Postpartum University® Podcast

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Struggling in postpartum? You’re not alone, Mama. I have created an assessment tool for postpartum recovery, that will give you the information you need now. 

Here's the kicker, after taking this assessment and getting your results, you can print it out and take it to your provider, and this opens up a whole other avenue here for your health and well-being. This is where you get to advocate for your own health.

So, now is the time friend. Go take the Postpartum Assessment Quiz here, and then be sure to join us in The Postpartum Circle Facebook group and let us know your thoughts and results! We'll see you there. 

For  full show notes go to  https://postpartumu.com/your-assessment-tool-for-postpartum-recovery-ep41/

In this episode, we are sharing:

• The creation of my newest tool for Postpartum Mamas
• A constant influx of health concerns and symptoms from Mamas that desperately need and deserve more help
• All of these symptoms come down to 4 very basic core issues
• Advocating for yourself & communicating with your partners and providers
• This assessment takes the pressure off you and allows you to communicate what's happening within your body to your provider
• This can also be used as a tool to continuously track your improvement
• Supporting you in healing your body
• Come join us in the Facebook group The Postpartum Circle!

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

Are you ready to learn about the mind-body connection and how that interrelates to mental health, pelvic floor health, and even more in postpartum? We are moving beyond postpartum maternal mental health awareness and more into prevention.

This prevention lies far outside the Western medical scope of practice. So many of these issues that arise in postpartum can be prevented with a more holistic, whole body, preventative type of care.  I invite you to carry this conversation over with us in The Postpartum Circle Facebook group. We'll see you there. 

For full show notes, go to https://postpartumu.com/mind-body-connection-with-logan-spacek-physical-therapist-ep40/

You can find & follow Logan Spacek here:
Website - Instagram - Facebook

In this episode, we are sharing:

• Logan's journey into motherhood
• How our own motherhood experience can shape the care and support we bring to our clients
• Her experience with postpartum
• Using your experiences to make a change
• Sharing her journey gave other Moms the safe space to share their struggles
• How to avoid projecting our traumas
• Our breathing and the effects it has on our body
• Improper breath patterns
• Breathing patterns & the pelvic floor
• The different diaphragms within your body
• Tension and Trauma within the body and muscles
• Everything is interconnected
• Postpartum depression & anxiety
• How holistic, proactive care can be used to prevent postpartum issues
• Women are prepared for pregnancy and birth, but not postpartum
• Mental Health in postpartum
• Making a holistic, actionable plan for prevention
• Our bodies operate as a whole, not in pieces
• Links to find Logan Spacek are listed above!

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

So many of our businesses are created from a place of trauma. Oftentimes, we create our business around an experience we went through in an attempt to help prevent others from having the same experiences that we did. However, we have to come to an understanding and realization that it does yourself, and those you’re serving no good when you are serving from a place of personal wounding, where your own cup is empty.

In this episode we have Lesha Nelson joining us. She has spent over a decade studying trauma, meditation, stress responses in the body, psychosomatics, attachment, the womb, birth work, really so many different things. 

In this interview, today, she's going to share with us how our own drive is often built upon trauma, and how we can shift that naturally. We talk about co-regulation, and how our nervous systems work better as a community.  We discuss psychosomatics and bringing wholeness into our bodies and that of our clients. 

You can find Lesha Nelson here:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

In this episode, we are sharing:

• Introducing Lesha
• A deep desire to over give, because if I don’t….who will?
• Serving from the place of personal wounding
• Our unique stories tend to guide us 
• Core wounding of scarcity
• Realizing, there is enough.
• The connection of enoughness & worthiness
• Creating a business on trauma, and then running it in a traumatic way
• The interconnection between our businesses and lives
• Our nervous system constantly being in overdrive
• Co-regulation
• Our nervous systems work better in community
• We need to hold space for our clients so their nervous systems can regulate
• How your senses are connected to regulating your nervous system
• Using different practices to bring your body into regulation
• Learning to pause
• Trauma can cause our brains to be wired differently & make cues more difficult to read
• Psychosomatics
• We cannot separate mind-body connection

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

Are you connecting yourself to your truest desires or just the avoidance of your fears? This is a phenomenal question for both providers, Mamas. Regardless of what phase you’re in.

Monique Cowan is joining us in this episode, and she is a birth and postpartum doula and lactation educator. Monique's mission is to help mothers understand and connect them with their own innate and inalienable power. To truly support her clients holistically, so that birth and postpartum are full of love and joy and power. And to make that the norm, not the exception. 

As you're listening in to this, I really want you to take into consideration how you are connecting yourself, or your clients to their truest desires?

