that. My daughter needs a new nightgown. You buy her a nightgown, and it’s covered in a chemical so that it doesn’t go into flames.

Dr. Nave: Yeah. Another of the things that the woman can do to help get herself ready before even consulting with a physician is that, with regards to environment medicine, opting to eat the dirty dozen — you can look at www.ewg.com, so that’s the Environmental Working Group. The release the dirty dozen each year, and these are the fruits and vegetables that are the most heavily sprayed. Opting to eat those things in season and organic, as opposed to nonorganic, and what that will do for you is — pesticides have solvents, which parabens and phthalates are a type of solvent, so they have some of those components to them. By opting for organic fruits and vegetables that are on that dirty dozen, you don’t have to do all your fruits and vegetables organic. Preferably, if they’re thin-skinned, like if you eat the skin of it, like tomatoes and strawberries and berries, you would want to opt for organic, but if not, at least the dirty dozen. Make sure those fruits and vegetables are organic because those pesticides have the endocrine disruptors. They’re things that affect your estrogen and your progesterone, and it’s not just those things it affects but your overall well-being.

Alyssa: So because it’s disrupting hormones, it can affect your ability to get pregnant, but let’s say even while doing all this, you get pregnant. It’s essentially affecting, again, your growing baby?

Dr. Nave: Yes.

Alyssa: Because you’re disrupting the hormones that the baby is using to grow?

Dr. Nave: Yes. So if you’re already pregnant, don’t freak out. Don’t try to lose weight. That’s one, because you’re pregnant, so your body is trying to use all the energy to make baby, as well as the fact that we don’t want to release any of the stored toxins in your fat to the baby. What you can do is, if you’re going to eat fish, make sure it’s not one that’s high in mercury. Avoiding things like swordfish, and if you’re going to eat tuna, make sure that — I think it’s albacore tuna, but don’t quote me on that — you can look at the Environmental Working Group, and there are other resources as well that list out the fish that are lowest in mercury. Looking at your skin care products and, as much as you can and as much as is possible, avoiding shampoos and skin care products that have parabens or phthalates or sulfates in them. It’s also because sulfates rub down your skin and it’s not as moisturizing. We want you to look glowing and magnificent! You can avoid those things in your skin care products and your household items and the food that you eat.

Kristin: So cleaning products, obviously, as well?

Dr. Nave: Yes, cleaning products. And if anything has any fumes and you have to spray it, make sure that you have all the windows and doors open so it can air out. If you get your clothes dry-cleaned and you have a garage, leaving them in the garage to off-gas before taking them into your house. If you don’t have a garage, if you have them in a room where you can remove the plastic and open the door and let them air out so that you’re not exposing yourself to those fumes. Just do that. And then after the fact, then we can address those things then.

Kristin: And then they would meet with you for a consultation preconception to try to get their body as healthy as possible?

Dr. Nave: Yeah, and even if she is already pregnant, what can we do to maintain the pregnancy while also minimizing her exposure to these environmental toxins. And her addressing her mental health during that time, if she hasn’t already started that process. Is she eating adequate amount of calories? Since we’re on the topic of nutrition, prenatal vitamins — you would start that at a year out. A year ahead of time.

Kristin: And, obviously, food-based versus the generic that you get at the normal doctor’s office?

Alyssa: Yeah, you know, you get free prenatals at the pharmacy but they’re basically junk.

Dr. Nave: We have very good-quality ones as naturopathic doctors, and I think DOs also have really high-quality ones, as well.

Alyssa: So for somebody who can’t afford it, what are those over-the-counter free prenatals doing? Are they doing any good?

Dr. Nave: Yes, because they have folate and they have an adequate number of B vitamins. It’s like a multi that’s specifically geared towards not only the mother’s health but also making sure that the baby can develop well. Folate is the one that I’m most thinking about at this present time because folate is important for neural development, like the spinal cord. What happens if there is insufficient or no folate is that the neural tube doesn’t close, and then that can cause spina bifida, which is a preventable condition if the mom is getting adequate vitamins. Folate is B9.

Alyssa: Oh, folate is a B vitamin?

Dr. Nave: Yeah, it’s a B vitamin, so it’s a water-soluble vitamin that’s very important for the neural tube development.

Alyssa: So my best friend found out she has this, and what’s the name — your body can’t absorb folate.

Dr. Nave: Oh, right. I know what you’re talking about.

Alyssa: So she actually had a really hard time getting pregnant because she was taking too much folic acid. But if you don’t know you have this, then…

Dr. Nave: If you don’t know you have it, if possible, choosing a supplement that has methylated B vitamins, so methyl folate as opposed to hydroxylated folate is better. What Alyssa was talking about is call MTHFR. It’s methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, so that’s an enzyme that basically, when you take in folate, for most people, they can then attach a methyl group to it, which makes it bioactive. There’s this cycle that you need methylation to occur in order to make the B vitamins active, which is important for making your red bloods cells, which is important for energy production, which is important for getting energy from your food. B vitamins — I think of them as, like, the power house side kick. Almost every enzyme in the body requires B vitamins. I have this lovely chart right here that shows the citric acid pathway, basically the utilizing our food to make energy pathway, and almost every single step in here requires two or three different types of B vitamins. There are even B vitamins that are enzymes themselves and carry things along.

Alyssa: You love B vitamins!

Kristin: So the free prenatals are helpful, just not…

Alyssa: It’s better than nothing?

Dr. Nave: Yes, it’s better than nothing, but if possible, there are different brands that we use as naturopathic doctors that you can probably try to get on Amazon, like Ortho Molecular or Integrative Therapeutic Initiative, I think is the name of it, ITI. SO I know those are pharmaceutical-grade, and when I say that, I mean that they have enough of the vitamin. It’s beyond the recommended dose, like what the government says this is minimally what you need, and it’s of good therapeutic value, so we know that it will do what it says it’s going to do. They tend to have more of the methylated form, so whether the mother has a different time methylating her B vitamins, or if she doesn’t, it takes out more work for the body to do so then it can go right to where it needs to go.

Alyssa: That’s fascinating! Is there anything we didn’t touch on?

Dr. Nave: I don’t think so. We talked about environment medicine and reducing your exposure. We talked about nutrition and making sure you’re getting enough calories. Oh — fish oil, vitamin D3, specifically, vitamin D3, because that’s the active form, and prenatal vitamins with regard to eating whole foods.

Kristin: We don’t get enough vitamin D in Michigan anyway, and I know that — and, again, I don’t have a medical background, but I know a lot of research on preeclampsia shows a lack of vitamin D3.

Dr. Nave: Yes. Another thing about preeclampsia is calcium and magnesium. If a woman starts to experience preeclampsia, making sure that — sometimes, it’s due to an electrolyte imbalance and not getting enough protein, so we would want to look at how much protein is she getting. The ratio that we usually look for is at least 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per kilogram of weight, so however many pounds you weight, divide your weight by 2.2, and that tells you how many kilograms, and then it’s 0.8 to 1 gram per that number that she should be getting. If she’s getting adequate protein and has enough calcium and magnesium, then she shouldn’t get preeclampsia. If she has a history of hypertension, making sure we’re managing that, whether naturally or if she’s taking medication, as long as it’s not one that would interfere with conception, would help to prevent it from happening. But even if a woman experiences preeclampsia, it doesn’t automatically mean that she will get eclampsia because we can still, at that point in time, address what’s going on.

Alyssa: Right. Well, thank you so much. I just feel like we could keep going and going. You probably have 80 other topics we could talk about. We’ll just have you back once a week!

Dr. Nave: Oh, I’d be down for that!

Alyssa: We’ll set up a couple more! Well, tell our listeners where to find you if they want to reach out.

Dr. Nave: You can find me at our website, and you can find me on Instagram, @drgaynelnavend, and I’m also on Facebook at the same handle.

Alyssa: Great! Thanks again!

Preparing Your Body For Pregnancy: Podcast Episode #84 Read More »

Maddie’s Birth Story: Podcast Episode #83

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth, Doulas, HypnoBirthing / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, birth story, birth support, breastfeeding, gold coast doulas, Hypnobirthing, labor and delivery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant, self-hypnosis

Our listeners love hearing a positive birth story. Today Maddie, a previous HypnoBirthing and Birth client, tells us all about her labor and delivery as well as her experience in the hospital right after having her baby. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Kristin: Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I’m Kristin, and I’m here today with my former birth client, Maddie, and we’re here to talk about her personal birth story. Welcome, Maddie!

Maddie: Thank you. I’m glad to be here!

Kristin: So we talked a little bit about why you chose HypnoBirthing in a previous podcast, so tell us about your birth story. How did you know you were in labor? Give us all the details. I was lucky to be there!

Maddie: Yes, it was wonderful to have you there! I went into work on a Wednesday, and I was due July 18th, and it was July 13th. For some reason, I just kind of thought, oh, I’ll know. It’s not going to happen yet. I went to work; I had a normally-scheduled weekly appointment with my midwife. I went at 10:30, and I had been kind of grouchy all day and just felt a little off but did not think about it at all. I’d been having practice labor for a few weeks, so I really wasn’t noticing anything different. I went to my appointment and sat down, and she said, how are you feeling? And then I started bawling. I said, “I just feel so confused by my body!” And she was like, well, let’s just take a look. How about we just take a look, and so she did an exam, and she said, girl, you’re six to seven centimeters! And I was like, what?! And I started crying again, and then I said, but what does that mean? Even though I’d been through HypnoBirthing; I knew what it meant, but it was just so unexpected. I was so far along already. She was fantastic; she was so wonderful, and she said, well, it means you’re going to have a baby today. Go have some lunch. So I called my husband. He was working, and I told him I was six to seven centimeters, and he said, well, what does that mean? And I called my mom who was coming, and she said, but wait; what does that mean? So we were all pretty taken off guard because it wasn’t like I had woken up and said, oh, you know, I think something’s happening. No one was really prepared. Hey, I’m six to seven centimeters.

Kristin: Right, I couldn’t believe it when I got the call. I was like, what?!

Maddie: Yeah! I went and got some lunch and drove myself to the hospital and parked on the fifth floor of the parking structure and waddled in. You showed up; you were the first one, and we went up to the room. Fortunately, since I’d already had the exam, I didn’t have to go through and wait for 20 minutes for them to monitor me or anything.

Kristin: That’s so nice to skip triage and go right up.

Maddie: We went up the room, and it was not bad for a really long time. You know, my body was doing a lot of the work as far as maybe turning the baby or getting more effaced. Having done HypnoBirthing, I knew that dilation is not the only factor that you need to pay attention to, so I was able to just kind of relax and say all right, it’s going to happen when it happens. You were there; you did a lot of hip squeezes for me, which was really fantastic for that counter pressure, because I was having back labor. My husband is not able to do those with his wrists, so that made a huge, huge difference. And we just kind of hung out, and I listened to my HypnoBirthing, and I listened to some relaxing music. My appointment was at 10:30, and he wasn’t born until 10:45, so it was a while, but…

Kristin: But for a first-time mom, it was pretty quick, and it’s one of the few calls I get in the daytime hours. Most of the time, I get a call at 2:00 AM or 11:00 PM.

Maddie: Right! Things started to get ramped up some, and then I started noticing it more, but none of it was overwhelming. One thing that we talked about in HypnoBirthing was breaking the amniotic sac. That’s protection for baby, so I didn’t want to do that; didn’t really feel like there was any reason to. The contractions really weren’t bad. The surges weren’t overly painful or overwhelming, and so my midwife worked her full day at the office and then came in. She checked me again quite a bit later, and then she did accidentally break the amniotic sac, and then after that, things got pretty intense.

Kristin: Yeah, that can intensify a lot!

Maddie: Yeah! I think from the time my water broke until the baby was born was about 2 hours and 45 minutes, so doable. I spent a lot of the time in the tub, and that felt really great. My husband was able to just use the hand shower, and having that, the different points of pressure, I think kind of helps take your mind off of it to some extent. The water makes it a little less intense. I really liked to be in there. Then we got out, she said she wanted to check me, and I was Group B Strep positive, so they wanted to do another round of antibiotics. That had been one thing that, when I found out, I was super devastated, because I wanted to labor at home for as long as possible. I didn’t want to have to come in before six centimeters, and we had me the plan that if I came in and I wasn’t six centimeters, I didn’t want to know what I was at. But I would just not go home. You could know; my husband could know, and then we could make the decision. Let’s walk around a little bit or just not be admitted. But because I was already six to seven centimeters, when I was checked, we went right in after I got lunch. We went right in and got admitted, so I was able to get those antibiotics in. Once she checked me again and broke my water, it got intense. It was really just — I felt very internal. You know, it was not a lot of talking, and it was — I think right after it broke, I kind of got to that point where I was like, oh, no. I can’t do this!

Kristin: Which most women go through with unmedicated births. Transition!

Maddie: Right. However, as soon as I had that thought — I have a distinct recollection of, oh, no, I can’t do this. No, wait – that means I’m really close. That means I can do this. And so then I really tried to just focus on my breathing, because we’d talked about that and learned and practiced about getting those breaths in. And I did end up struggling with that, but having you, having my husband, having my midwife all saying, all right, this is the birth you prepared for. You can do this. Just take those big breaths. Breathing and focusing on those voices helped me to kind of get back on track, get it under control. We tried a lot of positions for delivery, which that was one big thing. I had changed providers pretty early on from an OB who said you’re only allowed to birth on your back, and I said, I want the freedom to do whatever position feels comfortable for me and for my baby and my body. And so I ended up doing a lot of my laboring and pushing leaning over the back of the bed on my knees, and that definitely felt like the best position for me. We tried on the side with the peanut ball.

Kristin: I remember trying a lot of different positions, and it’s all about listening to your body.

Maddie: Right, and my body was saying, this does not feel good! Don’t do that! So I spent a lot of time there, and then I got to a point where I just remember feeling so hot and just, you know, put as many ice-cold washcloths on me as possible. I was so hot, but I was just kind of getting right there to the end. It was right at the end, and then my midwife had said, okay, I want to check you after this next surge, and so I want you to roll over. And I already knew I was crowning, but I couldn’t really explain it at that point. I’m like, no, no. He’s there.

Kristin: Right. I feel him!

Maddie: He’s right there! So I did end up flipping over, and that was okay on my back, and that was fine. What was helpful was the nurse that was there; she had said, do you want a mirror? And I had said no, no, I don’t want a mirror. And then she said to reach down and feel your baby. When I could feel — he’s right there. More than just oh, I feel it with my body, but actually touching it with your hand — he’s almost here! That kind of gives you a little reinvigoration. I’m right there at the end! So I was able to catch my baby and put him right on me and do optimal cord clamping. It was fantastic, just beautiful. He was born on July 13th at 10:45 PM, so about 12 hours from when I figured out that I was in labor until he was born. And it was being just relaxed about the whole process and recognizing it’s going to happen when it happens, and your body is going to do it, and trusting your body.

Kristin: Exactly, trusting your baby and your connection with your own body and your baby, because it’s the two of you working together along with, of course, your partner and support team.

Maddie: The very first thing I ended up saying after Charlie came out was, good job, buddy! He was a part of it, too.

Kristin: Exactly, babies work so hard! They have to turn in the canal and — yeah, they’re exhausted. You’re exhausted.

Maddie: Exactly, there’s a lot happening. It was beautiful!

Kristin: It really was. It was an honor to support you. How did it go with the skin-to-skin time and breastfeeding as a first time mom? Let’s talk about some of that and how you felt bonding in that first golden hour.

Maddie: That was fantastic that I could do skin-to-skin right away. I didn’t feel pressured to stop. That was super important. I did have some postpartum bleeding, and so while all of that was being taken care, not being separated from my baby was so big so I could just focus on him. That part was wonderful. We got all cleaned up. The breastfeeding definitely was more difficult. I have one side that’s inverted normally, and so baby really struggled to latch on that side, but he also struggled on the other side. I was fortunate that Spectrum has IBCLCs on staff 24 hours a day, and so they were able to come in at 3:00 AM and focus on what’s going on, why is baby not latching. We did end up using a nipple shield, and that was pretty demoralizing for a while. We used it until six weeks, and I went to some Le Leche League meetings and things like that. It really was important to have those contacts ahead of time and know where the meetings are; know when the meetings are; know an IBCLC that’s recommended in case you are having those issues so you’re not having to try to figure that out when you’re exhausted and you’re feeling downtrodden and things aren’t working. It’s really hard to try to find that when you’re already struggling. So having figured that out ahead of time, I was able to go to a meeting, go meet with a lactation consultant again. We did stick with it, and then at six weeks, which is pretty common, he just kind of got it. We got in the tub where it was warm and kind of womb-like and got rid of the nipple shield, and it worked.

Kristin: That’s amazing that you were so persistent and it paid off!

Maddie: Yes! We just weaned at 2 years and 11 months.

Kristin: Oh, congrats!

Maddie: Yes, that was exciting. We had a fantastic nursing journey. If you really stick with it and arm yourself with that support system, you can do it. I feel like so many women don’t have that support system. My mom nursed; my sisters nursed all of their children. Having that support system makes a huge, huge, huge difference.

Kristin: Yeah, and like you said, just taking advantage of lactation while you’re in the hospital, even for moms who have a great first latch, to just have someone see your holds and answer any questions you might have — it’s a resource that I highly recommend anyone take advantage of, if they’re birthing in the hospital, of course.

Maddie: Right. That was important that they did come in. They came multiple times to check on us and did work on holds and really understanding, you know, here’s another technique. Here’s another hold to try if this one isn’t working, so you have those skills in your toolbox to pull out. Okay, this isn’t working; let’s try this. That definitely was helpful for me, as well.

Kristin: Great! Well, thanks for sharing your story! Do you have any parting words?

Maddie: I would just say to do your research. It’s easy to just say that my doctor is going to do what’s best for me. This is what happens. This is how it goes. But it doesn’t have to be. You can be such an advocate for yourself, and you can surround yourself with other people to advocate for you so that you can get the type of birth that you want so that you have the support that you need. Even if you have a partner that’s not able to be there in the way that you need, you can get a doula. You can have a midwife who births in the hospital. It’s really not different. I know people that really think, oh, they’re not a doctor. That’s totally different. Just really doing your research and asking other moms who have been through it. Moms are very willing, good or bad, to give you their advice, so get as much information as you can so that you can make your own informed decisions.

Kristin: Yes! Thank you for sharing your story because other women want to hear personal, especially positive, stories. I feel like when it comes to birth, you here the dramatic or tragic. Everyone likes to tell negative stories, and there aren’t enough positive, and a lot of women in pregnancy want to surround themselves with light and positivity. We really appreciate you coming in! Thanks so much, Maddie. Thank you, everyone, for tuning into our podcast. Remember, these moments are golden.

Maddie’s Birth Story: Podcast Episode #83 Read More »

How Sleep Deprivation Impacts New Parents

Parenting, Sleep / Alyssa Veneklase / baby monitor, gold coast doulas, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, postpartum doulas, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnant, safe sleep, sleep consultant, sleep deprivation, sleep tips, sleeping during pregnancy

Becoming a parent is one of the most exciting and scary milestones of a person’s life. It’s likely your emotions will run the gamut from excited anticipation and joy, to fear of the unknown and uncertainty about what’s ahead and how you’re coping with parenthood. Managing night time feeds, tending to your baby throughout the day, and trying to keep up with your other responsibilities as you acclimatize to parenthood can make sleep difficult. While this is somewhat expected, sleep deprivation can have a serious impact on the health of new mothers and their babies, so it is important to get as much rest as possible.

The importance of sleep for new parents
The diminished quality and quantity of sleep that new parents often experience can result in physical and mental fatigue and an increased risk of postpartum depression. Prolonged lack of sleep or poor sleep quality can also increase the risk of diabetes, weaken your immune system, reduce attention and focus, and impair hormone production, causing weight gain, loss of libido, and moodiness.

Because our bodies require sleep to function correctly – and a specific amount of sleep that allows us to cycle through the various sleep stages several times throughout the night – a dip in the standard or quantity of hours we accumulate asleep in bed can have a far-reaching impact on our health and quality of life. One recent study found an association between poor sleep quality and postpartum depression.

There are two main phases of sleep – NREM (non-rapid eye movement) and REM (rapid eye movement, when dreams occur). Throughout these stages, specific changes and functions are carried out in our bodies and brains. NREM phases are when most of the physically restorative processes of sleep are performed. Our muscles and cells are repaired, our immune system is boosted, and the deep sleep of stage three NREM is what’s needed to wake feeling refreshed in the morning.

REM sleep occurs around 90 minutes after we first fall asleep and NREM phases are complete. This is the dreaming phase and the time that our brains process the salient and emotional experiences from waking life. When our body doesn’t get the required amount of sleep, it is unable to consolidate all the emotional and experiential data we have collected while awake, neither is it able to complete the physically restorative processes we need to feel refreshed and energized. That’s why we feel fatigued, forget things easily, and may find it difficult to manage our emotions.

Tips for getting the right amount of sleep
While some disruption to your sleep is to be expected as you adjust to the new normal; the good news is that there are a range of tactics and strategies you can employ to still get the amount of sleep your body needs.

Create the right environment for sleep:
When you do head to bed, it is important that you are able to drift off to sleep as quickly as possible so you can maximize your sleep time. To create the right environment for good sleep, keep your bedroom cool and dark. Light affects our melatonin production and signals to our brain that it’s time to get up. Turn the baby monitor down too so their snuffles and murmurs don’t disturb you, but you’ll still wake if they cry out for comfort. If you do have trouble falling asleep, try a wind-down relaxation or mindfulness meditation that will help calm your mind and body.

Share the responsibility:
Taking care of a baby is a 24/7 job that requires constant activity and emotional resilience. No one should expect that they can do this on their own.

Negotiate a schedule with your partner that lets you share nighttime feeds, diaper changes, and those evenings when baby just doesn’t want to go to bed. It’s necessary to ensure you have the right support so the sleep and health of you, your partner, and baby don’t suffer.

Accept help:
Have you ever heard the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child”? This isn’t just about the direct interactions; it’s all the support functions that are needed to raise a happy healthy child too. Don’t be afraid to ask for help with the cooking, cleaning, endless laundry, groceries, or just holding your baby for a while so you can have a shower and dress! The everyday, mundane tasks that were so simple pre-baby can take monumental effort to complete once there’s a baby in the house. Most people know this and will be happy to lend a hand.

Embrace the nap:
Babies rarely sleep for more than four hours at a time. While this is a major contributing factor to those interrupted nights, the multiple two to three-hour naps your baby takes through the day provides ample opportunity for you to rest too – if you let yourself. Resist the urge to catch up on chores and instead take a half hour nap that will help manage your fatigue. Avoid sleeping longer than 45 minutes though as this will adversely impact your night’s sleep.

Christine Huegel is on the Editorial Team of Mattress Advisor, covering a variety of topics pertaining to sleep health in order to help people get their best night’s sleep.

Image via www.pexels.com.

How Sleep Deprivation Impacts New Parents Read More »

Understanding Your Cycle: Podcast Episode #82

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Pregnancy / Alyssa Veneklase / gold coast doulas, high-risk pregnancy, postpartum, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnancy insomnia, pregnancy podcast, pregnant, sleeping during pregnancy

Dr. Nave now works with queens through her virtual practice Hormonal Balance. She talks with us today about a woman’s monthly cycle. What’s “normal”? What if you don’t get a period at all? Is PMS a real thing? You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa: Hello, welcome to Ask the Doulas. I am Alyssa, and I’m here with Kristin. Our guest today is Dr. Nave, who is a naturopathic doctor at Health for Life Grand Rapids.

Dr. Nave: Hi!

Alyssa: We were excited to meet you – what was it, a few weeks ago? We presented to your team, and you – I was really intrigued. Tell everyone what you specialize in as an ND, and then they’ll know why I wanted to talk to you so bad.

Dr. Nave: I am especially excited about assisting women to reconnect to their identities, and the way in which I do that is by really looking at their hormones, their mental health, their physical health, and other aspects of their life.

Alyssa: Do you only work with women?

Dr. Nave: No, I do not, but my passion is women.

Alyssa: So today you’re going to talk about cycles, and I know you have a couple specific thing about a woman’s cycle that you want to talk about, so explain what those are, and then let’s just dive in.

Dr. Nave: Okay. I want to talk about what a typical cycle should look like, so this is how your cycle should look if nothing is going wrong. And then we’ll transition to talking about PCOS and what is going on with that.

