Yes. Birth prep is super important. Birth is a transformational journey. But as I touched on at the beginning, the rite of passage so pregnancy is the separation and the ending. Birth is the transition and the initiation, and then post partum really is this new beginning. It's this return. It is this shedding of who you once were and who you no longer are. And so birth is the portal through all of that, but we don't actually complete the right of passage into motherhood without this community support and the social recognition that who we were before is no longer. There will always be these elements of the maiden and and and you and your essence that you will carry through into your motherhood journey. But it it's really about coming into this awareness of, like, when we can support mothers, not just in the first six weeks, not just in their 1st year, but through the entire journey of motherhood, the entire journey of postpartum. This is where this real repair work and this healing is going to come from. Continuously integrating in these 5 essentials, whatever phase you are in, whether that's through your menstrual cycle, whether that's through your pregnancy journey, whether that's through your postpartum journey, and every single phase that you are going in. These are just the essentials for healing and thriving life in general. Welcome to the Well Nourished Mother Podcast. This is a show for women who desire a deeper, more mindful, and meaningful pregnancy, birth, and motherhood experience. In this space, we bring so much reverence to the rite of passage that is the maiden to mother journey. I'm your host Lauren Fortunaflock, founder of Nest and Nourish. I'm a mother, an ex nurse turned birth worker, and a trauma informed somatic coach with a fiery passion for birth prep and motherhood prep that blends the head and the heart. Join me for inspiring conversations with experts, mothers, and all around badass wise women, exploring all the ways we can nourish ourselves, body, mind, and heart in pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. This space will help you cultivate the knowledge, practices, and resources you need to be the most embodied, vibrant, authentic, intuitive, and well nourished mother you deserve to be. So welcome. Let's do this. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to episode 18 of the Well Nourished Mother podcast. Early postpartum is a wild ride. So much is happening all at once. Your body is healing, your hormones are raging, Your milk is just coming in. You're starving. You're sweating. You're bleeding. You're sleep deprived, and you're learning how to care for a new little human. There's the highest highs and lowest lows as you navigate all of this. Being prepared, leaning on, and setting up support, having a deep understanding of both your physiological needs and the physiological needs of your baby during this time, it's all just so, so important and really sets the stage for your overall mothering experience. I really do believe that, that how you heal and rest and nourish in those early days really does set you up for the rest of your mothering experience. There are so many simple things you can do to prepare, and it really is a practice of learning how to receive and how to ask for what you need. So when I was planning for this episode and thinking, who could I chat with about planning for post partum? Who has so much knowledge and wisdom to share about this topic? The lovely Britney Zier was a no brainer. Britney is the creator of Blissful Womb Care, where she supports women and mothers through the entire childbearing continuum. She's a certified innate postpartum care practitioner, and she's passionate about creating a cultural shift that honors and centres mothers as the foundation for collective healing. Her work is rooted in the 5 essentials of postpartum care, which is exactly what we're gonna talk about today, which are really the essentials for healing and thriving life in general. It's through integrating many of these practices herself that she heals seven and a half years of daily migraines and fibromyalgia. Now she's on a mission to share tangible ways women and mothers can support themselves and others in their community so we can all transition from just surviving to thriving. You're gonna love this one, whether you're pregnant yourself, preparing for another child, or have friends or family, or even clients that you'll be supporting through postpartum? This conversation is packed with so many practical tips and tricks and wisdom. You might even wanna grab a journal and take some notes. And Britney is just so easy to listen to. She's so eloquent, and her passion for this work and supporting new mothers is just so palpable. So let's hear more about how to plan for that 4th trimester through the lens of the 5 essentials of postpartum care. Alright. Let's get into it. Thank you so much for doing this with me, Britney. I'm very excited to properly meet you and get to know you. I've been kind of following you for a while. I think I found you through our mutual friend, Nicole, and love everything you post, everything you share, and the beautiful work that you do. So I'm so excited for our listeners to hear more about you. So to get us started, I always start with this question, and can you share a word or phrase to describe your current season or phase of womanhood? A word or a phrase. First thing that came to mind is blossoming. Like, I really feel like I'm in this blossoming phase of reclaiming and remembering all of the lost and forgotten parts of myself and womanhood in general. So I really feel like I'm blossoming right now. I love that. That's such such a beautiful world word in general. And just yeah. To have that feeling of blossoming, that kind of, like, spring summer energy is so so lovely. So can you share a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what you're passionate about? Yeah. For sure. So I am the creator of Blissful Womb Care, and the journey to where I am today, has been a really beautiful and powerful and twisty turny journey. I definitely did not anticipate that this would be where I would end up being, but, feel like I've been very divinely guided to where I currently am right now as well. So Blissful Wound Care began as Blissful Doula Care. So a little bit of backstory on me. I was a yoga teacher for nearly a decade. I'm not actively teaching anymore, but that was kinda like the gateway for me into, into into myself. And that's actually where bliss part of where bliss and blissful womb care comes from was through my yoga teacher training 10 years ago was my first conscious experience of bliss. And I made a commitment to myself at that time when I was 24 years old that I would follow my bliss wherever it took me. And I did not anticipate that 10 years later, this is where it would be, yet it's so beautifully aligned as well. So, yeah, yoga was a gateway for me in so many ways. I started teaching prenatal yoga relatively early into my yoga career. And I wanted to do that because there were so many women in my in my network, in my friend's group and everything who were starting to have babies, there was no awareness or support around how to support them. And so I wanted to learn. How can I how can I support women, how can I support mothers, and so prenatal yoga became a real passion of mine for quite a few years? And then during the pandemic, or right before the pandemic, I guess, I was teaching yoga 7 days a week, and I was also living with chronic pain at the time. I I suffered from daily migraines and fibromyalgia for seven and a half years, and I no longer do. And I'll share a little bit around my story around all of that too because all of this is really woven into where I am and who I am and what I do today as well. So I went from teaching yoga 7 days a week and living with chronic pain to all of a sudden the world shutting down. I lost my job. I had no real idea of what it was that I was going to do. And what I felt called to do was, well, given the uncertain times of the world in which we live in, what will always be needed? What will what is some sort of service or offering or something that I can do that no matter what the current state of the world is going to be, what can I do to support and what lights me up? And what came to mind was was birth. I wanted to support birth, and