Preparing your body for pregnancy is about so much more than ovulation timing. In this episode I walk you through my personal fertility playbook; the exact steps I would take to prepare my body for pregnancy in 2026. This conversation is especially for anyone who hoped 2025 would be their year, and is now holding both grief and hope as a new year approaches.

I know firsthand that the emotional weight of fertility sucks, particularly during the holidays. Remember that grief around unmet expectations is real and valid. Today I’m going to break down a holistic, data-driven approach to fertility that prioritizes safety, nourishment, and whole-body health, not just quick fixes.

In this episode, I cover:

• Why fertility preparation should begin long before trying to conceive

• The importance of getting clear on your “why” before starting a fertility plan

• Why foundational labs are the first step in understanding your fertility health

• How to audit your cycle and what “regular periods” actually mean

• Why egg quality and implantation health take time and can’t be rushed

• Environmental factors that can quietly impact fertility and how to reduce the biggest burdens without overwhelm

• What not to do when it comes to detoxing while trying to conceive

• How to build a personalized supplement strategy based on data, not guesswork

• The role stress physiology plays in fertility and simple ways to support your nervous system

• Additional testing that can uncover root causes when pregnancy isn’t happening

• Why fertility is never just about hormones and why quick fixes often fall short

Let’s Connect:

Learn more about the Flourish Formula here: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

Last week I told you the five things I do care about as a parent so today we’re flipping the script. I’m sharing the five things I absolutely do not give a shit about. Some of these I used to be type-A obsessed with, and others I’ve never cared about for even one second. Motherhood has humbled me, softened me, and honestly just rearranged my priorities in a way that feels a hell of a lot healthier.

First up: the mess. I don’t care how dirty my kid gets or how many messes he creates. We live on land. He’s outside constantly. Dirt is basically part of his DNA. I’ll still hold him accountable for cleaning up but messes usually mean we’re having fun. I’m not ruining that.

Second: where he sleeps. This one always fires people up. I couldn’t tell you what a wake window is, and I have never once stayed awake stressing about sleep schedules. If we’re rested and happy, that’s the only metric I care about. If he’s still coming into our bed in the night, perfect. I LOVE THAT SH*T!

Third: screen time. I used to be that mom - wood toys only, zero screens, crafts on crafts on crafts. And then I remembered that my husband and I run multiple six-figure businesses. The more I stress about screen time, the more he wants it. So yes, he gets some. Yes, we have boundaries. And yes, I’m totally fine with it.

Fourth: what other people think about my parenting. This took time to untangle, but we’re here now. I don’t care if my child doesn’t want to hug someone goodbye. I care about his autonomy. I’ll take advice when I ask for it, but I’m done bending my parenting to make other adults comfortable.

And fifth—the one I’m most fired up about: how he expresses himself. I do not care. At all. If my kid wants a nightgown, he’s getting the damn nightgown. Tune in to hear why I think nightgowns are ridiculously functional and how I shut my own shit down when my brain tried to make it “a thing.” We’re not teaching him how to be “a boy.” We’re teaching him how to be himself.

When we stop shoving our kids into boxes they were never meant to fit in, we actually enjoy parenting more. The real goal? Enjoy their childhood while we’re still in it. I hope this episode gives you the permission you need to release the stuff that truly doesn’t matter. Your child doesn’t need perfection. They need you - present, tuned in, and showing up.

Let’s Connect:

Learn more about the Flourish Formula here: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

I wasn’t planning on recording today, but it’s snowing, my house is quiet, and after changing a poopy pull-up at midnight, I had a very clear thought: the things I thought would matter as a parent do not matter. At all. The things I actually care about now are way simpler… and way deeper.

First up: breakfast. I don’t force my kid to eat but when he skips breakfast I notice a huge difference in his day. Emotional regulation starts with blood sugar. If he’s hangry, we’re all going down with the ship.

Second: responsibility over obedience. I say this phrase regularly and with love: “Mommy isn’t your maid.” It’s not harsh, it’s the truth.

Third: emotional regulation. This one requires me to regulate my own emotions, which is honestly the hardest part of parenting. We name feelings, we take space, we repair when we inevitably lose our shit. And yes, our kid will absolutely talk to a therapist someday about something we did. That’s fine. I fully plan to pay for it.

