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ASK THE DOULAS PODCAST

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Ask The Doulas Podcast

rise wellness chiropractic

Podcast Episode #49: Adjusting Babies

Do babies really need a chiropractic adjustment?  Listen to Dr. Annie of Rise Wellness explain what happens to a baby’s body during pregnancy and delivery and how gentle methods can be extremely effective.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or Soundcloud.

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Alyssa:  Hi, welcome back to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa, postpartum doula and co-owner at Gold Coast, and we are talking to Dr. Annie again who is a local chiropractor.  Hello!

Dr. Annie:  Hello!

Alyssa:  Last time you were here, we talked about your Webster certification and what that means for pregnant mothers, and I know that you specifically can work with — there’s a pediatric end to this?

Dr. Annie:  Yes!

Alyssa:  So tell me what you do with babies and kids and what do you say to parents who are maybe scared to bring their newborn in for a chiropractic adjustment?  What does it look like?

Dr. Annie:  So first of all, I’d like to say it’s a huge honor when a mom is willing to hand you their newborn baby and ask me to check their baby.

Alyssa:  They get it, right?

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, they get it, which is such a beautiful thing.  They understand that the nervous system runs everything in the body and how important that is in development, in development of a child.  So that’s just an awesome honor.  I’ve had the opportunity to adjust a few newborns the day after they were born, which is so exciting.  The analysis and adjustment for an infant is different.  For anyone who’s familiar with chiropractic care, it can be kind of scary for some adults even.  Analysis and adjustment of an infant is totally different from that.  We say that the amount of pressure that you use to adjust an infant is the same that you would use if you wanted to check the ripeness of a tomato.

Alyssa:  It’s very gentle, right?

Dr. Annie: Very, very, very gentle.

Alyssa:  I’ve seen you adjust newborn babies in the hospital, Dr. Rachel’s babies.  Very, very gentle.

Dr. Annie:  It is, yeah, and part of that is because their spine is still cartilage.  They’re not ossified yet, so we’re not trying to move bones.

Alyssa:  They probably wouldn’t even crack if you tried, right?

Dr. Annie:  No, no, exactly.  You’re not looking for an audible crack in a child.  No, not at all.  We don’t do anything like that.  Again, this is more — especially with kids, we’re looking a lot more at the neurology and how that is affected, and so in order to influence the neurology and make sure that everything is working appropriately and lined up appropriately, it doesn’t take a lot of pressure to adjust them.  Now, why would we adjust an infant?  I always think that’s a good question because babies don’t have back pain.  A lot of people think that’s what chiropractic is good for.  But when kids are coming through the birth canal, everything is compressed.  The sutures kind of fold over each other, and then when the baby comes through, they’re often pulled out by their neck and tractioned by their neck, so that can lead to the very first subluxation.  If they aren’t in the correct position for labor, once the uterus starts contracting — so let’s say a baby’s breech.  Once the uterus starts contracting, it’s going to push down on the top of their head, too, so that can cause compression to their cervical spine.  Kids who are born via C-section don’t go through the birth canal, but still, they find the head and then they pull them and kind of twist them as they’re coming out of the mom’s uterus, and they will pull them out like that.  So there’s still a lot of traction that is placed on the infant’s cervical spine, and so that traction can misalign their bones in the very beginning.  Now, if you have a misalignment there and your brain isn’t communicating with your body, that’s the main way that kids are getting their sensory input.  That’s how they’re developing their brain, so being able to adjust them right when they’re born is an amazing thing.  You can set them up for an entirely different life just by changing that sensory input and making sure that everything is in good alignment so they can develop appropriately.

Alyssa:  I had clients who had horrible colic and their babies just won’t stop crying and they don’t know why, and oftentimes a chiropractic adjustment takes care of that for several reasons.  You know, if things aren’t talking, or maybe there is some sort of pain, right?  Even for nine months, you’re curved up in the fetal position.  I mean, I’ve got to imagine that’s maybe not putting strain on an infant’s back, but…

Dr. Annie:  I don’t know why, but there’s a common misconception that babies don’t feel pain the way that adults do, but that’s totally wrong.  That comes up in the circumcision talk, which is way out of my scope, but babies do feel pain.  They do feel that, and if you have a colicky baby, I think parents are attuned with their children enough to see that they’re in pain.

Alyssa:  There’s something causing the pain.

Dr. Annie:  Absolutely.  And so with colic, with GERD and reflux and things like that, things that kids often have trouble with, the mechanism for that is that the rest of the body is run by your nervous system.  Your brain coordinates and controls everything that goes on in your system, so if there is a miscommunication there, then things can’t function the way that they’re supposed to.  So that’s why getting an adjustment can help with those issues.  So it’s not necessarily that we’re treating the colic or we’re treating the constipation or ear infection.  That’s another big thing that parents will bring their kids to a chiropractor for is ear infections.  We’re not treating those things directly.  What we’re doing is we’re treating the subluxation, the misalignment, that’s affecting the nervous system and allowing that to clear up, allowing the communication to restore, and allowing the body to heal itself the way it’s supposed to.

Alyssa:  So what would you tell somebody who just doesn’t get chiropractic care?  They don’t understand why you would need it, why would I bring my baby there.  You know, if the body can heal itself, let it heal itself.  What do you say to that?  How do you counter that?

Dr. Annie:  I do think the body can heal itself, which is awesome, as long as it has the right tools and the right resources and the right communication.  So if you didn’t work out or if you didn’t eat healthy, your body could still function pretty well for a while until diseases and things like that caught up with it.  The body is really good at adapting until it isn’t.  But kind of the same thing: if you have a misalignment causing that interference to the communication, your body is going to keep functioning pretty good until it doesn’t, and so the thing with that interference to the nervous system is that we don’t necessarily see those things on a day-to-day basis stacking up.  Sometimes people will have trauma and it’s like, this is what caused this misalignment and ever since then, I’ve had neck pain, and I just need that to be adjusted back.  But a lot of times, it’s a lot of little things that are contributing, and then we say, you know, what was the one thing that triggered this?  Well, it wasn’t.  It was a lot of things.  It was probably since childhood when you were born and you were pulled out and then you started walking and maybe you kept falling onto your butt or you fell out of a tree as a kid or you broke your arm falling off the playground and things like that accumulate, and then when we’re adults, we have all this pain.  So why not address that when we’re a child?  Why not make sure everything is lined up, everything is communicating the way that it’s supposed to and healing the way it’s supposed to so then those things don’t compound down the road?  It’s much more preventative and wellness model rather than trying to fix you when you’re old and crickety.

Alyssa:  Which is a hard concept for some people to understand, right?  Like actually preventing these things from happening in the first place.

Dr. Annie:  Right.  But a lot of times, that is something that a lot of people will have to find out on their own, too.  I’m here for education and information.  If somebody doesn’t want to trust that, then…

Alyssa:  They can come in and pick your brain for a little bit, right?

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, absolutely.  I’ll answer any questions they have, but sometimes you have to find out information on your own.

Alyssa:  Right, until, like you said, we’re good at adapting until it doesn’t.  And then when it doesn’t, then that’s when you go, oh, yeah, maybe she was right.

Dr. Annie:  And usually it’s something small like picking up a laundry basket, and it’s like, I threw out my back just picking up this laundry basket!

Alyssa:  Tell us where people can find Rise Wellness.

Dr. Annie:  You can find us online at our website.  Or we’re also on Facebook and Instagram at @risewellnesschiro.

Alyssa:  Email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  Thanks for joining us!

Podcast Episode #49: Adjusting Babies Read More »

postpartum depression

Podcast Episode #48: Bri’s Postpartum Story

In this episode our dear friend, Bri Luginbill of BetterBodyImageConference.com tells us about her struggle with depression and anxiety before, during, and after pregnancy.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I’m Alyssa, and today I’m so excited to be talking with my friend Bri.  Hey, Bri.

Bri:  Hi, everybody.

Alyssa:  She is with the Better Body Image Conference, and we did an event together – how many months ago was that?

Bri:  It was this March.

Alyssa:  Was it this year?

Bri:  It was this year.  Doesn’t it feel like it was last year?

Alyssa:  Forever ago, uh-huh.

Bri:  It was this year, March.  I believe the 11th.  Crazy.  It feels like eons ago.

Alyssa:  Yeah.  Well, maybe since I mentioned it, tell everyone a little bit about what that conference was, and then at the end, we can ask you for more information.

Bri:  So that conference was a way to connect people in the community with different organizations that are very passionate about body image and just the mental and physical health, as well as social change, that can happen in our communities around that certain issue.  And so Gold Coast Doulas actually did a workshop on body image with pregnancy and postpartum bodies and had a lot of intimate conversations with different moms or even moms-to-be.

Alyssa:  Yeah, we loved that conversation.  It was – when our time was up, I remember someone came in and said, “Time’s up,” and everyone was like, “No, no, we just got started!”  So it would be fun to continue that conversation at another point.

Bri:  Definitely.

Alyssa:  Or even to have a podcast about it.  That could be a good one, too.

Bri:  Do a mini-event.  We’re trying to do mini-events now, too.  But we’ll talk later about that.

Alyssa:  So Bri and I see each other all around, and the last event we went to was just, again, the postpartum time with moms comes up a lot.  It’s just a topic that we always talk about, and you even spoke to the group about the struggles that you had, so I think – I just want to kind of continue that conversation, the two of us together, and let’s just have a real conversation about what it was like for you having a baby and was it even – did you struggle during pregnancy, too?

Bri:  During pregnancy I struggled more physically.  I had a lot of the sciatic nerve pain that a lot of people had, so I did go see – in my third trimester, it was weekly appointments with my DO just to get adjusted.  But the mental health was still okay there.  I think as soon as I had my baby, it was a very – I even had a lot of blood loss.  I almost hemorrhaged, too, during it, so I think when I had my kid, I was just exhausted, and I remember them putting him on me, and just being like, hey, there’s a baby there, but not really feeling that, like, instant love because I was just so exhausted and tired.  And so from that first point, I’m like, whoa, I was told I was supposed to feel instant love, instant excitement, and I was just worn out.

Alyssa:  You weren’t the photo of the mom in the hospital looking lovingly down at her baby; you were like, just let me sleep.  What’s on my chest?

Bri:  Yeah.  And then I even had to get walked to – when I went to the bathroom, another blood clot passed.  I almost actually passed out.  I remember telling the nurse, “I can’t hear anything, but I know you’re there.  I’m starting to not be able to see.  I’m just letting you know.”  So that was my experience, which some people even have it crazier than that, but I think I was just trying to make sure I was awake enough to be there, like not passing out, to be there for him more than, oh, my gosh, I didn’t have that moment to really be like understanding what was happening because of my health at that point in time.  And then after that, I do have a history in my family, and I have anxiety and depression, which I feel like is not a fair combination to have.  You get anxious, and then your thoughts race, and then you feel bad about yourself, and then it’s just like a cycle.  So I’ve learned over time coping strategies and things like that.

Alyssa:  And this something you struggled with before having a baby?

Bri:  Even before having a baby.

Alyssa:  So you knew that your risk after was so much higher?

Bri:  Yeah, definitely.  And I remember coming home, and we entered the door, and I just was bursting into tears, and I knew.  I also have a hard time with transitions.  I take them a lot harder than most people, and so I knew even with that it was going to be a little bit harder.

Alyssa:  Probably the biggest transition of your life thus far.

Bri:  Very true.  So I was super honest.  That’s the thing my mom taught me growing up.  She said, our family has these things; I’m going to tell you, and you just – if you feel anything, make sure you tell people.  So her training me in middle school with that still helped, and so I was able to just let people know, like, I know that I’m feeling these things, and logically and practically, I shouldn’t be sad; I shouldn’t be like this.  I just – it’s just so hard to fight that.  And then I was anxious at night because I was worried for him and just wanted to make sure he was okay, my baby, and then I was kind of depressed during the day just because that anxiety wore me out.  And I would go and sleep in the sun in our hammock because it was summer time, just to get some sunlight.  I actually did talk to my doctor and I did start taking medicine as soon as I could after getting out of the hospital, just because I had taken those before.  Zoloft is what I took, even before him, so I was doing all the things to try to deal with it, but I wasn’t being very compassionate to myself to just let myself be, and so I think my word of advice and encouragement to people is if you are feeling those feelings, as long as you’re voicing them and getting help and asking for support, just don’t beat yourself up too much.  You’re already doing so much, and it’s hard not to beat yourself up, but you’ve got this whole new world that’s going on, and you deserve to also be understanding to yourself, and you’re trying to understand what’s happening.

Alyssa:  Did actually getting on medicine seem to help?  Or not enough?

Bri:  It seemed like it helped a little bit, but it was still learning a new system, learning a new normal, learning what this means, and it really does take a village.  My mom helped a lot.  I had different friends that were helping.  I needed a lot of support from my husband.  There were times where we would wake up together at night with the baby because it was just nice, even if he was just sitting next to me, just having that person there.  And so, yeah, it was hard.  My anxiety, I knew was there because I remember just being so worried, is he eating enough?  Is he getting enough food?  And I would line up these bottles and then I would just obsess with counting and all that, to a point that was detrimental, and I remember I was over-pumping and all I was doing was pumping and taking care of my kid and eating, and that’s all I was focusing on for a few weeks, and I remember my husband pulling out all of the milk from the freezer, and he was like, there are 30 bags of 4-ounce milks here.  He is getting fed enough, and you’ve got enough.  I just think I was worried about my stock because I have to go back to weddings and I have to go back to work.  I was a wedding photographer, and just trying to make sure my stock was there.

Alyssa:  Anxiety turned a little bit OCD, it sounds like.

Bri:  Yes.  Yeah, so I just like to be open about it because I feel like a lot of people have their own experience of what goes on, whether they have anxiety or depression or not, but we’re usually always looking to someone to tell us – which is what I did.  I would ask all these different people of, what did you do?  What did you do?  Or what was your experience?  And none of their experiences were like mine, so I felt like I was doing something wrong, when in reality, everyone has their own unique experience, so don’t compare yourself to someone else’s postpartum story.  Just let yours be yours, and know that the one constant is that everyone’s journey is going to be different, and that’s okay and that’s good.  But I think sometimes, too, we just want to do it right because that’s what we’re taught in our society.  “Do it the right way.”  And there’s really no right way.  The only right way is making sure your baby is fed, has shelter, and that they’re loved.  And how the system happens for that is up to you and up to what your body and your family is able to do.  I did end up doing – I stopped breastfeeding at nine months just because he started not being interested anymore.  It’d be two minutes, and then, hey, what’s over here, looking around, and then he was always kind of a chomper, and I never discouraged that because I didn’t understand at the time, and my lactation consultant was like, uh-oh.  And so I was about done once he had teeth, too.  So for me, that ended at nine months, and then we did formula.  And sometimes people have to supplement or do both or do all formula, and that’s – it doesn’t really matter.  It’s whatever works for anybody.

Alyssa:  By the time you got to the nine-month mark and weaned him, did that help your mental health in and of itself, or had you gotten pretty much to a better place by that point?