it that seemed like a natural gateway given that here I was, I had been teaching prenatal yoga. I've been supporting women through this journey in a lot of ways. K. What's the next step? And because of my experience of living with chronic pain and being in the medical system and then starting to dive into the birth realm, I began to see all of the distortions in our medical community and the way that we tend to mothers and, and birth in general. And but what was fueling me was really from this place of, like, saviorship of, like, I see the brokenness. I need to come in and save and be like an advocate and a voice for these women who don't know, what they don't know. And, so I created Blissful Doula Care, and that was my whole journey was I was going to be a birth doula. So I dove into a few different, birth trainings, birth doula trainings. I actually completed a full spectrum doula training, for fertility, birth, and postpartum. And all of this was also in preparation for supporting my sister through her pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey. And so this was all a few years ago. And so I was, we were planning for a physiological birth for her and lo and behold, it didn't wind up going that way. She wound up having a cesarean. And even though I was just finishing up all of these trainings, I was left, like, I have no idea actually how to support her following this major abdominal surgery. Basically, all that I was taught in the or or in the postpartum doula portion was here's, like, 4 breastfeeding positions that you can recommend and emotional support and go in and do, like, light housework and cleaning and everything. I'm like, all of that is really important and powerful and needed for sure. But it all felt so surface level, and that was the same with everything that I was learning in these birth doula trainings as well as, like, I left those trainings with more questions than answers. And I felt out of integrity, supporting, birth I I hadn't gone through the process. I still haven't gone through the process, and that's not part of my journey. I truly through my own inner workings, I feel like my path now is to support mothers versus me myself becoming a mother. I embody the mother archetype and, I I am that mother figure through being an auntie and through all of the women and mothers that I support and nurture. But it was it was through this place, and I was just kept getting this message of, like, well, you'll learn along the way. You'll learn along the way. Just get out there and support. And that didn't feel right for me. So I had created a website and a brand on Blissful Doula Care. Everything was revolving around that it was going to be birth support, but that didn't feel aligned anymore. And I knew that I was meant to support women and mothers, but I just didn't know how. And so one night in December of 2021, one, I sat in front of my altar and I cried. And I and I just, like, I I prayed and I called in. I said, I need a teacher. I need a community. I need something that is going to show me the way, because I know that I am meant to support in a grander way, but I don't know how to get there right now. And the next day, an ad popped up on my Instagram page for Innate Postpartum Care, with Rochelle Garcia Soliga of Innate Traditions, and I got this full body yes. Like, Like, I didn't even know what it was about, but as soon as I saw it, it was like, this is this is it. This is yes. And so I had a whole bunch of different things that I moved through in surrendering and accepting that invitation in as well of, am I really gonna do another 9 month long training? Like, is this something that is actually necessary? And I just kept getting this, like, soul, soul, soul. Yes. This is where I'm supposed to be. So I took the plunge, and I dove in. And within 3 months of integrating what I was learning in that 9 month long training, I no longer had chronic pain anymore. So I had begun this journey with daily migraines, fibromyalgia. I'd had a concussion. And from there, my life had completely changed, and I was doing all of the quote unquote right things to support myself. I had come off of all pharmaceuticals, so that was a really big part of the journey and started a holistic healing journey myself before entering this program as well, but it was through learning the 5 essentials of postpartum care and connecting to my womb, body, and soul through these, like, innate ways and this remembering of these, like, really simple and tangible ways and integrating that into my life that I woke up one day, 3 months into this training, and I was like, I haven't had a migraine for, like, 10 days. Like, this hasn't happened in literally seven and a half years. Like, what has changed? And it was, that I realized that these five essentials for postpartum care that I was learning in this training are really just the essentials for healing and thriving life in general. And so the more that I began to learn and embody and integrate all of this and and heal myself in these ways and support the women in my community who were going through their own pregnancy and motherhood journeys that I really started to see the power of the simplicity of postpartum care and how this really is the foundation, for healing and thriving life in general across the board, and it has to begin with mothers. And, also, to kinda tie in, like, blissful doula carriage now being blissful womb care, I was also really diving into, like, menstrual cycle awareness and fertility awareness and really connecting to the seasons within and without and understanding how we mirror what mother earth goes through in these seasons and cycles as well. And I spent 16 years on birth control, and so I have, like, this whole other side of what really lights me up and inspires me too. And I was like, well, I'm no longer called to support birth. I wanna support postpartum. And I also am really passionate about this topic of cycle awareness. How do I merge all of this together? And that's where blissful womb care came in. I was like, instead of focusing on one specific thing, because it's all interconnected, let's just focus on the wound and healing in general. And, that's where we are today. Oh my gosh. What an amazing like, an incredible story of you finding, like, your real passion and almost being led to it so kind of divinely, like you said. It's yeah. I I got goosebumps at multiple points in your story, And there's so many things I wanna touch on. Oh my goodness. I I felt very I felt like I have a very similar story in a lot of ways. You know, I completed a a doula program after being fired from my nursing position for not being vaccinated. You know, that in itself was a kind of 2 by 4 to the face that, okay, redirect. Mhmm. And then, you know, taking that doula program and realizing kind of the same thing, like, it felt very surface level. And especially coming from already being a nurse and knowing all of those kind of, like, nurturing, caring kind of things. Yeah. It felt very surface level, and I found myself being pulled to those deeper layers of, like, you know, all the doulas shouting. I say this all the time, but all the doulas shouting, you know, oh, you need to just use your voice. You need to set boundaries. And I was like, well, wait a minute. What's underneath that? Why is that so hard for so many women? And similar similarly to you and how you found or how that ad popped up for innate postpartum care, I remember that feeling of finding this somatic coaching program that I that I've just completed, and that full body yes feeling, and that kind of that synchronicity of the moment and just how, like, perfectly aligned it feels. Like, that feeling in your body is so powerful. So so powerful. Yeah. Just those moments of of full body yes and synchronicity. It's like, how can you not follow it? You also you mentioned kind of that, like, savior kind of complex feeling, and I think that that is such a almost like a natural arc, a lot of kind of caring, nurturing individuals have to go through. It's like we're initially called to this work, to working with other humans, to working with mothers, to women, whoever, to be in, like, a caring role. We're kind of called to it out of seeing, you know, what's missing and wanting to help so so eagerly and wanting to save in a way. And then I think we come kind of full circle