Alyssa: And what does PCOS stand for?

Dr. Nave: PCOS is polycystic ovarian syndrome. In medical terminology, a syndrome just means a cluster of symptoms that fit this particular diagnosis, and so with PCOS, what’s happening is that the woman isn’t bleeding or she has skipped periods, and that is due to low progesterone, which is an important hormone that allows the endometrial lining, basically, in the uterus so that implantation of the fertilized egg can happen.

Alyssa: Okay. So let’s talk first about what it should look like.

Dr. Nave: Sure. With our cycle, there are five main hormones that influence a woman’s hormonal cycle. We have LH and FSH, which are the hormones that are produced by the brain to tell an egg to mature and to allow the endometrial lining, which is basically the build-up of tissue in the uterus that allows the implanted fertilized egg to become a baby. So we have those two hormones that are produced by the brain, and then we have estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone that are produced in the ovary.

Alyssa: All the time, or only if an egg is implanted?

Dr. Nave: At specific times. A typical cycle, in terms of what we would call the normal cycle or the optimal cycle, would be a 28-day cycle. We have some leeway in terms of, in the medical community, how we diagnose whether it’s too long or too short, whether it be above 35 days or less than 21. For me, I think it’s best if it’s 28 days because it’s kind of like cycle with the moon, so the lunar cycle, because it also helps with the math. So we’ll just use 28 for the typical just for explaining what happens. In the first 14 days, that’s what we call the ovulatory – like, the building up of estrogen. The brain tells the ovary, by way of follicular stimulated hormone, FHS, to make one of the eggs mature. So it’s like, hey, ovary, let one of these eggs become the mother, so to speak. The brain does that, and then the ovary responds by allowing one of the eggs to become mature. We have multiple eggs that are responding during this time in different life stages, but the one that is the oldest usually gets picked, in terms of its life phase. It becomes mature; the estrogen is being made by the egg itself, which allows for that ovulation to occur. FHS tells the egg to become mature, and then the egg itself makes estrogen so the egg can further mature. It’s a fascinating, interesting thing that’s happening.

Alyssa: That’s during ovulation?

Dr. Nave: Yes, so during the first 14 days of your cycle, the estrogen is building up so that the egg can fully mature. Then what happens is that there are two types of cells that are a part of the egg. One produces estrogen, and the other aspect makes testosterone, so those are the other two hormones that we’re talking about. Once the egg matures and it’s released, the thing that’s left behind is called the corpus luteum, also known as the yellow body. That then makes progesterone. All of this is sort of happening at the same time, so we say 14 days for the ovulatory phase, but really, it’s like the brain is telling the body to make progesterone at the same time it’s telling the body to make estrogen. It’s just that it’s at a lower level. Until the egg is released. You don’t really have that progesterone being made.

Alyssa: It’s ebbing and flowing based on the day of your cycle?

Dr. Nave: Yes, yes. Around day 14 is when the egg is released. It’s the highest level of estrogen at that point in time, and then the yellow body that’s left behind – the brain told the egg, by way of the luteinizing hormone, LH, to start making progesterone. Are you following?

Alyssa: Kind of, yeah. In my head, that little egg is moving along, following a timeline.

Dr. Nave: Right! At day 14, we have the highest estrogen, and progesterone starts to climb up.

Alyssa: And estrogen is decreasing and progesterone is increasing?

Dr. Nave: Yeah, estrogen is at its peak; progesterone starts to spike up a lot more. I’m grossly simplifying it, sorry! As the progesterone is being built up – so the corpus luteum is making the progesterone because the brain told it, hey, make progesterone by way of the LH, the luteinizing hormone. That causes, then, the endometrial lining in the uterus to build up so that implantation of the egg can happen. Towards day 28, which is when you expect bleeding to occur – basically, the reason why bleeding occurs is that the progesterone starts declining at that point because progesterone is necessary for the build-up of the uterine wall so that implantation can happen, but if there’s no fertilization off the egg, then it basically is a withdrawal of the progesterone, and then it just sloughs off.

Alyssa: So day number one is not the – is that the day your period starts?

Dr. Nave: Yes.

Alyssa: So day 28, then, is the day before you period starts? Okay, I’m seeing the timeline in my head.

Dr. Nave: Yeah. Day one, when a doctor asks a woman, okay, what’s day one of your period, he or she is technically asking, when’s the first day of your bleeding. Technically, we’re always cycling, but we consider day one the last time you bled. That’s what the cycle should look like. Now, when we experience our periods, even though people consider it the status quo that we experience PMS, we don’t have to experience it. Does that make sense?

Alyssa: The hormonal changes don’t necessarily mean that we’re going to have the mental and – becoming angry or disorganized or frustrated?

Dr. Nave: Yeah. Seeing those symptoms for a woman, that would indicate to me that maybe the ratio is a little bit off. Some examples are acne or being really bloated. Being bloated, puffy, having water retention and having really heavy bleeding – that could be a sign that the woman is experiencing what we call estrogen dominance. Now, estrogen dominance doesn’t necessarily mean that she has high estrogen. It could just mean that her progesterone is low and therefore throwing off the ratio so that when she’s experiencing premenstrual syndrome, PMS, she’s experiencing these symptoms, even though if it were normal, she wouldn’t have to.

Alyssa: So you’re not saying that PMS is made up. It’s a real thing; it just means there’s an imbalance somewhere? It can be fixed, that you don’t have to deal with this stuff?

Dr. Nave: Absolutely. And the weepiness: estrogen. Estrogen is important for our bone health, our cardiovascular health. It’s the reason why we as women don’t get heart attacks until much later in life because it protects our hearts; it’s important for our bone health, which is why when you experience menopause or perimenopause, it’s very important to get your bone density checked. That’s the importance of estrogen. And then testosterone, which is produced by the egg, is important for sex drive and being able to be aroused.

Alyssa: What happens in a woman’s body when they’re aroused that helps with implantation?

Dr. Nave: When the woman is aroused, that allows the cervix to sort of pulsate so that when climax is achieved, the sperm can travel up into the uterus and, hey, let’s get to the egg wherever it is. It also allows for the vaginal canal, which typically is around three inches, which sounds crazy, but it actually lengthens and stretches. It’s a muscle that moves to accommodate the penis, if you’re having that kind of intercourse, or allow for artificial insemination in that way. So it increases the likelihood of implantation successfully occurring. It’s so cool!

Alyssa: We’ll pause so everyone can visualize!

Dr. Nave: Our bodies are amazing! In order for conception to occur, not only do the hormones have to cycle how they should, but you have to address your mental health; are you in the space that you can have intercourse or whatever it is? The ovary itself isn’t even attached to the uterus. There’s a gap between the two of them, and we have chemotaxis – basically a chemical, like how your body produces the hormones, that attracts the egg to go down the fallopian tube as opposed to staying in your abdominal area.

Alyssa: So every time you see a picture, it looks like…

Dr. Nave: They’re attached? Yes. But they’re not.

Alyssa: So they have to let go and then actually be drawn up by the fallopian tube and then into the uterus? They’re not attached?

Dr. Nave: No. We have connective tissue or fascia that’s in that area –

Alyssa: Which helps kind of push it in the right direction, probably?

Dr. Nave: Not exactly. It’s more like it creates this compartment so that your uterus isn’t just floating around in your abdominal cavity. We have this connective tissue that anchors it in that area so there’s less likelihood that a fertilized egg will end up outside of the uterus, which is why ectopic pregnancies are so low in terms of their incidence. But we also have these finger-like projections in the fallopian tube that brushes the egg along. So it’s not just the hormone that’s attracting the egg to where it needs to go and we have all these other signaling processing that are working.

Alyssa: I’m picturing a crowd surfer pushing it along.

Dr. Nave: We’re all supporting you! So that’s what a normal cycle should look like.

Alyssa: Ideally, that’s what it should look like?

Dr. Nave: Yes, ideally, that’s what it should look like.

Alyssa: And when a woman doesn’t have her cycle?

Dr. Nave: When she doesn’t have her cycle, then we have to consider two different things. Is it that she’s not bleeding at all, which we call amenorrhea, or are there greater than 35 days between each cycle, in which case we call that oligomenorrhea, or many menses, technically.

Alyssa: It seems like it would be the opposite because there’s a big space between. But either way, it’s a problem, and that will help determine how you treat it?

Dr. Nave: Yes. And so if it is that a woman isn’t bleeding, as in amenorrhea, then we have to consider why is that the case. Is it that she’s pregnant? That would be the first thing to assess. Is she pregnant? Okay, she’s not. What exactly is going on? One particular condition that I’ve been hearing or rather seeing more women experience is called PCOS. We mentioned it earlier, that PCOS stands for polycystic ovarian syndrome or Stein-Leventhal syndrome. Basically, what’s happening is that instead of the progesterone going up around day 14 to day 28, instead of it increasing, the body is changing it into another type of hormone. Just to give you some context, our bodies use cholesterol to make all our steroid hormones, which are all our sex hormones as well as cortisol. Our bodies use the cholesterol and then turn it into pregnenolone which is like the mother of all of those hormones. Pregnenolone can then become progesterone. It can become testosterone. It can become estrogen, which we have three different types of estrogens, or it can become cortisol. In PCOS, what’s happening is that instead of the pregnenolone going down to becoming progesterone, it’s getting turned into either testosterone, estrogen, or cortisol. A woman who potentially has PCOS or has been confirmed with that diagnosis – in addition to having amenorrhea, for her to be diagnosed with it, she also has to have two out of three symptom criteria. We have what’s called hyperandrogenism, which is high testosterone, and some of the symptoms she could experience would be cystic acne or hirsutism, which is just a fancy term for hair in unwanted places, like coarse, thick hair along your hairline or along your breast or in places that aren’t typical areas that you have hair distribution. That’s one, and then the amenorrhea that we talked about, and the last one is seeing cysts. The only way that we can really assess if there are cysts in the ovary is if we do a transvaginal ultrasound. I say we, but not me, but the actual tech would do that for you, and basically, they place a probe inside the vaginal canal, and they use an ultrasound on top of the abdomen to visualize if there are any cysts in the ovary. The reason why we get the cysts – to back up again to looking at the cycle, instead of the egg being released, the egg just stays there, because you need the progesterone to tell the egg, hey, release.

Alyssa: It stays where?

Dr. Nave: It stays in the ovary. And then in the ovary itself, you have all these eggs that look like they’re just about to release, but they end up forming what’s called a cyst. It can be fluid filled. Cyst is just a fancy term for a ball, kind of.

Alyssa: I didn’t know a cyst could be an egg that didn’t move.

Dr. Nave: That didn’t move, yeah.

Alyssa: So when people say they’ve had ovarian cysts burst, it could be an egg that didn’t move? Could be, doesn’t have to be?

Dr. Nave: Could be, doesn’t have to be. It could just be fluid. But in the case of PCOS, it’s like the ovary doesn’t release the egg, so it becomes mature, kind of, but not to the point where it actually releases because we don’t have any progesterone, or there’s minimal levels of progesterone so that if and when a woman experiences bleeding, if she has PCOS – so long cycle or no bleeding at all – in the long cycle aspect of things, there’s no egg. It’s just blood or tissue that got to build up a little bit.

Alyssa: So the egg still is stuck in the ovary?

Dr. Nave: Yes. I mean, you could have some release at some point if her progesterone can get high enough that that can occur, but it’s kind of scattered. You can’t really track it per se because it’s insufficient.

Alyssa: So she’s having them, just not – I guess 35 days instead of 28 – wouldn’t most women just go, oh, that’s no big deal; I just have a long cycle? What are the other symptoms? What else would they see?

Dr. Nave: She could have the symptoms of PMS but never actually bleed. So she’s still cycling, because remember you’re still cycling, always, whether you bleed or don’t bleed; the hormones are still doing their thing. She can experience the PMS symptoms but not bleed, which means that she’s not able to get pregnant. And even if you don’t ever want to get pregnant, our uterus is what I like to call an emunctory. An emunctory is basically an organ that our bodies use to detox or remove toxins. If we are not bleeding, that means those hormones are getting reabsorbed into our bodies, which for a woman, if she’s estrogen-dominant, it basically reinforces the estrogen dominance because she’s reabsorbing it in her intestines, which makes the symptoms to get worse. Because to get rid of our hormones, once they’ve done their thing and we’ve shed our lining and we bleed, the other way in which we get rid of our steroid hormones is by poop. So if you’re not pooping, then…

Alyssa: Is that another symptom or side effect? Is that a cycle issue, or not?

Dr. Nave: It could be a cycle issue. One of the symptoms that women sometimes experience is when they’re on their periods, either they’re constipated or they have really loose stool, and that’s because of hormones.

Alyssa: They call it period poop, and I never knew why.

Dr. Nave: Yeah, it’s because of the hormones.

Alyssa: So it’s normal? If you’re having a regular cycle and you have a day of poop that’s not normal, it’s just your hormones? That’s normal?

Dr. Nave: Normal in the sense of it’s to be expected with what you’re experiencing, yes. Other things that can happen with PCOS, and this is not with every woman, is that some women gain weight. Some don’t. For a woman that does gain weight if she has PCOS, what’s happening is that the body is converting the progesterone into cortisol. And cortisol is the hormone that affects our sleep-wake cycle. So when you first wake up in the morning, the reason why you’re fully awake is cortisol. It spikes at that point. What happens when we’re under a lot of stress, or if you have PCOS, our bodies are making a lot more cortisol, and that cortisol allows for the breakdown of stored glucose and the conversion of other proteins and fats into glucose. This issue with that happening for prolonged periods is that the woman can experience what’s called insulin insensitivity, so her body is no longer able to respond to insulin, which means that when she eats, then she can’t stabilize her blood sugar, which means that the sugar stays longer in the bloodstream, which causes damage to small blood vessels and nerves, which is what happens in diabetes. That’s why for a woman with PCOS, having metformin might work, which is why some doctors place a woman with PCOS on metformin to increase her chances of conceiving. It’s not just the hormones that affect your cycle; hormones influence every aspect of our lives, from the moment we wake up and take our first breath to the moment that we pass on into the next life. It’s this orchestra that each hormone has a part to play and influence each other in term of how effectively each part is able to do their part.

Alyssa: So let’s say I came in and I had questions about my cycle. What’s the first thing that a woman could expect? Bloodwork?

Dr. Nave: The first thing I would want to know is what labs she’s already gotten done. Has she gotten her thyroid checked? And when I say thyroid, I don’t just mean THS because THS is just your brain telling your thyroid, hey, make the thing. It’s also looking at the levels of the thyroid hormones because you have two types of those. You have free T3 and free T4. Their ratio is also important. So thyroid function; CBC, which just stands for a complete blood count. It’s checking for anemia, because that could be another reason for amenorrhea. You may not be bleeding because you’re iron deficient. And then I would also want CMP. That’s a complete metabolic panel, and that looks at the kidney and liver function, which are affected if blood sugar isn’t being regulated effectively. On the CMP, there’s also a fasting blood glucose on there, so that would be something to look at. I would also want to review her symptoms. What symptoms are you experiencing? Are you experiencing acne? Are you experiencing bloating and irritability on your menses? Do you experience depression on your period? There’s also the consideration that we have PMS, and then we have PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is basically PMS on steroids. It’s like the cycle overall is so horrendous that the woman can’t go to work. It’s affecting her daily life, affecting her mental health. She’s more depressed on her period, more irritable, or really angry, or in so much pain that she can’t leave her home. Looking at her as a whole person is what I’m about. And she’s the expert in her experience, right? She knows what it’s like to walk in her body, to experience these symptoms, how they affect her life, and then both of us taking our expertise to work together to get to the root of why this is happening and give the body the tool that it needs so it can rectify it.

Alyssa: You just reminded me that I need to make an appointment with you. I remember when I met you the first time, I was like, yeah, I need to see her, because not only have I turned 40, but I know my hormones are changing. My periods are changing. Just weird things happening. So how do people find you? What’s the best way to get ahold of you?

Dr. Nave: I am at Health For Life Grand Rapids, and you can check the website and look for my page. There’s a 15-minute free meet and greet and consult, so we can see if we’re a good fit. I can hear about your concerns, and you can get the cure that you need.

Alyssa: I love it. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re going to have you on again, and we’ll talk about some other intriguing topics. Again, thanks for tuning in. This is Ask the Doulas Podcast; you can always find us on our website and on Facebook and Instagram. Remember, these moments are golden.

Understanding Your Cycle: Podcast Episode #82 Read More »

Maddie’s HypnoBirthing Story: Podcast Episode #81

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, birth story, birth support, childbirth, childbirth classes, childbirth education, gold coast doulas, Hypnobirthing, labor and delivery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant, self-hypnosis

Today our former birth client and HypnoBirthing student, Maddie Kioski, tells us her personal pregnancy journey using HypnoBirthing and how it helped her feel excited about labor and delivery instead of scared. You can listen to this completed podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Kristin: Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I’m Kristin, and I’m here today with Maddie Kioski. She is a former HypnoBirthing student of Gold Coast and also my birth client. Good to see you! It’s been a while.

Maddie: You, too! It’s been so long. We just had the third year birthday for Charlie, so three years!

Kristin: That is so amazing! I love following all of your adventures on Facebook. So, Maddie, let us know a little bit about your HypnoBirthing experience and why you chose HypnoBirthing and what it did for you. We’ll have another episode coming up about your actual birth story, but this is focused on the class.

Maddie: I’m lucky to have two older sisters who were very instrumental in that they both researched natural birthing and all of that, so before I ever got pregnant, I was kind of familiar. The middle sister took a HypnoBirthing class in Atlanta, so when I got pregnant, I knew I wanted to go for a natural birth, so I started researching in our area. I found you guys, and I found speed-dating with the doulas, and so I was like, oh, perfect. And I saw you guys did the HypnoBirthing classes, so once I came and met you guys, I was sold. I knew for sure this is what I want to do. So my husband and I did the weekends class, so we had just longer weekend classes. When we started, he was not totally sold on it, but he said, well, if you want to do, then of course we’ll go and we’ll do it together. I actually really enjoyed having the weekend class. For me, it was a long period instead of the shorter periods; you could really focus on it and really get in depth.

Kristin: Did you do any preparation knowing that it was a very time-intensive class versus being spread out for five weeks? Did you read the book in advance? Did you do any preparation?

Maddie: I didn’t. We came to the class, and then we would read after class on the way home; we’d read on the way to class, and then we’d do some in the interim before the next week. I just knew this is what I wanted to do. I can’t remember; I think I was maybe five months when I started.

Kristin: That sounds about right. Yeah, I remember there was some time before your due date.

Maddie: Yeah. So we started listening to the rainbow relaxion every night. It was weeks before I even knew there was a rainbow in it; I just fell asleep every time. But my husband listened to it every single night, so he was pretty familiar.

Kristin: It’s good to fall asleep to. It means that you’re getting in that fully relaxed state.

Maddie: Right. So I think what was really, really helpful for me in the classes was reframing how you think about birth. That was really helpful for me. Instead of saying Braxton-Hicks, it was practice labor. This is natural and normal and healthy; really understanding that trusting my body to do what it needed to do; trusting my baby, that he was going to be able to do what he needed to do. Reframing all of those words was really, really helpful for me.

Kristin: Yeah, I’m all about the impact of language. Even the contraction; you think of it being intense and tightening up, but in labor, you want to be relaxed or it’s just going to be more uncomfortable and take longer, so calling it a surge, for example, and viewing the wave-like motion of labor.

Maddie: And I also think what was really helpful for me is understanding what’s actually happening with your body and the different phases and knowing — I felt very internal when I was going through it, and so knowing what was going to happen and having learned about all the physical physiology, hormones, and all of that — I felt was really helpful to just kind of put my mind at ease and feel more prepared about what was going to happen and what I could expect. And I think being able to relax and feel more relaxed about it also let me feel a little free with, if something doesn’t go exactly how I want it to go, that’s okay. We have another plan. We know if it’s an emergent situation, things are going to have to change, but feeling more relaxed about the birthing process allowed me to feel relaxed about letting go of exactly how things were going to happen.

Kristin: Right. And there are some misconceptions about HypnoBirthing only being for home birthers. You birthed in the hospital?

Maddie: Yes.

Kristin: And you were able to apply what you learned in class?

Maddie: Absolutely. I took an old phone with me and I had my rainbow relaxation, and I had some other music on there and the affirmation track, and so I was playing those while I was at the hospital. Even just something like keeping the lights down low to allow a more relaxed atmosphere, to allow your hormones to really react to the calm environment rather than bright lights and people coming in and out. I mean, you can change your environment when you have the knowledge of what it should be to help your birth go more easily. So that was helpful. And I was fortunate to go to Spectrum Butterworth, and you can labor in the tub there and all of that, and they have a lot more training as far as helping women through a natural birth.

Kristin: Yeah, your provider makes a difference; a supportive hospital and their policies and procedures make a big difference in being able to achieve HypnoBirthing in the hospital.

Maddie: What was helpful as well: I did do a lot of research as far as who I wanted as a provider and selecting a provider that you guys have worked with a lot and a lot of other moms in the area have recommended, so they were more familiar with HypnoBirthing, too, and they understand it more and understand what a natural birth looks like.

Kristin: And it can be much different to observe someone who is internally focused if a provider is not familiar with HypnoBirthing.

Maddie: Right, exactly, and not feeling forced to respond and explain what’s happening and just allowing your body to do the work that it needs to do, allowing your baby to do the work that they need to do.

Kristin: Exactly. Was there anything from the class that didn’t sit with you? I always say, take what you like from a class or experience and then discard the rest. Was there anything that didn’t resonate with you immediately?

Maddie: I responded well to a lot of the self-hypnosis kind of techniques, but we didn’t end up really using those a ton when we were actually going through the birth process. We did a lot of focusing on breathing because that’s where I really ended up struggling was just calming down and getting those deep breaths in and having my husband understand what needed to happen; understand I needed to be breathing to get that oxygen in for baby, too, and help calm my body down. He was a fantastic birth partner.

Kristin: I remember that about your birth, for sure. He’s a very supportive partner.

Maddie: He was really involved, and we felt really connected after, so that was beautiful. And I know some people did a fear release, and for me, that didn’t really work, I feel like, as well for me. I think it would be really helpful for some people, but my main concerns were that I get migraines, and they’re really bad, and I’ve had kidney stones and they’re really bad, and so I felt like, oh, man, if I can’t handle those, am I going to be able to do a natural birth? So I think what helped more was just understanding how the birth process works, and then I talked with some other moms who also struggled with those same health issues, and they were able to help calm my fears, as well. Understanding that your body is putting out all that love hormone; you’re not going to be getting a migraine. Your body is protecting you from that; it’s focused on what needs to happen. So the actual fear release part, I didn’t really use that as much.

Kristin: And one thing about the HypnoBirthing class that’s helpful is you work on your birth preference sheet or birth plan. Was that helpful in having discussions with your providers during your pregnancy?

Maddie: Extremely helpful. I think it was almost more helpful for my husband and I to kind of give us a guideline of what we need to focus on. With HypnoBirthing, we had informed choice, really; here are evidence-based articles that you can read about these certain preferences that you can choose from. That was helpful for us to talk about. My providers were so wonderful, though; I just kind of was like, well, here’s my sheet, and they were like, yep, these all look great.

Kristin: Whatever you want!

Maddie: So that was helpful. But I would say I had a shift change, and so I think what would have been helpful that I didn’t realize was making sure, when we did that shift change, that the other nurse made sure to read the birth preferences. I had put on there that I didn’t want coached pushing, and so when she came in, I don’t think that she had really read it necessarily, and so then they were pretty focused on that.

Kristin: That can be challenging, the timing.

Maddie: I was just trying to block that out. You were helpful, and the midwife and my husband were all talking about breathing and getting those breaths in, and that was helpful.

Kristin: Great. Any other tips or advice for anyone considering HypnoBirthing?

Maddie: I think it was so helpful and such a bonding experience that I feel — I felt prepared and I felt excited to give birth. I think so many women go into it feeling scared and saying, give me drugs; they just feel from the beginning that I’m not going to be able to do it. And after going through HypnoBirthing and really understanding the process, understanding and getting to a point where I trust my body and trust my baby; it’s natural; it’s normal; it’s healthy. I was so excited! I was so excited to go in and give birth.

Kristin: I could tell that; I could see it and feel it.

Maddie: And you can know, okay, it’s not going to be a walk in the park, but it was beautiful, and I feel so fortunate to have had such a wonderful first birth experience.

