Julia was 20 years old when she had twins, alone in her recovery while her husband worked and her mother was still in another country. She figured out postpartum the hard way, by herself. It wasn't until her babies were nearly a year old that anyone named what she had been going through. In this episode, she walks through four pregnancies and two very different postpartum experiences, and makes a case for the one thing that actually changed her outcomes: the village.

Disclaimer:The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Postpartum rage isn't in the DSM, doesn't have a clean clinical definition, and almost nobody talks about it - which is exactly why Jennifer Steiger wanted to. In this episode, she joins Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp to define what postpartum rage looks like, why it happens, what contributes to it, and what actually helps. She also makes the case for why women specifically are least likely to name it: because we are taught from the start that anger is not ours to have.

Disclaimer:

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Jennifer Steiger is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in perinatal and postpartum mental health. In this episode, she and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp dig into the part of the fertility conversation that often gets skipped: what happens after the baby comes. The anxiety, the trauma that didn't disappear, the pressure to feel grateful at all times, and why telling someone who struggled to conceive that it all worked out misses the point entirely.

Disclaimer:

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

After a pregnancy loss and a new marriage, Bev's third pregnancy ended at 38 weeks in a Popeyes drive-through. Her third birth went fast and smoothly. Two days postpartum, she hemorrhaged. After six units of blood, a bag of platelets, emergency surgery for a cervical tear, and a Covid-era delay her OB refused to allow, Bev woke up in the ICU thinking about how women used to die from exactly this. Part 2 closes with Bev learning, for the first time in this conversation, that the symptoms she has been quietly managing for years are things pelvic PT can actually treat.

Disclaimer:
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Bev's first birth ended in a postpartum hemorrhage she didn't know was happening, and her first postpartum period ended with a hospitalization and quarantine that forced her to stop breastfeeding after weeks of hard work. Her second birth was an accidental unmedicated delivery she wasn't planning, followed by a postpartum period complicated by a struggling marriage and a mental health journey she worked through in therapy.

Disclaimer:
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Mary Lisan had two C-sections in the early 1980s under very different circumstances: One emergency, one urgent, and two postpartum experiences that looked almost nothing alike. She spent four years being dismissed about a symptom she knew wasn't normal, figured out her son's food sensitivities through process of elimination before organic food sections existed, and had to get a notarized permission slip signed by her husband to have a tubal ligation performed during her own surgery.
Disclaimer:
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Breastfeeding pain is common. It is not normal, and you don't have to push through it. Dr. Kellie Soltis is a pelvic PT who found the Thompson method after a painful first breastfeeding experience with her own child, and has been helping other moms ever since. She and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp talk through the Thompson method, what pelvic PTs can actually do for breastfeeding support and mastitis prevention, how to find the right kind of provider, and why so many women are being talked out of trusting what they already know about their own bodies and babies.
Disclaimer:
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Amanda's first birth left her with a significant tear, an infection, mastitis, and two years of assuming urinary incontinence was just her new normal. Her second birth - after pelvic floor PT, birth prep work with Dr. Mary Ellen, a doula, and acupuncture - ended with three pushes, a baby born with the membranes still intact, and a postpartum recovery that was so much easier. Learn why she now tells everyone she knows to go see a pelvic floor therapist.

Disclaimer:
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Getting back to intimacy after having a baby is one of the most common things Liz Jones and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp see in their practices - and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Liz brings 20 years of treating both women and men to a candid conversation about postpartum libido, the fear and guarding that can build around returning to sex, what couples aren't saying to each other and why, and the practical tools that actually help.
Disclaimer:
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.

Dr. Liz Jones, DPT is a pelvic floor physical therapist in Bismarck, North Dakota who accidentally became the region's go-to hemorrhoid specialist - and she is very okay with that. In this episode, she and Dr. Mary Ellen Kramp get into everything people don't know about hemorrhoids: how common they are, the wide range of symptoms they cause that nobody connects back to them, the treatment Liz specializes in, and what people can do to prevent and manage them. If you've been told it's just tailbone pain or just IBS, this one's for you.
Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to those saying them. This podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in this podcast establishes a patient care relationship with you, the listener. The host(s) and guests of this show are NOT your healthcare provider and if you need medical attention, seek an appropriate and qualified professional.