in realizing finally once we do start working in that in that way that we aren't there to save, that we're there to support, that we're there to I don't even wanna say empower because I don't like that either. We're not empowering other people. There you empower yourself, but you're there to, yeah, to guide, to walk alongside, not to make decisions for. And I just think it's kind of like a natural arc that we have to go through. I would love if you could share more about these five essentials of postpartum care, and I love that you said that they're actually, like, the essentials for healing and thriving in life in general. Oh, and I also wanna comment on the fact that, oh my gosh, 7 years of migraines and fibromyalgia. Like, that is incredible. That must have been like, I can only imagine the, the relief of of waking up and and not, like, realizing, oh, wait. Like, I actually don't have that anymore. Like, that's incredible in itself. So, yeah, just kind of, like, celebrating that for a moment Yeah. Because that is so huge. That is so huge. And I I can only imagine how much that affects your life and how you move through the world. So, yeah, celebrating you for that. But, yeah, so if you could kind of take us through those 5 essentials, 1 by 1 and let us know a little bit more about each one, that would be amazing. Yeah. Absolutely. And thank you so much for that celebration as well. And, I mean, one one of the biggest lessons that I've got through this entire journey as well is, you are, you always end up exactly where it is that you're meant to be and the journey will not likely take you the way that you think that it's going to. And for so long, I just thought that that was that was going to be my life for forever, and that was the identity that I held on to. And I got to a level of acceptance around all of that too and let go of trying to change things and really just support and tend to myself in the best ways possible and the ways that felt most aligned for me too. So just a little nudge to anyone, whatever currencies in your end as well. Things are always changing too, and so much love and compassion to wherever you're currently at right now too. And so touching on just kind of the introduction into the 5 essentials of postpartum care and where all of this comes from. So a little bit of backstory on my teacher, Rochelle Garcia Salica, as well as she's a traditional midwife, and she began her journey in Mexico supporting birth and working with traditional midwives in Mexico. And a lot of her work is also really rooted in, indigenous and in in ancestral ways of living and remembering and reclaiming. And so it was through her own experience of having a very unsupported postpartum journey that she birthed this innate postpartum care and started to dive deeper into that there are these 5 essentials cross culturally. There's postpartum care traditions cross culturally, whatever land someone comes from, whatever culture they're in, you can look back and sometimes you have to look really, really, really far back to remember and find what these postpartum care traditions are. And some of them are still intact as well. But they all are rooted in these 5 essentials, which is rest, warmth, body care, nourishment, and community support. And all of this is rooted in the physiological design of women. So from the beginning of time or physiology as women has been the same and the journey of pregnancy birth and postpartum is a built in physiological rite of passage for women to go through as well. And I'll touch a little bit more on that when we get into the community support aspect of that. So she began to dive into looking at all of these different traditions and cultures around the world and saw that even though there might be different foods or different practices specific to whatever grows on that land or whatever previous traditions were, they're all rooted in these five essentials. So we can look back at the ways that we have supported intended to women since the beginning of time and draw on that wisdom and bring it forward into our current time and look at how we can start to adapt all of that to what reality is today. We can't go back to the way that things were. We are creating a new, a new world, a new way of being, but we can use that wisdom to lead us and guide us forward. And we can look at the lack of support, especially in the last 3 to 4 generations, of women and mothers and and the disconnect from mother, from woman, from community, from the village, from these innate ways of being this deep trust in our physiology and the ways that things have been done prior to the modern days that we live in, we can see where this fracture has come from and why we are where we are today as a collective. And it all comes back to this lack of tending and support of mothers in this really transformational and pivotal time. So in Ayurveda, they say that how a woman is tended to in the 1st 42 days postpartum dictates her health, wellness and vitality for the next 42 years of her life. And in traditional Chinese medicine, similarly, they're saying that if a woman is appropriately tended to in her early postpartum time, this lays the foundation for her to be thriving when it comes to menopause as well. We view menopause and postpartum and the menstrual cycle all very similarly as that, like, this is a curse of which women go under, but it can actually be the gateway to us, like really thriving and honoring, who we are as women and where we come from. So that was something that really lit me up. One of Rochelle's missions is midwifing a cultural shift that we come back to honoring and centering mothers as the as as the pillar of community. So coming back to, like, what these 5 essentials are. So let's maybe I'll take a pause and see if you had any questions before I dive into that. No. No. It's beautiful to to hear, yeah, the background of why this is important and where these things are coming from. And I just love that it is truly about mother centered care, and I just yeah. Yeah. So and that idea of midwife midwifing a cultural shift around that. That's beautiful. So, yeah, continue. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So let's let's begin with let's begin with rest. So, like, there's so much of the circulating now around like rest is so important and, and we need to honor rest. And yes, all of this is very, very true, but we've also never been given an opportunity to rest. We're so far removed from the importance of rest, that it seems like a really nice airy fairy thing to do, but, like, how do you actually integrate all of that in? And so I just wanna touch on, like, what is the physiological reason for rest in especially in the early postpartum time. And when I'm talking in this context, I'm going to really be referring to the early postpartum window, but I also just wanna put some framework around that. Like, once you have conceived, whether you have had a pregnancy, a miscarriage, stillbirth, live birth, multiple babies, whatever it is from the time that you have conceived and then you no longer have life in your womb, however that comes, you are postpartum and you are postpartum for life. So oftentimes we, hear about postpartum. Lots of people actually I had someone comment to me the other day of like, oh, yeah. My sister didn't have postpartum, but maybe she's starting to develop it now. And I'm like, wait. Hold on. What do you like, she is postpartum. She had a baby. She is postpartum. She's like, oh, I said, do you mean, like, postpartum depression? She's like, oh, yeah. I thought that that was the same thing. So lots of people think that postpartum depression is synonymous with postpartum, and it's not. Postpartum is the physiological experience that your body goes through after you have had life in your womb and you no longer do. So postpartum is for life. But in this context, we are talking about this really early window and putting the framework around this too that it is never too late to begin to repair all of this as well. I support mothers who are 3 days to 30 plus years postpartum as well because we can begin to integrate all of this in at any point to begin repair. So back to this early window, why is rest so important in say the 1st 6 weeks postpartum? Well, when we look at what physiologically happens in the body from the moment of conception to