Bri:  It did actually help my mental health even more just because then it was one less thing to think about, and I do think – I don’t know; I’m not a doctor, but I think your hormones after you’re done breastfeeding – do they normalize more?

Alyssa:  I feel like they’re always fluctuating after you have your baby.  Five and a half years later, I still think mine are all wacky.

Bri:  Yeah, you know, I would agree with that, too.  I think I felt a little bit less – maybe it wasn’t chemically after stopping breastfeeding, but at least one less thing to have to do.

Alyssa:  Well, there are hormones involved because, you know, there’s the hormones that actually produce, that allow you to produce the milk, so they are changing, but I think for someone with anxiety, who’s worried about breastfeeding and pumping and how much milk – now you can give them solid foods and a bottle that’s very quantifiable.

Bri:  And I don’t have to worry about producing that.

Alyssa:  And again, like you said, everyone’s story is different.  For some moms, weaning becomes a source of depression because now it’s the end of this time with your baby that you’ll never get back.

Bri:  That’s true.

Alyssa:  So you really just can’t compare.

Bri:  Yeah, no comparing whatsoever.  I thought of wanting to make some sort of book, and it wouldn’t be photo; it would be more of just stories, and it would be everyone’s experience postpartum, like just different people’s stories of postpartum, and then you can gift it to people who are pregnant but tell them not to read this until you feel like you want to read other people’s stories, like after you’ve had your kid and maybe you’re tearing your hair out, like what is going on, in the thick of it, and then you can see, look, everyone’s had a different experience, and that’s okay.  Because it’s something that you don’t want to take away from their pregnancy experience with all this; we don’t want to scare people; we don’t want to also say well, this is what I went through so you should go through this same thing, but having a collection of those stories, when it just seems like so much and you don’t know if what you’re doing is right, look at all these people, and they did it right.  Their kid is healthy.  Your kid will be healthy, and there’s all different experiences.

Alyssa:  They did what’s right for their family.

Bri:  Yeah.

Alyssa:  In that moment.

Bri:  Yeah.  But that’s one idea I had recently.  I have too many.

Alyssa:  That’s funny that you say that really, all that Baby needs is food, shelter, and love.  That’s how I end my newborn survival classes.  I’m like, all this information that I gave you, if you get nothing else out of this, is keep it simple because there’s just way too much information out there, and Dr. Google is telling you one thing, and your neighbor is telling you another thing, and your mom and your mother-in-law are conflicting things.  Keep it simple, and give this baby food and love and shelter.  That’s all this baby needs.  The rest is just icing on the cake.  They’re going to be fine, and you’re going to be great parents.  Just keep it simple.

Bri:  I love that!

Alyssa:  Anything else about your postpartum journey?  How old is your son now?

Bri:  He is a year and a half.

Alyssa:  And how has it gone from the nine-month weaning period to twelve months walking?  How has your journey been?

Bri:  So he had actually had some – we actually went to food therapy for him, too.  So we weaned him at nine months off of breastmilk, and then we did formula.  We noticed he was having trouble eating solids.  He would try to eat and try to swallow, but then he would gag and sometimes to the point of vomiting.  So at first, I thought, you know, maybe it’s just something he’s doing and he’s learning, but it would happen a lot, and so I actually got a request to go to Mary Free Bed, and they were wonderful there.  They actually said, yes, he has silent reflux, and so that is why this is happening, and then they were showing how his tongue wasn’t working in the correct ways to swallow and get all the food out of his mouth that he was eating.  So we went there for a few sessions and then I just did stuff at home.  Also, that of course didn’t help my anxiety, but that’s okay.  It really taught me to be patient and to be understanding and being a part of Better Body Image, I don’t want his relationship with food and his body to be stressed from the beginning.  He needs to have me be calm so that he doesn’t get a bad relationship with that food from the start, and he needed more of me to be the patient and calm one, and he now is doing great.  He has weaned off of bottles now.  He does do a bottle of water for comfort sometimes, but he’s drinking his sippy cups.  He’s eating lots of food.  Our magical food we found that he just could do really well with was cottage cheese, and he loves it and he’ll eat tons of it, and now he’s doing better.  He actually ate noodles last night, and he usually never eats noodles, and he ate some chicken, and I was like, whoa!  And it was just really exciting.  So that’s how his food journey has been more unique, but it’s been really good for me because I’m able to understand the signs better, and he’s a healthy, happy boy.  He likes to play.  He’s very extroverted, so he likes to go up to people and talk to them.  And right now, it’s half-gibberish, half sentences, and the other day I was washing dishes while he was eating some snack, and he goes, “What are you doing?”  And I’m like, whoa, you just…

Alyssa:  A full sentence!

Bri:  Yeah, out of nowhere!  But I always ask him that all the time, like, “What are you doing?”  And so I thought that was funny, and I just told him, “Well, I’m washing dishes.  That’s what I’m doing right now.”  And then the other day, my husband said, “Hey, did you go to the doctor today?” And he answered, “I didn’t do it.”  And then just went and played.  So it’s been a really fun journey.  And I’ll say that I know I wouldn’t be the same without having him as my son.  There’s something about having a child that does change you in different ways, and it challenges you to be a better version of yourself, more patient, just perseverance to a different degree, and being able to function on less sleep.  You still want to get enough sleep, but you realize how much you can actually do in a day vs. when you didn’t have a kid.  I’m so much more efficient in certain ways.

Alyssa:  I’m definitely more productive.  My time is so important, and I get so much done.  It’s very valuable; I’ll say that.

Bri:  Yeah, very valuable and efficient.

Alyssa:  So do you feel like, even though your whole life you’re going to struggle with anxiety and depression, that you’re just learning different ways to cope with these new developmental milestones, and instead of internalizing everything – and it sounds like your husband may be like mine, where he’s very rational?

Bri:  He’s very calm.

Alyssa:  And says, hey, let’s look at all these bottles you’ve got laid out and you’re counting and all the supplies – my husband did the same thing for me when I was struggling with breastfeeding.  He was my voice of reason, so finding somebody like that, that you can talk to and say, okay, how can you calm me down?  Tell me something that’s rational.  Validate me and understand my feelings, but let’s look at this outcome or this fact.

Bri:  Yeah, I definitely think so.  I think I’ve learned with him to let go of control more.  I’ll still always really – I’m a planner, and I like to do stuff like that, but I’m trying to let go of control more.  And then I think also having self-compassion more, which is my new thing I like to teach people about, but just being compassionate towards myself makes things a little bit less extreme or less anxious.  So, oops, I lost my temper or something with my son because I was up here and there were so many different things going on that day.  Well, I make sure to apologize and hug him, and then that’s that.  I forgive myself, and I don’t dwell on it.  In the past, I would have, the whole rest of the day, been just dwelling on that, or any event that happens; dwelling on every single thing.  And there’s too many things that happen in a day that can bring you down, and if you just take each of them so much and internalize it, you’re going to drive yourself crazy, and it’s just not fair to yourself.  So I think also embracing that life is always going to throw you different things, and that’s just another constant that you can know and expect, and just don’t put too many expectations.

Alyssa:  My journey is very similar to yours.  I think I didn’t realize that I ever had anxiety until I had a kid because I went through a lot of the same struggles you did.

Bri:  Yeah, there’s a lot of different exercises I use daily, too.  If my mind starts to spiral, I stop that thought, and I go, okay, is this thought – this feeling can be valid, but is this thought truth or a lie?  Is this really something that I should think about to that extent?  No, it’s probably not, so let’s stop that.

Alyssa:  All the would-have, could-have, should-have, right?  Like all these things that could happen – well, it didn’t happen.  It probably won’t happen.  So why am I dwelling on this?

Bri:  Exactly.

Alyssa:  This intrusive thought of something I’ll never have to deal with.  I totally get it.  Well, you have your own podcast?  Tell us the name of that and where people can find it.

Bri:  That podcast is called Compassionately You, and you can find it on iTunes and Google Podcasts.  It’s also on my website, and I just host conversations where I have people on and they talk about either a personal journey or a body image journey and we talk in vulnerability in hopes of inspiring other people or if someone went through a similar situation, they can relate and feel that they’re not alone.  And we also usually feature people’s businesses in there, as well, during that podcast.

Alyssa:  Cool.  So the Better Body Image Conference – is it once a year?  Are you going to do it every year?

Bri:  Yeah, once a year.  We are set for next year, same place, Wealthy Street Theater, on March 2nd, 2019, so we’re set for that date.  And, actually, our speaker is going to be Diane Bondi, who’s in the yoga world.  But we are looking into and we have done a few mini-events where we just partner with an organization or a few and we host – who knows what I can be, but we host different types of mini-events.  One was a reshowing of the movie that we showed at our conference this year.  I think we are going to possibly be partnering with an organization this December to do another event, and then there might be some in the works for January, as well.

Alyssa:  Where do you promote those?

Bri:  We usually promote them on our Facebook and on our website, which also just got a redesign.  One of our board members is a designer, and the lovely Brittany redesigned it, and it has pictures from last year.  I think, actually, our main header image is a picture during the Gold Coast Doulas workshop.

Alyssa:  I’ll have to look.  I didn’t know you redesigned.  I’ll have to look.

Bri:  We just did it this week.  She’s been working hard on that.  And so that’s a lot of fun there.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Well, thanks again for doing this.  It’s always great to see you and talk to you.  Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story.

Bri:  Definitely.  Thanks for having me, and if people wanted to follow my Instagram page, I’m pretty vulnerable with just life.   So it’s just @briluginbill.  I just try to be super vulnerable in my days and let people know, like, hey, if you’re having this type of time, I might be, too.

Alyssa:  Well, you can always find us at our website, Instagram, and Facebook, as well.  Hopefully we’ll talk to Bri again sometime soon.  Hopefully, everyone has a great day!

 

 

 

Podcast Episode #48: Bri’s Postpartum Story Read More »

working mom

Podcast Episode #47: How to be a Mompreneur

Alyssa and Cindy have a thoughtful conversation about what it’s really like to be mother and entrepreneur.  Setting realistic expectations and learning to be intentional with your time as a business owner and a mom is important.  Listen to see if they have tips for you!  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello, welcome to Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula at Gold Coast, and we are talking with Cindy from Cindy’s Suds today.

Cindy:  Hey, how are you doing?

Alyssa:  Hey!  So in our last chat, we started, off the air, talking about our roles as mothers and business owners and how that’s totally different than just being a working mom.  Both have their own challenges, but we have our own specific set of challenges as mothers who own our own businesses.  So we thought maybe we would extend this conversation and see where it goes.   Let’s just talk about all the different hats we have to wear.  Our last conversation was about deodorant, and I had mentioned that I don’t have time to shower every day any more.  You know, that’s a luxury that I had, first of all, before I had a child, but even after I had my baby, I worked in an office, so I would literally get up half an hour earlier every morning to work out and then to shower.  I showered every single day.  I shaved every single day.

Cindy:  Not so much anymore!

Alyssa:  I look back now, and I’m like, why the heck would I waste all that time?  Now time is such a luxury.  If I can shower every two or three days, that’s good, and I also still hate it.  Now, I just feel like I’m wasting time every time I’m standing in the shower.

Cindy:  Same, yeah.  I feel the exact same way.  Because it’s not just the act of showering; then you’ve got to do your hair; you’ve got to dry off; you’ve got to quick put on a little bit of makeup, whereas if you don’t shower you can just kind of fly with yesterday’s leftover makeup.  I mean, it’s bad.  It’s bad, just the lack of time that we have, and I feel like we’re in a time right now where there are so many women that own their own businesses, which is so fabulous and it’s so wonderful, so I do think that a lot of women can resonate with what we’re talking about.  A lot of moms are picking up their businesses that they had this desire to this or that or they’re selling this on the side or that on the side, and I just feel like there’s a lot of moms who are entrepreneurs and business owners as well as being a mom, and to try to get it all in and have time for your work life, your mom life, your marriage life, your home life – it’s just a lot, and I think women are under more stress, being pulled in different directions, than we ever have been throughout history because there’s just so much that needs to be done nowadays.  It’s just different.

Alyssa:  Yeah, we’re redefining the role.  You know, in one of the groups I’m in, the mom brain group, I did a talk about guilt and how we manage guilt as moms, and it turned into everyone having these stories they wanted to tell, but the main thing I wanted to get across was we’re never really going to feel not guilty until we can shift the way we think about our roles.

Cindy:  Because I don’t think husbands feel that.

Alyssa:  And I said that.  I said, how many guys sit around and talk about dad guilt?

Cindy:  Never.

Alyssa:  None.  None.  And here we are; we’re guilty because now we own our own businesses and a lot of us work from home, so we feel like we should have all this extra time with our kids, but we feel guilty because instead, our kid’s in the playpen or the bouncy seat next to us and we’re on the computer, on our phones.  So until we can shift the way we actually think about our roles as mothers, as wives or partners, and leaders and entrepreneurs, we have to realize that what we’re doing is so awesome, and we are showing our kids that women can do this too, and we are strong and we are capable and we are providing for our families.  It’s not just Dad that has to do that.  And it’s also realizing that I’m a better mom because of these things that I’m doing for myself.

Cindy:  And I think, as with so many things in life, we’re not going to truly realize that until we look back.  I feel like hindsight’s 20/20, and when you’re in it, you just feel a lot of mixed emotions.  Am I doing enough here?  Am I doing enough there?  Do they feel my love here?  Is my work getting what they need from me here?  But I think when we look back, we can give ourselves that nod of approval and go, wow, I did do what I needed to do to make my business run well; to make my family run well; to make my children grow well.  But when you’re in the midst of it, it just feels like you’re living in this hurricane disaster all the time, and I feel like I’m treading water all the time because there’s no down time.  I hear people sometimes talk about “Oh, what’d you do today?  I read a magazine.”  I’m like, are you kidding me?  You got to read a magazine?

Alyssa: Do you see this stack of magazines right here?  This is how old?  September of 2017.  That’s how long that’s been sitting there.  I haven’t had time to read it.

Cindy:  My bedside table looks the exact same, so I completely get it.  But there’s so many things that we’re trying to juggle in a day that I think if we wrote down or if someone looked at all the things that we did, it’s like we’re living four days in one day.  We’re living our life as a business person and managing our business well and customer service and getting this out or that out, and then we’re managing our home life as best as we can, and are we eating together as a family?  Do we have all the events covered with our children going back and forth?  Am I seeing my spouse?  What about my kids; am I doing the activities that my kids need me to do?  Am I helping with schoolwork?  There are so many things…

Alyssa:  Not to mention the house is dusty, and there’s nothing in the refrigerator, and who’s making dinner?  It’s non-stop.  The to-do list never ends, I feel like.  I know that I’ve had to really scale back on the things that I feel like have to be done at home.

Cindy:  I have to.

Alyssa:  If you walked along my house and did a finger test, you’re probably going to find dust.  Five years ago?  Never.  There’s no way.  There never would have been dust; nothing would have been out of order.  My bed probably isn’t made.

Cindy:  My bed is not made.  I will tell you that.