Fourth: consent. For himself and for other people. Privacy, safety, boundaries—this stuff matters. We’re also picky about the adults we let into his world. Men, women… everyone. 

And the last one: self-care. I want my kid to see that moms are whole humans, not walking sacrifice machines. So sometimes I tell him, “I’m going to move my body,” even if he’s clinging to my leg like a four-year-old with zero patience. Boundaries are hard, but he needs to see me hold them so he learns to hold his own.

These five things are shaping both of us. Parenting is a mirror, and the mirror says, “Hey, you need to work on that.” So every lesson I’m teaching him, I’m also reteaching myself.

Tell me yours—what are the five things you actually care about as a parent? And stay tuned, because the next episode is “Five Things I Don’t Give a Shit About as a Mom,” and I promise, they might surprise you.

Let’s Connect:

Learn more about the Flourish Formula here: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

There’s nothing like sitting down with someone who just gets the messy, magical middle of motherhood—and Kelsey Anderson does exactly that. She’s a psychic medium who helps people wake up to their gifts and listen to the inner voice. If you’re a mom who feels pulled in a million directions and your intuition is a whisper you can barely hear, this conversation is going to hit you right in the gut in the best way.

Kelsey has been intuitive since she was a kid, but like so many of us, she shut it down because the world told her to be “logical."  In her mid-twenties she cracked herself back open and now she guides others into recognizing what’s fear, what’s anxiety, and what’s their actual intuition talking. We dig into how intuition works like a muscle and why you have to practice using it if you want it to stop feeling confusing.

We get into the collective burnout so many moms are feeling and Kelsey shares the framework she uses with her clients to bring them back to their inner voice. She even uses my own Motherland work as an example and tells me things about myself that honestly feel like she crawled inside my brain. 

I also get vulnerable and share a personal story about my Papa, who passed when my son was a toddler. I’ve always felt him with me and Kelsey helps me understand what that back-and-forth communication looks like now that he’s on the other side. It’s wild. It’s tender. It’s healing as hell.

Intuition is something every mom has access to. You just have to relearn how to hear yourself. If you’re craving clarity, connection, or a reminder that you’re not going crazy, this episode is your permission slip to trust yourself again.

Links & Resources:

Kelsey’s Framework; Connect, Release, Attune, Illuminate. 

Book a session with Kelsey: https://stan.store/kelseyandersonmedium?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4CGNhbGxzaXRlAjE1AAGn6M8JI3ew7KbTEhu2IXCB9eCGxZi4UZUeaabdR-VLtuhJnQEdFFvudnIGLlI_aem_ZVZ_DaN_cfhsV9Q_-tgxMA

Follow Kelsey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelseyandersonmedium/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KelseyAndersonMedium

Substack: https://substack.com/@kelseyandersonmedium

Dr. Lily Ros Organics - use code “MOTHERLAND15” for 15% off: https://www.drlilyros.com/

Let’s Connect:

Learn more about the Flourish Formula here: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This is something I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time — but I could never quite put it into words. Then, after hearing the same frustrations come up again and again in my discovery calls lately, I realized it was time.

We’re getting into why most functional medicine doesn’t actually stick — and what we do differently here at Motherland to make sure we’re the last practitioners you ever have to work with.

Here’s the deal: most of the women who come to us have already worked with other functional providers. They’ll feel good for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then the symptoms creep back in. And that’s so frustrating — especially when you’ve paid a small fortune trying to feel better. But it’s not your fault. It’s the model.

Too many functional medicine clinics jump straight into fancy protocols and deep healing work before anyone’s even looked at the foundation. That’s where we’re different. Before we talk about your gut or hormones, we look at the basics: are you eating enough, are you sleeping, are you mineralized, and does your body feel safe? It’s not sexy, but it’s what actually moves the needle.

We also take stress and trauma seriously — because your body doesn’t forget. Every single client fills out a stress timeline so we can see the whole picture. And you get unlimited chat access to your practitioner because we actually give a damn about what’s going on in your day-to-day life. 

And yeah, healing can be uncomfortable. It’ll ask you to make changes, to unlearn things you’ve been told about your body for years. That’s why we work with our clients in our Flourish Formula for six months — because real healing takes time.

So if you’ve done functional medicine before and it didn’t “stick,” this episode is for you. Your body isn’t broken — the approach probably just wasn’t complete. Let’s fix that.