birth, you are in this constant state of expansion. And this is going to tie into, I'm kinda gonna weave in warmth and body care with all of this as well, because I find the 3 really overlap. So you go through this massive expansion. Pregnancy is this time of expansion. It's a hot state. It's a yang state. Your blood volumes, doubles. You you have so much more fluid in your body. You're growing a human. You have, you know, like expansion, expansion, expansion, and the pressure that's put on your ligaments, on your pelvis, on your tissues, on your womb, like before you can see when you're in your cycle, you know, if you're not bleeding your, your womb weighs about 4 ounces and it's about the size of your fist. When you are bleeding, when you have your period, it goes up to about 8 ounces. By the end of pregnancy, not including the weight of your baby and your placenta and all of the fluid and everything, it's like 2 to £3. So that's how big it expands. And when we think about the pressure that is put on the ligaments, on the tissues, on the entire, on the entire pelvic floor and everything like that. Like, obviously, it's going to take some time for all of that to repair, not even looking at what the journey of labor and birth is actually like. Many women go through labor in some way, shape or form and wind up with the cesarean. Many people go through like a really, a really long labor. Many women go through just a caesarean as well. Why do we have this awareness and understanding that when someone goes through a significant injury or has a surgery of any way, shape or form or an illness or something like rest is one of the first things that we recommend, but for new mothers, it's like, how quickly can you bounce back and get back out there? And I think a big part of that is this culture that we live in that is like, so go, go, go oriented, that we, especially when it comes to mothers, that we forget, We don't even know. It's not even that we forget. I think there's most people just don't even know. They don't see the physiological, the physiological similarities between going through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum as they do with injury, illness, surgery of any other kind too. So we send mothers home after birth and cesareans with no support and just figure it out and do it on your own. No physio follow-up. Nothing like that. Yeah. Not nothing like that, which is which is why body care is another one of the essentials of postpartum care as well. So there's many different ways that you can integrate body care. Something as simple as, like and I I incorporate warmth and body care in very similar ways too. So k. I'm jumping all over the map here. My apologies. I can see how they're hard to separate out because they do all connect together. So I appreciate you trying to separate them out. Yes. But it's it's all it's all very interconnected. Okay. So let's let's dive a little bit into warmth. Why is warmth one of, the essentials here as well? So going back to pregnancy is a really hot yang state. The moment that you give birth, all of a sudden you are coming into, like, an like, you're still in a really expanded state, but you're empty now as well. And so cold can enter in really quickly. And warmth is essential for healing. Warmth, helps to bring in anti inflammatory cells. It brings in new fresh blood. It's helping to nourish and bring everything back into the state and cold delays healing. It constricts blood vessels. It like, when you think about we're in the season of winter here, I'm still in Calgary and it's still been really cold. Like, you get cold, you think about how your whole body just, like, goes into, like, this contraction mode. But when you're warm, like everything can like soften and relax and open. So how do we integrate in things like warmth? Well, one of my favorite, most simple, accessible tools is simply using a heating pad. Like heating heat, warmth really soothes and helps the nervous system to regulate. So putting a heating pad on your back, if your back is sore over your womb space, keeping your feet warm is one of the most, one of the most accessible and easiest ways that you can support yourself in this way too. And so then body care thinking about warming body care practices. So having a warm bath, a sit's bath, an herbal bath, something like that, an ambiance massage using, like, a warming oil. So sometimes I'll use, like, a sesame oil because that's warming in nature versus coconut oil is cooling in nature. Incorporating in other warming herbs that are going to be supportive as well, like like rosemary, thyme, ginger, cinnamon, and these can be integrated in through teas or nourishment, which we'll get into in a moment as well. But other really important body care practices like, pelvic care support, or womb massage, or, seeing an acupuncturist that is going to work with your chi and help to bring more energy back into your body. There's so many different modalities of body care that can be supportive. And when we're looking at that early postpartum time, it's not the time to be getting back into the gym. Again, looking at why is rest so important. The appropriate body care practices in the 1st 6 weeks postpartum are really going to be things like craniosacral therapy, acupuncture, breath work, stretching, like gentle stretching, like minimal movement. Really the most movement that you should be doing is whatever it is around your home and tending to your baby and giving yourself that time and space to be able to rest and heal, which can be very, very really rest in the ways that are going to be most supportive for you without community support. How do we have community support? Well, whether that's from the partner or from in laws or family or friends, anyone that is around, which also isn't accessible for a lot of people in this time too. So I'll touch a little bit more on that. Is there anything that you wanted to add in or reflect that? Just this idea that, yeah, like, overall, rest can feel so unsafe when you've lived your life hustling, hustling, being productive, being a high achiever, resting in general, even outside of pregnancy, birth, post partum, can feel incredibly unsafe to your nervous system. It starts highlighting all these old wounds of, like, I'm not being productive, I'm not doing enough, I don't have worth. I'm only worth something if I'm producing something. So this, again, is kind of the layer that I'm so interested in. Like, I love that rest is one of these components. And like you said, it sounds so kind of easy and airy fairy, like, oh, just rest. But for a lot of women, it's like, I don't know how to do that. I don't know what that feels like. It feels very uncomfortable. So I wonder, like, have you had clients that have had a really hard, like, a hard time settling into this, or do you have any recommendations for how to kind of, like, begin playing with this idea of rest maybe while you're still pregnant or before? Oh, I love that question. Thank you so much. I mean, virtually everyone that I've talked to, and supported has had some sort of struggle with rest. And oftentimes, like, there is this piece that, yes, it does feel unsafe in their body. They've never had that experience. They don't even know how to begin to do that, but a lot of times it comes from projections from other people as well. All of whoever else is in the support system is like, no. You need to hurry up and get back out there. So I'm gonna just share a quick little story and then I will add in, how to start to integrate this in as well through cycle awareness. Cause again, it's all intertwined. Yeah. But there was, there was, one of the first mothers who I supported, I was supporting her through her pregnancy while I was still in this training. So I'm sharing all of this with her in cesarean. And, she lived a few hours away from me, so I wasn't able to, like, be there to support her in person until a couple months postpartum. So I was doing virtual support with her in these early postpartum times. And, so she had had a cesarean, and her partner, was doing a training in Ottawa. And so he was home for the birth, and then 4 days later, he left. So here she is, like, navigating this really, really tender postpartum time virtually by herself. She did have some family support, but what everyone was telling her is you need to hurry up and get back out there. You need to be walking as much as you can. Like, what are you like, just do do do do do. And she's calling me saying, Britney, like, I I'm so anxious right now. I don't know what to do. I feel like I actually I I don't think I can do this. Like, I think I need to go on anti anxiety medication. This is too much for me. This is too intense. I don't know how to support myself. So I started asking, like, what is your daily life looking like? She also had a whole bunch of stairs in her house as well. And so her bedroom was upstairs and then she has the main floor and the laundry is in the basement. So here she is running up and down these stairs multiple times a day after major abdominal surgery, hauling a baby around, not eating the appropriate foods, navigating this grief of not having her partner there, navigating this grief of what her entire life and existence has just completely shifted from. And so I had to remind her and and offer up these these points that these are the ways that you can start to support yourself. 