Alyssa:  My husband will do it sometimes.  But I’ve had to realize that I just have to let go of some things.  These things do not need to be done.

Cindy:   And they don’t define you as a person, either, you know, and so I think we have to let go of some of those things that aren’t necessarily time-wasters, but when you have more time at home, you’re going to fill them with things that are the nitty-gritty details.  When you’re in survival mode like we are with businesses and families and children, you do.  You really start focusing on the important things, and you focus on your fires every day.  What fires need to be put out today?  And the detail things – you know, if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, they just kind of fall to the wayside, but then I think you also kind of shift your focus on the importance and what the important things are in your life, and you realize that having a completely picked-up house with no dust and always vacuumed – that’s not really what’s important to me at this point in my life.

Alyssa:  Right.  That doesn’t help me be a better mom, and it doesn’t help me be a better business owner.

Cindy:  Right.  And will your kids remember that?  No.  They’re not going to.  So they’re not going to remember these little things, so don’t let it make you crazy thinking that, gosh, I should have done this or done that.  It is not going to matter in the long run, and so little things like that, I think for our sanity’s sake, you just have to let go.  Because there’s bigger things out there; way bigger things.

Alyssa:  Yeah.  And we talked about wearing a lot of hats; you know, we are the business owners, so we are fielding the phone calls and the emails, and we’re also doing the marketing, and we’re also doing the events and the networking and the managing anyone who works for us.  It’s like there’s never, ever any downtime.  So even when you work from home – especially when you work from home – you never really get to walk away, but even if you work in an office and own your own business, you can kind of turn it off a little bit when you get home, but you never really can because if you get that phone call from that one person, you know you have to answer that.  So it’s a little tricky to really turn it off, and I’ve realized that I have – maybe it’s just a time.  Like, okay, 8:00 PM, or even earlier than that, because I want to do that before my daughter goes to bed.  So maybe it’s 6:00, and then I can turn back on at 8:00 when she goes to bed.  But I don’t even bring my cell phone back into that room with me because when I start hearing those rings and vibrations, and I’m like, uh-oh, emails are coming in or texts are coming in, and all of a sudden now I’m sitting there in front of my daughter looking at my phone when I should be focused on her.  Those are the things I don’t want her to notice.  I don’t want her to remember, Mommy was always on her phone.  So I have to be very intentional about leaving it in a completely different room because it is distracting.

Cindy:  Yeah, and I think what you just said is so important; the intentionality of making that choice.  So you make a choice that your phone does not take precedence over your daughter, and maybe not ever bringing it into the room when you have your bedtime routine or whatever.  Those are the things that are going to help us focus on the here and now for what we need to focus on.  So bedtime; it’s your daughter, you know?  Or while she’s at school or whatever, you’re giving 110% to your job and to running Gold Coast Doulas, and that’s where you’re at.  And so it’s really kind of taking these chunks of time that we have throughout the day and dedicating this chunk is for work; this chunk is for home; this chunk is for kids.  And we’re doing our best, you know?  My husband is also self-employed and so he gets it, and so that kind of is helpful, but on the same token, we’ve got two crazies, then, at home, because we both have our own businesses that we’re running, but at least he gets it.  But it’s tough.  It’s not easy, but I think just what you said about being intentional, about carving out spaces and time for the important things, and every single day, just kind of take a look at it like this – how am I going to balance today?  You can’t really – at least from my perspective, I don’t feel like I can plan out really far because I work best under a day-to-day kind of a guideline.  I mean, you’re constantly looking out in the future for work and for kids and family life, but when it boils down to how today is going to look, it’s just that one day, and it’s what’s unfolding today.  How can I give my best self today in this area or that area, and how can my children not feel like I’m being pulled in many directions, and when I’m working, how can my work not feel like I’m being pulled in many directions?

Alyssa:  That’s one of the things I talked about, too, is really focusing.  So when you’re 100% focused on work, you can know that’s done.  This is done, so when I turn it off, and then it’s 100% focused on kids.  Otherwise if you half-ass it, basically, like if you only give 80% to your work that day, by the time it’s family time, that 20% is still going to be on your mind, and you can’t dedicate 100% to your kids.  So it’s really being – and I think again it takes time and it’s almost like exercising your brain to, like, figure out that you can do this, to really be intentional with your time.  And then I’ve also learned on the flip side that we get so busy that we forget to take time just for us.

Cindy:  That’s a huge thing.

Alyssa:  Yeah, because we’re so focused on business and family and household things that I’ve learned that it’s really okay to be selfish.

Cindy:  And I think even more so when you own your own business, you have to almost schedule in down time, me-time, because if you don’t, you will burn out.  And I’ve been kind of running this rat race too much lately, where I’m like, okay, I need to really schedule down time.  So I’ve got a massage on Friday because I know that I’ve been overdoing it and I know I need to just kind of reset that bar for myself because things like that; the half-hour drive will calm me down.  I scheduled it for an hour and a half, and this is kind of mean, but I don’t talk during my massage.  I love my massage therapist.  I’ve been with her for several years.  I don’t talk because I need to completely decompress.  And she said, “You’re my only client that doesn’t talk.”  I’m like, I can’t.  I need to just – this needs to be me.  So I think it’s really important to, like you said, whether it’s exercise or whether it’s whatever you do to unwind; meditating, getting a massage –

Alyssa:  Take a bath by yourself.

Cindy:  Take a long shower every… four days.

Alyssa:  Four days, yeah. When we have the time, right?

Cindy:  When we have the time!

Alyssa:  But I mean, it can be sometimes me just sitting down after a long day, after putting my daughter to bed and spending some time with my husband.  If I can sit and watch Netflix for 30 minutes –

Cindy:  What’s Netflix?  What is that?  I’m joking.

Alyssa:  Oh, my God.  You really are busy!

Cindy:  But no, I get that.

Alyssa:  Just to decompress.  And then I shut my brain off; I don’t look at my phone, and I can actually, like, if my eyes start to get drowsy, I’m good.  I turn it off, I go to sleep, and I’m good.  Otherwise, I can’t shut my brain off.

Cindy:  Right, and when you just said that, I have to remind myself all the time: if I see my husband watching Netflix, I get bitter.  I’m like, how can you watch TV and I can’t?  And he always tells me, “Stop.  That laundry will be there tomorrow.  Sit down with me.  Watch a show.”  And for whatever reason, I’m going back to guys: how can they do it all?  They turn it off and they make time for TV time, whatever.

Alyssa:  We have the same exact conversation, and I’m like, how can you be watching golf again?  And I’m muttering to myself, and if I do actually say something out loud, he’ll be like, “Join me.  Join me on the sofa.  Make yourself a drink.  Sit down.”  I’m like, “I can’t.”  Yes, I can!  I totally can!

Cindy:  We have this thing where we’ve got to use every single free moment to get stuff done.

Alyssa:  Well, I’ve realized I think he really values his own time and his time alone.  Must be more than I value mine.

Cindy:  Well, I think going back to the fact that men and women are so different: they don’t have that guilt, and they’ve learned to make time for themselves.  When they’re burned out, they know what to do.  They stop.  They watch TV.  They zone out.  They take a nap.  You just don’t find women doing that, or at least no one that I know does that, but I think it’s something that maybe we could even learn from them and learn to give ourselves a little bit of permission to take those breaks.

Alyssa:  Absolutely.  It’s okay to be selfish.  Selfish doesn’t have to be bad.  Take time for yourself; and again, it makes you a better mother if you can take care of yourself.  So schedule those times.  Like, on my calendar today, it says get outside because this is going to be one of the nicest days, but it keeps moving farther and farther down my calendar because more and more stuff comes up.  So I think I need to do more things like that, like schedule a massage where I have to be there at 10:00 AM.  Because otherwise, stuff always happens during the day.

Cindy:  It always, always will happen, and that will be the slot that you erase and pencil somebody else in.

Alyssa:  It keeps moving down and it probably won’t happen today.

Cindy:  We give because women typically give, but you know, we really have to allow ourselves to just rest, just like what you were saying; you have to have that self-care, but if we don’t, we will end up empty, and an empty mom, empty business owner…

Alyssa:  Has nothing to give to either.  Well, hopefully that wasn’t too much of a rant!

Cindy:  I know, exactly!  Just a good reminder!

Alyssa:  It’s a good conversation, yes, that you can do it all and you can do it effectively.  Just keep an eye on where all – you know, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, whether that’s all family or all business or all yourself.  Well, thanks for talking to me, Cindy.

Cindy: Yeah, thanks!  Always fun!

Alyssa:  Email us if you have any questions for Cindy or me: info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  And Cindy, where can people find you?

Cindy:  You can find our all-natural bath and body products at our website. You can also find us locally at Kingma’s and Harvest Health Foods.  We’re also scattered in a lot of great boutiques around the Grand Rapids area.

Alyssa:  And we will chat with you next time.

Cindy:  That sounds great.

Alyssa:  Thanks!

 

Podcast Episode #47: How to be a Mompreneur Read More »

food as medicine

Podcast Episode #46: Plant-Based Diet

Today we talk to Dr. Kristi Artz, the medical director for Lifestyle Medicine at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids.  She is also the lead physician of the culinary medicine program and talks to us today about what a plant-based diet is and how it can work for your family.  You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, your host, and today I am talking with Kristi Artz, the medical director for Lifestyle Medicine at Spectrum Health, and she’s also the lead physician of the Culinary Medicine Program.  Hey, Kristi.

Dr. Artz:  Hi, Alyssa.  Thanks for having me!

Alyssa:  Yeah, thanks for taking time out of your day!  I hear you’re in the kitchen right now?

Dr. Artz:  I am.  I have three school-aged children myself, so it’s just about school pickup time, and they have after-school activities, and they need a healthy meal to keep them well-fueled.

Alyssa:  So I recently met you because Gold Coast is involved in the Spectrum Health Foundations LEAD program where we meet different people from different programs throughout Spectrum Health, and then we allocate funds to those.  And we met you because we were doing the culinary medicine program when we met you, and it was amazing.  And I’m so happy that I go that recipe book from you guys.  I have made the black bean brownies twice.

Dr. Artz:  Oh, excellent!  Yeah, those are delicious.

Alyssa:  My daughter loves them.  She’s vegan and gluten-free, so she’s just over the moon that she can eat these.  And I don’t care because there’s no sugar.

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, and it was so nice to meet you at that event, and we were thrilled to really just get in the kitchen and expose the program, the culinary medicine program, that we’ve been developing at Spectrum Health over the last year and a half and just to gain wider exposure as to what we can do in the program and how we’re hoping to reach people and really better educate, not only the community members and individuals, but also really involve nutrition more widely in how we train healthcare professionals and how we can integrate that in a more evidence-based way in the care of our patients.

Alyssa:  Yeah, it’s such an integral part of our overall health.

Dr. Artz:  Oh, absolutely.  I mean, what we’re really seeing as we care for patients is that a vast amount have diet-related illness.  With chronic disease, often the underlying trigger is, to a certain extent, genetics, but more so diet and lifestyle factors.

Alyssa:  Right.  Now, today we’re going to talk about raising a plant-based family, and I got to thinking: is plant-based a new term?  Is that just a new way to say vegetarian, or is it completely different?

Dr. Artz:  Well, I think as we look to the science of what a healthy diet looks like, I think a plant-based diet, specifically a whole food, plant-based diet, is really a better term than necessarily vegan or vegetarian.  You can certainly be a vegan, whole food, plant-based eater.  You can be a vegetarian whole foods plant-based eater, and there’s only slight differences.  You know, the vegan pattern of eating, obviously, would exclude all animal-based products, but a vegetarian eating a primarily plant-based diet would be consuming mostly whole-plant foods, lots of produce, beans, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, but maybe adding in a little bit of dairy at times or maybe adding in eggs if they prefer to do that at times.  So again, I think when we talk about diet patterns, I think it’s really pointing out what we want to be including in our diet, so more whole, plant-based foods.  That’s really why I like to use that terminology, and I think it’s more approachable for many people.  I know my experience as a doctor is that many people feel like — they have a gut reaction when you say vegan or vegetarian.  They feel that that’s not something that is attainable for them and their lifestyle or maybe their family, but I think when we start eating more plant-based or plant-forward is another term I like to use, I think people feel like they can make some of those changes, and it’s not too overwhelming.

Alyssa:  So plant-based doesn’t mean not eating meat?

Dr. Artz:  No, actually it doesn’t.  I think oftentimes it is becoming a loaded term, again, like many of these dietary terms that are often then put in a category where plant-based eating is exclusively vegetarian eating, and like I said, it oftentimes is, but it can include a small amount of well-sourced dairy or well-sourced fish.  But I do like to point out that there are real indications for many people, and oftentimes with certain chronic diseases, to really advocate for a vegan, whole food, plant-based diet.  And there’s also good science to support doing that for better planetary health, as well.  So it depends on what angle you’re coming from.  If you’re looking for a way to start to feed your family in a more healthy pattern, certainly a whole food, plant-based eating pattern would be definitely supported by science and what we know about what a healthy diet looks like in terms of those nutritional studies that we look towards for the evidence.

Alyssa:  I like the term plant-forward because you’re saying that it’s not 100% plant-based, which I think was the confusion I had between plant-based and vegetarian.  I’m thinking, what’s the difference?  You’re saying that it needs to be heavily plant-based, even if you do eat some meat here and there or go outside of that; that’s the focus?

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, the focus really should be how can you base your diet primarily around whole plant foods, and again that includes not only produce, fruits and vegetables, but includes nuts and seeds, beans, legumes, and whole grains.  So that should be the base of your diet, and when, again, you look to the evidence and the science of it, really, if you can achieve 90% of your dietary intake to be from a variety of whole plant foods, that leaves about maybe up to 10%, a little bit of wiggle room, and I think, again, that works really well for people who are healthy and trying to maintain their health and don’t necessarily want to remove all animal products.  The science would really support eating in that pattern; leaving, maybe, that 10% of wiggle room for inclusion of some high-quality dairy products or maybe some fish that they want to include for omega-3 fatty acids.  So yeah, that’s really what the science shows.  Now, I know we’re not going to be talking specifically about chronic disease, necessarily, but if you find that you’re affected by diabetes or hypertension or other cardiovascular disease, there really is an amazing body of research that supports eating an exclusive vegan, whole foods, plant-based diet, and that can be part of your care of your illness and it oftentimes can actually reverse some of the illness, as well.  So it’s really powerful.

Alyssa:  It is powerful, and I think it’s also, like you said, really scary for someone to think about completely changing their diet like that.  Is that part of the reason you started this culinary medicine program and have these amazing recipes, to tell people it isn’t as frightful as they think it might be?  That it might not be so hard, and they don’t just have to eat bland foods?  Because I looked through that recipe book, and it’s like, wow, there are so many great recipes.  You’d never know that every single one of these is healthy for you.