Kristin: Do you use any of the breathing or relaxation techniques in general life or parenting?

Maddie: I do, actually, do a lot of deep breathing when I feel frustrated and I need to take a step away and focus internally; do some breath depths; focus on a relaxing color.

Kristin: I do that with my kids. I get them to use HypnoBirthing and the birth breaths and the relaxation. For me, I have a fear of the dentist, so I’ve used it at the dentist! Yeah, it’s very helpful. Well, it’s so good to have you on, and we’ll talk about your actual birth story shortly.

Maddie: I’m excited!

Kristin: Thanks for listening to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas! Remember, these moments are golden.

Maddie’s HypnoBirthing Story: Podcast Episode #81 Read More »

Pregnancy Shouldn’t Be Painful

Pregnancy / Kristin Revere / birth support, gold coast doulas, high-risk pregnancy, pelvic floor, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnant

Gold Coast is thrilled to present a guest post by Sally Talbot, PT, Senior PT and co-owner of Health Motion Physical Therapy.

Pregnancy is a wonderful and amazing time. However, creating a new life does create some major changes in the body. Pain in different areas during pregnancy is a common complaint. Physio–pedia.com states that back pain occurs in 60-70% of pregnancies. While pain can be common, it is NOT normal and does not need to be tolerated. Pain can be stressful, and we know that increased stress for a mother can cause increased stress for baby.

Pain with pregnancy is not normal, and something can and should be done about it. Physical therapists are very helpful at safely decreasing pain and increasing function in pregnant women, helping them have a more enjoyable experience.

Here are some common pain complaints often associated with pregnancy and how PT can help:

Low back or sacroiliac pain: With increased weight gain (all out front), the center of gravity shifts and pulls the back into more of an arched position. Try standing this way – it is not comfortable. Also the abdominals are weakened due to being stretched with the increasing size of baby. This causes more work for the lower back. It is also common for the pelvis to become mal-aligned during pregnancy due to increased ligament laxity. All these factors put more stress on low back muscles and joints and can cause pain. Physical therapy can restore alignment of the back and pelvis and loosen tight muscles and strengthen others to make sure you can feel your best.

Mid back pain: Increasing weight of the breasts requires more work from the mid back to sit up straight and to lift and carry things. This overwork can result in pain and, if left untreated, it can continue well into the postpartum period, especially if mom is breastfeeding. Holding that newborn is harder than it seems. Physical therapy can assure that the joints of the upper back are moving well, loosen tight muscles, and stretch others to help improve posture and decrease pain.

Groin and pubic symphysis pain: Later in pregnancy, as the baby drops lower in the pelvis, there is more pressure on the pelvic joints (SI joint and pubic symphysis) and nerves that serve the groin and legs. This can cause pain, making it hard to walk or turn in bed. Weakness or muscle imbalance can contribute to this and make it worse. This is the one diagnosis that most people think that they have to live with – not necessarily true….. Maintaining good pelvic alignment is key with this – PT can do that as well as recommend positions and strategies when that new bundle of joy gets on your nerves literally.

Headaches: Headaches can be more common with pregnancy due to changes in posture, increased weight of breasts, hormonal changes, or general fatigue. Tight muscles and weak muscles will make these headaches worse. Even if headaches are hormonal, treatment to the muscles and joints of the neck and upper back can lessen the severity and intensity of the headaches and the need for medication.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Numbness in the palm of the hand focusing on the thumb and first 2-3 fingers can be a common complaint later in pregnancy, especially at night. Increased fluid retention can cause compression of the nerve that passes through the carpal tunnel in the wrist. This can be greatly improved with physical therapy.

How PT can help. A physical therapist will be able to thoroughly evaluate the issue you are having and locate the source of the problem and all the contributing factors. They will then create a specialized program to correct the cause of the issue and help you adjust to the changes that your body is going through. This program will include: manual therapy to loosen tight muscles or align the spine and pelvis better, modalities (such as electrical stimulation – yes it is safe!) to speed healing and recovery and provide pain relief, positioning or bracing solutions if needed, and exercises that will help the body keep up with the increasing demands of the pregnancy. Physical therapy decreases the need for medication and missed days from work/life. Help is available.

If you are having pain and wonder how/if physical therapy could help you, call and a come in for a free consultation. Just mention that you saw this blog post. You can also schedule through the website at healthmotionpt.com.

Health Motion Physical Therapy
South East: 3826 44th St, SE Kentwood, MI 49512 616-554-0918
North East: 3001 Fuller St NE Grand Rapids, MI 49505 616-451-4284

Remember PT is safe for mom and baby. You don’t have to hurt.

Pregnancy Shouldn’t Be Painful Read More »

The Minority Bride: Podcast Episode #78

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Pregnancy / Alyssa Veneklase / gold coast doulas, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas. It’s Alyssa and I’m talking with Gaby again if you remember her. Last time she told us her lovely birth stories. Hi Gaby.

Gaby: Hi Alyssa, good to be back.

Alyssa: I want to learn about your business. So Connie’s Bridal Boutique.

Gaby: Yes.

Alyssa: Who’s Connie? Beause you’re not Connie.

Gaby: No. We’re not Connie. Connie’s actually the name that the original owner gave the store, it was her nickname. Her original name was Veit Vu, she’s a cute little Vietnamese lady. Maybe 5 feet.

Alyssa: Okay.

Gaby: She was a powerhouse of a woman. These dresses get heavy, so you’d just see her hauling dresses back and forth. My grandmother used to work with her and when she decided to retire we purchased the brand and the store.

Alyssa: Okay.

Gaby: And we kind of molded it a little bit more towards our personalities, and growth, and developed it a little bit further.

Alyssa: Okay. So I’ve been in your store. It’s huge! It’s not little, it’s huge. I walked in and I’m like, “Oh my God! Look at all this space.”

Gaby: Yes!

Alyssa: So tell me what did you change? What’s your target market? Do you have a certain type of dress? Do you kind of focus on one area or is it a pretty broad range?

Gaby: Yeah, when we originally bought the store, if we’re getting down to nitty gritty business, we used to be on 44th and Kalamazoo. I think that was her second or third location. The target audience when we originally bought it, was for brides looking for dresses and formal gowns from $100 to, I think it was, $800. Around there. We began molding it to a little bit of a higher price range, just because that good chunk of $100 – $800 dresses, a lot of that is online. So it’s not really long term, sustainable, at least for how we run it. Which is a lot of sample and special orders, we don’t have stock of the same dress in 30 sizes.

Alyssa: Okay.

Gaby: We might have a couple in a small and a large, but most of what we do is a custom dress, custom measurements, custom length. We specialize in that and customizations, custom additions, and our clientele is the minority bride. That falls in so many categories. It could be “last minute,” so less than 6 months. We often do weddings like 2 weeks, 1 week, we can have a quick turn around time. My grandmother is magic as far as alterations! Our formal bridal gowns are anywhere from $600 to $3,000 – $5,000. We’re kind of snug in the middle between David’s and then you have the beautiful Renee Austin and Becker’s, who is on the higher end.

Alyssa: Right.

Gaby: We’re kind of snug in the middle for our minority brides and whether that be size, whether that’s brides that purchase and then they go and get married and they have beautiful African ceremonies in Africa, so that’s kind of the whole other package. Beause they’re buying for people where bridesmaids aren’t all here. We serve a lot of our “minority brides” that have that spunky and creative need.

Alyssa: Okay. Yeah, when I went in it was your grandmother and your mother.

Gaby: Yes!

Alyssa: You said sometimes your sister’s even there?

Gaby: Sometimes my sister’s there. On Saturdays, it’s me and my sister comes to help on and off. I kind of finagled my way to be like, “Grandma you can take Saturdays off and I’ll be here on Saturdays.” So now she’s there Monday through Friday, which is when our alterations and more complicated orders if she needs to kind of see as far as detailed illusion neckline, or anything like that. Then we’ll see them Monday through Friday and on Saturday we’re just seeing brides in their beginning phases and if they need basic fittings, then I can, of course, do that. I can fit you and pin you, but if anyone’s cutting your dress, it’s her.

Alyssa: It’s gonna be grandma.

Gaby: Yeah, it’s gonna be grandma!

Alyssa: So we learned last time that you have two children. How do you balance a three-year-old, a six-year-old, and helping to run a bridal shop?

Gaby: Yeah, I’m extremely lucky in the flexibility that not only working with my grandmother but having … working with my grandmother in our own business, close to home. So it’s kind of like a great little triangle of support. So she definitely wanted to see the grandkids, so when I had my first daughter and even with my son, I think I worked up until a couple of days before I gave birth. If not, the day before. I was very active, I don’t like to just down. When I gave birth, it was strap them up, literally carried them on and off up until they got too big to be carried. That was great! I could bring them in whenever and if I really couldn’t bring them in, I didn’t have to come into work. It wasn’t like I had to bring in a doctor’s note, and then I could work from home or work on off days. So I can move my schedule around pretty freely. So that’s definitely been a great opportunity for me to work, but also raise my kids and be as involved as I need to be or they want me to be. If they want to go chaperone, it’s great during the week because we’re not too busy. So I can say, “Hey, I’m not gonna be here until… today or until next time. I’m gonna go in the morning, I’m gonna be with my daughter or my son all day and then they can come back and work.” Sometimes work means I have to work until 9 or after they go to sleep, I’m gonna have to finish that, or I’m answering emails in the middle of the night.

Alyssa: Typical business owner stuff. I feel like I’m doing that all the time. You take out a chunk of time during the day to spend with friends, or family, or your children, and you always have to make up for it later.

Gaby: Right, you make up for it later.

Alyssa: That’s like the pros and cons, right? Of having your own business.

Gaby: Exactly. It’s definitely been a balance for them, as well. Because we open on Saturdays, so it’s not like we can just do all kinds of fun activities on Saturdays. My friends are like, “Oh, we’re having birthday parties.” And I’m like, “That’s great, but I’m at work.” So we can’t really just take that off. It’s Sundays. Everybody on Sunday kind of has a different schedule. In our industry, our busy time’s during the summer. So our vacations are in the winter.

Alyssa: Which is perfect! You want to get out of Michigan in the winter.

Gaby: We do! Everybody’s like, “You want to go to the beach?” I’m like, “Yes!”

Alyssa: On Sunday, I will!

Gaby: On Sunday, I will. Or Sunday usually ends up being trying to manage your household in half a day. Like a crazy person! That you have not been able to do the whole week. We kind of balance that out and my friends are like, “You never come out!” Like, it’s not really vacation ever for us, unless it’s winter. And during wintertime, regular jobs they’re still working, but we can be like, “Oh, we’ll take December off.” Because we’ve been working nonstop until December and we’ll just take a couple of weeks off. So it’s kind of a balance of where do you … it’s good to find other entrepreneurs because they have similar rhythms. Where it’s like, “I’m kind of just checking to see if you’re breathing for six months.” And then you can really hang out with them.

Alyssa: Right.

Gaby: During the slow time I’m like, “Just send a quick text like, ‘Hey, are you alive?” Yeah, we’re just working away. It’s been good to connect with other entrepreneurs and other busy moms that are kind of doing more.

Alyssa: Yeah and I think it’s important because we are definitely a specific breed of business owners and mothers. Because I might have, like this morning, I randomly had time to go for a walk around the lake and what did I do? I texted a bunch of people, but the only one that responded was the other mom who owns her own business. She was like, “Oh yeah, I can get out for an hour.” So it is good to have that network because otherwise you do kind of feel isolated. Thinking all of these other moms that work during the day and then at night maybe they want to get together, but that’s when I actually need to spend time with my kid.

Gaby: Right, right! That’s kid time. My free time could be, “Oh yeah, I can meet with you in the morning when the kids are at school.” I can kind of plan that out. But when I pick the kids up from school, I need to make sure that I’m with the kids because Saturday/Sunday. One day I was working on putting crystals on a dress and that was consecutive days of working past midnight. I think the kids came one day to the shop and they like slept in the stuff for a couple of hours. I’m just like, “We gotta get this done! We gotta get this done!” So we don’t have time blocks, it’s definitely an adventure to find people that match your schedules. Also interests, but also match the schedule of when you can free time and then understand that maybe I will be free three Sundays in a row, maybe you won’t see me for 5 months.

Alyssa: Yeah, I used to be able to plan ahead. Now I’m like, “I don’t know.” Can I go for a walk tomorrow? I don’t know, text me tomorrow and I’ll see.

Gaby: I will know an hour before!

Alyssa: Right!

Gaby: I think we’re maybe doing a month ahead of time. In my house with family events, I’m usually like let’s bring out the book of calendars. Everybody just dish out appointment cards. Like, “Here’s your Mother’s Day event, here’s this, and here’s that.” And now we’re just like, “We don’t know what we’re going to do.” Sometimes you’re just overwhelmed that you just don’t do anything.

Alyssa: Yeah, to have a weekend of nothing is totally fine.

Gaby: I don’t want to plan anything. You know what sounds good? Just being home, and cooking, and eating.

Alyssa: I think it’s the other side of owning a business that people don’t realize. You know, “Oh, you have so much free time.” Or, “Oh, you run your own schedule.” But there’s this opposite side of it where you do feel, like I said, isolated or that nobody quite understands. So I love these mom groups, like how I met you at the Mom Brain group. There’s always something to talk about because we’re always going through these same struggles. They might be a little bit different, but deep down we’re moms and we own our own businesses and we know what it’s like to be like, “Oh, yeah. I’m working until midnight tonight and I still have to get my kid up. I haven’t made lunch for school. Oh, yeah, and it’s library day and I don’t know where the library book is.” All these 20 little things, all these little details, but you still have a business to run.

Gaby: Right. There’s still something else that kind of, depending, is like two different … which, being a mom in itself has so many independent tasks that happen individually. Like these completely unrelated tasks that happen independently.

Alyssa: Mm-hmm, but we’re doing them simultaneously, often.

Gaby: Yes, yes! With two different children. One is your business and two is your actual kids that are kind of just, “I need all this stuff.” And then all of a sudden, business might have an emergency or your kid might have an emergency and if you don’t build those connections, you might be left struggling a little bit.

Alyssa: Well, it would be really easy to burn out. If you didn’t have, like you said, if you didn’t work with your family and it’s super close to home, you have that support network built in. If somebody owned a business, had children, didn’t have family, didn’t have friends, didn’t have a support network, and had no plan in place for these emergencies, whether it was family or business, you burn out.

Gaby: Yeah, I would imagine you’d just kind of be sitting there feeling lonely. It’s not even like, “Somebody come and help!” But it’s just the pure connection of like, “I just want to talk to somebody.” Or just a quick text to kind of get your mind out of maybe something serious that’s happening. Okay, then you can relax and go back and focus on your job, or your kids, or whatever it is. That’s so important to be able to have that extra support, in a multitude of forms, kind of sprinkled all over your life so that you can progress and move through the really hard, complicated times. In the end, you love your job. That’s why you’re doing it! That’s why we’re crazy still there. We’re still holding on because you love what you do.

Alyssa: Yeah, you work with brides who are in this specific zone and we’re working with new moms who are in this specific zone. Although many of our clients are probably, I’d say the majority of them are married, we do have some who are pregnant and then getting married or getting married while pregnant. So do you work with clients who are pregnant and need a dress? You say the minority, that would be the minority. How do you help? How does that dress grow with the belly if they’re not getting married right away?

Gaby: It definitely depends. The first thing for us is to make that bride feel comfortable. Some brides are just chill, they’re just loving it, they’re embracing what is happening. Some brides are nervous in the way of like, “This is not how I envisioned it.” Or it was how they envisioned it and they were fine with it, but there’s an outside pressure. So we want to make sure that that is relieved. Because once you are in a good, happy, neutral position, you can really see yourself in a wedding dress, calmy. Not like, “I need to cover this or I need to cover that.” You just want something that fits and that’s comfortable and it depends. Some brides are going to grow, right? They’re still going to be pregnant when they get married, so we have to talk about that. Are you going to come in the week before for alterations? Are we going to hold out until the week before? Couple of days before? Alter it and then it will fit and then take it? So it might be a last minute alteration. Or sometimes they buy it when they’re pregnant and then they’ll have the baby … it’s a bit of a guessing game. Are you going to buy it smaller? Are we going to allow for alteration costs to make it smaller? Is it a shape of a dress that can fit both ways? Are you going to be comfortable? Is it too tight for baby? You need to think about can you sit down, can you stand? Because you’re not as agile, though I’m clumsy anyway, so that was not a good clumsy pregnant mom that is wobbling through a bridal store was a funny scene. We just sit and talk with them and say, “How are you feeling?” Some moms have had multiple kids, so they’re like, “I don’t grow” or, “Tomorrow I’m going to be double the size. I’m just telling you for now.” And that’ll be fine. I had one bride, she was so sweet. She was like, “I’m going to be this size by the time I get married.” And she was. She knew! She’d already had children, so she was like, “I’m pregnant, I’m going to give birth and my body’s going to go relatively back to normal by the time I’m there.” It really ends up being a matter of a last minute alteration and just understanding that we just need mom and baby to be comfortable. If you want a nice, snug dress, it might have to be a different fabric versus a more stretchier fabric. Not because we can’t make it fit, I mean you can cut anything to fit anything, but just because it’s a little bit more flexible and movable, and not so restricting. Just a little bit more of guiding and consulting and you’re going to look beautiful! Everything’s going to come out good. Don’t worry about it!

Alyssa: So if we have any moms who are thinking about getting married, where do they find you? Tell us website, phone number, address. What’s the best place for people to find you?

Gaby: Yeah, well we have multiple ways of contacting us. We are on 28th Street, pasT Burlingame. We are next to Marge’s Donuts, so if you’re pregnant it’s always good.

Alyssa: I was going to mention that. Like, “Oh!” When I came to visit you, I couldn’t leave without visiting Marge’s on the way out.

Gaby: Yes, stop by and have a yummy snack. We have brides that come in with a very like, “I’m going to plan [to lose weight]!” If that is your healthy goal, we’re going to support you and empower you for it. But we don’t want you to be like, you need to all of a sudden only eat lettuce for the next six months. We want to make sure that you are being healthy with your path and if this is how your fiance is seeing you right now. Like he proposed to you right now, he’s loving you, he’s going to care for you, he’s going to embrace you no matter what. We want to dress you how you are, not with the pressure that you have from somebody else. You can find us next to Marge’s Donuts. Go ahead, we support your purchase of donuts, cakes, custard-filled pastries, bring us one on the way back if you’re coming before! We are on Facebook, it’s Connie’s Bridal. You can find us on Instagram, you can give us a call at (616) 455-5233. Our website is the same, which I think nowadays is the easiest thing to do.

Alyssa: Cool. What about the LGBTQ community? Have you ever had two brides? Because we do get calls from-

Gaby: Yeah, of course. Like I said, that’s our main focus is to make you feel comfortable, and empowered in your decision. If you’re wanting a suit, if you’re wanting two dresses, if you want a mini dress, if you want to alter something, we can do that. What I mainly see is the hesitation. Come on in, if you need extra time. That’s for any brides if you feel like you’re going to need extra time, if you’re going to need extra space, if you’re going to need extra quiet, or you’re going to need extra quiet because your support group is extra loud! We like to accommodate for that. Two bridess, we just want to support and celebrate alongside of you.

Alyssa: I love it. Thank you for sharing.

Gaby: Yeah, you’re welcome.

Alyssa: So yeah, check her out if you’re in the market for a wedding dress. As always, you can find us at goldcoastdoulas.com, Instagram, Facebook, and you can listen to our podcasts on SoundCloud and iTunes.

The Minority Bride: Podcast Episode #78 Read More »

7 Ways To Save Money When Having A Baby

Parenting, Pregnancy / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, breastfeeding, gold coast doulas, nursery, planning a nursery, pregnancy, pregnant

Emily Graham is the creator of mightymoms.net. She believes being a mom is one of the hardest jobs around and wanted to create a support system for moms from all walks of life. On her site, she offers a wide range of information tailored for busy moms — from how to reduce stress to creative ways to spend time together as a family.

While most of us understand that having a baby is expensive, many don’t have an accurate idea of just how much so. A 2017 survey revealed that most parents-to-be are vastly underprepared for the cost of having a baby, with over half of them assuming the first year would cost less than $5,000 (the real figure was $21,248 for lower-income households).

This can be worrisome when you are expecting your first baby, but it’s no reason to panic. There are many ways to save money during pregnancy and those first few months of parenthood. You just have to be smart and do your research.

Check Your Insurance Coverage

Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance must include coverage for pregnancy, labor, delivery, and newborn baby care. The actual benefits, however, depend on the individual policy, so find out exactly what you are eligible for. If you can’t afford private insurance and don’t have it through your employer, you may be able to claim it through Medicaid or CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program).

Get Creative With Your Gender Reveal

Some people go big on their gender reveals, but you really don’t have to. There are many ways to do a memorable gender reveal with very little money. Kindred Bravely suggests ideas like having a cute photo op for social media, printing bespoke T-shirts, or using colored sparklers. By getting creative, you’ll be sure to end up with something more personal.

Buy Second-Hand Accessories

Baby accessories are the quintessential second-hand item. The baby will inevitably outgrow everything, and once you’re done having children you’re left with a bunch of useless stuff. For this reason, second-hand websites are some of the best and cheapest places to find everything you need for your baby, from strollers to cribs to clothes.

You may also be able to get some free stuff on websites like Freecycle. It’s not all low-quality, either – some people just prefer to give their stuff away rather than going to the trouble of finding a buyer and selling it.

Look For Free Formula

Not all mothers breastfeed, and even those that do may want to supplement with formula. The cost of this can add up quickly, especially if you need to buy fortified formulas. Luckily, there are many ways to get free formula. Major brands often offer free samples and coupons, and you can also get some at your doctor’s office or hospital.

Ask for a Prenatal Prescription

There are several supplements that are often recommended for a healthy pregnancy, such as folate, iron, Vitamin D, and prenatal vitamins. If you’re at the beginning of your pregnancy, you know you’re going to be taking these for the foreseeable future. Ask your doctor to give you a prescription for prenatal vitamins, which you can easily fill for $4 at retailers like Walmart and Target.

DIY Your Nursery

It’s easy to get carried away with dreams of the perfect nursery, but remodeling a whole room can quickly become expensive. Instead of spending a fortune on decor that your child will want to change in a few years, make your nursery even more special with some cute DIY projects. This list by Brit + Co has some lovely ideas, from washi tape wall art to an upcycled cradle and several pom-pom projects.

Teach Your Partner Some Massage Tricks

Soreness is an almost inevitable part of pregnancy, and not everyone can afford regular massages. What you can do is teach your partner (or a generous friend) to do it for free. A good prenatal massage should be gentle, with unscented oils, in a position that is comfortable for you – usually, sideways with pillows supporting your back.

Some parents feel like they have to spend large amounts of money to give their child the best. However, as long as you provide them with the basics for their health, comfort, and safety, you are doing your job as a parent. Being smart about money at this stage allows you to devote more money to things that matter, like saving up for college or having fun family experiences. In the end, it’s the love and support you give the baby that’s going to make a difference, not the money you spend.

7 Ways To Save Money When Having A Baby Read More »

Gaby’s Birth Stories: Podcast Episode #77

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth, Pregnancy / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, birth story, birth support, childbirth, gold coast doulas, labor and delivery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

Gaby is a local business owner in Grand Rapids and talks to Alyssa about the birth stories of both of her children. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas podcast. I am Alyssa and I’m excited to be here with Gaby today. How are you?

Gaby: Hi, I’m great, Alyssa.

Alyssa: So we met a couple of months ago?

Gaby: Yes.

Alyssa: Was it the Mom Brain meet up?

Gaby: We did, yeah.

Alyssa: Yeah, and we got to talking about your lovely little bridal shop. I shouldn’t call it little, we’ll talk about that in another episode. But you have three children?

Gaby: I have two.

Alyssa: Two children.

Gaby: And a fur baby!

Alyssa: But you didn’t birth that one!

Gaby: Yeah, no.

Alyssa: I just wanted to talk about your stories. So our moms who are pregnant love hearing positive birth stories and it’s not to say that even though your birth story – the outcome may be positive, but there weren’t crazy things that happened along the way.

Gaby: Yeah.

Alyssa: I think there are so many people telling you, oh, just wait until… You know? And they tell you negative things about pregnancy, about labor and delivery, about postpartum, and then every year as your kid grows, oh, you just wait until… So I like to give our listeners some positive stories. So tell me about your kids. How old are they now?