1st of all, stop running up and down the stairs and stop going out for walks, especially, you know, like, it was fall time as well. Like, that cold element was really starting to come in as well. And, so in the physiological standpoint to, like, the spleen in traditional Chinese medicine is the place of the emotional body and the heart and home and, like, where the where the blood and the nourishment and all that sort of stuff comes from as well. And so oftentimes, an overly anxious mother is a sign of the spleen chi deficiency. So we started integrating in what are the warm foods that you can take, starting to integrate in just simply resting with a heating pad or a hot water bottle on. And having those be the things in a way as, like, the forced rest, that's that in a way seems productive if you are utilizing some other tool besides that. And so then I would also guide her through some shorter moments of rest too with like, what are some self compassion holds that we can do? What's a 5 minute meditation that we can do? What what is some breath work? How are you regulating your nervous system? And and she had some other people in her life as well. She was working with a really great therapist who was offering up a lot of these points of support too. And so looking at that, those are simple ways that we can incorporate rest into. Rest doesn't necessarily have to be laying in your bed for 24 hours a day for the next 6 weeks. It can be these little snippets and these moments of pausing and taking a breath and honoring where you're currently at in this moment can be one of the most powerful ways to incorporate rest. But how can you start to practice this before postpartum During your period, your period, your period, I don't even like to call it your period anymore. Your bleed, your moon cycle, however you wanna orient to that. It's a it's a mini postpartum that we go through every month as well. And it's this invitation to come in words to integrate in these 5 essentials too, especially the rest, warmth, body care, and nourishment. And so women can start to practice these slower moments of rest and connecting to their womb and their physiological design when they're bleeding and in preparation for that time as well. And again, it seems great, but like when you're a mother, how do you, how do you do that when you have a job, when you have life and humaning responsibilities in this world that doesn't honor that and doesn't give the space for that and doesn't have the awareness and compassion. Again, it can be as simple as taking 5 minutes, just like with your hands resting over your womb or wherever feels comfortable on your body and communicating with your body of, I see you, I hear you. I feel you, I honor you. I am doing what is accessible to me. And if all I have is 5 minutes to connect with you in this way, Can you trust that that is going to be enough to start to build up that muscle and that tolerance too? So starting small and starting before you are thrown into this journey of postpartum is going to be really supportive as well. That I love that. I love yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. I love how this idea of combining them together. So, you know, instead of just resting, meaning, oh, you have to lay on your bed and do nothing and stare at the wall. Well, no. But this idea that, okay, you're gonna rest for 10 minutes while you have a heating pad on, somehow that can feel more productive. Or, you know, resting, but you're also crocheting or, you know, with your baby laying on the bed beside you or whatever it is. And there's different types of rest. There's mental rest. There's emotional rest. There's physical rest. So I think whatever you can find that allows you to have those moments, like you said, even those quick moments of of really just having no expectation. I think that's the difference as well. There's no expectation to produce anything, to do anything, to have a result. The other thing I I really appreciate is this idea of practicing with menstruation, and it's so true. And I've really, like, personally settled into this so much more since becoming a mother. You know, I was I remember being 12, getting my first period, and I also hate that word too. Mhmm. And thinking it was a curse, and, like, I could not believe that for the rest of my life, every single month, for, like, a week at a time, I was gonna have to deal with this. And now I see it as such a beautiful experience. And, you know, my husband and I, we've started we come downstairs actually into the room that I'm in right now. We've turned the other side of this room into a little gym. So every morning, we come down with with our daughter and we work out. And I've really settled into this idea that, like, I'm not keeping up with him. We are so different in that way. And when I'm bleeding, I don't come down. I stay upstairs. I take a break. I don't work out that day, or I stay upstairs and I do some gentle stretching. But I think it's you have to change your whole kind of mindset that we're not the same, and our bodies don't work on a 24 hour cycle like men like men do. And and really just allowing yourself to kind of flow and ebb and and really respond to what your body is needing and wanting. And I think that starts with getting really curious about what your body is even telling you to begin with. So, yeah, I love that so much. So we've really touched on on rest. Yeah. We've really touched on warmth with these practical ways of of incorporating warmth, heating pads, warm socks, warm baths, and then body care, massage with some warming oil like sesame. I think the idea of body care also brought up for me the importance of touch, whether it's touching yourself or having someone touch you and massage or stroke or whatever it is. I know for me, in the beginning, I felt like I was being touched a lot because I always had a baby on my boob, but it's much different than that. Like, whether it's sensual touch or touch for pleasure, and I don't mean that in a sexual way either, but that as well. Yeah. Just you start to really miss out on a certain type of touch because you're always being sucked on or pulled, hair pulled, or skinned. You know? You've always got a baby attached to you, and it's a beautiful way to be touched. But it's, I found that I really started to miss these other ways of being touched. So I I think it really highlighted the importance of touch in in that healing time as well. And then through all of this, the importance of community support so that we can do these things so that we have someone to help us do them or someone to hold the baby while we do them or not to hold the baby. You can hold your baby, stay connected, and have someone clean the dishes for you, tidy up the room, like, the things that you don't need to be worrying about right now so that you can focus on you. And, again, it touches on this mother centered care, and I think so many women have such a hard time with this because it feels selfish. It feels like there's guilt and shame kind of automatically built into it. So what are we missing here? Nourishment, I guess, is the is the 5th 5th pillar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So nourishment is one of the things that I am the most passionate about. I'd say that food is one of my love languages. And, I