Dr. Artz:  Thanks for saying that, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the recipes!  Yeah, that’s really the premise behind the culinary medicine program is really, over the last 20 or 30 years, we’ve had a pretty dramatic shift in how people feed themselves, and more and more, it’s focused on convenience and not focused on cooking food in the home.  And as a result of that, foods that are oftentimes more convenient can very well be highly processed and contain lots of salt or sodium.  They can have a lot of saturated fat.  They can have a lot of preservatives and dyes and things that are going to create pretty widespread inflammation in our bodies, children and adults, and can put us at risk for those diseases that we want to try to avoid.  So culinary medicine also realizes that, as a program, that it’s one thing to have awareness of what the science shows or to have knowledge around what a healthy diet looks like, but you also have to know how to cook and prepare that food.  But you don’t want to spend all day, necessarily, doing that.  So what we have tried to really implement quite broadly at Spectrum Health is a program that allows for basic skills development in the kitchen as well as pairing that with some nutritional knowledge.  So when you pair the skill and the knowledge, you can really make positive changes in your own home kitchen.

Alyssa:  So who has access to the culinary medicine program?  Is it Spectrum Health patients who are, let’s say, battling diabetes or some of these other chronic illnesses?  Or could my mom off the street come in and say, I want to take a class and learn more?

Dr. Artz:  Both, actually.  We’re still planning and developing and really trying to see as we intentionally grow and expand the program that we’re really making it as accessible as we can to not only patients whose doctors want to refer them to classes, but also community members who are looking to the health system that they trust to provide programming that can really help them achieve better health and wellness goals than, maybe, they have set for themselves, if they’ve worked with their physician.  Excitingly, as of yesterday, actually, we just launched our webpages at Spectrum Health, so if you search for culinary medicine, you can actually reach us directly, and you can have access to all of our 80-plus recipes that are now online and available to anyone who wants to use them.

Alyssa:  Oh, awesome!  Good timing!

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, it was a lot of work getting that together.  We had great support in creating that webpage, and coming in January, and hopefully before that, we’ll be able to have this class listing up, but it will also be — the place to go will be that webpage on Spectrum’s website.  You’ll go to our website to find all of our recipes.  We also have some information sheets about how to build a healthy pantry, about vital nutrients or those plant nutrients that are represented by the colors that plants often have, whether it’s red or orange, and how those impact your health.  And then we’ll also have all of our class listings available there with online registration.

Alyssa:  That’s so great!  Do you think you’ll have anything for pregnancy, like specifically for pregnancy or postpartum?

Dr. Artz:  You know, we don’t have any specifically-designed classes for pregnancy or postpartum yet, although we’re in early conversations with a really awesome program through the Women’s Health CenteringPregnancy, if you’re familiar with that?

Alyssa:  I am, yeah.

Dr. Artz:  So we’re in early conversations how we can support the great work that they’re already doing with their group visits for pregnant moms.  But we will be launching a seasonal plant-based series beginning in January, and those classes are for everyone.  So if you’re curious about how to properly nourish your family, or if you’re a pregnant mom now and you’re wanting to learn ways to add more plant-based foods into your diet, that would be a great way to try out some new recipes, to learn some of that nutritional science as to why you may want to look more and more to a plant-based or plant-forward diet for you and your family.  So that would be a great way to get involved.

Alyssa:  Yeah, and did you say there are some tips on ways to kind of introduce this into your family?

Dr. Artz:  Yeah, so like I said, I have three daughters myself, and when they were very young and I was early out of my training program and residency — and my husband is actually a physician as well — you know, we were just trying to get by day by day and trying to feed our kids the best we could, but I think over the first couple of years of them being toddlers, we realized that kids get colds often and they get respiratory viruses or they get those irritating little GI bugs where they have a lot of vomiting and diarrhea, and how could we best support their little bodies and their immune systems so that they could be more resilient, for them to have better growth, better energy?  I’m an emergency medicine doctor by training, so all the nutritional training that I’ve undergone in the last decade or so has really been training that I’ve sought out personally and has been incredibly beneficial to how I practice medicine and also how I feed my children.  And a lot of that really transitioned us to a plant-based eating pattern for our entire family.  I would say that my children are not exclusively vegetarian 100% of the time, but like I said, that 90% rule: they eat plant-based foods; they’ll eat a lot of beans, and I would say that’s a really good place to start.  Beans have a great texture and flavor, and they have a great amount of fiber; they’re filling, and it’s not an ingredient that is often — I would say it’s underutilized with children.  It can be a great early finger food for toddlers if you squash them up a little bit so they’re not too round and a choking hazard.  Really, if we feed our children peas, which is great, you know, why not try a black bean or why not try a white bean and just get children used to those different tastes and textures?  And same goes with using fresh herbs or adding spices to your meals, and not the hot spices, but warming spices or cinnamon or things like that, really just exposing children to those textures, those flavors.  We eat a lot of soup in our house year-round, and that is a great way to start to transition to plant-based eating.  You can load your soup up with tons of vegetables and beans.  I like to make my own vegetable stock, and my do-it-yourself hack is to just keep a freezer bag, like a plastic freezer bag or a container, that you can store all the trimmed ends of carrots and celery and mushrooms and tomatoes and just pop them in your freezer, and then on the weekend or whenever you have an extra afternoon, let those simmer with just some water and a bay leaf, and you have a really nutrient-dense vegetable stock that you can then use for the base of your soup, or you can use it when you cook other whole grains or quinoa or things like that, as well.

Alyssa:  Oh, that’s great!  How long do you have to boil it or simmer it?

Dr. Artz:  You know, I always thought it was longer than I’ve discovered it needs to be, because we do this all the time over the winter, and I would say when I’m really in a pinch, I can simmer it at a pretty good simmer or a low boil for about an hour or so.  Then you strain it, and I get that really deeply-colored broth.  I think adding a tomato is always a great idea and adding some mushrooms, because mushrooms have these amazing nutrient properties, and that can be a tricky vegetable for kids to really want to eat a lot of, but mushrooms are incredibly healthy, and finding ways to even sneak those into a young child’s diet is a great idea.  A homemade vegetable stock is a really easy way to do that.

Alyssa:  I’m going to try it!

Dr. Artz:  Awesome, you’ll love it!

Alyssa:  Thank you so much for your time today.

Dr. Artz:  Sure!  Everyone, please use our recipes, connect with us, and let us know what you think or topics that you might be interested in.  We’d love to hear from you!

Alyssa:  We’ll talk to you next time!

Podcast Episode #46: Plant-Based Diet Read More »

Beach Front Baby Ring Sling

Podcast Episode #45: Babywearing

What are the best baby carriers and wraps?  Can you wear twins?  Today we talk to babywearing expert Marissa Berghorst, owner of EcoBuns Baby + Co in Holland, Michigan.  You can catch this complete podcast episode on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hello again!  Welcome back to Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doulas at Gold Coast.  Today we’re talking to Marissa from EcoBuns Baby + Co today.

Marissa:  Hello!

Alyssa:  I want to talk today about babywearing.

Marissa:  Another one of my favorite topics!

Alyssa:  Good!  So we have Ashley Forton, one of our birth doulas, who does babywearing consults.

Marissa:  Oh, and I love her!

Alyssa:  Yeah, she’s pretty amazing.

Marissa:  She’s wonderful.

Alyssa:  She was here yesterday for our team meeting with her new little baby strapped to her, and it was so amazing.  She’s so adorable.

Marissa:  I can’t wait until she brings the baby out to see us!

Alyssa:  She’s lovely.  We all got a little baby fix.  But she doesn’t do multiples.  She’s great at single babies, but if we have multiples families, we send them to you.  So can you tell us, how do you babywear twins, let alone triplets?

Marissa:  Oh, for sure.  So a little bit about me and why you guys like to send babies out to me is I’m certified through the Center for Babywearing Studies.  I’ve done a lot of training on things, which makes me able to do the consults on multiples.  And multiples are fun!  They’re fun because there’s two babies or three, and I usually get to hold at least one of them during the consult.  They’re very fun.  So we do carrier consults, you can come in even before baby is born.  We have weighted dolls so that parents can test out and see how the different carriers feel.  Multiples kind of get into this whole other world, though, and a lot of times with twins what we find is one baby likes to be held and one baby is a little more independent.  We do always say one carrier for one baby.  A lot of times, parents will come in and they’re buying two of everything, and baby carriers usually aren’t any different.  If you want to be able to do two babies at one time, we definitely suggest one baby carrier for one baby.  Ring slings end up being a really popular option for multiples.  Ring slings are a long piece of fabric attached with rings almost like a men’s belt loop, how they kind of weave through; kind of that same concept with a ring sling.

Alyssa:  So you would just criss-cross them like an X, then?

Marissa:  Yep, and so you’d have one baby just to your right and one baby just to your left, but not fully onto your hip, though.  We don’t want to put new babies onto hips, but they can just be a little off-centered, and then the rings end up situated right across your chest.  It’s a super comfortable way to carry two babies at one time.  When babies get a little bit older, generally around a six-month mark, then we start teaching parents how to put one baby onto their back, and then they do two carriers, still, with one baby on the back and one baby on the front.  There are baby carrier options out on the market that are marketed for twins, but we don’t sell them at our store because even our multiple parents will still find that one baby likes to be worn and one baby likes to be more independent, so usually they’re still only carrying one baby at a time.

Alyssa:  That’s interesting.  And then, too, if you’re carrying two but if your friend or someone else wants to carry the baby, now you have two carriers and you can each carry one.

Marissa:  Yeah.  Our average customer has between two and five baby carriers, and that’s even our single-baby customers.

Alyssa:  And that’s based on what we’re doing, right?  Are we hiking; are we going shopping; are we going on a quick run to the grocery store?

Marissa:  Right, and even age of baby makes a difference.  A lot of customers come in looking for a ring sling or a wrap for that newborn stage, that fourth trimester where babies are still getting used to being on the outside.  I always compare it to car seats.  You can totally get the convertible car seat that goes from birth to booster, but you start to make some compromises along the way, right?  You have to add that infant adapter.  You have to add the infant base.  It’s the same thing with carriers, whereas if you start with a carrier designed for the newborn stage, you don’t have to add all those adaptions to it.  The buckle carriers that everyone usually thinks of like the Ergos and Lillebabies and Tulas of the world, those are really designed originally to be worn on your back for babies over six months old.  They weren’t originally designed to be a front pack with a newborn.  But now it’s evolved to where you can absolutely do that, and we teach parents how to do that all the time.  But sometimes it’s nice to get those little carriers for those early days that really hug and snuggle babies.  Our postpartum depression moms also love ring slings because they can move babies just off center to where they’re not right in their field of vision.  They’re just off to the peripheral just enough so that they’re not feeling so overwhelmed with caring for this new baby.  It’s really great.  We get a lot of postpartum depression moms into the store who come in to talk about different options with things, and one of the biggest things that we can offer them is a ring sling so that they can still care for baby but not feel so overwhelmed.

Alyssa:  Now, how would a mom hold triplets?  Is it possible?  Is it safe?  Maybe not until they’re older when you can have one on the back and two in front?

Marissa:  Yeah, I would say we don’t often see very many moms doing three baby carriers.

Alyssa:  By the time you get three on, what’s the point?

Marissa:  Then one wants off.

Alyssa:  Right!

Marissa:  And like I said, moms are awesome because they’re resilient and they adapt to the situation at hand, and triplets, twins, even single babies can be super overwhelming, but you absolutely have in you what it takes to handle the situation that you’ve been given.  I think that’s one of the biggest things with babywearing is it’s just a tool to help moms already be the awesome moms that they already are and that they already know how to be, and we just walk alongside them and support them in that.  With the triplets we often see, again, that there’s usually always one in the mix that loves to be snuggled on, loves to be held, and the other ones will either kind of take turns with being held and snuggled on or they’ll just need their space, sometimes.  I know a lot of times, especially if a baby has spent a lot of time in the NICU, when they come home from the NICU, depending how long their stay was, they’re used to being not held 100% of the time, so they’re a little bit more independent.

Alyssa:  So tell me; you had mentioned earlier about these mesh carriers that you have that are great for summer because they don’t get so hot and you can wear them in the water?

Marissa:  You can wear them in the water!  So we have a brand called Beach Front Baby which is fabulous.  They make a version of a ring sling that can be worn in the water.  Most fabric carriers are made out of cotton, but you don’t want to take cotton into the water; it will weigh down and be super heavy.  This one is made of a mesh material that’s still super supportive.  You can still wear it from 8 to 30 pounds, so you can still use it for a full-term baby up until when your shoulders can no longer handle carrying the kiddo.  You can wear it in the shower, which is one of our customers’ biggest things because parents are like, oh, my baby won’t let me set them down, but I smell!  I need to wash my hair!  But babies are slippery and you don’t want to just hold them in the shower, so you can put them into the ring sling and safely take them into the shower.  It’s a safe way to shower with babies.  And it’s summer in West Michigan and we have so many splash pads; we have so many water parks; we have so many lakes, and so it’s nice to be able to put baby into a carrier for that.  We don’t recommend actually swimming in the water, but to be able to go in, splash around.  I always love taking mine to the splash pad because then I could duck under the water, we’d both get the refreshment, and it’s amazing.  The company also makes wraps, as well, that are just long pieces of fabric that you actually wrap, and just like we talked about earlier, any carrier purchase from EcoBuns comes with a free half-hour lesson on how to use it.  So if wraps and ring slings sound a little intimidating, it’s our job to make sure that when you walk out of the store, you know how to use them.  If you don’t like their ring sling, if you don’t like the wrap idea, we do have soft structured carriers.  Those would be the ones with buckles that have a mesh front panel.  The company that we carry, Onya, has a mesh front panel, but then it also has a protective layer that can zip down over top of it, so if you’re using it in the winter and you don’t want that mesh panel, it closes it up and keeps everyone nice and cozy.

Alyssa:  And if you want to baby wear in summer, it’s like, oh, I’m going to be sweaty; the baby’s going to be sweaty, so the mesh helps with that.

Marissa:  The mesh is really great.  Now, it doesn’t cool you down per se…

Alyssa:  Babies are still hot.

Marissa:  Babies are still hot, yeah.

Alyssa:  Right, but it’s not going to be as hot because at least they’re going to get air circulation, right?

Marissa:  Right.  It’s a lot of common sense with baby wearing.  You know, if you yourself don’t want to be out in 80-degree weather for two hours, your baby probably doesn’t want to be, either.  Make sure both of you are staying hydrated.  The other cool thing with babywearing is that we can teach you how to breastfeed and bottlefeed in a carrier.

Alyssa:  I was just going to say that.  When you said that about keeping hydrated, you’re right there by the boob; how much more convenient can you get?  And it’s actually a lot less distracting then putting on these covers and trying to whip up your shirt.  They’re already wrapped in, and you just do it.

Marissa:  Yeah, and with the ring slings, they have that nice long tail that a lot of women will use as a cover if they want a little more privacy.

Alyssa:  That’s awesome.  So how do people find your wraps?

Marissa:  We have them online on our website, and if you search for baby carriers and then water wraps, they’ll be listed there.  Or if you want to come out and see the colors in person, you can drive out to Holland.  We’re at 12330 James Street on the corner of James and US 31, right between Carter’s and Gap Outlet.  You can come into the store; we’re open seven days a week.  Come in and pick out the color in person!