Gaby: I have two kids. My oldest, Aurora. She’s going to be six this year. And my youngest, Andreas, he’s going to be three this year. They’re a good amount apart, but still kind of fighting the ages right there.

Alyssa: Yeah. What was it like having a three-year-old and a newborn?

Gaby: She had just surpassed the age of needing me 100% of the time. She was starting to be independent and she was very involved and loving, but there was still that balance of like, she’s still not 100% independent. But I like that space. I wouldn’t personally go any closer. I know I have friends and moms that are like, I just like to have my babies super close so that I’m having babies all at the same time. And I’m like, that sounds very overwhelming!

Alyssa: I think it’s very overwhelming in that stage. I was actually just talking to a girlfriend today who did that and she was like, It was so overwhelming! I don’t even know how I made it through. She goes, “But now, it’s so easy. They’re all within the same age range and they’re all independent. And they all just go play outside for two hours together.” So I can see the beauty of both ends, I guess.

Gaby: Yeah and now since she’s a little bit different, she’s still kind of interested in what he’s interested in, and can also watch him a relative amount of – you know, she’s kind of on the lookout a little bit. So she’s enjoying that responsibility of like, I’m in charge and don’t do that.

Alyssa: Oh yeah, my daughter’s six and she would love to be a big sister.

Gaby: Yeah. She’s like, don’t do that. Or she’ll run inside like, “Mom!” Okay, let’s go through the emergency levels here. Not everything is 100% red flag, our house is on fire, emergency.

Alyssa: So how were your deliveries with both of them? Were they pretty similar or completely different?

Gaby: They were relatively similar. I like to talk a look at all the possibilities and when I originally was planning to get pregnant and got pregnant, I was like, gve me all the drugs. Let’s set a date for the delivery, just give me all the drugs, and it’ll be quick and simple, and I’ll be in and out, and I’ll look great. You know, in a week I’ll be fabulous.

Alyssa: Instagram perfect, right?

Gaby: Yes! It’ll be fabulous! And that’s when I started reading up more on it and because of my tendencies already – so for example, my back has always kind of been sore, in pain, or more on the delicate side, and I started seeing the complications with medications and where they go and how they go and how they affect you. I started to explore a more natural way, more hands-off, with still keeping in mind, If I need it, that’s open. So not ever being like, I don’t want it no matter what. But just being like, I want to go in with the mindset of as much hands-off as possible. And then with the nurses and the doctors, because I trusted them if it really needed to be done, or if I needed medication or an intervention, then I was okay with doing that. And it was relatively – the pregnancy itself, I was sick! Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick! I think I lost weight until the last couple of months. And she was right on time and it was a relatively – I don’t know if it’s long, but it was almost like 12-20 hour from start to finish. But I think the active labor was maybe 6 hours? I was in a lot of pain. It seemed like, I can’t even tell you how long it was, but the active labor wasn’t that long.

Alyssa: Did you end up begging for an epidural?

Gaby: No, I didn’t. What ended up happening is they gave me Stadol at the last stages because I was refusing to sit down, to lay down, because it just hurt so much more. So when the contractions started they put me in a little tub, but as it started to get more intense I just couldn’t be sitting down. So most of the labor my partner and I were just on our feet. So I would be on my feet and then the contraction would come and I would obviously just collapse and he would just kind of hold me. Like underarms hold me through the contraction. Then the doctor’s like, you need to rest! You’ve been on your feet most of the labor. And I was like, I can’t, it hurts! They’d try to lay me down and I’d be like, “No!” It was just not good. It definitely helped me rest once I took the medicine and I don’t want to say it took the pain away, but it definitely helped ease the transition from standing up and the anxiety of like, If I lay down, it’s going to hurt more. She came and it was everybody focus! Don’t talk to me, focus! And she was delivered. There weren’t any complications. She came out great and everybody in my family waited until we were in the other room to come in.

Alyssa: Yeah, I was going to say, who was in the room with you?

Gaby: Just my partner at the time. Yes, I was very adamant about that. In fact, my grandmother tried to come in a couple of times and she was like, do you need anything? And I’m like, There’s nothing you can do! Please, I need some space. And I think it really helped me focus in the moment and just continuously tell myself, your body is meant to do this, to go through it, don’t panic. I just had to be like, don’t panic, just breathe in. You’re supposed to do this. If something were to go wrong, someone’s going to tell you if something’s wrong, they’re going to intervene. But as long as they’re just like, hey, everything’s okay! I’m trusting my environment and my body that this is what it’s supposed to do.

Alyssa: So was that intentional decision to only have you in your partner in the room for your first baby?

Gaby: Yes.

Alyssa: Because you wanted to focus.

Gaby: Yes and I feel like I would get distracted. And my mom, I love her to death, she’s great. She actually works in the emergency room. She’s an interpreter. But when it comes to family emergencies, she gets really panicky. And at that time with my daughter, she was actually in Florida, so it wasn’t too bad. It was just my grandma kind of coming in. And I think after the second time, I was like, I will see you when it’s done. Please, I’m fine. There’s nothing really. I guess in my head it’s kind of like, what can you really do? And I have friends that have everybody in there. Like a photographer and the neighbor. They’re great, they love it. They just want all the hugs and kisses and I just want everyone like, we’re here to work. We’re here to get from A to B, but we’re going to do it. So I told everybody, you cannot be out until I’m in the next room. And for the most part, they listened.

Alyssa: Minus grandma, twice.

Gaby: Minus grandma! I think she was just – you know, I think it’s definitely shocking. Your loved ones want to like, how can I make it better?

Alyssa: Well how did your partner react? Because often times they’re the ones who, you know, I want to fix this. I want to help and there’s nothing I can do.

Gaby: We had been together for a while and I definitely have a – in my life in general, when I’m sick I have the same kind of reaction. So he kind of knew that I was going to need specific help and we kind of were like – he knew. And he knew that if I needed something I would ask or that for example, really he was just there literally as a support because I was on my feet. And then the next time he was just there to make sure – I was like, I just need you to make sure that if I cannot vocalize what I want, this is what I want. That we have decided together. And he was just kind of there, vigilant, just checking, which kind of also brought me a little bit of peace of mind. Like, I have someone that isn’t trying to deliver a baby. I think they were 7.8 and then my other one was like 8.7.

Alyssa: But in your head, you were probably like, this must be a 12-pound baby.

Gaby: Whatever is coming out, I’m doing it and he’s not and he can say, go through the checklist.

Alyssa: Right!

Gaby: I’m very – I like to take charge and so at that point, there was only one thing that I was going to be able to focus. We had talked about it and I think he definitely – I have a very like, don’t get close to me unless I need it kind of vibe when I’m in pain. But again, I just kept thinking, this is something that happens. That’s supposed to happen, that you’re meant to happen. Like, you’re body’s prepared for even though you’ve never personally gone through it before, but it’s supposed to kind of go this route.

Alyssa: So how did that affect baby number two knowing you’ve been through this before, you knew your pain thrthreshold did that help?

Gaby: I actually thought I was not as far along than I actually was. With both of them! So don’t time your contractions in your head. Make sure you’re using an actual timer. With my son, when I got in they were like, do you want medication? Do you want some Stadol right now? I was like, Oh, no! I still have time. I’ve only been here a couple ho ofurs. With my daughter, I was here, it wasn’t until like midnight or you know, until I got Stadol, so I still have a couple hours of labor.

They didn’t say anything, they were like, okay, fine. You don’t want medicine right now, we understand. And then when it started getting worse and I was like, okay, I’m ready!

Alyssa: Give me some!

Gaby: And they were like, you’re too far along. And I’m like, wait, what do you mean? It hasn’t been that long. I had already labored outside of the hopsital longer and I must have been dilated much faster, obviously, because it was my second.

Alyssa: Right.

Gaby: So it was kind of a shock to me like, wait, I’m not – this is going to happen without anything. So with my son, I didn’t have any medication. And he just kind of – I don’t think the doctor was a little – she didn’t even have time to put gloves on. ‘Cause when they were like, you don’t need medication, you’re far along. I’m like, oh. And then a little bit after that, like less than 30 minutes, I was like, it’s time! You have to wait until you feel pressure. I’m like, yes! I’m checking it off, yes. And they’re like, no, it’s going to be a little bit. And then the doctors come in so relaxed. They’re so relaxed. And I’m like, ma’am. You should probably move along. And she sits on her little stool and I’m just kind of watching her like, she shouldn’t be this calm because I’m feeling it. It’s coming. She’s coming. And she literally turns around and she’s like, let me put my gloves on. And I’m like, nope! And she’s like, what do you mean? And she’s like, oh my God. And she just – she’s like, okay. And she catches him – he comes out.

Alyssa: No gloves? No time.

Gaby: She didn’t have time for gloves.

Alyssa: Oh my gosh.

Gaby: Yeah.

Alyssa: So I mean it kind of was a totally different experience. I mean, very quick.

Gaby: Yeah.

Alyssa: You probably wouldn’t call it painless, but it was a lot less drawn out.

Gaby: No. It was a lot less drawn out pain and I don’t know if I was – I don’t want to say I was used to the pain. I was in pain – like the muscles on the inside of my legs had decided they were too sore the whole pregnancy, so I was in a lot of pain consistantly. Kind of like jolts of pain. I don’t know if I was used to pain and then it was a faster delivery and he was just kind of like, I’m ready. And he just slid right out.

Alyssa: Do you think that as first time moms, since we don’t know what to expect, our brains kind of tell us that it’s going to be worse than it is?

Gaby: I think it definitely contributes to that and sitting down and talking to friends – the stories are not there for us. Like my friends and I are not like, I wish somebody would have sat down and talked about the actual labor. Honestly, not in a, I’m going to scare you. Not in a warning, not in a, don’t get pregnant because then labor’s painful. But in a, let’s go through everything, compare notes. So that you can be at least aware of what actually happens. Be prepared for the pain. As women, we have pain every month. Some of us more than every month. I think we’re much more capable, but we have this background fear of labor and delivery.

Alyssa: What are a few of those things that you would say to a new mom who has no idea?

Gaby: I think that mostly would be educate yourself with actually facts. Educate yourself in how you yourself react to pain in just your everyday life. Are you squimish? Are you not squimish? How your partner does that? How are you going to communicate? Some people can’t communicate when they’re in pain. Does that need to be talked about beforehand? You can bring your $200 ball to sit on, but I could not sit on the ball. It wasn’t mine. I didn’t pay for it, so I was grateful that I didn’t invest in a birthing ball that I didn’t need. So there’s going to be so many switches. Just kind of learn to be a little bit more go with the flow, ‘cause in the end – I want to say it’s like the baby in your body that’s going to be in charge of what happens. I just kept telling myself like, just breathe. Breathe through it, not because it’s going to minimize the pain, but because it’s going to help focus where I’m going out of the pain.

Alyssa: Sounds like you could have benefited from our hypnobirthing class. It’s like learning physiologically what’s going to happen. You know, what’s going on in your body, what’s happening during a contraction, what’s happening during active labor, but then like you said – so you’re ahead of most knowing that, let’s talk about how I deal with pain and how I process things. Do I like to be touched? Do I not like to be touched? Do I hold all my tension here? So knowing that and talking to your partner about that ahead of time is a big part of what the hypnobirthing class is about. Let’s focus on these things and practice how are we going to deal with that when we’re in this situation.

Gaby: Yeah and you definitely have to – we work so hard in preparing the room, and the baby, and all the stuff, but that moment is so small comparatively speaking, but it’s so intense. And it can leave such a big mark if it gets too complicated. So I feel like being prepared for a lot of stuff makes the load a little bit lighter. ‘Cause you already have the answers and you know what to expect. I didn’t realize that my doctor wasn’t going to be there until the very end. This whole time I’m like, I want my doctor. I’ve known her for a million years and we’re best friends. They didn’t call her until the end. Then when I realized, the nurses were just fabulous. They’re the ones that are going to take care of you. So it’s great to have a great relationship with your doctor, but going into where you’re going to give birth and seeing the support and the nurses – the support staff, I guess depending on where we give birth, they’re going to be there for the long run. They’re really invested in you because they’re there with you the whole time.

Alyssa: Yeah. Labor and delivery nurses are amazing.

Gaby: Yeah, yeah. I was kind of worried that – because I wasn’t going to be in a hospital, they were going to be like, we’re going to wire you up and we’re going to put all the juices in you. And I was like, I don’t want -. But it wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t feel forced into a certain way that they were doing things.

Alyssa: Well, is there anything else that you would love to share?

Gaby: I just wish we would trust our decisions more and be more confident in what we can handle, as far as labor and delivery. Again, if you want that support group there around you, and you know you need it, and that’s how you’ve been your whole entire life like you want mom, and aunt, and everybody, and the dog, that’s great. But if all of a sudden because you’re giving birth everybody wants to sign up and come and take pictures, don’t do it. It’ll be a good first start to parenting and being with family. It’s not about you not loving or caring, or that you don’t want them involved ever in the life of the baby, but that is such a critical moment that you can’t have extra people that you’re really not going to ulitize or that you’re going to feel like you’re trapped in that room for a long time.

Alyssa: Yeah, so often family members can make us feel – like guilt us into doing things that we don’t feel are right. And this is, like you said, the first step in a very long journey of parenting where you have to do what’s best for you and your family and not everybody else.

Gaby: Right. I probably would have been mad to see my sister on her phone while I’m mid contraction.

Alyssa: Right! You better not be posting anything to Facebook.

Gaby: Yeah. Like, how can you be relaxing? I’m mid contraction! You know, let’s not get angry. Let’s just focus on that.

Alyssa: I did the same thing, so I totally understand.

Gaby: People are so hesitant to say – They don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings and I think it’s – now that we’re learning a little more emotional tintelligence, think we can put responsibility on both parts. One to say no and the other part to understand. Hopefully everybody understands if you want to draw that line.

Alyssa: Well, thank you so much for sharing.

Gaby: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Alyssa: We will have you on again. I want to learn a little bit more about your business and what it’s like. I love talking to moms who are business women as well.

Gaby: Yeah, I can’t wait.

Alyssa: Thanks, everyone for listening. You can find us on iTunes and Sound Cloud. Again ,this is Ask the Doulas. You can find us at goldcoastdoulas.com, Instagram, and Facebook. Thanks for listening.

Gaby’s Birth Stories: Podcast Episode #77 Read More »

Jamie’s Breastfeeding Experience: Podcast Episode #76

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Breastfeeding / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, breastfeeding, breastfeeding consultant, breastmilk, gold coast doulas, lactation, lactation consultant, postpartum doulas, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

Jamie Platt, Birth and Postpartum Doula with Gold Coast Doulas, tells us about three completely different breastfeeding experiences with her three children. This podcast was recorded over a year ago, and Jamie is now a certified lactation counselor. 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 for today, and today we have a special guest, Jamie. Hello!

Jamie: Hi!

Alyssa: Thanks for coming! So we were talking the other day, and you’ve had three really, really different experiences with breastfeeding with your three children. Tell us a little bit about your three kids and how breastfeeding went differently for each of them.

Jamie: Sure! So I have three children. My oldest son, Noah, is 14. And then my two younger children are five and three. So I was a young parent and gave birth to my oldest, Noah, when I was 21. My breastfeeding journey with him was very short and limited. I knew I wanted to breastfeed, and I received a manual pump, I remember, at my baby shower.

Alyssa: Did you even know what it was?

Jamie: No! No one ever showed me how to use it. I knew what it was for, and that’s it. And I remember in the hospital, no one ever gave me any tips about breastfeeding. It was expected that I was going to breastfeed. My mom breastfed all three of us for over a year. It was challening not knowing what to do with breastfeeding. The funniest story I remember from that journey was, since I was young, I went back to work right away. I was coaching volleyball at the time, and I went to a tournament and coached all day. I didn’t bring a pump; I didn’t know that I was supposed to be pumping this whole time.

Alyssa: That’s what this whole manual pump was for!

Jamie! Yes! And I looked down during a break at a game, and my shirt was all wet! I had leaked through my shirt, so I had to put a sweatshirt over me, and of course, it was so hot in the gym all day. And shortly after that, I stopped nursing. I don’t recall how old my son was, but it had to be within a month or two. And so I wish, looking back, that someone had sat down with me, shown me what I needed to do to nurse and to pump, but that didn’t happen.

Alyssa: Do you think that it lasted such a short period of time because — I mean, did your milk supply just dry up because you were back at work and not pumping? Or did you just say, I’m so over this; I’m just going to stop?

Jamie: It’s hard to remember the details. I just remember stopping. I was in school at the time and working, and just one day, I stopped.

Alyssa: So a lot of things all mixed together, I’m sure.

Jamie: Yeah. So when my second child was born — he’s five now — I knew I wanted to do things differently. I was older and wiser; knew a little bit more about breastfeeding, but still not enough to know what to do in certain situations. I nursed him until he was about 18 or 19 months old.

Alyssa: Wow! So you learned a lot more, then. I mean, in nine years time, to go from one month to 19 months.

Jamie: True. There were just a few different barriers along the way. I was a single parent, so I went back to work when he was around three months old. However, he wouldn’t take a bottle at the time, so with that situation, my sister came to my home and was watching him for me, but she would bring him to my work, or I would quick drive home on my break just to feed him, and that lasted a good one or two months. And I knew what to do at the time, as far as I was trying different bottles, but I did feel quite alone trying to figure this out. And then while working, I pumped for over a year. Another obstacle I had to overcome was with coworkers. A friend of mine told me that a coworker complained to my manager that I was still pumping, and my child had reached a year old, so I shouldn’t have these pumping breaks anymore. And the manager never said anything to me, but I had heard this through the work grapevine. I also had an experience around the time he was a year old with his pediatrician at the time. We went in for his one year well child check, and they ask you if you have any questions. And I asked about nighttime feedings. I think that’s a popular topic. He was still feeding through the night, and it didn’t bother me, but at the time, I thought it was something to bring up. The pediatrician told me that I had to stop nighttime nursing immediately, that she had done it with her kids; he’ll be fine, that he was going to get cavities — which we know from research that that is not true.

Alyssa: Cavities from breastmilk?

Jamie: Yes, during the night. That’s still kind of a popular myth that’s out there. And the big thing she told me was that he wouldn’t be potty trained by the time he was eight, and that sticks into my mind because she chose the year eight.

Alyssa: Okay, that’s really confusing. If you breastfeed your one-year-old at night, they won’t be potty trained when they’re eight?

Jamie: Yes. So this wasn’t our usual pediatrician; she had stepped in. And immediately after she told me these things, I wanted to leave. I stayed, but she could tell that there was a problem because I was silent. She asked me if there was anything wrong, and I said yes, I don’t agree with anything that you’re saying! The visit ended shortly after that. I was kind of angry that she was telling me these things because I knew better. So I called my dentist’s office, and I asked them about the cavities with breastfeeding. I reached out to other individuals that I knew were very knowledgeable about breastfeeding and asked them different questions, and I ended up looking up scholarly articles, anything that had to do with research, that I could bring back to her and tell her that she was wrong. I ended up calling the office a few days later. I had all my stuff in front of me when I called. I spoke to the manager, and I ended up speaking to the pediatrician. I remember telling her that I felt sorry for her patients that believed everything she told them. I said, “I am an educated person, but some people might not know as much about breastfeeding or they don’t know to do the research about it before making a decision, and they would go along with what you said.” And she apologized. She said she had no research to back up the potty training claim.

Alyssa: Oh, wow.

Jamie: And she did end up sending me something in the mail, as well. Ever since that encounter is when I became passionate about breastfeeding and being up to date on the research about it, sharing with others about it.

Alyssa: And you joined several lactation support groups, correct? You belong to a couple now?

Jamie: I am on a couple of local Facebook groups about breastfeeding, and I talk to a lot of my friends about breastfeeding. I just really want to educate people more about it, after that encounter. So that’s just when I really started to delve into researching more about breastfeeding and the benefits that it has for both mother and baby.

Alyssa: So what happened after the pediatrician visit and you realized that information was wrong? Did you continue nighttime feeds?

Jamie: I continued nighttime feeds.

Alyssa: No cavities, and he potty trained?

Jamie: No cavities, and I left that office and found a new pediatrician. He’s a healthy, happy little boy. He did end up weaning on his own because I was pregnant with my youngest at the time, and I could tell that had something to do with that. But I was the working, pumping mom. I brought my pump to work every day. And it is a lot of work to pump at work, making the time to take those breaks. I worked in a busy medical office, and it is hard to say, “I need to do this for my child,” when you know that other people are picking up your slack for a little bit. But I think if, as a culture, we all realize that breastfeeding is good for mom; it’s good for babies; it’s good for our society.

Alyssa: And aren’t there studies that say that women who breastfeed actually overall have a better sense of self-esteem, better sense of self, almost? Like, they are actually more productive, even though we like to look at them and say, oh, well, I have to pick up your slack while you’re pumping? Well, you know what, because you’re pumping, you actually are more productive when you are working. Does that make sense? I swear I’ve read things about that.

Jamie: I’m not sure about that, but I do know that research shows that mothers miss less work because their babies are sick less and they’re not taking their kids to the doctor. So it’s better for the economy overall. We actually save millions of dollars; the United States saves millions of dollars every year through moms breastfeeding, so it’s important that you support your coworkers if they’re nursing. It’s for a relatively short time in the grand scheme of things, and it’s great to also find those breastfeeding buddies at work. I had other moms that nursed. I had my nice, double electric pump, and it hurt when I pumped, but I never could figure out why, and finally I complained about it to a coworker who was also pumping. She was a little more experienced mother, and she helped me realize that part of my pump was too small.

Alyssa: Were the nipple shields too small?

Jamie: The flanges were too small, yeah, so I had to buy new ones, and that made a world of difference. So it’s really helpful to find a more seasoned breastfeeding friend who can help you along your journey, because there’s lots of little things that you may not know about.

Alyssa: Or a lactation consultant, right, if you get into those serious binds?

Jamie: Yes. Thankfully, I’ve never had mastitis or a clogged duct, but if I did, I definitely would have called a lactation consultant for help.

Alyssa: So tell us about your third child. I think your youngest has been a little bit longer, so tell us how that journey went.

Jamie: Yeah, so my daughter turned three on Halloween, and I am still nursing her. So this is definitely another new experience for me. I would never have imagined I would be nursing a child for this long. I have realized that I did have some preconceived notions about extended nursing; maybe some judgmental thoughts about it, as well. And I honestly still struggle a little bit with those internally myself as I’m still nursing, thinking, man, you know, you should really stop; you should be done. And while I would love to be done, I do want my daughter to wean on her own. I tell myself I am decreasing my risk of ovarian cancer every time I nurse! Even when you nurse your baby longer than the one or two years, it’s still healthy for Mom and it’s still healthy for Baby, and it’s been a very different experience doing this.

Alyssa: So tell people what it looks like. Having a three year old; it’s not going to be nursing every three hours. Is it a nighttime feed kind of thing, or when she’s sick or tired? Is it more like a comfort thing almost at this point?

Jamie: It is more of a comfort thing. She nurses at night. However, I’ve been on three or four extended trips, and by extended, I mean I’ve been gone for four to six days at a time at conferences, and thinking every time I leave, this will be our last nursing session, and I come back and I don’t bring it up, but she still wants to nurse. So it is usually just at night; if she’s feeling sick, then she’ll nurse a little bit more.

Alyssa: And you don’t lose your milk supply after six days of being gone with no nursing?

Jamie: I did not. The first time I went away, she had just turned two, and it was the first time I had ever been away overnight from her, actually, when she was two. So I did bring a pump with me, but I didn’t produce a lot when I pumped, so I knew that for my next trip, I wasn’t going to bring a pump with me. But I still have a supply, and I was lucky enough with her, as well, to stay home with her for almost the first full year and nurse, and that was just a blessing. I hadn’t been able to do that before with a child, and it was so nice not to have to pump for that time! And then right around a year is when I started nursing school, and so I would pump when I was away from her. And I finally decided to stop pumping. Pumping is so hard! If you’ve done it, you know! And we’ve just been nursing ever since.

Alyssa: Well, it sounds like a lovely plan. You know, you say you had maybe judgments about nursing for that long. What still bothers you that you think shouldn’t, or what have you had to tell yourself to get those thoughts out of your mind?