You can find Monique Cowan here:

Instagram

In this episode, we are sharing:

• Meet Monique Cowan
• Getting started as a doula
• Holding space for clients and connecting them to their true desires
• We all know what it is that we don’t want, learning how to switch our mindset from that, to focus on what it is that we do want and how to create it.
• Getting very intentional about what you want, in all areas
• Getting to a place of joy and delight
• Stress hormones and their effects
• Fear & how it impacts labor and birth 
• Finding a way to bring those fears to a minimum
• Mindset is everything
• The stress cycle that can happen from labor into postpartum that we want to avoid
• How we can help improve health outcomes, regardless of how we serve our clients
• Learning both the medical model and holistic model of care
• Learning to truly listen to our clients
• Offering solutions, that work for the person you’re helping
• Becoming the guinea pig when necessary
• Our experiences tend to shape our work
• Shaping experiences of childbirth through being given options and being supported throughout them, especially when things didn’t go as anticipated.
• How to find healing in postpartum from a traumatic labor or birth experience
• Getting our Mama’s nourished and nurtured
• We can treat things like they’re going to be good and normal
• You can follow Monique on Instagram (linked above)

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

 The first step to nourishing our mind and soul is through food. In this interview with Alyssa Callahan, we are going to talk about re-learning to listen to our body and trust our intuition in order to really move forward and nourish our bodies. We also discuss food trauma and disordered eating in postpartum. Big, heavy topics that can feel hard to address.

These things are incredibly popular and common, and it is so important to learn how to continue breaking the barriers to discover intuition and how to use that with food and beyond.

You can find Alyssa Callahan here:

Website

Instagram

In this episode, we are sharing:

• Food Trauma and Disordered Eating in Postpartum
• Nourishment is the foundation of healing
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs & how it pertains to postpartum
• Everything suffers when your basic needs aren’t being met
• Statistics  & negative thoughts and patterns with eating disorders
• You do not have to have a “diagnosed” disorder to be experiencing an eating disorder
• The struggle with food and body image
• Practical eating. What it is, and why it’s so important
• Intuitive eating
• The message of it tends to get really lost in translation on social media
• Fed is best, with mothers too.
• Nourishing your body
• Society and Mainstream media’s ideals and the issues that are causing
• Is it your nervous system, or your intuition? 
• Learning how to tell the difference
• If you have experienced trauma, please, seek support. You deserve it
• Grounding techniques 
• Mindful Meditation
• Are you in trauma response brain?
• Gut-Brain Connection
• Comfort and connection that comes along with food
• How are you feeling? Using this question and how it can change things for you.
• Women need to be supported where they are at.
• We are all on our own journey, within our own bodies, and deserve support.

For full show notes go to https://postpartumu.com/food-intuition-and-disordered-societal-eating-with-alyssa-callahan-registered-dietitian-ep37/

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

Tami Kent joins us to discuss the deep disconnect that occurs within the motherhood space. There has been this forgotten work of energy and healing, and it is time we learn how to invite that back into our life. 

Get ready to learn how to embrace your feminine power and invite it back into your body. 

You can find Tami Kent here:
Website: http://www.wildfeminine.com/

Her books can be found on this website, where there are links to purchase:
https://www.wildfeminine.com/wild-feminine-book/
Wild Feminine
Mothering from Your Center
Wild Creative

In this episode, we are sharing:

• Introducing Tami Kent & the potential of the female body that she works hard to represent
• Disconnect within the motherhood space
• Where Tami found this passion in the motherhood space
• The importance of pelvic care in postpartum
• My experience with Tami’s book ‘Wild Feminine’
• What the patriarchy really is
• The importance of the pelvic bowl, and so much missing information for women
• The denigration of feminine power and the effects we are dealing with because of it
• The effects on everyone from this patriarchy
• ‘Mothering From Your Center’ by Tami Kent & what the book is all about
• Tools for healing the mother wound
• The attempt to be a tribe for our children, all by ourselves
• Learning to care for yourself as the mother
• By addressing your needs, you are also simultaneously addressing the needs of your family
• Disconnect, dysregulation, and depletion that we live in when we don’t operate from that core space
• Living in a depleted model
• How to reframe reciprocity with our children, and learning to mother ourselves as the mother
• The ebb and flow of the energetics of mothering
• Energy meditations
• Our bodies are meant to heal
• The lost art of feminine wisdom
• The sacredness of the female body is not something to be strived for, it IS sacred, no matter what.

For full show notes go to >> https://postpartumu.com/the-energetics-of-healing-with-tami-kent-author-of-wild-feminine-and-mothering-from-your-center-ep36/

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

Food is very emotional, in fact, it is one of our very first emotional attachments as infants. Food is also something that is a huge part of community and connection to others, especially around the holidays.

If you want to learn how to use food as a tool to support you both emotionally and physically, even during the Holidays when you’re surrounded by goodies, then be sure to listen to this episode. I’m going to share all about the emotional connection that each of us has to food and how you can use it to support you through not only the holidays but every day.