Alyssa:  Excellent.  Go check them out!  Thanks for coming in again and talking to us!

Marissa:  Absolutely!  You’re always so much fun to hang out with.

Alyssa:  Let’s try to find a few more things to talk about and have you back soon!

Marissa:  Yes!

Alyssa:  Thanks for joining us!  You can find Gold Coast Doulas on Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and iTunes.

 

Gold Coast Doulas is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

 

Podcast Episode #45: Babywearing Read More »

Cindy's Suds

Podcast Episode #44: Kids and Sex

Today we talk about sex.  How do you discuss it with your kids?  What’s age appropriate?  How much is too much information?  Cindy, a former PA, gives us some good advice on how and where to start the conversation with your kids.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Alyssa:  Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa, your host, and I’m talking with Cindy from Cindy’s Suds again today.

Cindy:  Hello!

Alyssa:  Hello!  It’s lunchtime and we’re hungry.

Cindy:  We are!

Alyssa:  So hopefully you don’t hear our stomachs growl.  We are going to talk about a topic today that probably doesn’t pertain to families with babies, but even for me with a five-year-old, it’s something I’m thinking about.  You with teenagers have definitely gone through it, and that is talking to kids about sex.  And it’s interesting how young kids begin to ask those questions.  When my daughter was three, I got the first, “Mommy, how do babies get in your tummy?”  And at that age, literally, my explanation to her – we were driving in the car, and I had no forewarning, of course, right?  So I was like, well, daddies have sperm; mommies have eggs, and when they meet, it makes a baby.  And she was like, “Okay.”  That was literally a good enough explanation for her, so I’m like, oh, my God, when is level two coming?  What do I have to explain next?  She did, when she was four, asking something like, well, how does the baby get in there?

Cindy:  What did you say?

Alyssa:  What did I say?  I think I just said, well, remember how I told you about the sperm and the egg, and they have to meet?  And she didn’t ask anymore.  So she was like, no, I didn’t remember that, so in her mind, that was an explanation.  So we haven’t gotten there yet, but she’s five; I don’t know when she’ll ask again.  But you have teenagers.

Cindy:  Talking to your kids about sex is the worst thing ever.  And it’s the scariest thing ever because you feel like you don’t want to give too much, but you don’t want to give not enough.  And the thing that I’m learning as my kids are now reaching adulthood and beyond is that I probably should have started the conversation earlier, and I probably should have revisited it so casually that it was not a big deal.  Because when you have “a talk,” and maybe when they’re between the ages of nine and eleven, you have “the big talk,” you’re building it up in your head.  It’s probably awful for your kids to sit down and hear about it.

Alyssa:  Because they don’t want to hear about it, thinking that your mom and dad have sex.  That’s probably the grossest thing you could ever imagine.

Cindy:  Absolutely, yeah, they’re probably wanting to stick needles in their eyes!  But now in hindsight looking back, I’m like, oh, I can see where – I have some friends that are so very open that I’m kind of like, oh, my gosh, I’m a little uncomfortable.  But their kids seem to roll with sex talks better than my kids who would run away with their hands over their ears.  “Okay, okay, got it, got it got it.”  Like, they’ll ask me something completely random, and if it has anything to do with sex now, I feel like they’re like, “Okay, got it, got it.”  Whereas I’ve got some friends who were like, “Oh yeah, okay, so you know…” And they lay it right on the table, and their kids don’t bat an eye because they’re so used to Mom and Dad being so open about it.  So it seems like you have to do what’s right for you as a family.  Some people naturally are going to be more conservative about how comfortable they feel talking to their kids about sex, and some are going to be more open, but regardless, it’s a conversation that has to happen over and over and over.

Alyssa:  Not just once?

Cindy:  Not just once.

Alyssa:  I never really got a sex talk, and when I did, it was one time and very – it probably lasted all of 20 seconds, and it was super uncomfortable, and then there was nothing else.

Cindy:  Right.  And I think that’s what a lot of us grew up with because who wants to talk about sex to their kids?

Alyssa:  I’m really not afraid of it; I just don’t want to do it wrong.  And so when she asked me at three, I was caught off guard, but I feel like I’m going to be very open about it without divulging too much.  Like, I’m not going to tell her different positions when she’s six years old, but…

Cindy:  Right, and I felt too, as a PA, I was going to be very open about it, and my kids are more private.  They’ve always been more private.  They don’t change in front of each other, and we’ve got two boys that share a room that they make the other person go out.  They’ve always been like this, so that’s just their personality.  So I’ve had to kind of work with them.  I’m more open with talking about anatomical, factual type of information because that’s medical-minded for me, but the whole key is, I just feel like you have to do it in stages enough and have it be talked about enough where it’s not going to come out as a one-time shock and then okay, that was your 20-second sex talk, and now good luck.  So there’s lot and lots of great resources out there, and there’s lot of great books.  You can get them at the library; you can get them at different bookstores.  Books that talk about what’s appropriate at three?  What’s appropriate at five?  What’s appropriate at seven?  And kind of read them all.  Even if you have a ten-year-old, read what’s appropriate at three because you may not have talked about what’s appropriate at three.  And if you start talking to a ten-year-old and they’ve not gotten the three-year-old information…

Alyssa:  You’re still going to lose them.

Cindy:  Yeah, that’s just going to be over the top.

Alyssa:  That’s a good idea.  So I need to go buy a couple sex books?

Cindy:  Buy some sex books because there’s a lot out there, and you can pick and choose as a mom what working is comfortable for you.  I personally would definitely say use anatomical words.  Do not do fake words like “this is your boo-boo.”

Alyssa:  My daughter knows it’s a vulva.

Cindy:  Perfect.

Alyssa:  The other day, I was like, “What is this little wad of toilet paper on the floor?  Why didn’t you throw it away?”  She was like, “Oh, that was stuck in my vulva.”  It’s like, okay, still, I’m glad you found it, but it needs to go in the trash can.  But you know my parents’ generation. She was talking about her vagina one day, and my mom was like, “Did you hear her?  She just said vagina!”  I’m like, “Well, that’s what it is.  What do you want me to call it?  Her hoo-hah?”

Cindy:  Exactly.  Don’t go there because our kids are smarter than we think, and if we start using dumbed-down words, they could potentially have a dumbed-down version of what sex is.  You don’t want that.  You want to be a straight shooter with them.  The other thing that – and this is an aside, too, is the whole sex talk and starting at super young, just being very age-appropriate with what you’re saying, but start the conversation.  You’ve got to just have that conversation.  It’s got to be comfortable and natural and it’s got to be something that flows kind of woven through your whole parenting.  It’s got to be consistent.  The other thing that we are facing now that we didn’t have in our time growing up is that pornography is everywhere.

Alyssa:  Readily accessible.

Cindy:  And when we were grown up, you had to search out pornography.  And now you have to flee from pornography, and it’s a very, very different world.  They could be innocently on Snapchat or Instagram or Facetiming their friends – whatever they use computer-wise, and every family has their own boundaries for what they are comfortable with for computer time, but it is literally out there everywhere.  So you would be naïve to think that they don’t know and that’s a problem that they’re not going to run into until they’re in junior high.  Oh, sister.  It’s a problem that’s happening super, super early and young because it’s just everywhere.  So you’ve got to start thinking now about if you want to have on internet blockers or some kind of an accountability blocker on your computer or on their phone.  Be careful with giving your kids phones.  Every kid has a phone, but now looking back, I’m like, gee, that was like handing a time bomb to your kids.

Alyssa:  Open access.

Cindy:  It’s open access, whereas when we were growing up, you literally had to search it out.

Alyssa:  Well, we didn’t have the internet, so it wasn’t even like Google searching it.  It was like, oh, under the bed, or my friend’s brother found some.

Cindy:  Right, my uncle in the bathroom cabinet.  I mean, it had to be something that was physically sought out, and now your kids are needing to physically remove themselves and flee from something that is so out there.  So that’s, I think, part of the whole sex talk, too, is when you’re doing the sex talk with your kids, make sure that you’re establishing a guideline of what you feel is healthy for their sexual relationships with themselves and with others and within their family because it’s out there and they will get exposed to it.  And if you don’t talk about what your healthy normal is, they will have a different idea of what normal is from what is out in the world.

Alyssa:  We’ve had to have the masturbation conversation way early with my daughter because she’s a humper, and you know, we just had to say, totally fine.  I know it feels really good.  Do it in your bedroom.  She was still napping at the time in school, and we were like, you don’t do that at naptime at school.  This is a private thing.  I don’t care what you’re doing; just make it private.  And I’ve actually started calling it the humpty dance.  She’ll tell me; like, mommy, I want to go in bed and do the humpty dance.  I’m like, that’s fine, but if I see her starting to do it, like while I’m scratching her back at night, I’m like, no, babe.  That’s for you to do by yourself.  You don’t want mommy or daddy or any friends around.  You do that on your own time.  So she knows, like, I’m going to go in my bedroom and I’m going to hang out by myself for a little bit.

Cindy:  Yeah, and you know what?  You’re not shaming her either.

Alyssa:  No, absolutely not.

Cindy:  Exactly.  And that’s the whole thing; if it’s not – if you don’t establish that hey, that’s totally fine.  Go in your room; it’s just a private thing, then she could have other ideas imprinted on her from what she sees out there.  So the fact that you’re giving her a safe place and –

Alyssa:  Permission.

Cindy:  Permission, and that it’s just something that you do in private, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

Alyssa:  And she has no idea at this point that it’s even related to sex.  All she knows is that it feels good to her and she wants to do it, so fine.  Right now, until you ask more questions – again, you know, we’re walking a fine line of, she’s five.  She’s very naïve right now, and I want her to be that way.  I’m not going to give her the sex talk yet just because she’s a humper.

Cindy:  She’s not asking questions yet.  But you still want to have enough – even things like oh, Mommy’s breasts are sore because – you know, if she hits you funny, “Oh, honey, that hurts my breasts because women get sore in their breasts when they get their period,” or whatever.

Alyssa:  She knows about that, too, yeah.

Cindy:  It’s a conversation so that nothing is all of a sudden blurted out and they’re like, I just got hit by a fire hose.

Alyssa:  That leads me to the conversation of having periods because I have a daughter, and I’ve been very open with her about things and changes in a woman’s body and even breastfeeding, you know, like you get a baby and they automatically come with a bottle.  So from a very young age, I was like baby’s hungry, and I’d stick the baby on her little booby instead of giving the baby a bottle.  But I grew up, again, getting zero, having zero conversations about anything sex, periods, anything.  My mother told me at one point that you had to be sexually active to use tampons.  And I found out later as an adult when I confronted her and said, “Why did you ever tell me this?”  “Oh, that must have been something that Grandma told me.”  I’m like, so you’re giving me –

Cindy:  1940s advice?

Alyssa:  She was born in, like, 1920!  Are you kidding me?  So I am probably a little bit on the opposite spectrum of being very, very open about what’s going on, and she knows what a tampon is.  She knows what a period is.  She knows why.  She’s like, why does that happen and when will that happen to me?

Cindy:  Well, you’re normalizing it.  If you kept it secretive, when you start having secrets, that’s when you start questioning, well, why is it secretive?

Alyssa:  Right, and then she’s going to ask her friends instead of me.  And this is natural.  There’s nothing secretive about it.  But I remember in 7th or 8th grade, my girlfriend Alison coming up to me in the hall and asking for a tampon, and I was in shock.  I’m like, oh, my God.  She’s having sex!  You know, we’re like 13 years old, and that’s all I could think about.

Cindy:  Poor Alison!

Alyssa:  And I don’t know how I found out, but I went to the store by myself and bought tampons.  I went through three or four of them before I figured out how to use it.

Cindy: Same with me, yeah.  I know, it would just be so much easier if as a parent you could say, hey, you know, this is what you do, this is – I actually even had a friend that showed her daughter how to use it.  She was like, yeah, this is what you do.  So easy.  And her daughter was like, oh, okay.  You know, I stood outside the bathroom door, like, “Can I help?  Can I talk you through it?”  She’s like “No!  There’s directions right here!”  I’m like, I know, but I went through, like you, three or four before it went in comfortably, and I was like, oh, it’s not sitting right.  “Can I help?  Can I talk you through it?”  “No, get away!”  So each person’s going to be different, but if you’re starting out being super open about life and about sex, that’s the best way to be because now there’s not going to be fear or stigmas or they’re going to come to you, hopefully, versus –

Alyssa:  Yeah, that she doesn’t have to feel like it’s this bad thing that she needs to seek out porn on the internet and be secretive about it.

Cindy:  And you’re not seeking out porn.  It will find you.

Alyssa:  Right, right, that’s true.  It just happens.  I know; it happens to me when I’m just Googling something.  Oops, okay, I shouldn’t use that word, I guess.  But especially in the birth world, like looking up stuff for breastfeeding, and all sorts of crazy stuff comes up.

Cindy:  So just talking about talking about it and keeping open, but at your stage in the game, I would just check out some sex books from the library and pick and choose what feels good and familiar for your family and just be consistent with having the talks.  And not making it a big deal, because when you make it a big deal, now they’re going to think it’s a big deal.  But if you’re just talking about it regularly like life, because it is life, it will be received better.  I think it will be a healthier transition because it’s not fun, regardless, talking about that with your kids, but if you have some tools in your back pocket about, well, I’m going to say this, and this is what I feel comfortable saying at this stage in life, and giving a little bit more information as they get older, that’s probably the best route to go.

Alyssa:  I’m going to put that on my to-do list.  Get sex books from the library.

Cindy:  There you go.

Alyssa:  Well, thanks again.  It’s always so fun talking to you.  So Cindy is with Cindy’s Suds like I mentioned before.  We’ve talked to her a lot, and in case you guys haven’t heard, you can find her online and at a bunch of great local stores in Grand Rapids.  You can find your stuff in Rockford also, now, too, which I might need to check out that little baby store.  What’s it called?

Cindy:  It’s called Bridge Street Baby, and they carry primarily baby clothing through 24 months.  Super cute store.  They’ve got Cindy’s Suds products there.

Alyssa:  Well, thanks for joining us.  You can email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  You can listen to our podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud and we are also on Facebook and Instagram.

Podcast Episode #44: Kids and Sex Read More »

Empathy

Podcast Episode #43: Empathy in Healthcare

What should empathy in health care look like?  Why do parents so often have negative experiences with their health care providers?  Today we talk to Martelle of Mothership about empathy training and what her website provides for new parents.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud

Alyssa:  Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa, co-owner of Gold Coast Doulas, and today I’m here with Martelle of Mothership.  Hello!

Martelle:  Hello, Alyssa.

Alyssa:  So for those of our listeners who have no idea what Mothership is, can you describe it in a nutshell?