Jamie: It’s still hard to get over the way our culture thinks about breastfeeding. That you shouldn’t breastfeed in public; Mom should cover up; anything over a certain age is gross or weird, or why are you doing that? Once they have teeth you should stop; once they start talking and can ask for it, you should stop. All these different things our culture tells us about breastfeeding is a little backwards. We know, if we went to a different country or a different culture, that things are definitely different than they are in the United States, but it’s just the media that always sexualizes breastfeeding as well, and you grow up with that. So you’re growing up in this culture that sexualizes breasts, when we know that you use them also to breastfeed your child! And so for me, it’s just getting past those thoughts that I’ve had growing up about breastfeeding and just telling myself this is normal and it’s okay to do. It’s not hurting anyone. It’s my decision as a mother. It’s been a really neat and wonderful journey that I never though I’d be on.

Alyssa: Well, and I imagine nursing a three-month-old and a three-year-old, you’re probably not going to attempt to breastfeed your three-year-old in public. Or have you?

Jamie: I don’t, but she doesn’t ask to, either.

Alyssa: So it’s almost like you guys have this unspoken thing; that it’s something in private that you two do together, and I’m sure it’s still this amazing, beautiful bonding experience, just like it is with a newborn.

Jamie: Definitely a strong bond, and again, I as a mother and a parent and working, I did reach a time where I wanted to be done. I’m like, okay, we can be done with this now! But I’m just letting her take the lead with it, and I can tell you that I do hope she’s done relatively soon! I have another week-long trip coming up in three weeks.

Alyssa: Maybe that will be it?

Jamie: Yeah, we’ll see if that’s the end of our journey.

Alyssa: You know, I wonder culturally, too, if it was a son who was three, would it be different, because of the sexualization of breasts? Would it be different if it were a boy? I don’t know; can they remember that at three when they get older? I don’t know. Just a thought that I wonder if that would make a difference.

Jamie: I’m not sure. I’m sure that for some people, a boy versus a girl breastfeeding is different. I’ve had people very close to me tell me I should stop breastfeeding. This was with my middle son when he was around six months. I was still nursing, and I got asked, when are you going to stop? He’s six months old! And I tried to throw all the evidence-based research at them to show them that this was still okay; the AAP and WHO, all these big organizations say you should breastfeed until one. And so then I got to one, despite people telling me to stop. I just pretty much ignored them because I can be stubborn like that, and when he turned one, I got the same comments again. When are you going to stop? And it’s funny that once I just plowed through all the negativity and judgmental comments, I haven’t had those same comments with my last child, because I think those people know — well, obviously, she’s three now, but when she was younger, they knew I was going to continue breastfeeding her for as long as I wanted to. So people may not talk about it a lot, but I have had the challenges at work with comments from people; I’ve had people very close to me have very negative comments about breastfeeding, and you see all the big media stories that just happen to pop up because social media is so prevalent now. It is everywhere, but there’s all those things that women that you know may be experiencing but they don’t talk about it. It doesn’t reach the news. And so we really need to support everyone in their own breastfeeding journey because you don’t know what someone may be going through.

Alyssa: Right, and I think as postpartum doulas, we have a unique experience and a unique opportunity to deal with this with new moms right when they come home with their babies, to really help support them. Maybe we are that one person who’s cheering them on, in the face of everyone else who’s saying, why in the world would you do that? Or isn’t that weird? I remember having friends saying things that were trying to make it sexual when it’s not at all! It’s something you can’t even describe to someone who doesn’t understand, this crazy bond. And I get that. Like, you so want to quit; some days, you’re just like, God, when is this going to be done? But then when it finally is, you don’t get that back! And then you actually kind of miss it. It’s like you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. And I do; I think back on it. My daughter just turned five, so it’s been a long time since she breastfed, but I think back to those days, and there’s nothing like it.

Jamie: One of the things that I really love about being a postpartum doula is the fact that I get to help mothers with breastfeeding. That’s something I really enjoy, especially — they may have gotten some help from the lactation consultant at the hospital, but when they get home, that’s another ballgame. Problems can start to arise. They don’t feel confident anymore. They think their milk’s not coming in. So it’s really a blessing to support them.

Alyssa: That’s one of the biggest fears for moms, I feel like, who are breastfeeding, is how do I know that the baby’s getting enough milk? How do I know that the latch is right? How is this supposed to feel? There’s just so many questions about this thing that’s supposed to be so natural. Like, we have boobs to breastfeed and it should be so natural, but it’s sometimes one of the most frustrating and difficult parts of having a baby, I feel like.

Jamie: Definitely. I would strongly recommend, if you are having problems with breastfeeding, there’s a lot of community support right in our own area. There’s breastfeeding support groups from the hospitals; Le Leche League; we have wonderful lactation consultants in our area that will go to your home. So it’s really important to utilize the resources that you have and reach out for help.

Alyssa: Shira is our in-house lactation consultant, and having that consult in your home: it’s quiet; it’s one-on-one. There’s nobody in the hospital coming to check your blood pressure and poke and prod you. She spends two hours with them at that first visit, and she really gets to know you and what’s going on and figure out a solution. So I feel like, yeah, that’s — I wish; if only I had known Shira four and a half years ago!

Jamie: She’s very knowledgeable! I do have lots of friends who ask me questions about breastfeeding, but I have sent her a quick text to say, hey, this is out of my scope of knowledge; can you help me with this problem? And she helps me out.

Alyssa: I think it’s great to have the support of postpartum doulas, and you have even more extensive knowledge than I do because of all the groups you’ve been in and the research you’ve done. I’ve breastfed one child; you’ve done three. I feel like we can do only so much for clients, though. It’s good to know that they have a resource beyond our scope, to really help with the hard things.

Jamie: Definitely!

Alyssa: Well, thanks for sharing your stories! If anyone has questions about breastfeeding or more questions for Jamie, in particular, you can always reach us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com. Remember, these moments are golden!

Jamie’s Breastfeeding Experience: Podcast Episode #76 Read More »

HOW TO TAKE A SOCIAL MEDIA BREAK ON MATERNITY LEAVE

Parenting, Self-Care / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, birth support, gold coast doulas, mood disorders, postpartum, postpartum doulas, pregnancy, pregnant

We are so very excited to share this guest blog with you because not only is the author an amazing mother and entrepreneur, but she is also a past client. With over 10 years experience in social media strategy and digital marketing, Chris found her purpose after having her daughter. Pre-baby, she was a self-proclaimed “hustle-a-holic” with no intention of slowing down. Because of her failure to plan a proper maternity leave, she entered motherhood with all the grace of a knock-kneed baby giraffe. Biz Babysitters is the outcome of this struggle. Chris made it her mission to prevent as many women as possible from going through what she went through by supporting them postpartum.

The average person spends 142 minutes on social media every day. Seem low? Remember, this count includes your Grandpa who doesn’t know what a DVR is. For the average business owner, it’s not surprising that this number is higher by, um, a lot. And here’s the catch – for most of us, the amount of time we spend actually in our social apps pales in comparison to the amount of time we spend thinking about what to post. With such a huge importance and energy suck in our day-to-day lives pre-baby, it’s imperative for pregnant (or planning to be pregnant) business owners to consider what the heck they’re going to do with their social media in their postpartum before it arrives.

Just like every other step of the entrepreneurial journey, there’s no one perfect one-size-fits-all solution. Rather, it’s a customized series of decisions, based completely on your own preferences. You’ve got the power and you know yourself and your business best.

Today, I’m going to walk you through three options for logging off of social media in your postpartum time, as well as the potential pros & cons, and some recommended resources for taking action.

By now, we’re all becoming more and more aware of the negative effects of social media on our mental health. We’re also becoming more aware of perinatal mood disorders. With the two of these worlds overlapping postpartum, there’s a strong case for taking your business’ social media off your plate in your maternity leave.

Ready to get started? Here are your three options for logging off…

1. HIT PAUSE.

This is the most straightforward – it’s literally just stopping.

It’s a beautiful option for those whose businesses don’t rely on social media for lead generation or marketing. If you decide to go this route, I recommend giving your audience a heads up ahead of time and letting them when to expect you back. No one likes to be ghosted. A potential downside here is that an inactive account cannot build business and can start to gather dust (i.e. lower visibility) from your absence.

*Recommended resource: You

2. OUTSOURCE IT.

Hand off the reigns.

Outsourcing works well for those who want to keep a thriving social presence and continue garnering leads, but are unsure what their own capabilities will be in their immediate postpartum. When outsourcing, I recommend investing in an expert with a vetted system for onboarding to minimize the stress and time investment on your end.

*Recommended resource: Biz Babysitters

3. AUTOMATE IT.

Schedule it and step away.

This involves some legwork ahead of time, but keeps an active presence while freeing up some mental hard drive. For scheduling, I love the Later app, which can handle both Instagram and Facebook. It gets bonus points because you can use it from both Desktop and your iPhone. Automation is great for business owners who want to DIY it. The potential downside of automation is overwhelm and an increased temptation to “check in” (which is a slippery, slippery slope).

*Recommended resource: Later

The cool thing is that there is no wrong answer – just an array of selections that can all be customized to fit your exact, unique desires. The important part is to take your business’s social media, which can be an ever present monkey on your back, off your plate so you can focus on what’s important – your own healing during this important transitional time.

No matter which route you choose, you’re not alone. If you want support in your decision making, I’d love to chat. Reach out to me via DM on Instagram as @bizbabysitters.

In the comments, tell me… which of these three options calls to you most?

HOW TO TAKE A SOCIAL MEDIA BREAK ON MATERNITY LEAVE Read More »

EMDR Therapy: An Overview

Parenting, Self-Care / Alyssa Veneklase / gold coast doulas, perinatal mood disorders, postpartum, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnant

We are so excited to share this guest blog by Joshua Nave LLMSW and Paul Krauss MA LPC of Health for Life GR. We get asked frequently about EMDR Therapy, so read below to find out what it is and how it works!

This blog is a discussion of the basics of what Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is, its origins, and how it can help people. Many people have heard about EMDR in one fashion or another, and with over 2 million people reporting healing from its use (Trauma Center, 2007), it’s no wonder that more and more people are asking “Just what is EMDR?” So let’s begin with trying to answer just that: what is EMDR therapy?

EMDR therapy is a physiological psychotherapy technique that aims at unlocking the body’s natural ability to process information and heal from past trauma and current distress (EMDRIA, 2019). EMDR therapy seeks to access the process that the human brain uses during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) cycle of sleep to reduce the disturbance caused by memories, events, and thoughts that have become stuck or intrusively repeated in a person’s mind and/or behavior and personality. EMDR therapy is an advanced type of empirically-validated therapy that can be utilized by Masters-Level Counselors with specific advanced training (post-graduate school). Hundreds of studies have confirmed that when human beings are enduring great duress or stress, the brain becomes incapable of processing information as it normally does. While the brain may change its normal processing abilities to protect the person during a stressful situation–there are often negative side effects. Information that is not processed in a normal manner, due to a stressful or traumatic event can then become “locked” within the mind, and as the brain attempts to process that event, an individual may experience a repetition of the very stress, pain, thoughts, and other body sensations that they experienced during the original event(s).

EMDR therapy works on multiple levels of the brain, both incorporating talk therapy and elements of the rational brain, along with the deeper memory systems as well as the physical memory to allow an individual to access those “locked” stressful/traumatic events in a therapeutic environment– so that the effect on the brain is essentially “reprocessing” the stressful or traumatic event in an adaptive way that allows resolution of suffering. As the brain processes the event, individuals become able to embody with healthy and adaptive beliefs about themselves both from the past and during the current time, which can build long-term resiliency in an individual. In addition, EMDR therapy works to clear the body of disturbing physical sensations associated with the event, or what is sometimes called “the felt sense.” To this day, scientists and medical professionals have been unable to ascertain the exact mechanism of action that helps to change brain and body’s response to triggers and associated negative stimuli (all of the elements that make EMDR therapy effective), nevertheless study after study demonstrates its tremendous positive effect on people, and often shows improved outcomes over such therapies as CBT and traditional talk therapy. Counselors who utilize EMDR therapy often theorize that it is the use of rapid eye movement or other forms of bilateral stimulation (BLS) during the treatment, combined with the cognitive elements of counseling, which ultimately causes the stress reduction and adaptive processing to occur.

Francine Shapiro originally theorized the foundations of EMDR therapy in 1987 when she discovered that rapid eye movement could have a beneficial effect on reducing the effects of stress and the effects of traumatic memories (EMDR Institutive, 2019). Dr. Shapiro later went on to perform clinical trials to test her theories, and today, EMDR Therapy is a certified evidence-based approach to recovering from traumatic experiences. In addition, EMDR Therapy has been reported to be effective with anxiety, depression, panic disorders, addictions, body dysmorphic conditions, phobias, pain disorders, and more (Legg, 2017). Many people have sought EMDR Therapy as a method of treatment for these conditions instead of the traditional route of medication first.

Is EMDR Therapy right for you? If you suffer from repeating intrusive memories, feelings, body sensations, or thoughts of past disturbing events, or in fact, any of the symptoms previously discussed, then EMDR Therapy could assist you in your healing. If you are interested in receiving a different method of healing where you are in control of having the healthier life you’ve always wanted, then I encourage you to contact a licensed therapist who’s undergone EMDRIA approved training in providing EMDR Therapy services.

EMDR Therapy is an effective psychotherapy method when its methodology is followed by a licensed counselor. It is important to have the right fit for you, so when investigating, make sure you feel aligned with your therapist and that they are experienced and knowledgeable and have valid EMDR therapy training. If you’re interested in a free 15-minute consultation to either learn more about EMDR or to set up an appointment, please visit our website at healthforlifegr.com. At Health for Life Grand Rapids, we are now proud to have a counseling wing called The Trauma Informed Counseling Center of Grand Rapids. You can also give us a call at 616-200-4433.

References:

EMDR Institute. (2019). History of EMDR.

EMDRIA. (2019). How does EMDR work?

Legg, T. (2017). EMDR therapy: What you need to know.

Krauss, P. (2019). The trauma informed counseling center of grand rapids.

Trauma Center. (2007). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).

About the Authors:

Paul Krauss MA LPC is the Clinical Director of Health for Life Grand Rapids, home of The Trauma-Informed Counseling Center of Grand Rapids. Paul is also a Private Practice Psychotherapist, host of the Intentional Clinician podcast, Behavioral Health Consultant, Clinical Trainer, and Counseling Supervisor. Paul is the creator of the National Violence Prevention Hotline (in progress) as well as the Intentional Clinician Training Program for Counselors.

Joshua Nave MA LLMSW
“I became a social worker and ultimately a therapist to assist in God’s mission to bring healing to the hurt. Through my years of work in the field of trauma, behavioral health, and the broader social work field, I discovered that many of us are held back from reaching true healing by the traumas and lessons imparted on us in our early childhood. It has thus been my passion over the past several years to provide early childhood intervention to families struggling when their young children, as well as assisting adults in overcoming the barriers to healthy living through trauma-informed therapies. I have used my training in Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Play Therapy, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) to assist my clients in achieving a more complete and healthy life. It is my belief that all individuals have not only intrinsic value, but also the natural capacity for healing and change.

As a therapist, I provide my clients with a truly “client-driven experience.” I am skilled at partnering with you to identify the changes that you wish to make in your family’s life, or even your individual life, and developing a plan to achieve success. I look forward to partnering with you on reaching your potential through natural healing!”

EMDR Therapy: An Overview Read More »

Postpartum Support for Business Owners: Podcast Episode #74

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Doulas, Parenting, Postpartum / Alyssa Veneklase / breastfeeding, breastfeeding consultant, gold coast doulas, lactation, lactation consultant, postpartum, postpartum doulas, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

On this week’s episode of Ask the Doulas, we chat with Chris Emmer, owner of Biz Babysitters, about postpartum life and owning your own business. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa: This is Alyssa. I am recording with Chris Emmer again. Welcome to the Ask the Doulas Podcast. How are you, Chris?

Chris: Good, how are you?

Alyssa: So we talked to you about sleep before, and today we’re going to talk a little bit about being a mom in business and how that affected us. We were talking about this book you just read and the rage, the fire, that it lights under you about just how – I don’t know, would you say a mother in general, or would you say a whole family, is treated during pregnancy and how we’re just kind of disregarded during this postpartum time? And how we wish more was part of the whole process. You get pregnant, and you just get X, Y, and Z, instead of having to seek it out yourself and pay for it all yourself.

Chris: Right, that’s the biggest thing is that there is this huge lack of support postpartum. I guess I can only speak from my experience, but I felt like when you’re pregnant, you see the doctor every two weeks, and people open doors for you, and they smile at you, and you just hold your belly and you’re so cute. And then you have the baby, and it’s like wait, what? It’s just a complete shock, and it’s like, now is the time I need people to be nice to me! This is the hard part!

Alyssa: Yeah, you’re completely forgotten, and it’s all about the baby. Nobody’s holding a door open. I mean, how many moms do I see trying to struggle with a toddler in one arm and trying to push a stroller through a door, and I’m watching people walk by? I’m running up to her, like, let me get the door for you! Why are people just completely ignoring you?

Chris: Blowing past you like you’re not there, yes. Absolutely. So, I mean, I don’t know what your birth experience was, but there was a six-week checkup or an eight-week checkup, maybe, and at that appointment, my OB said, and I quote, “You are a normal person now. Go back to life as it was.”

Alyssa: Huh.

Chris: And I was like, but…

Alyssa: I’m not! And define “normal,” please!

Chris: How do you know I was even normal before? But yeah, and then that was it, and then she scheduled me an appointment for one year out or whatever, just a normal physical exam like you would have just as a person before kids. And that just felt so shocking and kind of, to be honest, just cruel and unjust. Like, you’re in this huge transition, the most incredible and important transition of your life, and the bottom drops out, and you’re completely alone there. And we know that mental health is a huge issue postpartum, and there was really no education on that besides circling which happy face you feel like today.

Alyssa: Yeah, we’ve been talking to pediatrician offices a lot because they oftentimes are the ones who see this mom and baby before the six-week checkup, so they’re the ones who are seeing this mom struggling with breastfeeding. She’s crying all the time. We can tell she’s not sleeping. Let’s talk about her mental health. Even though you’re here for me to see this baby, I’ll weigh the baby and do all the things I need to do with the baby, but let’s also ask Mom. So thinking about tests, you know, different tests and not just picking the smiley face; let’s really ask you some real questions. Because, yeah, six weeks is too long. It’s way too long to wait to see a mom, and then to tell her that she’s normal and to go home and go on with life. I mean, maybe somebody feels kind of back of normal again at six weeks, but sex is not the same at six weeks. You might not even be completely healed, especially from a Cesarean. Maybe breastfeeding is still not going well. How do I deal with these leaky boobs? What’s going on? Nothing is normal!

Chris: There is zero, zero normal, and I think in that circumstance, being told, “You’re normal now,” when on the inside you’re like, “This is anything but! I feel like an alien in my own body and in my own brain and in my life! Who am I?” You look in the mirror and honestly have no idea who you’re looking at, and to be told you’re normal, then it adds, I think, a layer of shame, because you’re like, oh, I’m supposed to be back…

Alyssa: They think I’m all right, so what am I doing wrong?

Chris: Yes, and then I think of the way that I handled that appointment. I probably just smiled and giggled and said, oh, thanks! Yay, I can chaturanga again! See you at yoga; bye! You know, and then just acted happy and normal, and then got in my car and cried or whatever happened next. But yeah, getting back to what we were originally on – now, I’m almost a year out, and I’m coming to a point where I can look back, and I’m processing all the different stages and reflecting on what everything meant, and I’m getting really obsessed with this transition and I’m soaking up all this literature on how we do it in other countries. My question for you is this: how do you come to terms with that? It feels so – I don’t know.

Alyssa: Just unjust?

Chris: Yes.

Alyssa: I think knowing that what we’re doing at Gold Coast is just a small, small piece of this pie, right? We’re one tiny piece of this bigger puzzle. I could look at the whole big picture and get really, really angry, but what can I do right here, right now, for my community? But then, even then, I’m like, okay, so, even in my community, there is just a small portion of people who can afford this because it’s not covered by insurance. So what about the rest of the community that I can’t help? So we just do the best we can. And every family that we support, we support them the best we can, and we know that we’re making a difference for those families. And then they’re going to, in turn, hopefully, kind of pay it forward, right? Like, either tell someone there’s this support available, or they’ll say, “I struggled too. I want to help you.” You know, my sister, my neighbor, my friend: be that support! Because maybe your neighbor can’t afford to hire a postpartum doula, but you have a group of friends who could stop over. You know, I’m going to stop over for two hours today. She’s going to stop over for two hours tomorrow.

Chris: That’s a really cool way to think about it, the ripple-out effect. Because you do need a lactation consultant; you need a sleep trainer. All these things; where the lack is in other areas, you end up having to find that somewhere else. So what about people who can’t afford these things? But I love what you said, that you could teach this one family this thing, and then you know that that mom is on a group text with, like, 15 other people. Like, I’m in probably five different group texts with different groups, like my cousins that are also moms, my friends from growing up that are also moms, and we’ll text each other pictures of things like a rash. The trickle-down image is cool to think about, that if you equip one family with the tools to do something, that they can then kind of pay it forward.

Alyssa: Yeah, and I think, too, about sleep. So I try to make my plans very affordable, but there’s always going to be people who can’t even afford the most affordable package, so I’m like, what can I do? Maybe a class. So I’m actually working on a class right now where I can give new parents some of this basic knowledge about healthy sleep habits. But again, like we talked with your sleep podcast, there’s not just one solution that works. So I don’t want people to think that by taking this class, they’re going to walk away and say, “I can now get my kid to sleep through the night.” I will give you the tools that I can that are generalized to children in certain age groups, but then from there, they kind of just have to take it on their own, if they can’t afford to have me walk with them and hold their hand through the whole process. But I guess it’s one step of, like, what else can I do to reach those people who maybe can’t afford everything? I think we’re just slowly working on it. We’re finding ways to infiltrate the community in so many different ways, whether it’s volunteering. We used to teach free classes at Babies R Us until they closed. That was another way that we could just get information into the community and let people know, you have options. You have a ton of resources in this community, and here they are.

Chris: That’s so cool.

Alyssa: Otherwise, yeah, you can get really, really mad about it.

Chris: Yeah, you can get really mad!

Alyssa: And I think that is the fires that burns. That’s what makes us passionate about what we do, because it is not fair that moms feel so isolated and alone once they have a baby. It’s not fair.

Chris: And then take that passion and turn it into something that can help people.

Alyssa: Yeah. So this kind of is a good lead-in to your new business because you, reflecting now back over the past year and owning your own business, and thinking, “Oh, I got this; I can do it all during my maternity leave” – even though you work for yourself and you don’t really give yourself a leave. Life still goes on; you still have emails to deal with and all your social media stuff, and looking back and saying, how can I help other moms when they’re going through this transition? So explain what you went through and what made you start this new business.

Chris: Yeah. So a little bit of background info: I have a social media business, so I do social media for a handful of clients, and when I was prepping for my ‘maternity leave’ last spring, I thought I was getting ahead of the game. I was, like, “Chris, you’re amazing! Look at you pulling it together!” I hired some people to my team. I started training them. I started onboarding them. I thought I had all my systems put together, and I thought everything was awesome. In my head, I was going to take at least one full month off, not even checking email, just completely logged off. In my head, I was, like, wearing a maxi dress in a field, holding a baby, effortlessly breastfeeding, with sunshine. It was going to be awesome. And then I thought that I would just slowly ease my way back in and maybe come back in September. In reality, what happened was I had a C-section. My water broke one week early and I ended up having a C-section, and in the hospital still, just hours after my surgery, I was doing clients’ posts on social media and doing their engagement because I hadn’t tested my team. I actually had a few people who I had hired who ended up just not working out. And so it all fell back on me because, as a business owner, it does. And so that was just in the hospital, and then getting home and starting to learn how to do, like, sleep training and breastfeeding and even just dealing with my own healing – that was more than a full-time job already, so I was trying to balance that with continuing to work. So there was zero maternity leave there, and that made my transition, which was already really pretty tough, a lot harder than it needed to be, and I can see that looking back. I’m like, whoa, girl. That was nuts. But at the time, it felt like the only thing that I could do. And so, like we said, looking back and seeing that, I’m like – it fires me up, and I don’t want anybody to have to do that. And I will do anything again to prevent that for other people. So when I see women who are pregnant and own their own business, I just want to shake them and tell them, “You don’t know what’s coming! You need to prepare!” Because I wish that somebody would have done that to me. But all I can do is offer to them what I wish I would have had. So I started a business now called Biz Babysitters, and what we do is we take over clients’ social media completely. So we can handle posting; we can handle stories; we can handle DMs, engagement, comments – literally everything. We can handle your inbox, as well, so that you can log off totally in your maternity leave. Because there is such a temptation to just bust out your phone, and there are so many things that you think, while you’re breastfeeding or raising a newborn, that you can quickly, easily do. You just can’t!