actually used to wanna be a chef. And so it's really interesting that this has also led me kind of in a way back to that. It's one of my key offerings is a delivery nourishment care package where I make these superfood broths and soups and really nourishing muffins or treats and deliver them to women and mothers. And, nourishment was one of the biggest pieces for me in my healing journey. And I can see that that is one of the biggest pieces that we are lacking just across the board when we look at our food system and and access to food as well. Like, we can't talk about the importance of nourishment without also acknowledging the access to adequate nourishment as well. I I acknowledge and recognize that our world is not set up for that. Tell me why, like a clamshell of strawberries is 899, but a box of cereal is 249 that's full of sugar and ingredients that we can't pronounce and everything. So when we talk about nourishment, it's also incorporating in the warmth aspect as well. So what are the foods that are going to be most supportive and nourishing during the postpartum time and in support of healing? Foods that are warm in nature, warm in temperature, easy to digest, and nutrient dense. So where does all of that come from? That all comes from all foods that have as little, fillers or additives or production in it as possible. Again, I honor and acknowledge that that's just simply not accessible to everyone. So what are the small ways that you can begin to incorporate those things in? And, one of the things that I love the most is broth. It's one of the simplest ways to incorporate so many different nutrients, and then it can be as simple as throwing like, I I save all of the bones from the chicken thighs that we make, and I put them in a bag in the freezer until I get this nice big bag, and then I'll make a huge stock car stock pot of broth for my house with all of that. And then I'll throw in some simple veggies, carrots, onions, celery. And then I have a bunch of super foods that I love to use as well. So throwing all of that in and making this, like, pot of really nutrient dense deliciousness that you can sip on throughout the day as well. So broth is one of the easiest ways and, like, why why are these components so important? Again, back to the physiology, a new mother's digestive system is basically equivalent to a newborn's digestive system as well. Right? Like your body is going through massive, massive healing. So, thinking about why are we eating the way that we're eating is to support healing. It's to bring more of this warmth back in. It's to incorporate in foods that are anti inflammatory, that are nutrient rich, to start to replenish all of the stores that your baby has drawn from from your body during pregnancy, and then the production of breast milk as well, and foods that are going to be supportive for your brain. Like, everyone talks about mommy brain or pregnancy brain or anything like that. But most people don't understand that, like, your brain actually shrinks by 5% by the end of pregnancy because your baby is siphoning off from your brain to develop theirs, and then your brain is going through this whole massive rewiring process through motherhood as well. And so we need to be eating foods that are really supportive for the brain. So animal fats and omega fatty acids and and, those animal fats are really important too because it covers the myelin sheath of the nervous system too. So we need, we need like a substantial amount of fats and nutrients to support brain, nervous system to replenish all of these nutrients in the body. And so, yeah, the thinking about what are the foods that are going to be easiest for your body to digest so that if so that you're not pulling energy away that your body needs to be supporting healing in all of these other ways and to be producing breast milk too. So avoiding cold foods, cold, like, cold and raw, like, like vegetables and and fruits. If you're having fruits and vegetables, do your best to cook them or at least have them be at room temperature as well. Lukewarm or warm water over cold water. I know that smoothies are something that it's really easy to just like grab and go. You can throw a whole bunch of stuff in there, but oftentimes women will develop a chill for days or weeks after having something cold, and that is because it sends this whole body into this shock system as well. So in those first 6 weeks, really eating as many warming foods, warm in temperature, heating your food up, and well cooked foods that are easy for your body to digest is really going to be the most supportive for you in in stoking that digestive fire and bringing those nutrients back in. I'm I'm kind of laughing because I just thought of, you know, in my own postpartum preparation, I remember, you know, preparing lots of soups and warm foods, and I had lots of stuff in my freezer. And I was planning for a physiological homework. And, you know, after 3 days of labor, I decided it was time to get some help. I was exhausted, blah blah blah. So I didn't plan ahead, and I didn't bring any food when we transferred to hospital. So my first meal, which I'm sure this is a very common experience, but my first meal after giving birth was Tim Hortons. It was like I think it was the afternoon. There wasn't much open. I don't even know what time of day it was anymore, but, yeah, I'm pretty sure I had, like, a bagel and a coffee. Like, that was my my lovely postpartum meal, and I wish I would have thought of head and grabbed something from my freezer to bring with me. So this kind of leads into, like, how so for, you know, someone listening who's maybe gearing up to be pregnant or is pregnant and they're planning for their next postpartum first postpartum experience, how do we plan or how do we, you know, create that community? How do we ask what do we ask for? What do we save for? What do we do to have this kind of nourished postpartum experience that includes rest, warmth, body care, and nourishment, and community support? Like, practical ways. Practical ways. Great, great question. I mean, it all really simply begins with education. That's that's one of the most practical ways, and I have a course that I'm going to be rolling out in the next couple months called planning for the 4th trimester that is designed for pregnant women, their partners, and anyone who is going to be supporting you during your postpartum time. So whether that's your mother, your sister, your friends, whoever is going to be kind of primary support for you so that everyone is being educated on the physiological reasons why these five essentials are so important and so that you can begin to prepare yourself in that time frame. Now that's not something that is accessible to everyone as well, and I honor and acknowledge that too. So, again, just listening to this conversation, and understanding. K. I personally, nourishment is one of the easiest ways that you can incorporate all of these 5 essentials in. And so focusing on the soups, stews, warm foods, easily digestible foods, and and letting the people in your support network know that these are the foods that you want to incorporate in. So many people are very well meaning, and they'll bring over, like, a really cheesy lasagna or something that's really heavy or, like these smoothie preps or lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and, and all of that. And again, like that's, that's really important and that's really generous and it's really lovely. But when we can understand the amount of energy that it takes for your body to digest lots of these foods and your story of having Tim Hortons after your birth, like, you're you're not alone in that. I see I see doulas oftentimes. I saw a doula recently. And there's no shade, no judgment. Everyone does what what they know and think is going to be most supportive. But, like, she supported her client through a caesarean, and she showed back up at the hospital with, like, an ice cream cake. Because, like, yay, you did it. And I'm, like, that's so sweet. And that's one of the, like, least least supportive nourishment things that you can give to someone in that time as well. Again, like, if that's all that someone is delivering to you, use your judgment, whatever it is that you wanna do. But creating a meal a meal train there's actually a website. What is it? Mealtraindot