Martelle:  Sure.  So Mothership is a new nonprofit, and we’re focused on empathy and empowerment in healthcare for parents.  We’ve spent some time over the last two years trying to figure out how we can best do that, given all of the other great programs and organizations that are around town and in the state and nationally, and we are focusing on two programs.  One is a digital platform and community for parents that’s facilitated by parents who also happen to be health professionals, so it’s this health education platform where you can find information and support in the form of Q&A sessions, support groups, and curated resources based on your own family’s experiences and what you need.  We also train health professionals on empathy and empowerment and building connection during health practice, and all of our health professionals on the platform will be trained in this curriculum.  It’s called Mothership Certified.  We also train health professionals outside of the platform as well, including many of the Gold Coast doulas.  Many are Mothership-certified now.

Alyssa:  Yeah, several of us are.  So I think from an outside perspective, this website is really a draw for parents who are looking for resources, but then Mothership also helps the community healthcare providers to become more empathetic towards the people they are working with?

Martelle:  Yes, that’s the goal.

Alyssa:   Yeah, we did the training with you, and correct me if I’m wrong., but you kind of specifically tailored ours to be around doulas?

Martelle:  Yes.

Alyssa:  And I know there’s one specifically for lactation consultants or if you’re a group of nurses.  So it’s kind of in your best interest to have a group of people who are somewhat like-minded to that you can gear the training towards them?

Martelle:  Ideally; however, most of the topics are fairly universal.  The tailoring happens related to the different examples and what we focus on and the different activities and some of the detailed topical discussions.  But the general framework is really applicable to any group, so if you have folks that are working in the same office but may not be the same type of professional, that can work too.  We also are able to tailor it, like you said, specifically to a certain kind of profession.  But it’s designed to meet needs of a range of health professionals because it’s designed as a parent-centered training.

Alyssa:  So let’s say we have a group of nurses.  For somebody who still is going, hmm, I still don’t quite understand this, what does empathy training look like?

Martelle:  Sure, yeah.  Sometimes it’s hard to talk about this because a lot of people in healthcare are already very empathic.  People go into health professions because they want to help people, but unfortunately, the health system is often designed against them, where we’re not given very much time with our health professionals.  We’re putting a lot of burden with paperwork and completing tasks, which is all really important for other reasons, but it makes it really hard sometimes to build connection in that short amount of time that you might have to engage with the patient or with the client.  We did a lot of feedback sessions with different health professionals about what kinds of information and resources would be helpful for them, and we decided that we wanted to create a training that would put together, in one day, many opportunities for reflecting on the current practice, your current practice, including different topics.  We’re talking about many different topics related to empathy, empowerment, and connection, and focusing on group activities so that you can really think through how it applies to your own work.  For example, we do an introduction to empathy and compassion and set the stage for the whole day about what it means to be empathetic.  We do a section on self-care because when you’re hurting or struggling, it’s really hard to provide empathetic care, even if you are an empathic person.  If there’s a lot of other stuff going on in your life, it can sometimes be hard.  So we do a section on self-care.  We do a section on cultural and emotional intelligence.  We do a section on implicit bias; a section on storytelling; a section on building connection through facial expressions, gestures, spatial relationships, and intentional verbal communication.  So it kind of touches on a little bit of everything, and we drew from psychology and human behavior, and we also intentionally drew from the field of design, specifically human-centered design, because they actually in that field have a lot empathy tools that we have integrated into some of the other content throughout the day.

Alyssa:  Yeah, that part was interesting to me.  The way you’re facing somebody or how close or how far away, and if you’re far away and hands crossed — all these weird little things that make such a difference.  If you’re a healthcare provider and you’re standing either above or below – I’m really tall so I’m always above, but I don’t even realize it if I’m crossing my arms, which I normally do, because I have long arms, and it’s like, where do I put them, you know?  I could be giving off an impression of being standoffish or I think I’m better that them or who knows what, right?  Just by my body language.

Martelle:  Right, exactly, and what’s really interesting is that there’s not really a perfect formula on how to provide the most empathic experience that builds trust and connection.  What we try to do is provide tools to folks that participate in the training because not every idea or every practice is going to make sense for every single person participating.  Sometimes you might be more challenged based on the way that your particular clinic might be set up.  It might be set up in a way that makes it really difficult to use spatial relationships and certain gestural and body language because it’s out of your control, so maybe then you’re more focused on that intentional verbal communication because you’re sort of making up for the spatial relationship that might not be there.  What I mean by that is maybe you are in a position where you are towering over someone, and you’re not able to meet them at an eye-to-eye level for whatever the reason may be.  So the goal with the training isn’t that we have all the answers; it’s that we want to provide a range of tools that people can use in their practice.  And what I will say, also, is that I think in general, these ideas and these topics of patient-centered care and then trying to look at things like spatial relationships and certain types of verbal communication — these are trending right now, which is really great because the reason that we put this together is that we heard from a lot of families that they weren’t always having the best experience.  Some people had great experiences, so that’s great, but not everyone is having great experiences, so we saw that there was value in doing this.

Alyssa:  Do you have some examples of some experiences that you’ve heard of?  And then I want to know why Mothership; why did you choose that name?

Martelle:  Sure, yeah.  So I’ll give you one of the examples of an experience that wasn’t ideal, and this was from a mom that we interviewed for our blog.  We gathered information from all over the place.  We did in-depth interviews with some people; we also interviewed people for our blog, if they were just able to write in some answers for us and share.  And because this one was written for our blog, I’m able to share it, whereas some of the other ones were a little bit more personal and people weren’t as comfortable sharing.  But this one, I can just start with a quote.  So this mom says: “They made us wait for over three hours after four sleepless days in the hospital and breastfeeding challenges.”  So this was at her follow-up pediatrician appointment.  “The doctor came in and decided to give the baby a bottle, saying something about people wanting to ‘feed babies with spoons and droppers like damn goats, and there’s nothing wrong with a bottle.’  I remember I just sat there with tears rolling down my eyes, feeling like a huge failure.”

Alyssa:  So she was having some breastfeeding struggles?

Martelle:  Yes, and the way that the pediatrician engaged with her was not the way that she was looking to be engaged with.

Alyssa: No, I don’t think anybody wants to hear that kind of feedback or attitude, right?

Martelle:  Yeah, and I think some of this also has to do with changing — I mean, this particular example just sounds terrible regardless of what context you put it in, but millennial parents, in particular, are really looking to take ownership of their health and the health of their families.  I’m a millennial, so I relate to this personally, but I don’t want to make my decisions based on my own personal experiences and anecdotes.  But market research also shows that millennials are not really looking at their doctor to tell them what to do and manage their care in the way that previous generations have.  They’re looking to their doctor as a source of information, a source of support, but ultimately, they’re looking to be empowered to make decisions, informed choices, based on credible information and empowering support; that’s what they want.

Alyssa:  That doctor didn’t make the cut.

Martelle:  No, no, no, did not make the cut.  That’s one of the stories.

Alyssa:  So you just heard story after story after story of these new parents; and was it especially mothers?

Martelle:  It was especially mothers.

Alyssa:  Saying, “They’re making me feel this way,” or, “I feel like a failure before I’ve even started.”

Martelle:  Yeah, it was confusion and conflicting advise and judgement and not necessarily getting the advise and information that they felt was really personalized to their unique experience.  Another really interesting thing that came out of our discussions with parents was that there’s a lot of emphasis on the baby, which is really great, but not the whole family as a unit, like what makes sense for the family as a unit.  What makes sense for Mom and Baby, versus this is the best thing you need to do for your baby, but does that make sense holistically for your family?  And for a lot of the families that we talked to that had challenges, it was sort of this tension between what they thought they needed to do and what actually made sense for them, and so they were feeling this conflict and these feelings of failure as a result.

Alyssa:  Well, and there’s no one right answer for every family, so when you have a doctor who says, “This is what you do for this,” and that’s it…  I think that’s why we loved this so much as doulas because it changes every day, and every family’s so different, and you can’t just give one family one answer, and you have to take the time to listen.  So we thought the training was amazing.

Martelle:  Great.  I’m so glad to hear it!

Alyssa:  There’s been some stuff I’ve read and seen and talked to you about and seen on social media about your fundraising campaign.  What does that have to do with Mothership?

Martelle:  Sure.  So we’ve been working on Mothership as an organization, and we’ve been researching and developing our programs for the past two years as volunteers.  So this has been a very grassroots volunteer initiative because it’s resonated with a lot of people, and it’s been great because people have jumped in and offered their time and their talents to be able to create the training and the platform that we’ve been working on.  But now we need to, especially with the platform, put it out there and test it in real life with moms and with health professionals, and we need to collect data and do evaluation, and that takes a little bit of money.  Thankfully, not a ton of money, but enough money.  So we recently launched a crowdfunding campaign.  Our goal is to raise $12,500, and this is to run the pilot of the platform for one month with, hopefully, around 100 families; maybe up to 150 families.  It will support six to seven dieticians who are moms, and they’ll be teaching virtual classes, hosting support groups, live Q&A sessions, curating resources, blogging.  We developed a customized search tool that makes it really easy to find information and articles from anywhere on the internet that have been endorsed by these different mom dieticians, meaning that if you really like one of them or a couple of them really resonate with you, you can go into our search tool and search for the resources and information that they endorse, and it’s not necessarily just stuff that they did.

Alyssa:  So it’s kind of funneling your Google search into a trusted filter.

Martelle:  Yeah, exactly, but someone that you can trust both on a professional level because they’ve been training but also on a peer level.

Alyssa:  They’re moms, too.

Martelle:  They’ve been there.  They know what’s going on, and that was really important to us.  Something that came out early on in our research and development: one of the moms we interviewed said to us that her best mom friend is also a nurse, and she said, “She understands me and she doesn’t judge, but she also has medical knowledge.”  So that was a really unique and wonderful relationship, and we wanted to create that experience for more parents because we want people to be able to know and trust the health professionals that they’re getting their information from because they’re looking to get to know them.  So it’s a way that you can find things that are more relevant to you and your personal experiences.  We hope to grow in topics, but in the beginning, we’ll be focusing on nutrition for fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and early childhood.  So we’re really focused on food and nutrition in the first round of this work, and the dietician moms involved have a range of their own personal experiences.  Some of them have kids with food allergies; some of them have food allergies themselves; some of them have had really picky eaters; some of them have had fertility challenges.  Some of them, even though they’re dietitians, were completely confused by nutrition for pregnancy and postpartum.  Very relatable stuff; feeling, postpartum, like how do I get back to my normal, healthy routine now that I’ve just been in this other stage in my body?  Replenishing those nutrients, that kind of thing.  That’s a long story to say that we are really excited to finally put this platform into real life with real-life moms and future moms.  And so we’re doing this crowdfunding campaign to do that.  And the way that it’s structured is kind of like a Kickstarter campaign, meaning that if you make a donation, you get a reward for backing the campaign, so some of the rewards are a recipe PDF from all of these dietitian moms.  We also have tote bags, because who doesn’t love another tote bag?  But the most exciting from our campaign is actually participation in the pilot.  So if you back the campaign at a certain level, you can participate in the pilot.  You can also gift participation to other people, so if you have a friend or family member who might be interested in participating, you can gift it to them.  Or you can just generally support, and then we will be recruiting families.  So if you’re out there and you think this sounds really interesting but might not be in a place to back this campaign, we’re also recruiting families to participate in the pilot.  It will run in November.

Alyssa:  Let me boil this down to make sure that we all understand.  Your pilot program starting this platform is going to focus on nutrition, and that’s why you have the dieticians?

Martelle:  Yes.

Alyssa:  And you want to get all these families involved.  Part of it’s just to start getting feedback and seeing how this is working and what’s not working, and then you’ll start phase two, whatever that looks like, later?

Martelle:  Yes, exactly.  The goals of this pilot are to get feedback from families so that we can improve it and make sure that it’s meeting the needs of the modern parent.  We’ve been doing feedback sessions so far, but this will be the first time that all of the pieces happening at once.  So we’ll hopefully be gaining some information about that.  The second piece is that it will help us collect some data so that we can seek out additional grants, partnerships, sponsorships, to sustain an equitable nonprofit business model where everyone has access.

Alyssa:  We still haven’t talked about why you call it Mothership.  Where did that come from?

Martelle:  It actually came from one of our board members who is in design.  He was just doing a brainstorm for us of what could we possibly call it, and some of us were like, Mothership, that’s really great because it’s really strong.  People think of things that are really strong.  It’s connotes a headquarters or a foundation which is kind of what we wanted to create.  We wanted to create this headquarters for empathic and empowering resources and support.  And then also it has the potential to redefine itself into something that’s friendship or kinship, related to parenthood or motherhood with Mothership, so we decided yeah, let’s give this a go.  We checked out the trademarks, and no one had it in this space, so we were like, okay, we’re going to go forward with this.  But I’m curious what you think of the name, because it can connote a variety of different things.

Alyssa:  I like it.  It’s not one of those I see Mothership and know what it is right away.  But I like the friendship, the kinship; down the road, having all these other “ships.”  I think it’s really clever.  I like it.  For everyone who’s interested or wants more information — let’s say it’s a pediatrician’s office who would love to have the staff takes this empathy training; if it’s someone who wants to help with the fundraising campaign by donated money or if they’re a family who can’t afford it but wants to get involved.  Are there three different places those people have to go, or do you send them all to one?

Martelle:  It’s pretty much all coming to our website, so you can go to our website, which is ourmothership.org.  On the dashboard on the top, you can see the campaign; you can see our program, so you can see Mothership Certified as an option.  And then you can just generally see more information about Mothership.  We also have a pretty active Instagram account; also Facebook, but more active on Instagram if people are interested.  So that’s @our.mothership on Instagram.  And if anyone is really interested in talking more about it or sharing their experience, we’re always interested in interviewing more families for our blog.  We’ve got some great families up there already.  But we’re one of the things we teach in our training is storytelling and the value of storytelling, so it’s something we try to keep up with in general with our organization as well, so if you’re interested in being interviewed for a blog, if you’re interested in participating in the pilot or in the training, go to our website.  You can also email me directly.  I’m the contact on the website.  It’s going to go to me, anyway.

Alyssa:  Thank you for your time!  Hopefully you get some feedback from this.

Martelle:  Yeah, thanks so much, Alyssa.

Alyssa:  Good luck with everything!  We will talk to you guys again next time.

Podcast Episode #43: Empathy in Healthcare Read More »

Birth Doula

Podcast Episode #42: Building Your Birth Team

What should your birth team look like?  What kinds of questions do you need to ask and who should you be talking to when you find out you’re pregnant?  We answer these questions and more on today’s podcast with Rise Wellness Chiropractic.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud

 

Alyssa:  Hello, again.  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa, your host, and I’m talking with Dr. Annie and Dr. Rachel again of Rise Wellness.  So we had the idea of talking about building a birth team and what that might look like for new parents as they start this journey because there are obviously a lot of options.  And we can talk about doulas and we can talk about chiropractic care, but we can also ask you, Dr. Rachel, as a fairly recent mom.  Your twins are how old now?

Dr. Rachel:  Ten months today.