Alyssa: On that note – so I too was a breastfeeding mom, scrolling through my iPhone. I recently learned that there’s an increased risk of SIDS by trying to multitask while breastfeeding because you can get your kid in an unsafe position. Like, especially a teeny-tiny baby who needs to be held in the right position. They can suffocate on the breast. So that’s another reason for mom to just put your phone down.

Chris: Put your phone down!

Alyssa: Yeah, stop multitasking.

Chris: Two other things with that. One is the blue light that comes off your phone. If you’re shining that in your baby’s face in the middle of the night and then wondering why they don’t sleep or why you don’t go back to sleep? I would get up and breastfeed my baby and be scrolling through Instagram, and then I would lay down in bed exhausted but completely unable to fall back asleep, and I think it was because I was staring into a glowing blue light. And the other thing is just the mental health aspect of social media. There’s so many more studies coming out on this now, but Instagram is not good for our mental health. You’ve got to really clean up your feed and be intentional about it if you want Instagram or whatever app to not send you down a shame or comparison spiral. And I remember feeling, while spending hours and hours on Instagram and breastfeeding, that this whole world was out there happening around me, and I was watching all the fun things everyone was doing, and I remember just feeling like I was stuck in this one place. So I could feel the negative effects of being on social media in my immediate postpartum, very strongly. So I think that just acknowledging, like, maybe this might not be a great thing for you in a time when you are so tender and vulnerable.

Alyssa: So we had talked about this, and you had said, “I wish somebody would have told me all these things I needed postpartum,” and then you were looking back through old emails and you found one from me, saying, “Hey, you should take my newborn class.” And you were, like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m too tired.” And now you’re like, well, shoot, I wish I would have done that! So how do you tell moms who are pregnant and saying, just like you did, “I got this. I’m lining everything up; all the Ts are crossed; the Is are dotted; when I go on maternity leave, everything is done. I’m good.” And you’re saying, no, you actually need to prepare. How do we really reach people? You don’t know what you don’t know, so unfortunately, this mom isn’t going to know she needs you or me until she’s already in the thick of it and losing her mind and crying and saying she can’t handle this anymore. So maybe it’s just education? They need to hear it over and over and over again that this harder than you expect, and you have to prepare ahead of time.

Chris: Right. I don’t know! This is the hardest part, because you’re exactly right, you don’t know until you know, and I looked back this morning on that email that I had sent you, where I was like, eh, I think we’re good. We were so not good! Oh, my God! That’s the hardest thing, I guess. All you can do is share your story, and maybe it will connect with some people. But I think that a lot of it is, in that state of shock afterwards, to be there to help out, too, as sort of like a 911.

Alyssa: And we have that. You know, a lot of people call us. “We need postpartum help,” or, “I need sleep help.” And it is like, how soon can you start? But with your business, if I was a new mom and I was in the middle of this social media campaign, but you don’t know anything – like, how would a mom do that 911 with you?

Chris: Right.

Alyssa: Would that even work?

Chris: It would, because we’ve got systems set up, like our intake forms and everything. I mean, it wouldn’t be as effortless. You know, you would have to go through a lot of onboarding because we need to figure out your voice, your tone. A lot of it we can do just from stalking your account and everything that you already have out there on the internet, but yeah, there is a little bit of work that needs to go into handing off the reins to somebody. But I really like to tell people – this is the cheesiest – it’s a skill to chill. But it’s for real, especially for people who own a business. We are a weird breed of people where you don’t know how to relax because you’re so passionate about your business that a second that you have to breathe, you are probably dropping into your business. I don’t know. I was that way.

Alyssa: No, it’s true. I’m always on, and I think occasionally, let’s say an appointment cancels or I end up having an hour of free time. I find myself wandering, and I don’t even know what to do. What do I do right now? I just finished all my work because I was supposed to be doing this other thing right now, but I can’t get out of that mode to just sit and read or go for a walk. I’m trying to get a lot better at that. It’s beautiful out; I should go for a walk. But it is hard to get out of that mode and into chill mode.

Chris: Yes, so it takes practice because it’s shocking. And so I love to recommend to people to get started working together around 30 weeks. Go through all the intake forms; get everything put together, so that you can start your log-off at, like, 36 or 37 weeks. And in those last couple weeks, you can start to practice relaxing and see what it feels like to not check your email, and see what it feels like to not being in your Instagram DMs every 15 minutes. Fill in your vice of choice, but you can start to slowly – just like how you want to phase slowly back into working, you can slowly phase out of it. And you don’t know what’s going to happen towards the end of your pregnancy. You could go into early labor. You could want to nest so bad that you just wander around Home Goods for eight hours. So I love to tell people to start early; start around 30 weeks, then slowly phase it out. We can work out any kinks, and then you can practice for maybe a week, maybe two weeks, seeing what it’s like to be completely stepped back and completely relaxed. And I think that’s a great way to mentally and physically prepare for your immediate postpartum as well so that you aren’t tempted to jump back in. That little reaction you get with your thumb when you turn your screen on where it just goes to Instagram and you don’t think about it – you can start deprogramming that now.

Alyssa: That’s really smart. So for any moms who are listening to this and going, “Oh, my God. I need that. I’m a business owner and I’m pregnant.” Whether it’s your first or fourth, you can use this. How do they find you?

Chris: You can find me on Instagram, of course.

Alyssa: Of course. You have a beautiful Instagram feed. I love it.

Chris: I’m such a nerd for Instagram. I love it so much. So on Instagram, I’m @bizbabysitters. And you can find every other piece of information from that point. Instagram is the hub. And then bizbabysitters.com is the website. I also have a free maternity leave planning workbook for anybody who is coming up on your maternity leave and you’re not sure you want to work with somebody. This is totally free and a good way to just get started wrapping your head around a game plan.

Alyssa: And they can download that on your website, too?

Chris: Mm-hmm, bizbabysitters.com/freebie.

Alyssa: Lovely! Well, thanks for joining me today! Is there anything else that you want to say about either your business or this crazy mess of being a mompreneur?

Chris: I think it’s such an interesting, cool breed of women. And there’s so many more of us now! A big shift is happening, I think, and it’s really cool to be part of it.

Alyssa: I have a daughter, and so do you, so I think it’s really cool that as Sam gets older, she’s going to see you as your own boss. I think that’s really cool. My daughter knows that I own my own business and I am my boss, and I work when I want to work – and I’m going to get better at working less – but I just think it’s really cool and empowering. That, in and of itself, is really empowering.

Chris: It is! Julie, the postpartum doula at Gold Coast, left me a stickie note. She always leaves little stickie notes, and I save all of them. She left a stickie note that said, “You are setting a good example for your daughter.” And I was, like, tears!

Alyssa: Tears! Oh, Julie.

Chris: She’s the best!

Alyssa: Yes, we love her too!

Chris: So I guess also just a reminder that you’re not alone, even if you feel that way. We’re all feeling it.

Alyssa: So help a sister out. Stop this mom shaming stuff. You are no better than another mom, and don’t even try to make yourself look better than another mom. We’re all struggling in our own way, no matter what stage; six weeks or six years. We all have different struggles.

Chris: Yeah, and different areas of thriving, as well. We’re all in it together.

Alyssa: Thanks, girl!

Chris: Thank you!

Postpartum Support for Business Owners: Podcast Episode #74 Read More »

Podcast Episode #71: Bedrest Support

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / antepartum doula, gold coast doulas, postpartum, postpartum doulas, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

What the heck is an antepartum doula? Well, it basically means bed rest support for mothers who are high risk. But a bed rest doula can also help families that aren’t necessarily on bed rest. Maybe a mom needs help running errands, finding community resources, preparing for baby showers, putting away gifts, nesting! Listen and learn more about what an antepartum doula does! You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa: Hi and welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa.

Kristin: And I am Kristin.

Alyssa: Today’s question is what is an antepartum doula, and I think it’s a really good question. We actually just kind of changed this on our website recently because antepartum is such a strange word. It actually refers more to our bedrest doulas, so it’s before birth, whereas postpartum support is after you have your baby. Antepartum support would be while you’re still pregnant.

Kristin: Exactly.

Alyssa: Do you want to talk about the role of a bedrest doula?

Kristin: Bedrest doulas can support at home or in the hospital for clients who are on bedrest for a variety of reasons. They could be carrying multiples, or they could have placenta previa or preeclampsia like I did during my first pregnancy, and they just need to limit movement. So we’re there to help, whether it’s in the hospital or at home. We can help even with birth plans or if they want to take a childbirth class; we can help with childbirth preparation if they are in bed for a part or all of their pregnancy. On the postpartum end, some of our bedrest doulas have similar responsibilities to our postpartum doulas.

Alyssa: Yeah, I’m even thinking on the bedrest end — let’s say, especially with clients with multiples, you could be put on bedrest at 22 weeks. Think about having baby showers planned. How do you do baby showers? If you’ve already had your baby showers, how do you unpack all these gifts? How do you put these gifts away? How do you get a nursery ready? Day-to-day things; how do you get groceries? You can get Shipt from Meijer or whatever, but every little day-to-day thing. If you have older children, who’s getting them to school? Who’s helping around the house? There’s just so many things that you can’t do when you’re on bedrest. It’s a little bit different with postpartum because you can still do many of those things.

Kristin: But yeah, how do you prepare meals when you’re supposed to be in bed the entire time? How are you feeding and nourishing yourself? If there are prescriptions that need to be picked up, who’s going to do that if your partner is at work?

Alyssa: Yes. We can help you run errands. We can help you prep meals. We can bring you to doctor’s appointments. We can…

Kristin: Take your dog out!

Alyssa: Yeah, and help with older siblings. Put away gifts and organize the baby’s room and fix the closet situation that’s overflowing and falling over when you open the doors. All the things that we get around the 35 week mark when you feel like you’re nesting and you want to get everything done, and you can’t because you’re in a bed. So I think that’s probably some of the major things for bedrest support.

Kristin: Yeah, and certainly community resources if they need to reach out to anyone or prepare for resources; if Baby could potentially be premature, so different support groups and resources outside of their medical provider that they can rely on after the baby’s born. And then also the emotional end of it is huge. I know I was only on bedrest a short time, but it was a big, scary time in my life, and to have someone to just process that with and know that they’re supported and not alone in this journey, that they have someone.

Alyssa: It’s so isolating to be stuck in bed for weeks; sometimes months.

Kristin: I mean, to have someone to talk to!

Alyssa: And then, too, we can bring classes. Gold Coast offers so many amazing classes, and we can bring them to parents in their home for women who are on bedrest. So with all of our classes, for a minimal additional fee, we’ll bring the class to you and we can offer you a class in bed, literally.

Kristin: Yes, so for our multiples clients, we have Preparing for Multiples, so if you’re expecting twins or triplets and you’re on bedrest, we’ll bring the class to you so you’ll know what to expect. Same with the newborn class that Alyssa teaches; amazing to have that option. And breastfeeding.

Alyssa: Breastfeeding support; yeah, a breastfeeding class while you’re still pregnant, and then in-home support once you have the baby or babies. I think just bedrest support in general is so important, but people don’t know what it is, and the term antepartum still probably throws some people off.

Kristin: And in the hospital, it can get lonely as well. I had a friend who was on bedrest in the hospital for 20 weeks of her pregnancy, and it was her second child.

Alyssa: That sounds expensive!

Kristin: Yeah, she had a good insurance, luckily, but I kept sending her care packages because I lived in a different city than her and knew that she had to just be bored out of her mind. So bedrest doulas are here to support you whether you’re in the home or in the hospital through the remainder of your pregnancy, and from that point on, you can choose to have birth doula support if you want or plan for postpartum support, but sometimes clients just hire us for bedrest support alone.

Alyssa: If you’re interested in finding us, you can see our entire list of services on our website. We are also on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for tuning in. These moments are golden!

Thanks to Pediatric Dental Specialists of West Michigan for sponsoring this podcast episode!

Podcast Episode #71: Bedrest Support Read More »

Woman wearing neutral colors lays on a white bed cradling her baby bump

HypnoBirthing Baby – Wesley

Birth, Classes, HypnoBirthing / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, birth story, childbirth, childbirth classes, childbirth education, gentle birth, gold coast doulas, guided meditation, Hypnobirthing, pregnancy, pregnant, self-hypnosis

We love getting birth stories from clients! This is a beautiful story from one of Ashley’s HypnoBirthing students. Through all of the unknowns of labor and delivery for a first time parent, this mom describes her birth experience and how relaxing and keeping calm throughout eliminated any room for fear.

Wesley Thomas Sarazin was born 9-2-18 (13 days prior to EDD) at 5:02 pm. At 4:30 am on 9-1 was laying on the bed at my cabin and felt a pop/jolt feeling and thought my membranes released, but I stood up and no fluid was coming out. I went to the bathroom and had instead lost my mucus plug. I laid back down with my husband and had 2 contractions 20 minutes apart, but decent intensity. Since the cabin is about 1 hour and 15 minutes from home, I knew I wouldn’t feel comfortable laboring there and wanted to go home. Chris started to drive, and about 15 minutes before getting home I started to vomit. I got out of the car and fluid gushed. Surges were 6 minutes apart and lasting about 1 minute, with lots of back labor.

We got home and I took a shower, grabbed our hospital bags, and contractions were now about 5 minutes apart. I had wanted to labor at home for a while, but felt that I needed to head into triage because I was doing more vomiting and I felt like I needed to poop so I was afraid to try not knowing what my cervix was doing. I was 1cm and “soft” with baby’s head pretty low at the appointment just over a week prior. We got to triage around 9:00 am. I was still only 1-2cm but surges seemed quite intense and still no more than 5 minutes apart. They confirmed I had released my membranes and I was taken up to L&D by 10:00. I had some high BPs initially but they came down and stayed around 135/85 so they weren’t really concerned about pre-e. I was GBS neg.

Krista, my first nurse, was awesome. She has been in the field for 25 years. I’m a nurse so I wanted an IV in up front, because I don’t have great veins. I got in the tub right away and labored there for about 2 hours. I did not have to do continuous monitoring. They took an initial 20 minute reading (wireless in the tub) and then just traced me for 2 minutes each hour with the portable one. I purchased a bath pillow on Amazon and that made it more comfy. I listened to Rainbow Relaxation and some other YouTube/Amazon playlists that I had ready. I got out and dried off, and did some squatting. I hated the ball. I hated leaning forward; the sensation in my abdomen when leaning forward was less tolerable than the back labor. I had lots of rectal pressure the whole time, probably my least favorite part.

I had them check me at around 1:30 pm, and I had made it up to about 5.5cm and 90% effaced. I continued to labor, now mostly side lying with a peanut ball and some standing/squatting and rocking hips. Krista, the RN, told me to try to get through 4 surges in 1 position and then switch to another position; that it would help time go by, and for me it did. I would do about 3-4 surges and then switch. It gave short term goals to get through. Kind of like when you’ve got 10 more minutes to run but you think of it in five, 2 minute sections, just get through the next 2 minutes.

My husband, Mom, and sister took turns applying heat or ice to my back and some counter pressure. I also held heat or ice over my pelvis as it just felt like menstrual cramps. Between surges, I would tell myself to be “loose, limp, relaxed”. I continued with either Rainbow Relaxation or a really great birthing affirmations track that I had found on Youtube. My favorite affirmation was “My surges are not stronger than me because they ARE me”. Baby did have some late decels but was overall ok.

The first 5 hours I was barely monitored but had to be watched more closely at the end. About 2 hours later I was having natural expulsion reflex and I was about 7.5cm and 100%.

Doc finally came in and I was relieved when she didn’t leave, which encouraged me to know that things were likely happening soon. She was fantastic. Even the nurse commented that she has a very midwife-like approach and I felt totally comfortable with her. She put a warm wet towel on my perineum and did counter pressure during my surges. She told me to keep doing the natural expulsive pushing if it was happening even though I was not 10cm because baby was coming down well, at +1 station and tolerating it. She said, “You’re not going to rip through your cervix, your body knows what it is doing.”

After 20 minutes of active pushing, I was struggling to breathe because my urge to push was so strong it was hard to breathe in as much as I’d like. They threw a mask on me and had me push with 1 leg up through 2 surges and then switch and lean the other way to get baby to keep rotating. They got a little aggressive with how they had me push but at the time I was ok with it because I wanted him out ASAP! His head came in and out through several surges and once I popped that head through his body came all at once, such a relief.

During transition I almost asked for some nitrous oxide, but with knowing that the end was in sight, I just kept completely relaxing between surges. I didn’t have any drugs aside from IV fluids. The Doctor did do a pudendal block right before I pushed which I had never even heard of but am super thankful for. I didn’t have the “ring of fire” feeling that some people talk about.

I didn’t get post delivery pit, and had no issue with bleeding. Baby did about 2 minutes of delayed cord clamping, and then I donated the rest. He wasn’t pinking up well and neonatal needed to come. He had lots of fluid/mucus in his lungs and got deep suctioned. H also had to go on CPAP. Once he was looking better, they put him on my chest again, but unfortunately after a few minutes his color was not looking good and we had to call neonatal back for more CPAP and suction. He was threatened with the NICU and I told him to get his act together so he could stay and snuggle with me. I just kept talking to him from across the way. My husband and mom were right by his side as well. The 3rd try to my chest worked. He had mild signs of respiratory distress but his color was looking better.

The next hurdle was hoping his blood sugar was ok since he couldn’t try to latch until his breathing was stable. Luckily that was good! The only thing I would change about the whole process would be to slow down on the pushing because I think that would have minimized my tearing and maybe the baby wouldn’t have had as much fluid in his lungs.

We are in mother baby now, doing fine. He has been latching pretty well. He still is borderline tachypnic so Dad and I are taking turns holding him because he does better that way. No bassinet for him tonight.

I had my Husband, Mom and sister in the delivery room and am so glad they got to witness our awesome birth. The labor and delivery was hard but honestly not as hard as I thought it would be. It was different I would say, in regard to the back labor and rectal pressure. My husband called me a “gangster”. He said, “I don’t know how to say this the right way, because I know it wasn’t easy, but you made it look easy. It didn’t look like you were uncomfortable.”

Before labor and birth, Chris was a lot better than me about trying to use the HypnoBirthing lingo and shut down any negative birth stories that people would tell. We had several people (who are honestly GREAT people, so it surprised me) say to us, “Oh you’ll see once you get into labor, you’ll want an epidural,” or “You don’t get a trophy afterwards.” After a few of those statements, I just stopped telling people that I was going to try for a natural birth. Fortunately, my mother delivered 4 children without medication, so I had her encouraging me and my husband fully believed I could do it, more than I did.

I should say that the reason I took HypnoBirthing was because I believe that our bodies are made to do this. One of my friends, who’s biggest fear about labor was that she would go too fast and not be able to get an epidural, had read the book – Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and she gave it to me when she was done. That book further ingrained the message that our bodies are made to do this and a birth without fear will hopefully progress as it should. I think that is the most important part of preparing yourself for natural childbirth. I can honestly say I was never fearful at any point and had a beautiful, exciting, experience.

Most, if not all, of my preferences were met and I am so happy with my experience. I was up to the bathroom and walking around the room less than 2 hours after he was born, and I’m really not having any pain. Bleeding is appropriate without the dose of pit. Just trying to get some rest but being extra attentive though this first night because of my little guys breathing.

HypnoBirthing Baby – Wesley Read More »

Babies! Babies! I could watch these precious babies all day!

Pregnancy / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, childbirth, gold coast doulas, pregnancy, pregnant

Today’s guest blog comes from Jessica White of 4D Moments Ultrasound Studio.

Who does not love the sweet face of a brand new baby?! A dreamy smile…a big yawn…a goofy open-mouthed grin. Oh, or one of those precious baby stretches where their little lips pooch out and their knees pull up to their bellies and their arms stretch over their heads! Soooo cute!

When your new son or daughter is born, all those precious moments are absolutely priceless and each one makes you fall in love even more. Did you know that your baby is smiling and yawning and stretching inside the womb long before their birthday ever happens?

With the technology available in 3D/4D ultrasound, you can enjoy those precious moments during the second and third trimesters. Check out these peeks at 16 weeks, 28 weeks, and 40 weeks that were taken at 4D Moments 3D/4D Ultrasound Studio.

At 4D Moments, we provide elective ultrasound for early gender determination and amazing images like the ones you see here. We are not a medical facility so so you need to seek care from a medical professional before coming to see us. What we do provide is a unique and affordable experience from 12-40 weeks where you can bring friends, your baby’s older siblings, or the new grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa will be blown away to see their grandchild on our big screen television, sitting in our comfy viewing room, and say, “I sure wish they had this technology when we were having babies!”

Or maybe you want to plan a gender reveal party and give your family another memorable moment in the life of your tiny one. We can determine the gender as early as 14 weeks! Even if you had the blood test, we all know seeing is believing! Our accuracy is always over 99% and if we are unable to find it for whatever reason, we bring you back one time for no charge.

The oohs and ahhs that fill the room when that baby shows their face makes it worth every penny, and you and your family will have pictures and/or videos, but more importantly, memories to cherish forever. You’ll always remember the time you just got to come relax and spend some time bonding with your baby. I once had a mom tell me, “I’ve been really stressing about the big delivery day and losing patience through these last few weeks of the pregnancy, but seeing her on the screen today has given me the strength to get through it and reminded me what and who I am doing this for.” Wow! Seeing your baby’s face is therapy for the body and the soul.

What about dads? Some dads are already so well-connected with their unborn baby – perhaps talking, singing, and playing with them throughout the pregnancy. But some dads really struggle to find a connection. I have seen that connection unfold at our office when dad sees that adorable baby in such detail. He can even see the interaction when the baby responds to talking or tapping or music or big brother and sister pushing. I once had a dad who came late but I was able to wait for him. After he saw his son’s beautiful face with his cute little foot on his cheek, this dad nearly broke down. At the end, he said, “Thank you so much for waiting for me. What if I had missed that!?” Mind you, this was not his first child and he was still blown away by what he saw that night.

Some of my favorite memories are the few times I got to tell a family that they were having twins. Since most moms get an ultrasound from their doctor’s office in the first trimester, it does not happen often but every once in awhile, when the image first comes up on the screen and I see those two little heads, I get to be the one to let them know. Everyone takes the news a bit differently. One couple was so calm about it, not really surprised, and were just thrilled that it was a boy and a girl. Mom said, “That works for me. I get a boy and a girl in one pregnancy!” Another couple was completely shocked and it was so interesting to watch as they both slowly lost their minds as the waves of their new reality hit them one by one. “We can’t afford daycare for two, can we?” “We’ll have to get a different vehicle.” “How can I breastfeed two at a time?” When that couple left that day, I said, “This was a most enjoyable session for me, but I’m going to go on with my day and my life will be unchanged for the most part. However, you guys are going to walk out of here and your lives will never be the same.”

But twins and triplets are so fun to see! How they are positioned with each other and who is kicking who and where. A half hour to just enjoy your little ones before the busyness that comes after they are born is such valuable time.

My name is Jessica White and my husband and I opened 4D Moments in 2013 in Kalamazoo and then officially in Grand Rapids in 2017. As parents to 8 babies ourselves, this business concept just spoke to our hearts and we have been so heavily rewarded. The moms and dads who allow us to be a part of their life-changing journey of parenthood have our utmost respect and admiration. The love for these little ones is often palpable and I just love that I am allowed to witness it in such an intimate way.

Visit us at 4DMoments.com and check us out on Facebook because we are always running specials and we give away two free ultrasounds every month on our page. Call 269-384-BABY(2229) with any questions or to make an appointment. Come see your baby blossom!

3D Photo Credits: 4D Moments

Babies! Babies! I could watch these precious babies all day! Read More »

Your Trusted Birth Team

Birth, Parenting / Alyssa Veneklase / antepartum doula, babies, birth doula, birth support, childbirth, gold coast doulas, midwife, night nanny, night nurse, overnight doula, postpartum, postpartum doulas, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, sleep consultant, spectrum health

We all know that becoming a parent is difficult, but most first time parents don’t really have a full understanding of how hard it will be until they’re in the midst of it. They may encounter fertility struggles or miscarriages; they realize that planning during pregnancy takes a lot of work; they have to find an OB or midwife they trust; they may hire a doula; and it takes time for new parents to put a postpartum support network in place.