org or meal train dot com. I can't remember. Something like that. But you create an account, and you make a list within here of what are the foods that you would really like, maybe some recipe inspiration. And then you add the people in your community into this and create kinda like a schedule of who's going to be dropping food off during that time. What are some what are some things that you can stockpile your freezer with, whether that's, like, slow cooker bags or a bunch of frozen soup and broth or, like, a baked oatmeal that can be stored in the freezer that you just have to pop in the oven. Like, what are what takes the least amount of preparation for you as the new mother or for your partner or whoever is going to be coming into the home to support. And also reframing this idea too of, you know, baby showers. Everyone loves to shower the baby and like buy all of these gifts and gadgets for baby. And mothers will almost always put their care intending to last. So if you really wanna do things differently, switching from having like a baby shower to maybe a mother's blessing ceremony or asking for donations towards some sort of postpartum care package that you can reach out to whoever is accessible in your community or body care or, like, if there's a pelvic care practitioner that you wanna see or massage or something like that, like, getting creative with asking for support in a way that is going to center you. Because if you as a mother are supported and tended to, ultimately, your baby is going to be supported and tended to, and your family is going to be supported and tended to. So this comes back to Rochelle's whole vision of midwifing a cultural shift. Like it really comes back to, to, to this cultural shift of honoring and centering mothers first and foremost over, over babies and all of the gadgets and everything. We have no problem asking for money for a fancy stroller. Why do we have problem asking for money for continued support outside of here? Right? Yeah. I'll just add, like, it's this is making me think of so in episode 13 of the Well Nurse Mother podcast, I chatted with the creator of Be Her Village. Have you so Be Her Village is this incredible, platform where new parents can set up an account, and they can ask for kind of like donations or monetary support so people can give gifts of support, so they can give money. People want to do this anyway. They wanna support you, and half the time, they don't know what to give you, so they buy a baby blanket. And then you end up with 300, and you're like, I feel bad. I'm gonna throw some out and give some away. So it's this beautiful it makes it easy for you to ask, like, hey. Here. Here's a platform. These are the things I'm interested in, and it might be a postpartum doula. It might be photography for my birth. It might be, a pelvic floor physio. Whatever it is that you wanna ask for, you put on your page, and then people can kind of contribute to this account. And then the beautiful part is that in the end, the parents get to decide how they wanna spend that money in whatever way they want. So I think it's just such a beautiful tool to make that asking a little bit easier. Because what I think is so hard and what I'm hearing you say is that we need to be able to ask for these things, and we need to be able to set those boundaries. Like, yes, I would love for you to bring me some food postpartum, but here, here's a list of foods that I'm interested in. And that can feel so, so difficult for a lot of women. So I love that, you know, the meal train website, that's such an easy way to make that asking a little bit easier. Yeah. And, also, I feel like a lot of the times, it feels like all of this is on the woman to figure out. Well, you need to ask. You need to set these boundaries. And it's like, well, where's the rest of the family? Where's the partner? Where's the husband? Letting them take take the reins a little bit in some of this asking as well. Like, maybe they can talk to their parents about these are the these these are the ways we want you to support us. And having these conversations ahead of time, I think, is just so important. Mhmm. Yeah. Absolutely. And this this brings us all into this very big topic of community support. And all of this, everything that I have dripped in here and offered in here, like all of this is really lovely, and we can see how supportive all of this is going to be. But without the community support so community support is the foundation, and then the rest, warmth, body care, and nourishment are the pillars of the house. Right? Like, the pillars can't stand without this foundation. And so we can see that one of the biggest fractures in our current collective right now is this lack of community support, and we can see how community support is what is the most needed. So we're in this really tender time where we're building this bridge right now where there's actually a lot of grief for a lot of people as well coming back to this, like, asking for support, how uncomfortable it can be to ask for support, especially when our mothers and the other women in our lives never had this available to them, which is one of the reasons why I support women who are 3 days to 30 plus years postpartum because that is the continuous theme that I have heard is I wish that I would have had someone like you during my time and it just wasn't accessible. And so even if you can see that and desire that there's also a lot of this grief that we need to process for everyone who came before us who didn't have this accessible to them and being okay with asking for that support even though other people didn't have this accessible to them as well. It's it's really reparative work that we are doing right now. But the other piece too, one is asking for it, the discomfort of asking for support. I am the first person. I will jump up and support anyone and everyone. I will drop whatever it is that I'm doing, and I will put other people's needs and support far above my own. And my biggest insight at work has been to allow myself to ask for and receive for the same support that I so lovingly and graciously will give to others. It's still very, very uncomfortable for me. So it's one thing to have the space created to be able to ask for support. It's another thing to actually ask for it. And then the biggest piece is allowing yourself to receive it. Can you allow yourself to receive? And one thing that came up as well, when we were talking about, like, productivity and how, like, it can seem productive to like, if you're resting with a heating pad, that can just be that it can give that little bit more of a permission slip to to rest because there's that productivity. What if simply nurturing and feeding your baby and tending to yourself was product productivity enough? Like, why does it have to be more than that? Yeah. Again, like, it it's it's this culture that we have created that celebrates productivity and that doesn't see that that in and of itself is productivity. But, like, isn't that the most productive thing that we could ever do when we look long term at how supportive that can be as well. But again, yeah, this this piece of community supports, we can't do any of this if we don't have community support. And I'm so I'm so grateful for the for the men, the partners, the husbands that are stepping up and really stepping into this role of support and honoring mothers and, and wanting to step into the birth, into the birth realm and in the postpartum realm. But the men and fathers and partners are also going through their own rite of passage and they need their own support. And there is such little support for men and for partners. And we're putting all of this pressure on them now to show up in, in these spaces. And then lots of women are disappointed when their partners don't know how to actually show up or support or don't understand what it is that they're actually going through. And so I use this analogy of, like, women have been supporting women since the beginning of time. We have this innate wisdom within us and this innate connection to women. But men have never been invited into these spaces. Really, it's only been in the last generation or 2 that we have started to ask men to show up, to be there to support us during pregnancy, birth, and to be a part of the parenting journey and share this load. Prior