In this episode, I’m sharing:

• How to eat well during the Holidays
• Food is emotional
• We learn from infancy, that food is good
• The Mind Gut Connection by Dr. Emeran Mayer MD 
• Your response to food is normal
• Food is more than just emotional, it’s also a bonding tool
• There is almost never enough community during postpartum
• The benefits of the Mediterranean diet
• Our state of mind while eating food
• Avoiding anything & everything that will cause you inflammation
• Going out to eat
• Planning meals with friends & family
• MY food is MY responsibility
• Your stomach has more nerve cells than your brain
• We aren’t just eating to replenish and sustain, we eat for comfort
• Guilt & Shame around indulging
• Operating from a trauma state
• Asking your soul not your body what you are needing from this particular food
• Assessing your needs & fulfilling them before indulging
• Avoid the guilt and shame for “not eating the right foods”

For full show notes go to >> https://marandabower.com/eating-for-comfort-hello-holidays-ep35/

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

In the path to motherhood, so much of who we are is challenged and changed when we are, quite literally, cracked wide open and left raw. Whether you are a provider or a new mother, this episode will challenge you and help you look deeper into the psycho-spiritual changes and the identity shifts that occur in postpartum. It will help show you how to better expand and embody care for not only ourselves as mothers, but also the mothers we are caring for as providers and our friends and families as they step into parenthood.

I challenge you to take the information from this episode and ask yourself this question, how are you honoring the identity shifts that occur in motherhood and beyond for your clients? 

You can find Zoe - Embodiment Doula here:

The Memphis Doula - Zoe Etkin 

Instagram

Embodied Doula Training:

Website

 Instagram

In this episode, we are sharing:

• Psycho-spiritual
• The profound transition that occurs going into postpartum
• Grief & The Shadow side that is rarely talked about
• Helping mothers navigate this transformation
• Identity shifts in postpartum
• The energetic outpour that occurs after childbirth
• Childbirth cracks you wide open
• The struggle to see past the “immediate postpartum” & initial fog
• The lifting of the fog
• Being in a period of immense change, and riding it out
• There is a shattering of who you are when you become a mother
• The most essential type of self-care in postpartum
• Allowing new mothers to explore their identities and feel rested and nurtured

For full show notes go to  https://marandabower.com/motherhood-and-identity-with-zoe-etkin-co-founder-of-embodied-doula-trainings-ep34/

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

When you're alone and feeling isolated, especially in postpartum and motherhood, you are more susceptible to falling prey to bigger narratives that influence how you think about yourself as a new parent. Being alone with your negative thoughts is not beneficial to anyone, and it's simply not the way things were meant to be. Kerry Ingram is the founder of community-supported postpartum and is joining us to discuss the importance of community in postpartum and as parents.

She is going to share how she got started in her business and transitioned to this specialty. Kerry has great insight on why you need a community during postpartum and how you can be creative in this post COVID world to keep your community alive. 

Find Kerry  & her offers HERE

Come listen in and see how having a community of support can make a difference in your life.

For full show notes click HERE

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals 

Send us Fan Mail

Getting your period back in postpartum is yet another area that has a huge lack of readily available information, and simply isn’t being talked about enough. 

Just because these menstrual symptoms are very common, does NOT mean they are normal. It’s time to get down to the root cause of these symptoms and get it fixed.

I’m going to share with you what is considered normal in your cycle, some things that are more abnormal, and what can be done to help get your cycle back on the right track.

If you are struggling with any issues related to this, come join The Postpartum Circle Facebook group and ask questions there. We would love to help you heal!

In this episode, I’m sharing:

• Getting your period back
• What is normal after baby
• Breastfeeding can change when you get your period back
• Cycle length
• Each person is going to be different
• Symptoms that most everyone has
• Normal and common are different things
• Reasons your period is not normal after baby is born
• Listen to your body
• Thyroid disorders
• Sheehan syndrome
• Asherman’s syndrome
• How to bring back a normal period
• Nutrition
• Sleep
• Reduce stress
• Acupuncture
• Chiropractic care
• Vaginal steaming
• Learn to embrace your period instead of letting it hold you back

For full show notes go to  https://marandabower.com/getting-your-period-back-after-baby-ep32/

NEXT STEPS:

• 🎒Download the Postpartum Restoration Method™ Assessment Tool 
• 🧠Perinatal Mental Health Certificate Training
• 🔔Sign up for the Postpartum Nutrition Certification Waitlist
• 👍Rate, REVIEW & share the podcast
• 📱Connect on Instagram!
• 📚Get a Copy of the BOOK: Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness
•  Additional Courses for Providers & Postpartum Professionals