Add on to that the stressors of guilt, living up to “social media standards”, unwanted advice from friends and family, fear of failure, and lack of confidence. It’s overwhelming and can leave parents feeling defeated before they even begin.

With information at our fingertips, how do we discern what’s evidence-based and what’s junk? What’s worth worrying about and what’s not? How does a parent today make an informed decision?

Luckily, our West Michigan families have so many great health care professionals to choose from and tons of options for support. We’re going to tell you how to begin this journey on the right path so you don’t go through this alone. If you are supported by a trusted team throughout, you are more likely to have a positive birth experience.

Let’s talk about some myths. It’s important to talk about the misconceptions the public has on every area of the support team. Let’s debunk those!

Doula Myth #1: Doulas only support home births.
At Gold Coast Doulas, over 80 percent of our births happen in a hospital. Our clients are seeking professional, experienced doula support in the hospital setting.

Doula Myth #2: Doulas only support parents who want an all-natural delivery.
Gold Coast Doulas supports any birth and respects all birth preferences.

Doula Myth #3: Doulas catch babies.
Definitely not! We are not a replacement for any medical staff, we are an added member of your birth team, there to offer informational, emotional, and physical support throughout pregnancy, labor, and delivery.

Doula Myth #4: Doulas only offer birth support.
We have antepartum doulas that offer support for mothers on bed rest, are high-risk, or for any reason need additional help while pregnant. We also have postpartum doulas that support families once a baby, or babies arrive. They offer in-home care, day and overnight. They are like a night nanny and infant care specialist rolled into one!

Hospital Birth Myth #1: You can’t have an unmedicated birth in a hospital.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Many of our birth clients prefer an unmedicated birth in the safety of a hospital setting. Our West Michigan hospitals have many different options for a laboring person.

Hospital Birth Myth #2: An induction leads to a cesarean.
This is not always the case. In many cases, labor induction leads to a successful vaginal birth.

Hospital Birth Myth #3: You can’t move around during labor.
As long as you don’t have an epidural, movement is encouraged. Even with an epidural, there are many possible position changes in bed that your birth doula can help you with. You won’t be lying on your back the entire time. Most hospitals have walking monitors for those who wish to move around during labor.

Midwife Myth #1: Midwives only support home births.
We have many local midwives that do support home births, one midwife that delivers in a birth house, and there are plenty of Certified Nurse Midwives that practice in hospitals! There are midwives in West Michigan for any kind of birth preference you have.

Midwife Myth #2: Midwives only support women during pregnancy and birth.
Many midwives also offer well-woman care (annual exams).

OB Myth #1: They aren’t supportive of vaginal births after cesareans (VBAC) and it’s best to attempt one at home.
This is often based on the hospital’s policy rather than preference of the doctor. Many hospitals are supportive of VBACs.

OB Myth #2: They do not work with doulas.
This is not the case. Many of our clients see an Obstetrician and most are very comfortable with professional doulas. Our team is always willing to accompany clients to a prenatal appointment if the provider is not comfortable with working with a doula.

OB Myth #3: They don’t like birth plans.
While this may be partially true just because many “birth plans” are eight pages long. Many things patients put on their birth plan are already protocol at most hospitals (skin to skin, delayed newborn procedures, etc). Knowing that providers have to see many patients in one day, it’s important to keep in mind that they cannot read through an eight page plan. Give them the information that is specific to you. “I want dimmed lights and music.” “I don’t want to be touched when I’m laboring.”

Millennials are over 80 percent of the pregnant population right now and they want answers! They want a relationship, and they want a team they can trust. Our parents and grandparents had one doctor who did everything. They trusted anything the doctor said and definitely didn’t go searching for answers on their own.

Medical care is different today, and families expect a different approach to their healthcare. Oftentimes they don’t even realize they need something more until they are expecting a child. It’s probably one of the biggest unknowns to ever happen in someone’s life. Having a trusted team by your side through the entire process can relieve the stress, pressure, and oftentimes unnecessary anxiety that comes with planning and preparing for pregnancy, labor, and postpartum.

If you are pregnant or even just thinking about starting or growing your family soon, reach out to us. We can offer local resources and our doulas are here to be your guides when you are ready.

In the meantime, here are some trusted online sources we recommend. Try your hardest not to get information from individuals online (mom groups, Facebook, etc)!

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

March of Dimes

Evidence Based Birth

Your Trusted Birth Team Read More »

Podcast Episode #68: Overnight Doula Support

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Doulas, Parenting, Sleep / Alyssa Veneklase / birth support, gold coast doulas, mood disorders, night nanny, night nurse, overnight doula, postpartum, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, postpartum doulas, postpartum psychosis, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant, sleep deprivation

Many of our clients and listeners don’t fully understand what overnight doula support looks like. Kristin and Alyssa, both Certified Postpartum Doulas, discuss the kinds of support their clients look for and how their team of doulas support families in their homes. You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud. You can also learn more here about overnight postpartum doula support.

Kristin: Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I’m Kristin.

Alyssa: And I’m Alyssa.

Kristin: And we’re here to chat about what an overnight postpartum doula does, as that is a question that we get asked often by our clients and our podcast listeners. So, Alyssa, my first question to you is, as a postpartum doula and sleep specialist, what do you see as the key benefits to a family in hiring overnight postpartum doula support?

Alyssa: Whether they hire for sleep or not, it helps the parents get sleep. So let’s say they’re not even hiring me for a sleep consult. Parents don’t understand what sleep deprivation means until their in the midst of it, probably at least three weeks in. Like, our bodies are designed to survive a couple weeks of this, sometimes even three or four, but after that, our systems start to shut down. So if you think about overnight support being this trusted person who sleeps in your home to take over all those overnight responsibilities so that you can get a good night’s rest. Even a six-hour stretch or sometimes even a four-hour stretch makes you feel like a whole new person the next day when you’re used to only sleeping maybe one- or two-hour chunks. A four-hour stretch seems amazing in that moment, whereas right now if you told me I could only have four hours of sleep tonight, I would cry. I would be miserable the next day. And you, Kristin, as a birth doula, you know that feeling. If you’ve had one night of no sleep, you’re just wrecked. So you’re running on adrenaline. You’re sleep deprived. So having a doula come in and take over all that responsibility at night — obviously, she can’t breastfeed your baby, but you have a couple different choices if you’re a breastfeeding mom. If you’re a bottle-feeding with formula mom, you can literally go to sleep at 10:00 PM and wake up whenever you want because the doula can just feed that baby every three hours.

Kristin: Exactly, and clean the bottles and change the diapers and burp the baby, all of it.

Alyssa: Yeah. So if your partner is feeding in the middle of the night, you’re certainly not going to wake up to clean bottles and parts in the morning. The doula does do that. But for a breastfeeding mom, you can choose to pump instead of breastfeeding because it’s usually a lot quicker. So you pump and you set those bottles out for the doula. The doula wakes up when the baby wakes up; feeds the baby; burps the baby; changes the baby; gets the baby back to sleep — and Mom’s sleeping this whole time. Or, if Mom chooses to breastfeed, the doula can bring Baby to Mom so Mom doesn’t even have to get out of bed. I was just talking to Kelly Emory, our lactation consultant friend, and she was saying that when she was nursing, she would just side lie and her husband would bring the baby to her. She would lie on her side, so she didn’t have to get up. She didn’t even have to open her eyes if she didn’t want to. She was still kind of in this half-sleep state, and then when Baby was done on that side, her husband would take the baby and she’d roll over and she would feed on the other side, and then the husband would take the baby away, change the baby, burp the baby, and do all that stuff. So she said it was amazing. She took over one shift of the night, and he took over the next, so she would get a six-hour chunk of sleep and would feel amazing in the morning. So you’re able to tackle all those everyday tasks during the day because you didn’t have to also worry about those at night.

Kristin: Yes! And I’ve also had overnight clients who prefer to come into the nursery and sit in a rocker and feed their baby rather than have me come in and disrupt their husband’s sleep.

Alyssa: Sometimes they’re sleeping in separate rooms, too, because they’ve become used to that. So oftentimes, my goal as an overnight doula is to have both parents sleeping in bed together again, or wherever you were before this baby arrived.

Kristin: Right, no more partner on the couch or in the guest bedroom.

Alyssa: Right.

Kristin: So as far as other tasks of an overnight postpartum doula, sleep is one. So we can get Baby back to sleep and if they’re working with a certified sleep consultant, like you, then they can implement that.

Alyssa: Yeah, I guess I didn’t answer that initial question. So if they do work with me as a sleep consultant, you can hire an overnight doula in conjunction with. So I offer this customized sleep plan for your family, and then our doula knows that plan, understands that plan, and implements that plan overnight.

Kristin: That’s amazing.

Alyssa: So you wake up again refreshed because you’ve slept, and then you have the energy to implement the sleep plan during the day. And then the doula comes in at night and implements that plan overnight. So it’s consistency because that’s always the key with any sort of sleep consult is that you have to be consistent. You can’t just do it during the day and then give up at night because you’re tired. Your plan will fail.

Kristin: And so who hires a postpartum overnight doula, and how often do they use the doula support?

Alyssa: Who hires them? Tired families hire them! You get to the point of exhaustion. I don’t think when you’re pregnant you’re thinking about an overnight doula because you truly don’t understand what you’re in for. But newborn babies sleep all the time, so they could sleep up to 22 out of 24 hours a day, so you’re thinking, well, of course, like, newborn babies sleep all the time. I’m going to sleep when the baby sleeps. They’re going to be feeding every two to three hours!

Kristin: They get up a lot!

Alyssa: Which means all day and all night, you will be up feeding every two to three hours, at least. So your sleep becomes these little tiny chunks. Because if you think if you have a newborn baby that’s eating every two hours, and it takes you an hour to breastfeed, and then after the breastfeeding session, you have to burp; you have to change the diaper; you have to get the baby back to sleep. You’ve maybe got 30 to 45 minutes, if you’re lucky, to sleep before the baby needs to feed again.

Kristin: And some clients hire us for one overnight to get a good night of sleep and catch up; other clients hire us every night, and we bring in a team, in and out, or have one doula consistently. And some of our clientele have a partner who travels a lot, or I’ve even supported a family where the mother was going back to work from maternity leave and was traveling for her job, so as an overnight doula, I supported the husband as he cared for the toddler that was waking; I was caring for the baby. And so there are a lot of unique situations, but a lot of our moms who have partners who travel a lot want that extra support, whether they have a new baby or other kids in the household that need support, as well.

Alyssa: I think it depends on resources. So if someone is sleep deprived and they’re like, I just need one night of reprieve, and that’s all we can afford and that’s what we’re going to do, then that’s what they do.

Kristin: Exactly.

Alyssa: Even if they don’t have the resources, oftentimes during pregnancy, if parents have the foresight to ask for postpartum support as a baby shower gift, they can have several overnights gifted to them by friends and family.

Kristin: Which is better than all the toys and clothes they’ll outgrow.

Alyssa: I always tell them, you’re going to get mounds of plastic junk that you’ll literally look at and say that’s hundreds of dollars’ worth of stuff I’m never going to use, and you could have had an overnight doula in your home so you could sleep.

Kristin: Easily!

Alyssa: So I think it’s just based on resources because, like you said, we’ve had people hire us for, you know, two overnights and we’ve had two months straight. So I think it just depends. I mean, I don’t know that it’s a type of client. I think that’s just kind of based on resources available.

Kristin: And we certainly support families who are struggling with postpartum mood disorders and anxiety, but that is not all that we serve as far as clientele. But for moms who are being treated in therapy, then we certainly are able to give them much-needed support and rest as we care for their baby, and we do have a package where we are able to lower our hourly rate for clients who are in the Pine Rest mother-baby program or are seeking therapy.

Alyssa: Yeah, sleep deprivation is considered to be the number one cause of perinatal mood disorders, so all these moms with anxiety, depression, up to postpartum psychosis — when you’re sleep deprived, you’re literally torturing your brain and your body, and it’s really hard to function. So sleep is such an imperative thing, and for your baby, too. If you’re not sleeping and your baby’s not sleeping, physiologically, that baby needs sleep in order to grow, for their brain to develop, for their immune system to function properly. It’s so critical for both parents and children.

Kristin: Agreed. So, really, anyone can benefit from it. Our shortest shift would be coming in at 10:00 PM and leaving at 6:00 AM, but a lot of clients extend that time.

Alyssa: I’ve found that a lot of people like you to come a little bit earlier, especially if they have older children. So if there’s older siblings, let’s say 6:00 comes around and you’re trying to get dinner on the table. You have a two-year-old, a five-year-old, and a newborn.

Kristin: That’s a lot!

Alyssa: That overnight shift tends to, when parents say, yeah, yeah, come at 8:00 or 9:00 when I’m going to go to bed — that very quickly changes to 5:00 or 6:00. So either that shift moves up, or it just lengthens. So the doula can come from, a lot of times, 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, and they do a lot of 12-hour shifts because they’re there for the hustle and bustle of getting dinner, wrangling toddlers, helping with the newborn, and then helping with bedtime routines for two or three children and then taking that infant newborn and helping them get to sleep. Usually, it’s in that order. Like, the doula will take the baby and put them to sleep, and then the parents get to spend some quality time with this toddler who is usually lashing out because they are used to being the only child, if there’s only one, and are really, really seeking that one-on-one attention that they’re not getting anymore.

Kristin: Yeah, that’s the perfect time to bond, and they can read them a bedtime story and sing songs; whatever their nighttime routines were before Baby arrived.

Alyssa: Yeah, and that’s one thing I stress, too, with my sleep consults is just having a really good bedtime routine, and even if I’m doing a consult for one child and there’s others in the household, I usually ask about them, too, because if you’ve got three kids who all have a different bedtime, and each bedtime routine is taking an hour, certainly whoever’s last on that list is going to bed at 9:00 or something, which is way too late for these little kids. So trying to consolidate and have a system in place and just get a schedule that works for the family, for everyone in the family, is a really big goal.

Kristin: Awesome advice.

Alyssa: So you mentioned earlier that a doula sleeps when the baby sleeps, and sometimes parents wonder, well, what do you mean? What does that look like? Depending on the house, we’ve had doulas sleeping on sofas in the living room.

Kristin: Yes, that’s what I’ve done.

Alyssa: We’ve had doulas sleeping in a spare room. We’ve had doulas sleeping in a spare room on the same floor, in a spare room on a different floor, and you can make anything work.

Kristin: With monitors and technology now, you know the second a baby stirs.

Alyssa: So parents are always like, oh, shoot, I don’t know how this is going to work. How am I going to do that? We’ve had blow-up mattresses in the nursery. Ideally, you want the doula to be as close to the nursey as possible, so they’re the one, when they hear that baby, they’re up; they’re there.

Kristin: No one else gets woken up in the household.

Alyssa: Yeah, you want the parents to be as far away. So sometimes I even tell them if you have a spare bedroom in the basement, go sleep there, because even with one of my most recent sleep clients, the first night we did the sleep consult, the doula was there overnight, and I contacted them the next day: how did you sleep? And they were like, oh, I wanted to so bad, but I kept hearing this phantom crying. Even when the babies weren’t crying, they hear it, anyway. So it does take, as parents, who are used to not sleeping for week after week after week — it takes time for your body and brain to adjust back to, oh, I’m able to sleep again. So it’s not instant. It usually takes at least a couple nights to get your brain to say, I can sleep. It’s okay to sleep through the night. I don’t have any responsibilities tonight. This doula is taking care of it. And it’s just a matter of them getting sleep in two-hour chunks instead of the parents getting sleep in two-hour chunks. So a doula can usually do two or three in a row before they’re too exhausted.

Kristin: Just like a birth doula. We can do a couple nights with a client in the hospital without sleep, and then we’re done.

Alyssa: Yeah. So for those clients of ours who we’ve had for two weeks straight or two months straight, it’s several doulas taking turns. Otherwise, they’re just too exhausted.

Kristin: Right, and that’s where we sometimes will bring in a team if it is continuous care.

Alyssa: But I think ideally, with sleep training, I would love to see every parent have a sleep plan and then a doula for five nights. That would just be — I don’t know; I think the mental well-being of these parents would increase drastically if they were able to do both.

Kristin: I would have loved an overnight doula with my kids being 21 months apart; having a toddler and a newborn. It would have been amazing.

Alyssa: Well, and some people, too, think it’s weird to have somebody sleeping in your home. I mean, always, when they meet the doula, they’re totally fine with it, but it is a weird thought to have this stranger come into your home who’s going to care for your babies. That’s why I think we’re so adamant about talking about our training and our certification process, and we’ve done background checks for people who want us to.

Kristin: Yeah, and we’ve shown immunization records and CPR certifications and so on and liability insurance. We have all of that.

Alyssa: Yeah, because especially with a mom with anxiety who needs to sleep and knows she needs this help, but now she has anxiety because a stranger is going to be sleeping in her home — we need to do whatever you have to, to make that mom feel comfortable to be able to sleep.

Kristin: Yes, and we’re there to do just that. So feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about overnight doulas. We’d love to work with your family! Remember, these moments are golden.

Podcast Episode #68: Overnight Doula Support Read More »

Podcast Episode #65: Annette’s HypnoBirthing Story

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth, Classes, HypnoBirthing, Pregnancy / Alyssa Veneklase / birth story, birth support, childbirth classes, childbirth education, gold coast doulas, guided meditation, Hypnobirthing, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant, self-hypnosis

Today we talk with a previous HypnoBirthing student, Annette Beitzel, about her personal experience with HypnoBirthing at Gold Coast Doulas. Although she didn’t use it how she intended, it had an incredible impact on her pregnancy and birth experience. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Kristin: Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I’m Kristin, and I’m here today with my business partner, Alyssa.

Alyssa: Hello!

Kristin: And we’ve got Annette Beitzel here.

Annette: Hello!

Kristin: And we are talking about Annette’s experience with taking HypnoBirthing class back in 2016. So thanks for coming on! First of all, as far as all of your options of out-of-hospital childbirth classes, what made you choose HypnoBirthing?

Annette: Honestly, I heard about it on a podcast, and it just sounded cool. At first, just the name HypnoBirthing sounds really kooky, like, oh, yeah, those people! But just hearing the person’s experience with it, it was like, oh, my goodness. This sounds like exactly what I want. I already had planned on natural birth at a birthing center. That was my goal, and so it just felt like it fit really well with what my goals were. Breathing is better than medication, right?

Kristin: Of course, yes!

Annette: So yeah, it just sounded like it fit well.

Kristin: Perfect. And did you have any reservations about HypnoBirthing, when you think of hypnosis? When people call our office and ask questions about HypnoBirthing, they get a little freaked out by the “hypno” aspect of it.

Annette: I think that because I heard about it on a podcast with a person who really explained it right away as just relaxing yourself; that’s what you’re doing; you’re doing it to yourself. Nobody is coming in with a watch on a chain!

Kristin: That’s what people imagine, for sure!

Annette: It was harder to explain to my husband. I was like, okay, just listen to this podcast. This will help you understand what I heard. Because it is; it’s one of those weird things. It just sounds that way, right?

Kristin: Right! And you mentioned your husband, so again, one question we get a lot about the class is that people feel like with hypnosis, it’s internal, even with self-relaxation and visualizations. How is your husband involved in both the class as well as your birth using that technique?

Annette: So in the class, you do all the same exercises. A lot of it is dealing with your fears and just understanding the process, and so men come in with those things, too, right? Maybe not the same ones or different ways, but they still have their expectations of what birth will be. And so I think he found it really helpful to really get an expert explaining what’s really happening, that women’s bodies are made for this. And then also they do all of the “hypnosis” along with the women, so everyone is doing it together. I mean, it would feel really weird if the men or the partners were just sitting there watching, but they’re involved. It was all group things, so he understood what I was doing. There were some exercises that he would sort of help me. I don’t remember the different things, like tapping or different things like that, and so he sometimes played a more active role. But also, I think, if I had gone by myself, he wouldn’t have really understood what I was doing in birth because the way it all ended up, he didn’t do really anything. And so I think he would have been, like, oh, my goodness; I’ve done nothing; nothing’s happened here; I’m useless. But he knew what I was doing. He knew I was inside myself. He knew that I was relaxed. He knew all of those things, and so I think it really helped him just understand what was going on and not be like, “Oh, do I need to do anything?!”

Alyssa: I have not gone through the class. I’ve tried to set myself outside of this as a person listening who doesn’t know what HypnoBirthing is, and I’m thinking it still sounds hokey. So when you say “hypnosis,” what kinds of things are you doing in the class, and why isn’t it hokey?

Annette: Right! Because it works would be the main reason I’d say it’s not hokey. So basically all she does is go through a reading of something, and she uses a very soothing, calm voice, so it’s easy to sort of stop thinking that you’re in this room, in this place. You just close your eyes, and you think about what she’s saying. I think the first one you do, she has you raise your hand as if a balloon is raising you up or something. And so you just kind of realize, like, oh, I can go outside of my brain. I can come back into my self-conscious, or I can sort of disconnect a little bit. And that’s all me. I’m listening to her, right, but it’s all me just choosing what I want to focus on, how I want to move my thoughts or my energy. So I don’t know; it does sound a bit ridiculous, and even in the first class, she’s totally talking about that. She’s like, I know this is weird. I know it sounds weird, but you’re relaxing yourself. Don’t think hypnosis; think relaxation. That’s what you’re doing here. And is there anything better for birth?

Kristin: Exactly, opening up and relaxing — that’s key to it!

Annette: So, yeah, to me, listening to a big explanation of what it really was from an expert was really helpful. These are the steps you can take, and this is how it can benefit you. But for me actually being in the class, it was like, yeah, okay; this is me; this just me relaxing; this is me choosing what I’m thinking about, what I’m focusing on. If I want to think about my fears, that’s going to make me tense up or stress out. Or I can think about a flower opening up, and I’m sure that sounds silly, but that’s sure a lot more relaxing than, “Am I going to go to a C-section?!” It’s what do I want to choose to think about, and how will that help me give birth the way that I want to.

Kristin: And certainly it goes over the basic physiology of what your body is going through, understanding the stages of labor and what’s normal, and for those birthing in the hospital, a little bit about what the hospital experience is like, as well as breastfeeding. So anything an out-of-hospital class would cover, in addition to changing the language of birth. That’s one of the things as a doula that I love the most is just changing some the fear-based words. I mean, contraction already sounds like you’re tensed up, and just looking at “surge” as a more opening, positive word, and not looking at pain. You know, you go to the hospital, and it’s like, what’s your pain threshold. They ask you that, like, ten times during labor. So just sort of changing that language and using affirmations, which I love. Being positive and just being relaxed. And the fear releases you do in task — can you talk a little bit about that experience, of doing a fear release?

Annette: Yeah, that was really interesting. So I think that my husband actually experienced that one more deeply than I did because I remember the whole thing. I remember going in the book and pulling out pages and saying, I’m not going to be afraid of this. This is okay. I already know the facts because we’ve gone over what do I expect. Can my body handle this? Very likely, yes! And so for him, he doesn’t remember it at all. He was so relaxed and so into it that he — which is an interesting aspect. Talking about the different affirmations and stuff, you listen to something that’s about 30 minutes long every night, and to me, that was one of the main things that I really did that was super consistent. I listened to it every single night, and it’s Rainbow Relaxation. So it goes through all these colors of the rainbow, and I think by the second color of the rainbow, I’d be asleep every night. And she was like, that’s totally fine. You can sleep, and it’s relaxing, and you’re still hearing it, and it’s fine. And I remember a couple of times, I would wake up at the end, which means I wasn’t actually asleep, I was just in that super entranced state where I was really relaxed, really in my subconscious and feeling it. And it was just such a weird feeling, because you’re like, oh, my goodness; I was awake this whole time. I was hearing these things, but I didn’t really feel that awake. So it’s amazing what your brain can do and just how relaxed you can really get. So with the fear, I don’t think that I came in with the same fears that a lot of people do. I already had two sisters-in-law go through natural births at birthing centers, so I was kind of like, yeah, this it totally doable. I’m not experiencing terrifying birth stories all the time. I came in with relatively positive expectations. And then going through the actual information part of it, it’s amazing. I mean, she really explains to you what is this; how does it work. Your body is made to do this! Now, I have to caveat that my sister-in-law — another one — her pelvis cannot. It doesn’t work. So it doesn’t work for everyone, but for the vast majority, our bodies can do this. And that was my experience, too. I didn’t do anything for labor. It was just there, and he came out, and there we were. I don’t think that the fear thing for me was the biggest part of it. The biggest thing for me was the relaxation, and even through my whole pregnancy, I had a miserable pregnancy. I had SPD starting at 14 weeks, which is symphysis pubis dysfunction. I could not walk without excruciating pain. I couldn’t put my pants on. I couldn’t do anything; it was just horrible. And I was pretty down about it. It was really frustrating because I was going to be the active, pregnant woman that was going out walking all the time and keeping active, and I just couldn’t. Talking to Ashley about that, she just helped me reframe everything, and the last couple of months of my pregnancy were just completely different. I was so much more positive; I was so much more relaxed and comfortable, and even though there was still pain, I wasn’t just grumpy all the time. And I had been up to that point. I would say my husband was probably really glad we took the HypnoBirthing, even just for my pregnancy. I was just so much more at peace, and it was so, so helpful with that aspect of it. So even before we got to the birth, I already felt like HypnoBirthing is amazing because look at my outlook on this pregnancy. It’s okay.