Alyssa:  Ten months.  So you’ve fairly recently went through this whole process of, like, who do I need to talk to?  What does my birth plan look like?  What was the first thing when you found out you were pregnant?  Like, I need to call – who?  Your OB?  Your husband?

Dr. Rachel:  I need to tell my husband!  Yeah, my OB.  That’s who I called first, probably.

Alyssa:  So did you have an OB already that you liked?

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, my gyno, yeah.  I liked her.

Alyssa:  And she’s also an OB?

Dr. Rachel:  Yes.  There was the thought of, do I want to go this route?

Alyssa:  Is she the right one?

Dr. Rachel:  Yes, is she the right one?  I met with a midwife.  Yeah, so I guess I did do all that.

Alyssa:  For birth clients, their providers don’t often change, but I think once you wrap your head around this plan of what you see as ideal, you might realize that your current healthcare team might not be the right team to achieve those goals, and we have to tell people that it’s okay.  They’re working for you; you can interview around and pick a new one.  Why not?

Dr. Annie:  Ultimately, you want to figure out what your ideal birth looks like and what that team looks like that’s going to support you through that process.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, and encourage you, and not question you on everything you want to do right.  I feel like I didn’t get that a lot from my OB, but I know a lot of our patients do.  I feel I didn’t get it because I was a chiropractor.  She kind of left me alone.

Alyssa:  So do you think that meant she knew you already did your research?

Dr. Rachel:  Yes.

Alyssa:  You’re an educated mom.

Dr. Rachel:  Yes.

Alyssa:  So they’re assuming these other moms are not?

Dr. Rachel:  Yes, because I have friends that also had her, and they would get a lot of pushback.

Alyssa:  Like got the third degree?  Interesting.  I wouldn’t ever think about it that way because I think a lot of our moms do get that pushback, but I think being educated in the biggest part of that, right?  If you know your stuff, if they can say, well, why do you want that?  If they do give you pushback, then you say, well, because –

Dr. Rachel:  I’m sure there’s some moms out there way more educated than I am or planning to be a mom and really have thought about it more than I did.

Dr. Annie:  I think that’s where an organized birth plan comes in, too, and having support and people that support you like doulas helps you with that pushback, if you do get pushback from your OB or from your midwife or whoever; your family.

Alyssa:  It can come from all directions.

Dr. Rachel:  I mean, the first thing I did – well, I knew you, so I talked to you and met with Ashley and Kristin, and I was like, cool.  You guys have this handled.  I don’t have to worry about anything anymore.  You’re going to get me through all of it.  I am no longer worried; you know how to get me through labor; you know how to do everything.  So I highly recommend doulas.

Alyssa:  Doulas will help with it, but they won’t write your birth plan – did you have a birth plan?

Dr. Rachel:  Yes, I did.  I took your hypnobirthing class.  So that’s another thing; you should decide what kind of birthing class you want to take.  I would also highly recommend that.  It was awesome.

Alyssa:  Which helps with that whole education piece, that you’ve done your homework and taken childbirth classes.

Dr. Rachel:  And with hypnobirthing, they kind of help you with a birth plan of what you want.  Ashley goes through that with you.

Alyssa:  And they don’t do it for you, but they will explain some things and answer questions and ultimately, you know, we want, and doulas in general, at least at Gold Coast, want you to be informed and educated to make your own decisions.  Parents will call us and say, well, I want you to advocate for me, and that’s not what we do.  We will empower you to advocate for yourself because you’re educated and have fact-based resources that you were given to make those decisions.  But we don’t sit there and tell people what to do on your behalf.

Dr. Rachel:  No, and I think what happens, and what even happened to me, is you get there and they really – you can have a birth wherever; home birth, hospital birth.  I ended up having a hospital birth, but they scare you into doing what they want to do, so it’s really important to be educated but also have people that are there supporting you and empowering you that no, you know the right decision and what’s best for you.  So stand up for yourself while you’re there.  And it’s hard to do.

Alyssa:  Right.  And that too; are you’re going to have a hospital birth?  Are you going to have a home birth?  Are you going to call the one birth center in Grand Rapids?

Dr. Rachel:  Are you going to do a water birth?

Alyssa:  Yeah, and even if it’s a hospital birth, are you interested in the natural birthing suites that are available?  Are you limited to a hospital based on your insurance?  Finding out all these things and going from there.

Dr. Rachel:  Do you want an epidural?  Do you not want an epidural?

Dr. Annie:  Do you want a midwife or an OB?  That’s another big question.  A lot of people are uncomfortable with midwives because they don’t think they’re as trained or they’re scared that something might go wrong during the birth, so I hear that a lot from people who are interested in home births and want to have a midwife and want to do the crunchy natural thing, but are like, what if something does go wrong?  And I think one of the biggest things that most midwives would tell you is that they’re so trained to recognize flags before they’re even red flags that if, for some reason, anything would go wrong, so many of them are so experienced, and they know exactly how to handle that situation.

Dr. Rachel:  But also, “going wrong” is so different in a midwife home birth.

Dr. Annie:  That’s true.

Dr. Rachel:  Compared to in the hospital.  You know, “going wrong” in the hospital is anything.

Dr. Annie:  Oh, levels of intervention?

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, where you have to think, this is just natural.  Your body is doing what it needs to do at home, so it’s just…

Dr. Annie:  Midwives come from more of the philosophy of supporting the woman rather than taking control of the birth, too.  There’s this great quote by Ina May Gaston that I wrote down.  “Most women need encouragement more than they need drugs,” and I think that’s true throughout their pregnancy.  That’s true throughout the birth process, and really, that’s true for most people throughout their lives.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I was going to say even postpartum and beyond, right?  Just tell me I’m doing a great job and then maybe I won’t be so down on myself, you know?  Those little things, little pieces of encouragement from family and friends.

Dr. Annie:  Trusting the natural process and knowing that your body is capable of doing what it’s supposed to do, what it’s designed to do.

Alyssa:  Well, and the beauty of this, too, is that there’s so many midwives that work in hospitals.  So you can get the best of both worlds.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, if you are scared of something going wrong.

Alyssa:  Yeah, and a lot of times, it’s the partner who might be a little scared.  You know, Mom might say she wants a water birth at home, and Dad says heck, no.  No way; that’s not safe; blah blah blah.  Well, how about a midwife in a hospital?  Maybe the natural birthing suites?  And as long as you’re low risk, it’s a pretty beautiful option.

Dr. Rachel:  Let me just tell you, those hospital beds are uncomfortable.  I cannot believe they are putting pregnant women in those.  So I would totally opt for – if I didn’t have a twin pregnancy and all these things, I would have wanted it done at home, too.  I would have done the natural birthing suite at Spectrum.  Don’t you get a normal bed there?

Alyssa:  It’s a king-size bed, I believe.

Dr. Rachel:  It’s better than what I have at home.

Alyssa:  I mean, you don’t get to stay there after delivery.  You walk in there and you go wow, this is amazing.  If you could stay there for two days… it’s literally like a beautiful hotel room.  But unfortunately, they have to move you for the next lady coming in.

Dr. Rachel:  You can just – even to lay in that bed, gosh.

Alyssa:  We’ve had a few couples who have delivered in there, and it’s just kind of happened where Dad was sitting against the back of the bed and Mom was kind of between his legs, so he got to support her and talk into her ear, which is kind of a nice thing you can do in that sort of environment that you can’t in others.  So what else was in your process when you found out you got pregnant?  You found your OB first.

Dr. Rachel:  I found my OB.

Alyssa:  You obviously knew a chiropractor…

Dr. Rachel:  I knew a chiropractor.  Check!  Yeah, met with you guys.  Just taking classes, like I said.  I’m a chiropractor; I can adjust someone and educate them on what they should do and support them.  I know how to do all that, but I never had a baby before.  So yeah, I took your lactation class.  I took the hypnobirthing class.  I tried to do whatever I could.  I read books.  I would say find a lactation consultant, one that you like.  I would do that beforehand, also.  I would take that class and I would find one you trust because you think you’re going to have these babies and they’re just going to breastfeeding, and that shit is hard.  And the people that just show up in your hospital room aren’t the nicest, I’ll be honest.

Alyssa:  Yeah, they have a lot of people to go see.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, so find someone you like beforehand.  I would definitely put that on there.

Alyssa:  Well, and like you said, if you take the breastfeeding class with our lactation consultant, Shira, you kind of already know her, and then to have her come to your home for a consult, you know, the day you get home…

Dr. Rachel:  You feel comfortable; you don’t feel judged.

Alyssa:  You know her; she spends two hours with you alone, and not, hey, I’m here for 15 minutes until I get to the next patient.

Dr. Rachel:  Yes, I would recommend that also.

Alyssa:  What other parts about the birth plan that you created in hypnobirthing?  What else would be important for people to know?

Dr. Rachel: For new parents to educate themselves on?  Deciding if they want interventions; do they want an epidural?  Do they want to hydrate themselves?  Do they want to be on an IV?  These are things I don’t even think, if you have a hospital birth, that you realize you have a choice about.  Like, no, I’m going to hydrate myself; I don’t want to be hooked up to an IV; I want to be able to walk around.  I would say do the hospital tour, also, so you feel a little bit more comfortable about where you’re going.  They have lots of options for you while birthing.  But if they hook you up all of a sudden, you can’t do anything.

Alyssa:  Right, unless there’s something that calls for it, right?  Like if you really need it.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, if you have to.  That’s also when you ask questions.  Like, that was a big thing about HypnoBirthing; they teach you, am I okay?  Is Baby okay?  And if we’re okay, do we really have to do this right now?  And then what do you want for Baby once Baby’s born?  Do you not want them to clamp the cord right away?  Do you want to do the vitamin K?  Do you want the hepatitis B?  Do you want the drops in the eye?  There’s all these things.  And they ask you.  They do ask you.  I was surprised I was asked.  Even though I had a birth plan, they’re still like, do you want this?

Alyssa:  Yeah, and for new parents who don’t even know what this stuff is, again, you research it.  You figure it out.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, you figure out what’s best for you.

Alyssa:  And as doulas, and I’m sure as chiropractors, too, you don’t judge them based on the decisions they’re making as parents.  You work with them where they are and figure out the best solution for them at this time.  What about chiropractic care?  So you find out you’re pregnant; does chiropractic care change for you?  You have Dr. Annie working on you because you can’t work on yourself.  So does that change or does a mom who doesn’t see a chiropractor – what would she need to know?  Like, okay, now I’m pregnant; I need to do this?

Dr. Annie:  I think for somebody who’s been under chiropractic care, what happens as your body’s changing and as your baby’s growing, we focus more on pelvic alignment and making sure that everything is in the right spot; making sure all the bones are moving together the way they’re supposed to and making sure that the joints are really not super mobile, but we want them to be able to move the way that they’re supposed to for the birth process.  So it helps remove that tension in the pelvis; helps the nervous system communicate the way it’s supposed to because your brain needs to tell all your reproductive organs what to do.  And it removes tension on the uterine ligaments, too.  So a lot of women with babies that maybe aren’t in the right presentation, like if the baby is breech or posterior, sometimes that’s caused from intrauterine constraint, and so there’s specialized chiropractic techniques, like Webster technique which we’re certified in, to help with the ligament tension so that the uterus can balance within the pelvis and then the baby can get into the right position that it’s supposed to be in.

Alyssa:  Yeah, because if you think when you’re growing a baby and you gain, 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds, that’s got to put straight on your muscles.  Well, you had twins… do you want to say how much you gained?

Dr. Rachel:  I think I gained 60 to 70 pounds.

Dr. Annie:  It puts tons of strain on your muscles, but also you have relaxin in your system, so your ligaments are softening, anyway, so those muscles try to stabilize everything that’s going on.  So a lot of women will have low back or butt pain, like sciatic symptoms, just while they’re pregnant because all of a sudden, they’re carrying so much more weight in the front of their bodies.  So chiropractic can help with that, too.  We’re good with that.

Alyssa:  I saw on Instagram a guy with a watermelon duct-taped to his belly, and the wife was like, now you know what I feel like!  But it was kind of true, you know, like imagine walking around all summer with a watermelon duct-taped to your belly.

Dr. Annie:  Oh, yeah.  And within a couple of months, you’re gaining a lot of weight; your body’s changing very, very rapidly.

Alyssa:  It’s got to put strain on your back.

Dr. Annie:  Exactly, and strain on your nervous system, too.  But yeah, chiropractic care; there’s been a lot of studies that show that there’s less intervention, which is awesome for moms and babies, especially if that’s part of your birth plan.  Less emergencies; less birth trauma, things like that.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, because you have to realize whatever you’re given during your labor and delivery, the baby’s getting, also.  So I don’t think a lot of people realize that, either.

Alyssa:  Depending on what the intervention is, it can affect breastfeeding.  You know, mom can be groggy; baby can be groggy.  A lot of weird side effects, right?

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah.  For healthy pregnancy, staying fit is important.  So what kind of fitness do you want to be doing?  Prenatal yoga, or there’s Fit for Moms and they do a lot of prenatal classes.  That’s important; finding what you feel comfortable doing while you’re pregnant.

Alyssa:  Yeah, and what about the mom who doesn’t work out, finds out she’s pregnant, and says, oh, boy, I better get on this train now?  You know, I’ve heard doctors say that – and none of us are medical doctors so we shouldn’t give advice, but I’ve heard them say whatever you’re doing before you’re pregnant, you can continue it as long as it seems right for your body, but you don’t want to just start lifting weights after you get pregnant.

Dr. Rachel:  I’m going to go to CrossFit now!

Alyssa:  Right, I’m going to do CrossFit, bootcamp, start running.

Dr. Annie:  If your body’s used to it, then you can usually continue it, unless there’s issues that your MD tells you not to lift heavy weights anymore, things like that.  But typically, you don’t want to start anything too vigorous if you haven’t been active.  Walking is amazing.  Prenatal yoga is great.  Those are all good choices, and I think that’s one thing: most women find out they’re pregnant and are like, I want to be fit for my baby; I want to look at my nutrition because I want to make sure my baby’s healthy.  I’m going to stop drinking; you know, anything like that.  But I don’t think a lot of thought goes into, necessarily, the birth plan and their birth team and stuff.  So that’s a really important piece, too, especially if you need advocates to help you.

Alyssa:  And it’s funny you say that because we’ve gotten more and more phone calls, like, hey, I’m 34 weeks.  It’s almost like the oh-my-God mark; this is for real.  I’ve been so focused on other things, and now this baby is going to be here, and I need to start thinking about the real stuff.  They get scared, and they call us and say, is anyone available?  I think I need a team.

Dr. Annie:  We get that a lot, too.  Especially a woman who’s 37 weeks and is like, my baby’s in the wrong position; can you help me?  We can do our best to balance your pelvis; we can help relax those ligaments so your baby has the best chance of turning, but that’s not a guarantee, and really, chiropractic throughout your whole pregnancy would set you up for a way better experience.

Alyssa:  And a higher success rate.   It’s the whole preventative thing; why wait until something’s already happened?