to this, it was, it was women doing it and women supporting women. So men don't have this built into their innate wisdom and into their physiological design of how to support the women in their lives. And so we need to give them a little bit of grace and compassion and rally around them as support too. I was in home last week with a mom who was 4 weeks postpartum recovering from a cesarean. And I had a really great chat with her husband as well. And and I said I was like, who's did you have men in your in your life who are also fathers? And he said, oh, yeah. I've I've got lots. And I was like, okay. Great. So, like, are you able to, like, open up to them and and talk about what this experience is like? Oh, no. No. No. No. Like, out of 10 out of 10 men, there's probably only 1 or 2 that I talk about feelings with or anything, like, not surface level with. I was like, yeah. I that and that's that's just something that is so normal. So, it's about supporting the men. I love I love supporting the partners and the men as well so that they can be seen and witnessed in what their experience is like, and so that they can be educated in what is going to be most supportive, or how can they show up in ways that are most supportive for their partners too. So community support is the foundation. It's the thing that is lacking the most. It's the hardest bridge to build. We can see all of these other essentials and how important they are. But without that foundation of community support, it is really, really challenging to integrate it all in, and it's possible. It's repair work. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. So the foundation or, like, you know, what I view kind of birth preparation as these days. You know, I think in the beginning of my, like, doula journey, it was, oh, learning about the phases of labor and learning about the physiology of birth. But now, you know, I'm much more interested in birth prep as, like, calling in and cultivating your village, how to do that, or how to open yourself up to be able to receive, how to set boundaries, how to use your voice, how to ask for help. I think those are the, like, the the more inner work of birth prep that I think is just so important so that we do have this foundation of of community support so that you can have all of these other nourishing things happening so that you can heal, so that you can care for your family and your child in the best way possible. So I have loved this so much, Britney. I'm wondering, is there anything else you'd like to touch on before we start to wrap up? You know, there's so much support for pregnancy and birth out there and they and such little support for postpartum care and support out there. And I see one of the biggest reasons for that is because pregnancy and birth are finite times. Right? Like pregnancy is 9 months or birth is, you know, at most a few days. Postpartum is for life. So when we live in this world that can put that that likes these boundaries around timelines, it's easier to drop in and support those things. But where we really need to start to shift things is in this, like, this shift of what you're just saying around birth prep of, like, how can you actually begin to prepare? Like, yes, birth prep is super important. Birth is a transformational journey. But as I touched on at the beginning, the rite of passage, so pregnancy is the separation and the ending. Birth is the transition and the initiation, and then postpartum really is this new beginning. It's this return. It is this shedding of who you once were and who you no longer are. And so birth is the portal through all of that, but we don't complete the rite of passage into motherhood without this community support and the social recognition that who we were before is no longer. There will always be these elements of the maiden and and and you and your essence that you will carry through into your motherhood journey. But it it's really about coming into this awareness of, like, when we can support mothers, not just in the 1st 6 weeks, not just in the 1st year, but through the entire journey of motherhood, the entire journey of postpartum. This is where this real repair work and this healing is going to come from. Continuously integrating in these 5 essentials, whatever phase you are in, whether that's through your menstrual cycle, whether that's through your pregnancy journey, whether that's through your postpartum journey in every single phase that you are going in. These are just the essentials for healing and thriving life in general. And the more that we can individually do this inside out work that you're speaking about as well of honoring our boundaries and and speaking what our needs are and asking for support and integrating in these very simple and tangible ways. It doesn't have to be all of them. It can be 1. You know, I had I've been supporting a mom of 5, and she said, I you know, the the heating pad thing was such a game changer for her. And then she needed that continuous reminder for me for a long time and probably still does of, hey. It's really simple. Can you just take 5 minutes with your heating pad? Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. So continuing these reminders, continuing to embody this to walk forward in this way, this is this is the journey. That's the foundation. That's the community support. And yeah. So You highlighted that or there's this this reminder that it can be in such small and simple ways. I think when we start learning about these new ways of caring for ourselves and, you know, these 5 pillars, it can feel overwhelming. It can feel like you have to do all of them and have it perfect and, you know, yeah, just incorporate it all. And I think what you so beautifully kind of stated, it can be in really small ways. It can be one thing. It could be swapping your cold water for hot water or for tea instead. It can be instead of having Tim Hortons as your post birth meal, it's having a bowl of soup from Tim Hortons. Sure. You know? If if it if it needs to be that small, it can be that small. And I just think that's such a great reminder, so thank you for that. And I'm wondering as we kind of wrap up here, you've shared so much juicy goodness. I can't wait for everyone to to hear it all and let it soak in. But where can we connect with you if we want more more, Britney? Yeah. Absolutely. So, primarily, you can find me on Instagram at blissfulwombcare. You can also explore my website. I've written quite a few different blogs that expands a lot more on a lot of the things that we talked about here. So there's a blog on why postpartum care is a necessity and not a luxury. There's also a blog that that goes a little bit more into these 5 essentials as well. And, all of my postpartum care offerings can be found on my website as well. I offer different packages for in home care rooted in these 5 essentials. And I also offer virtual support as well. So for anyone who isn't local to me in Calgary, but just really want someone in your pocket to connect with through text and voice messaging to be seen and witnessed in the rawness and the vulnerability and the messiness of pregnancy, birth, post partum, motherhood, all of that. That's what the virtual support is available for. And almost all of my offerings I offer on a sliding scale as well because I honor and acknowledge this access, this financial access, and that mothers are going to put their needs usually towards the bottom of the list, and I want to be as accessible to the mothers in my community as I can while also continuing to be a resource so that I can show up in my fullness for the mothers in my community too. So I would love to connect more. I'm so honored to have been on your podcast to share all of this wisdom with you, to be connected with you and the women in your community. And, yeah, we together, we are just repairing, healing, reclaiming, and returning back to this innate wisdom and this innate knowing that mother centered care really is the way forward. And I'm just so honored and grateful to walk alongside you and all of the others doing work in such beautiful ways. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I would be ever so grateful if you would leave a review on Apple or rate the show wherever you're listening from. It really does help this show grow and blossom. Alright. See you next time.