Alyssa: So you had the ideal birth where you said you didn’t have to do anything; it just happened. So what kind of tips or advise would you give for parents for whom that doesn’t happen or if they know they’re getting a C-section. Would HypnoBirthing still benefit them, and how?

Annette: Oh, absolutely! So first of all, I would not say I had the ideal birth. He came out without my working for it, but I actually had some really intense bleeding the night before. I was planning on a birth center and ended up in a hospital because my midwife just didn’t want to touch this; this is scary; could be placental abruption. You know, we didn’t know. So I checked into a hospital at 6:30 in the morning. We thought I was probably at a 6 or a 7. I wasn’t really having intense surges; I wasn’t feeling that much pain. It was there, but it felt more like Braxton Hicks at that point still; maybe a little stronger. We knew I was in labor. They had found that out before because I had actually been in the hospital earlier that night and went home. So at midnight, my water had broken, and 6:30, I’m in the hospital. We were like, yeah, nothing is really happening yet. But it was still a little scary. I was in the hospital and I didn’t really want to be in the hospital, but they went with my birthing plan, which was like an emergency birthing plan, which unfortunately I had to use. So I’m sitting in this hospital. She turned down the lights for me. She’s doing intake paperwork because I’m not supposed to be there, and I’m answering questions between the surges, and all of a sudden, I felt him move into the birth path, and I was like, oh, I feel him moving down right now. And she’s like, oh, good good! I’m like, no, no, he’s coming! And they were like, okay… And I rolled over away from her; I’m not going to answer any more questions right now. And they checked me, and I was at a 10. And this is six hours or seven hours after my water had broken. So it was so, so fast. He was born 20 minutes later. It was actually too fast. He didn’t get properly squeezed out, so he was vomiting up stuff the next night, which is scary in its own right. So yeah, they were, like, oh, don’t push! I’m like, honestly, anything that happened was involuntary. And then the doctor got there. He came out ten minutes after the doctor was there, and he was there telling me, you might want to hold your breath! And I was like, no, I don’t! I remember that conversation. I remember when he was crowning. They told me, oh, he’s crowning. And I was, like, wait, I thought this was supposed to be a ring of fire. Where’s the fire? And that was my thought while he was crowning. I was just relaxed. That’s all I can say. We did not have time for listening to any of the meditations. We didn’t do anything during the actual birth because even during the night, I was sleeping most of the time. So I feel like I barely did a HypnoBirthing, other than the fact that I was relaxed and I was breathing. And that’s what I really took from all of the classes and all of the work, which is part of the reason I wanted to do this, because it was like, hey, I didn’t even really do it, but it still worked, right? I didn’t spend 12 hours listening to relaxation things and breathing him down. I did breathe him down, but very quickly! So yeah, I had a second degree tear and there was all sorts of other things, but my placenta was getting old. They said that was part of the reason for the bleeding, and so there was reason for concern, which I would also say, the whole time, it was like I didn’t want to go to the hospital, but all right, here we are. I think just the knowledge of everything — I never freaked out. I wasn’t worried. It was just like, okay, well, this is what’s happening now. And just very — I think I was very go with the flow. And my husband and everyone else was kind of freaking out. I was texting my family because they’re in another state. I told them I was going to the hospital because there’s lot of bleeding and they think it might be this and whatever, and they were all freaking out. And then 20 minutes later, we’re sending a picture of a baby. Okay, well, I guess it was okay! So, yeah, it was an ideal birth, and also completely not what I was expecting or planning. I was going to be in a birthing tub all night long, right? That was my plan! But even without going along with the plan, it still was just completely changed how I was approaching everything, how I felt about it, what I was even thinking about. I was thinking about my breath and feeling him in my body. Everything else was so peripheral. Oh, there’s doctors out there. I even remember looking up, like, oh, look at all these faces I have never seen before. I think there were five or six people at the end of the bed! And I was like, all right, well, here we go then! And all of it was so — I just got the inevitability of a birth. It was going to happen. It didn’t matter what I was doing. It didn’t matter what they did. Here we are in this place that I wasn’t planning, and here comes my baby, just exiting my body. And I think after that birth, I really did believe and understand the women giving birth in a coma because it was like honestly — I feel like my body did some pushing. It didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like what people explain is a birth. It was just like my body helped him exit.

Kristin: You were breathing your baby down, as we talk about, the birth breath in HypnoBirthing. But of course, we see the movies where everything is traumatic and the woman is screaming. That’s not what the reality of birth is, even with a precipitous birth, which can be a little bit stressful and overwhelming if you haven’t prepared the way you did and having that relaxation. And even with your change of plans, in HypnoBirthing, of course, instead of a birth plan, you talk about birth preferences, so what you would like in an ideal situation, knowing that you may need to be flexible, which you obviously were, and you handled it very well.

Annette: Yeah, sorry, I forget some of the terminology. It’s been a couple of years. But yeah, it was amazing. It was, okay, we’re working with my midwife, so we don’t need to tell her what all we were going to do. We were on the same page already, but I was really glad we actually did walk through all of that and come up with a list of what we really wanted from a birth. And he was on my chest for two hours before they even touched him to do anything. They still followed all of the things that I wanted, and I think that was a really helpful part of the class. I was going into it thinking, “That’s not going to happen to me! I’m not going to be in the hospital!” But I was, and I’m really glad that somebody walked me through just saying what I want, if I’m in the hospital. Just lay it all down.

Alyssa: Having the knowledge and being educated ahead of time, I think, is a big part of releasing fear because you know what to expect “if,” instead of walking into this unknown. And then you would have been panicking because you’re in a hospital; there’s six people that I don’t know at the end of the bed; what’s happening to me? You were kind of like, oh, yeah, we talked about this.

Annette: Yeah, it was very much that way. I know what my body is going to do, so you all can hang out if you want.

Kristin: And we have students that have planned Cesareans that want to eliminate some of that fear or students who then have medical issues and then need a Cesarean. That can certainly be helpful. I mean, the situation you just described is just knowing how to plan, how to relax, to use your breath, regardless of how you birth.

Annette: Yeah, for sure. That would have been such a huge — I mean, I can’t imagine if they had said, hey, you’re in a Cesarean. I know it was all about — got to keep breathing. That’s what I need to think about! I’m just going to keep breathing, and this baby is coming. I’m going to be holding this baby soon. And if somebody, especially with a planned Cesarean — I know these women have so much fear around that. It’s a surgery; that’s a huge thing. And yeah, that class would be so helpful to process all of those fears and to know your body will be okay. You will be okay. Your baby will be okay. You’re going to come through this. I can’t imagine the difference in being in that situation, but with the confidence and the relaxation and all of that, rather than being scared and stressed out. I imagine that would be much more helpful.

Kristin: So, Annette, at what point in your pregnancy did you take HypnoBirthing? It sounds like you had some time to practice. You were saying you were listening to the relaxation tracks at night.

Annette: I think that we were taking it in November, and then he was born in March. We had a couple of months afterwards, which, like I said, was super helpful. Honestly, I would have taken it at the very beginning, after knowing how much it helped me with pregnancy.

Kristin: Yeah, HypnoBirthing is different than a lot of childbirth classes in that it helps to take it earlier in pregnancy so you have time to practice. Of course, we have students who take it right up until their due date and sometimes even go early and miss a few classes.

Annette: Yeah, we had that happen! We lost a student. It happens!

Kristin: But certainly, like you said, to have a few months or even taking it very early in pregnancy, where other classes, you want it fresh on your mind, especially if it’s focused more on movement and positions rather than the whole mind-body-spirit connection. That is one thing that I think is different about HypnoBirthing is it’s not just the physical movement and breath. It’s a focus on your inner being and peace and serenity.

Alyssa: Yeah, it sounds like it’s not just for birth, and I would venture to say that it probably helps — that you probably even think about it now in day to day. Like, it almost helps you when a situation arises just in life?

Annette: Oh, for sure, yeah.

Alyssa: Just breathing and releasing fear in whatever way you’ve come to do that.

Annette: Yeah. And I do meditation now, and I didn’t think that was a cool thing before, but now I’m like, sure, yeah, that sounds great! I want to get back into that space with my mind where I’m in control of things and thinking about what I want to be thinking about. I’m not usually going through the ones the instructor did, but it’s opened me up to that whole world of what can my subconscious do? And a completely unrelated thing; I’m now doing EMDR therapy, which is also very similar in using the relaxation and controlling what you’re thinking about and all of that. And I think I would have thought that was ridiculous, if I hadn’t gone through HypnoBirthing. So yeah, it’s amazing all the different ways in your life that it can continue touching you.

Alyssa: Our brains are powerful. They do a lot of good and bad for us on a day to day basis!

Annette: Definitely, yeah!

Kristin: So it sounds like your class had a mix of birth center, home birthers, and hospital birthers?

Annette: Yes. I don’t think anyone had a planned C-section, but there was a mix of all three of those, yes.

Kristin: And then another question that we get pretty commonly is for people who are very religious, faith-based, would this class be something that they need to steer away from? That’s a common – because of the hypnosis, maybe, but having experienced it yourself, can you address that for us?

Annette: Yeah. I mean, I grew up super religious. I’m not as much anymore, but for sure, I remember that being something. Oh, yeah, hypnosis; that’s something that you would want to stay away from. And this class isn’t that at all. It’s 100% you controlling what you’re thinking about and thinking about what you’re deciding to. It’s just all you. That’s all I can say, right? You’re listening to someone talking, but you’re choosing everything that you’re doing, and all of the images that you’re seeing and everything is what you want to do. So nobody is controlling your mind. Nobody is coming in and saying, drop this pen, and then suddenly you’re dropping pens or whatever. It’s all you, relaxing, choosing what you’re listening to, choosing what you’re going to respond to.

Alyssa: It really sounds no different for a religious person than prayer to me, right? Like, they could almost — it could feel like prayer to them, and they can call it whatever they want to call it: medication, prayer, hypnosis.

Annette: Yeah, it’s relaxation, right? That was the thing that I came away with, especially. It’s relaxing yourself. So if you want to go and learn how to relax yourself, then this is for you.

Kristin: Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Do you have any last words or tips for our listeners?

Annette: If you’re thinking about HypnoBirthing, do it. It’s amazing, truly; 100%, I tell every single pregnant person I meet: have you heard about this thing called HypnoBirthing? And then I tell them my story. It’s a weird one. I didn’t use it the way you’re supposed to, but it still made a huge difference. Even now, I’m like, I don’t know; did I earn the woman badge of giving birth? I feel like I kind of didn’t, but here’s my kid…

Kristin: You totally did!

Annette: So apparently, I did!

Alyssa: There’s the proof!

Annette: but yeah, it’s amazing. It really is, and I think it’s perfect for any birth situation, for anyone who’s going to give birth. Do HypnoBirthing. It really is amazing.

Kristin: Thank you again, Annette!

Podcast Episode #65: Annette’s HypnoBirthing Story Read More »

How Much Does a Doula Cost?

Birth, Doulas, Pregnancy, Sleep / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, birth support, childbirth, childbirth classes, gold coast doulas, grandparents, postpartum doulas, pregnancy, pregnant

With all of the expenses that accompany pregnancy and—eventually—parenthood, it’s natural to be concerned about your budget when considering hiring a doula.

So, how much does a doula cost? Prices vary widely and depend on the specific role of your doula, since there are both birth doulas and postpartum doulas. Their hours, rates, and responsibilities are very different from each other, so you’ll first need to determine which service you’d want by your side during these two distinct phases of your journey.

You can expect an investment of around $1000 to $1400 for either a birth doula or a postpartum doula through Gold Coast. This is a much lower range compared to average doula costs in the United States, which can run you up to $3k, and we even had a recent client comment on how cost-efficient our pricing is for everything that we offer.

To be honest, we certainly agree with him! Doulas like ours are on-call for clients 24/7 from the moment you sign a contract with us. But maybe you’re still wondering, what exactly does a doula do?

What Doulas Do

If you’re thinking about hiring a doula, it’s important to decide which of the two doula types you’d benefit from the most. A lot of first-time moms and dads find solace in hiring both a birth doula and a postpartum doula, while those who have had kids before might prefer hiring a birth doula but forgoing a postpartum one (or vice versa).

Birth Doula

The primary goal of a birth doula is to ensure that soon-to-be mothers have a safe, memorable, and empowering birth experience. Working in pregnancy and birth support, these doulas provide the following resources.

Prenatal expertise: Following an initial consultation, they’ll design an individualized birth plan after taking the time to get to know you and your partner.
Labor and delivery: During the actual labor and childbirth, your birth doula will be right there with reassuring and tangible comforts such as calming massages, breathing techniques, and position recommendations.
Medical advocacy: Behind the scenes, a birth doula connects with hospital or birth center staff to communicate your wishes and needs throughout the process.

Postpartum Doula

Perhaps less commonly known are postpartum doulas, who strive to create a fulfilling and comfortable support system after the birth. Postpartum doulas assist moms and dads with the complex yet exciting adjustment of bringing home a new baby.

Newborn care: Lactation and breastfeeding help, sleep consultations, diapering tips, infant hygiene—there are so many moving parts involved in newborn care, but with a postpartum doula in your corner, you don’t have to go it alone.
Emotional encouragement: There will be ups and downs as your family adapts to a new normal postpartum, and that’s why a doula who specializes in this transition is so invaluable, as you’ll have a supporter who knows what you’re feeling.
Household maintenance: Handling light chores is the last thing on your mind as a new parent, and a postpartum doula lifts that stress off your shoulders so that you can focus on what really matters… bonding with your baby!

Cost of a Doula

How much does a doula cost? Well, that can be a little unpredictable, but for doulas, unpredictability is part of the job. Some births are two hours long and others are multiple days in length. At Gold Coast Doulas, packages start at $1000 with payment plans available.

Doulas miss holidays and birthdays, and we’ll usually plan our vacations around client due dates; we’ll often add the “unless I’m at a birth” clause to social invites. We love this work, but it does take an emotional and physical toll.

Because it’s such an intensive profession, the charge for a doula tends to reflect that intensity, but as we’ve said, our Gold Coast Doulas team is worth much more than our current rates, for a very important reason: we want a teacher, or a caregiver, or an artist to be able to hire us without causing a huge financial strain.

All of our clients are so special to us, so our pricing is meant to keep this crucial resource accessible for everyone.

Ways to Pay For Your Doula

Out of Pocket– Conventionally, doulas are paid for by expectant parents out of their own pocket. Unfortunately, standard insurance doesn’t cover doula support in Michigan at this time, though we hope that changes in the near future. With that said, there are self-funded employer plans that you can look into like Progyny or Carrott Fertility.
HSA and FSA– We’re thrilled that most HSA and FSA plans now consider birth doulas a qualified medical expense. Many Gold Coast clients choose to allocate their HSA or FSA funds to pay for doula support.
Gifted– We’re finding that more and more grandparents or friends are gifting postpartum doula support or classes to our clients (we can make custom baby shower inserts and create gift cards for any of our services!). We’re also on the online and in-store baby registry at Ecobuns Baby & Co. in Holland, MI. Why not reduce the baby shower clutter and ask for a postpartum or birth doula instead?

Payment Plan Option

Gold Coast is proud to offer payment plans for most of our services once the standard deposit is made; we accept credit cards, cash, money orders, and checks. We’re a professional business and as a result do not barter for chickens or canned goods, although we do believe in supporting our local farmers with our own money.

We also have packages available if you purchase one or more classes or services, as we want you to feel supported and prepared as you start or grow your family. This makes adding on services more affordable and gives you the birth and/or postpartum support that you deserve.

Why Gold Coast Doulas Is Different

At Gold Coast Doulas, we go above and beyond to make our clients feel like VIPs because they are. We’re there for you 24/7, with a team of experienced and caring people who are eager to help you become a parent and thrive while doing it. Even with our exceptional service, clients frequently ask us how we can make doula support work within their budgets.

With Gold Coast, you don’t have to worry about how to pay for the care you need. Our extensive payment options (plus HSA/FSA funding and improvements in insurance coverage) minimize the hassle and maximize the support. We stand out among the rest because we truly love our clients and what we do, so providing the best possible birth and postpartum doula care is essential to meeting the standard we’ve set for ourselves.

We’re happy to customize any options just for you. Please reach out and email us (info@goldcoastdoulas.com) with any questions or fill out our contact form. We’re here for you.

How Much Does a Doula Cost? Read More »

Podcast Episode #62: Newborn Traumas

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, chiropractic care, colic, gold coast doulas, postpartum, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, postpartum recovery, pregnancy, pregnancy podcast, pregnant

What is birth trauma and do all babies experience it? How can you remedy it? Dr. Annie and Dr. Rachel of Rise Wellness Chiropractic give us several examples of common birth traumas, what they mean, and how chiropractic care can help. You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Kristin: Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. This is Kristin, and I’m here with my business partner, Alyssa.

Alyssa: Hello!

Kristin: And we have Dr. Annie from Rise Wellness, as well as Dr. Rachel. Today we are talking about birth trauma with babies and how a chiropractor can help them, especially since you have a focus on newborns. So, Annie, tell us some different ways that you can help parents.

Dr. Annie: Sure. Well, first, I want to talk about what birth trauma means. It’s not necessarily that all births are categorized as traumatic births, but let’s say there is a lot of pressure on the mom and the baby while the natural birth process is happening. So even with a natural birth, there can still be some things that show up in little kiddos after. But if there is any sort of birth trauma, if Mom has to get an epidural, that can affect the baby. If there are risks of C-section, stuff like that, any of those red flags that are happening during labor, that can all lead to birth trauma, too.

Dr. Rachel: You’re probably wondering why an epidural would even effect the baby and create more of a birth trauma. What happens is when Mom gets an epidural, you can’t feel from the waist down, so we can’t feel when we’re supposed to push. So what happens is that the baby’s head puts more pressure on the cervix that you can’t feel, and it can cause some birth injury in the cervical spine. Minor, but it can still have effects later on.

Dr. Annie: Yes. And then they’re also more likely to need intervention at birth, too, so whether that’s help pulling the baby out by the head and neck or if that’s use of forceps or vacuum-assisted. And all of those put a lot of pressure on the upper cervical spine of the baby, where the neck is, and your spinal cord goes through that area. So that’s what we find in kiddos, even after a natural birth process, but especially in those instances where there’s been a lot of intervention. We see a lot of upper cervical misalignment that affects the nervous system. And so what we want is to take care of is correcting that misalignment so that they can develop the way that they’re supposed so that their bodies work. A lot of people think of brachial plexus injuries in kids, when the shoulder gets stuck and there’s traction on the brachial plexus, but if there’s enough traction there to injure those nerves in the arm, there’s enough pressure just in a natural birth that can affect the whole nervous system through the neck.

Kristin: We find with breastfeeding there can be some issues with the latch or a baby preferring one side to the other, and that could be, obviously, remedied by chiropractor care. Maybe something happened during birth where they’re just having some issues with their neck and alignment and so on.

Dr. Rachel: Yeah, that’s super common. We see that. That’s one of the first signs that there could have been upper cervical misalignment is if a baby prefers one side or one breast when they’re breastfeeding or if they have latching difficulty because that all has to do with how they can turn their head, how the muscles in their face are working, what position their jaw is in. So we see that a lot, and when we do home visits, that’s often for a baby who’s head is turned to one side, and then we can correct that with a simple gentle adjustment, and then it’s amazing. They breastfeed like a champ after that.

Dr. Annie: I would say a big one, too, right now is the torticollis and the flat head. I would say that’s later; you see that later, but it probably started with favoring nursing or with latching difficulty that didn’t get corrected. They’re favoring, so they always want to turn to one side. And then they hyper-develop those muscles on that side, and then just further down the road, it becomes harder and harder to correct.

Dr. Rachel: That’s why we always say it’s good to get your babies checked.

Alyssa: Maybe that’s why I’m so lumpy on this side!

Dr. Rachel: It’s probably your parents’ fault! I blame everything on my parents!

Alyssa: I had no idea!

Dr. Rachel: It all started with the birth!

Kristin: And then, certainly, babies that are colicky or have other issues at birth can be helped by chiropractor care. That’s an easy fix?

Dr. Annie: Yeah. And we’ll say this, just so people don’t think we’re crazy. There was a study done by an MD, Gutman, and he found spinal injury present in 80% of infants examined shortly after birth.

Dr. Rachel: Out of a thousand births.

Dr. Annie: Yeah. Causing interference to neurological and immune function. So like I said, even just the natural birth process. I mean, think about it. If they’re pulling — what is it, 60 to 90 pounds of axial pressure, they say? So even a natural delivery. And just the whole process of babies going through. The uterus contracting; that’s going to cause some sort of distress on that spine.

Dr. Rachel: And we see that. I mean, we see other things, too, in kiddos who ended up C-section. Because they don’t go through the vaginal canal, they don’t get that compression, and so when they’re pulled out of the abdomen, they have a lot of those issues, too, but then their lungs aren’t cleared of fluid and stuff, so then they’re more likely to have allergies and asthma and stuff like that, too, because of those things never getting corrected.

Kristin: So can you explain to our listeners what an adjustment for a newborn is like so they can rest assured that it’s very gentle?

Dr. Rachel: Yes. So the ICPA says you’re going to use the same amount of pressure that you would use to check the ripeness of a tomato. So it is so gentle. If you push your finger on your eyelid, the amount of pressure that you can just feel — that’s how much pressure we’re using to adjust a newborn, especially.

Dr. Annie: We’re using our pinkies. There’s no instrument; there’s no twisting, cracking, popping.

Kristin: And I think that’s what people imagine is the cracking. So it’s not like that? And the fact that you do home visits is amazing, so people can come to your office here in East Town, and for certain cases with newborns, you’ll go to their homes. That’s so wonderful!

Dr. Annie: We do that with most of the moms that we’ve seen throughout their pregnancy. As soon as their baby is born, they call us up and ask us to come over to their house and check the baby, please.

Kristin: And do you also adjust the mom when you do these home visits?

Dr. Rachel: We usually do. I think almost every time. And sometimes Dad, if Dad’s home.

Dr. Annie: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s important for the whole family. Birth is stressful! It’s stressful on everybody. It’s stressful on the mom’s spinal mechanics and on her body, but emotionally stressful on both parents, too.

Dr. Rachel: And on your body. We see doulas after the birth!

Kristin: You are so helpful to me after a birth because we have some recovery, as well, especially if it’s a physical birth, or even if it’s not as physical and my client’s sleeping with an epidural and I’m trying to get rest in a waiting room and kind of shoving myself into these strange positions on a chair to sleep. I definitely recover faster and my immune system is much stronger as a result of chiropractic care, so I appreciate you both! Thank you for explaining some of the remedies for different newborn traumas they experience. How can we find you?

Dr. Annie: You can find us on our website. Or you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. Both are @risewellnesschiro. It’s probably the best way to find us and get in contact with us.

Kristin: You’re still accepting new patients, correct?

Dr. Annie: Yep!

Kristin: Awesome.

Dr. Annie: Oh, yeah, we’ll take all the babies!

Kristin: Thank you so much for chatting with us, Dr. Annie and Dr. Rachel, and we will see you next time!

Dr. Annie: Thanks for having us!

Podcast Episode #62: Newborn Traumas Read More »