Let’s Connect:

Learn more about the Flourish Formula here: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

Let’s talk about a topic that so many women feel ashamed of—and I really want to take that shame out of it—weight loss. There’s a lot of noise around this topic, and honestly, most of it is really annoying. So today, I’m breaking down what’s actually going on inside your body and why so many women feel stuck when it comes to changing their body composition.

Here’s the thing: if you’ve tried all the things and nothing’s working, it’s not because you’re broken or lazy. It’s because your body is protecting you. And when you understand how your body works on a cellular level, it all starts to make sense.

We talk about why traditional dieting and chronic under-fueling can trap you in a cycle that feels impossible to break. Most of us started dieting as teenagers—counting calories, doing tons of cardio—and while it may have “worked” for a bit, your body eventually caught on. That slowdown you feel? It’s called adaptive survival—and it’s your body’s way of keeping you alive, not holding you back.

I also dive into the science of safety and metabolism. When you eat far below what your body actually needs, your energy output drops, cortisol spikes, ovulation can shut down, moods swing all over the place, and you just don’t feel like yourself. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a famine and a diet—it just knows you’re under threat. So it holds onto fat for safety.

And here’s the big takeaway: you cannot starve a body into safety. You have to create safety first.

If you want to see changes in your body composition, start by testing instead of guessing. Work with a functional provider, run full baseline labs, find your real maintenance calories (for most women, it’s over 2000 a day), and focus on blood sugar balance. Swap the high-intensity workouts for strength training a few times a week.

Here’s what I want you to remember: your body isn’t fighting you because it hates you—it’s fighting to keep you alive. When you nourish it, support it, and help it feel safe, the changes you’re looking for become so much easier.

Let’s Connect:

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Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

Let’s talk hormones, shall we? I know you probably feel like you’re doing everything right — working out, eating well, buying all the supplements — but your cycle is still unpredictable and your energy feels off. The truth is, some of the things you think are helping might actually be doing the opposite.

In this episode, I’m breaking down six sneaky things that might be f*ing with your hormones and what to do instead. We’re talking supplements (and why “random influencer recs” aren’t it), weekend binge culture, overdoing the cardio and HIIT, skipping breakfast, not sleeping enough, and the endocrine disruptors hiding in your home.

I also share what hormone imbalance can actually look like — exhaustion, anxiety, rage, brain fog, heavy periods, acne, sugar cravings — all the fun stuff that so many women write off as “normal.” It’s not normal, and you deserve to feel good in your body again.

This isn’t about being perfect or overhauling your life overnight. It’s about awareness, small swaps, and building habits that bring your body back to balance. Because if your hormones are out of whack, no supplement is going to save you — but the basics will: sleep, food, movement, and nervous system care.

You’re not broken. You just need support and some no-BS truth about what’s really messing with your hormones. 

Links:

Truly Home Laundry Detergent - Use code MOTHERLAND for a 30% discount: https://click.trulyfreehome.com/aff_c?offer_id=238&aff_id=4069

Let’s Connect:

Click here to sign up for the Black Friday Vital Insights waitlist!

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

I’ve been wanting to chat about this for a while, and honestly, this one feels extra personal. I cozied up with my water, blanket, and sweatshirt for this conversation because it’s one that’s been on my mind quite a bit lately — the whole “do we want another baby?” conversation.

When Chris and I first talked about kids, we were totally those people who said, “Yeah, two under two sounds great.” Like… that’s just what you do, right? Keep yourself in baby mode, give your kid a built-in buddy, and check the box. But after my pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience — which were all way harder than I ever expected — our perspective completely changed.

In this episode, I’m getting real about why we didn’t rush a small age gap, what it’s looked like for me mentally and emotionally, and why I actually love the space we have right now. I talk about the toll pregnancy and postpartum took on me, how hyperemesis and perinatal depression shaped my healing process, and how I’ve seen the mental load hit so many of my patients, too.

There’s also this part of me that’s terrified — of pregnancy loss, of what it means to raise kids in today’s world, of bringing another baby into a time that feels so uncertain. I share how that fear shows up for me, especially living in a red state, and how it’s made this decision even more complicated.

Right now, we’re in a season that feels really good. I feel content in a way I didn’t think I would. And yet, there’s still this little pull for one more. I’m sitting in the in-between — grateful, grounded, and okay with not having it all figured out.

If you’re navigating family planning or feeling pressure about “the right time,” I hope this episode gives you a deep breath. You’re allowed to pause. You’re allowed to heal. You’re allowed to do this your way.

Let’s Connect:

Apply for The Flourish Formula: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

This episode is extra special because I’m joined by one of my closest friends, Kim—the person who hears all the crazy thoughts in my head on a daily basis. She’s a functional nutritionist, founder of Root and Branch Nutrition, and one of the women I admire most in this world. Oh, and she’s also a mom of two, which means she gets it on every level.

We’re diving into burnout, stress, and resilience in motherhood, and let’s be real—this conversation is for anyone who feels like they’re running on fumes. Kim opens up about her own burnout journey, including the mental and physical toll of exclusively pumping for both of her boys. That experience shifted everything for her and changed the way she supports moms in her practice.

We get into why so many of us fall into mom martyrdom, how society glorifies productivity, and the impossible pressure to constantly “do more and be better.” Spoiler: it’s not sustainable, and it’s not your fault.

What I love about this conversation is that it’s not about giving you a giant to-do list of wellness hacks. Instead, Kim shares realistic, functional ways to support yourself that you’re probably already doing in some capacity. Think: eating meals that actually sustain you, getting outside, throwing some heavy weights around, carving out alone time, sipping on mineral mocktails or herbal tea—whatever feels good and doable.

We also dig into why minerals are the foundation for everything (blood sugar, gut health, metabolism, stress response) and how HTMA testing can give you the answers you’ve been searching for. If testing isn’t in the budget right now, don’t worry—Kim gives you easy, low-cost ways to start supporting your body today.

At the end of the day, this episode is a giant permission slip: taking care of yourself isn’t selfish—it’s necessary. When moms are supported, everyone else benefits. So pour that mocktail, pop in your headphones, and let’s talk about what it really looks like to take your power back.

Follow Kim on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rootandbranchnutrition

Follow Kim on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@rootandbranchnutrition

Let’s Connect:

Apply for The Flourish Formula: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in your own HTMA? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.

I’ve never shared Rylo’s birth story publicly—until now. This episode feels both vulnerable and freeing, because his birth shaped so much of who I am today and even plays into why we haven’t had another baby yet.

From the moment we started trying to conceive, I was full of hope and anticipation. But by week six of pregnancy, everything shifted. I was hit with hyperemesis gravidarum, and let me tell you, throwing up 12–18 times a day until 34 weeks pregnant was brutal. I couldn’t eat, I could barely function, and the exhaustion, anxiety, and depression that came with it were overwhelming.

Still, I was so grateful for my incredible midwifery team. They held me up and helped me plan for the peaceful home birth I’d always dreamed of. My husband and I worked hard for two years to create a home that felt safe and sacred for bringing Rylo into the world. But as any mom (especially a postpartum nurse and birth doula) knows, birth rarely goes as planned.

On the night of my labor, things took an unexpected turn. My midwives all being unable to attend last minute and we were left calling in backup—a woman I’d never met and actually couldn’t stand. That was a turning point for me. Between the intensity of labor, some pretty wild body reactions, and realizing my plan wasn’t going to unfold the way I even remotely imagined, I had to make peace with transferring to the hospital. (Oh, and yes—there’s a story in here about cinnamon rolls mid-labor that you don’t want to miss. 😅)

The car ride was messy, the hospital was overwhelming, but in the end, I can honestly say my birth experience was still beautiful in its own way. As a postpartum nurse, I’ve learned that babies have their own way of coming into the world, and it rarely matches the “perfect” plan we create in our heads.

If you’ve ever struggled with birth disappointment, changing birth plans, or the weight of postpartum healing, I hope my story reminds you that you’re not alone. Every birth is unique. Every journey is worth honoring. And sometimes the most unexpected paths are the ones that teach us the most.

Let’s Connect:

Apply for The Flourish Formula: https://motherland-wellness.com/flourish-formula

Interested in how we can help you? Click here to learn more.

Click here to apply to work with our team!

Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Squeeze, where we share actionable tips, nourishing recipes, and empowering insights to help you feel at home in your body.

This episode was brought to you by the Pivot Ball Change network.