Dr. Rachel:  Same with doulas, though.  I mean, I probably met with you guys very early on, and they were like, yeah, text us whenever; ask us questions about anything.  And I would!  I’d be, like, do you guys know any good daycares?  I wasn’t planning this!  I know nothing!

Alyssa:  But that’s the benefit of, again, hiring early, instead of coming in to a chiropractor at 37 weeks or calling us at 34 or 37 weeks.  You hire literally sometimes at six weeks when they just find out, and you’re through the whole pregnancy with them, for the same price!  The whole pregnancy, you have that support, which can really affect outcomes.

Dr. Annie:  Helps reduce stress.  You don’t want too much stress when you’re pregnant, either.

Alyssa:  We have that prenatal stress class, too.  You guys should pop into that one time.  It’s really good.

Dr. Annie:  Is that one new?

Alyssa:  It’s newer.  We’ve only taught it a couple times.  Deb from Simply Successful Kids; she teaches it, and it really great.  I think no matter what age your kid is, it’s beneficial.  Whether they’re one, ten, or forty.  It’s pretty intense.  So you have your baby, and you go home, and I think this leaves parents in this period of isolation, especially for moms if their partner has to work, and I don’t think they know that that healthcare team can expand into the postpartum phase.  So like you; you had doulas, and a birth doula team at Gold Coast will give you one postpartum visit.  They’re going to come follow up with you; how did everything go?  How’s breastfeeding going?  But then beyond that, our postpartum doulas can come and work with you in your home for extended periods of time.  So I think understanding that your team doesn’t have to disappear the second you have your baby.

Dr. Rachel:  Yes, that was nice.  And I did have postpartum doulas come, and I’m very much like, I’m good, I’m good.  I don’t need any help.  But it was so nice, and there’s no judgment.  No one’s there judging you, and it’s just nice to have people there to support you and I think they would just take care of babies.  And you just feel comfortable with them.  They’re here; they know how to take care of babies; you guys got this and I would go work out in my basement.  It was nice.  Take a shower!

Alyssa:  Yeah, and that’s the thing; you don’t get to do those normal things anymore, and then when you have anxiety as a first-time mom about somebody caring for your baby, to know that, okay, they’re professional; they’re trained; they’ve done this, not only with their own children, but with several other families.  They know what they’re doing.  I can feel confident to walk out of that room.

Dr. Rachel:  They make you feel like a good mom, like you’ve got this.

Alyssa:  And that’s part of it, too; as much as the parents think you’re there to take care of that baby, we’re doing just as much for Mom, and sometimes Dad, too.  And sometimes all it takes is, “How are you feeling today?” And then Mom bursts into tears, and you’re like, all right, we need to sit on the sofa; let me make you some tea.  Let’s talk for a little bit.  I’ll hold the baby; you sit and drink this tea.

Dr. Rachel:  It’s hard at first.

Alyssa:  And then chiropractic, too.  I mean, you don’t have your baby and quit.  Your body just went through all these changes during pregnancy, and now you just delivered a baby.  And I think we expect oh, I’m going to be right back; bounce back at this.  Well, it took nine months to change and get here.  It’s possibly going to take nine months to get back to where you were before.

Dr. Annie:  Absolutely.  I mean, with any injury, they say six weeks, like if you roll your ankle.  But if you’re giving birth, that’s a huge stress on your body, so I mean, yeah, you can expect probably another six to nine months recovery.

Dr. Rachel:  I would say a year.  I’m still recovering from that pregnancy!

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, I mean, it takes a long time, and chiropractic, again, is great with that, making sure everything goes back in its place where it’s supposed to and works and functions the way that it’s supposed to and really helps your body and brain optimize your healing.  We also do home visits for new moms because it’s so hard to get out of the house.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, we’ll come and visit new baby.

Dr. Annie:  Especially if that baby’s having any latching problems and stuff, too, we can work with your lactation consultant.  But adjustments for babies are really good, too, especially after they’re born when their head and neck are so compressed coming out of the birth canal or if they’re being pulled out by their head and neck, which happens whether you have a vaginal birth or a C-section birth.  That can cause misalignments in their neck, which can lead to issues feeding or issues with stress, like colicky babies will often have that, too.  So we try to just approach that very comfortably and easily.  Our adjustments are super gentle for infants, but have amazing results.

Alyssa:  I saw you give the twins adjustments when they were a day old!  It’s very gentle, and they did not cry; they did not fuss.

Dr. Rachel:  I mean, babies might cry during an adjustment, but that’s just because they’re mad we’re putting them in a position they don’t want to be.

Alyssa:  Right.  Why are you moving me here?

Dr. Annie:  And we’re new, strange people.  But we had some pretty amazing outcomes with a ten-day old that I did a house visit for.  He was having a really hard time latching and it was super painful for Mom, and I adjusted him while he was breastfeeding, and then he was able to latch three times with no pain for her.  Totally fine at finding the nipple, and did a really good job.

Alyssa:  Really?  While breastfeeding?

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, and that was with one adjustment, which is not always the case, but with infants, it’s pretty minor, what we have to do.  And it’s not like this huge intervention.

Alyssa:  Because it’s not the years and years of stress that we’ve put on our bodies.  They’re only days or weeks old.

Dr. Annie:  Yes, their bodies are super adaptable; they’re constantly learning what’s going on.  We see those really good changes.

Dr. Rachel:  We see that a lot, and we see the tight necks from the delivery.

Dr. Annie:  Usually that muscle tension is because of that upper cervical misalignment.

Alyssa:  Yeah, we had a physical therapist on, a friend of mine, Jessica Beukema from Hulst Jepson, who specifically does torticollis and plagiocephaly, and she’s really good for beyond your chiropractic care, like if physical therapy is needed.  So I think bottom line for parents, they need to be kind to yourself.

Dr. Rachel:  That’s what I was going to say.  Be so kind.

Alyssa:  Be kind, and give yourself some grace.

Dr. Rachel:  It’s really, really hard.  So you sit down; you find out you’re pregnant; you’ve done all the things.  You get your people in your corner; you get your birth team; you write your birth plan.  And I guarantee you, nothing’s going to go the way you want it to.  It just won’t.

Alyssa:  Maybe some things, but…

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah, some things, but it’s just not going to be what you envisioned.  Maybe; I’d say maybe your second time around, it might, but if you’re a first-time mom, you just have to be flexible and know you’re doing your best, and then yeah, just be not hard on yourself afterwards.  That’s the hardest thing is not being hard on yourself.

Alyssa:  These birth plans just become a plan and it’s set in stone, and if it doesn’t go that way, I’m a failure, and that’s, I think, the negative side of empowering mothers.  You’re walking a fine line there.

Dr. Rachel:  I think you have to just go in and be like, okay there’s my plan, but I might have to waver from it, and that’s okay.

Alyssa:  But I tell moms this is good.  This is your first test because once you have this baby, nothing’s going to go as planned.  Your schedule’s not your own anymore.  This timeline for going to sleep and waking up for the first several weeks; nothing.

Dr. Rachel:  Going to sleep and waking up is still not on my time, I’ll tell you that!

Alyssa:  I need to talk to you about that.

Dr. Rachel:  They’re doing better, but they’re still… I’d rather not wake up at 7AM if I didn’t have to!

Alyssa:  Well, that’s pretty normal.  7AM’s a pretty normal wake time.

Dr. Rachel:  Yeah… still not my time!

Alyssa:  But I mean, heading to Target on a whim doesn’t happen for a while, especially if you’re breastfeeding, because you have such a small window in between the breastfeeding sessions.  And then you change their clothes, and then the second you get them strapped in that car seat, they have a blow out, so you take them out again and change the diaper…

Dr. Annie:  I would say probably just give up on running errands.

Alyssa:  For a while, yeah.  And that’s okay, but having those realistic expectations.  I thought I was going to go on maternity leave and be making gourmet meals for my family.  What was I thinking?

Dr. Rachel:  That’s another thing to think about in your birth plan is a sleep consultant.  That’s a real thing!  People should look into that more and set aside from cash for it.

Dr. Annie:  And maybe your own gourmet chef.  Have somebody come to your house and make your meals!

Alyssa:  Well, we have the Life Fuel.  It has saved me.  So my delivery just came last night, and I just keep ordering more and more and more because it’s just so convenient.

Dr. Rachel:  Convenient and so good.

Alyssa:  Yeah, and healthy.  Like, I can’t cook this healthy for this price and make it taste this good.  I can’t.  But sleep, too, like I – and people think it’s really, really, expensive, and it’s not that bad.  I even have a really small fee where I just say your baby’s not ready to sleep train yet; this baby’s not ready to sleep through the night.  But I will have a conversation with you about some help; let’s start some healthy sleep habits.

Dr. Rachel:  Sleep is a really big strain on relationships.  Because let me tell you; dads usually don’t hear babies crying.

Alyssa:  Well, and there’s two different theories.  Dads will say just let them cry, it’s fine, and Mom’s like, I can’t.  We’re still partially attached by the umbilical cord; I can’t listen to my baby cry.

Dr. Rachel:  I think that’s a big one people need to think about and don’t.

Alyssa:  And I think just starting off, not sleep training your three-week-old, but let’s talk; let’s get some things in your head and start doing a few things with sleep cycles and patterns and how we want to shape this so that at the twelve- or fourteen-week mark when most babies are ready – I mean, they’re ready, and it’s not hard, and it’s not this week-long struggle.

Dr. Annie:  Which is so great that you guys do that, because there’s so much conflicting information out there about sleep and letting your babies cry it out or whether you should nurture them.  There’s a lot of conflicting information.

Alyssa:  It is conflicting, and you can’t just read one book and think that – well, that’s worked for my neighbor or my nephew.  That’s why for every consult, I talk to them for an hour, sometimes two, and I get a really good sense of what that family is like and what they do and what their goals are; what their values are.  If one of their values is co-sleeping, I work that into the plan.  There is a happy medium for everybody, and I don’t believe in letting your kid cry in the crib for two hours.  That’s not healthy for parents or the baby, and it means they need something, so we’re going to figure out how to work them out of that.  But yeah, there’s not just one right answer.

Dr. Rachel:  That’s a good point, and I think a lot of people think that.

Alyssa:  You can’t read a book and figure it out.  You might get lucky and the first one you read works…

Dr. Rachel:  I had a friend, and it was interesting.  She did; she read this book; here was the plan; she did it; it worked for her first kid, and so she swore by it and told everyone.  And I was just like, oh, my gosh; it didn’t work for me.  There’s something wrong.  And then she had a second kid; doesn’t work on him at all.

Alyssa:  Because it’s a completely different personality!  Well, there’s two things going on there; the kid is a different personality and different temperament; could have a medical issue they don’t know about, right?  And she also has a baby and a toddler, and that toddler throws the biggest wrench in these plans because now you have to figure out; I have a screaming newborn, but I also have to get this toddler to bed.  And that’s the good thing if you have a toddler who’s already on a sleep schedule:  so much easier to then get that newborn into the mix.

Dr. Rachel:  Sleep’s important!  Sleep is important for babies, and sleep is important for parents.

Alyssa:  For growth, for health, for development.  I mean, we just don’t put enough emphasis on sleep.  I love sleep.

Dr. Rachel:  Same.

Dr. Annie:  We all do!

Alyssa:  And babies need it!  They need it!

Dr. Rachel:  We’ve gotten way off topic here, but I think it stresses out parents a lot when we’re like, I know you need to sleep, and you’re not sleeping; you’re not napping.  And then you’re crazy and now I’m crazy!

Alyssa:  I think it stresses out the parents, and then Baby reacts to that stress and becomes more stressed, and when they reach that peak, there’s almost no consoling them.  It’s difficult.

Dr. Rachel:  And that would get a sleep consultant on your birth team!

Alyssa:  Yes, that would be a great part of a birth team.

Dr. Rachel:  Babies, please sleep!

Alyssa:  Two at once, or maybe three!

Dr. Rachel:  I can’t imagine.

Dr. Annie:  That’s why you need a team.

Dr. Rachel:  That’s why you need a team.  That’s what we’re concluding here.

Dr. Annie:  It takes a village.

Alyssa:  Well, for the parents who are looking for their team, tell them where to find you ladies.

Dr. Annie:  We are in the Kingsley building, right next door to you.

Alyssa:  And where’s the Kingsley building, for those who don’t know?

Dr. Annie:  It’s right on the corner of Robinson and Lake, where Lake is shut down right now because of construction, so come down Robinson if you’re coming here.  Right in East Town, Grand Rapids.  Second floor.

Alyssa:  So the restaurant Terra is right below us.

Dr. Annie:  Also shout out to E. A. Brady’s.

Alyssa:  Right, E. A. Brady’s, Wax Poetic, all sorts of really good stuff.  I always tell people if they’re coming to our classes, come early because you can eat at a restaurant; you can go make a candle, grab some jerky.

Dr. Rachel:  Get a cupcake!

Alyssa:  And then work out.

Dr. Rachel:  And then hit up a spin class.

Dr. Annie:  Get your hair done.  What else is around here?

Dr. Rachel:  Get a therapy session.

Alyssa:  Well, there’s Rebel’s down the road, too, which is a really fun gift shop.  It’s just a really fun area.  We love being here.

Dr. Rachel:  Oh, yeah, I love being here.

Alyssa:  Again, we’re getting off topic…

Dr. Rachel:  But here’s all the things you can do in East Town!

Alyssa:  What’s your office hours?  Are you gone Wednesdays now?

Dr. Rachel:  Annie’s here now.

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, just a couple hours, but our office hours are all on Google, too, and Facebook.

Dr. Rachel:  We have late hours if you need them.  Annie’s here until 7:00.

Alyssa:  Would it be best to go to your website?  For new patients, what would you prefer?

Dr. Annie:  Website, Facebook, Google.  Our website is www.risewellnesschiro.com.  If you just look up Rise Wellness, it will be the first hit on Google, too, if you’re in the area, and that will take you to our website.  We have links to our Facebook and Instagram on there, too.

Alyssa:  And you can schedule right through there, too, I believe?  That’s what I do.

Dr. Annie:  You can schedule through there.  You can see all of our cool events that we’re doing, like our Baby Bumps and Beer Bellies thing at the end of the month at Brewery Vivant.  We sold out our tickets in less than a week.

Alyssa:  Good job!  I had no idea!

Dr. Annie:  So we’re thinking about maybe doing another one in a couple weeks if we have the interest.

Alyssa: That’s awesome!

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, so we’re super excited about that.  That will be the first one, so it will be a trial run, and we’re just excited to talk about, again, the benefits of chiropractic care during pregnancy and how important it is at helping you through that pregnancy and all those changes that your body’s going through.

Alyssa:  So if people are interested, they should just watch your Facebook page for the next one?

Dr. Annie:  Absolutely.

Alyssa:  Cool, and then hopefully we’ll be involved in that one, too.  Thanks for talking again.  I always love seeing you girls.  You can always find us at goldcoastdoulas.com, and you can listen to this podcast, Ask the Doulas, on iTunes and SoundCloud.  Thanks!

Podcast Episode #42: Building Your Birth Team Read More »

Nutrition for kids

Podcast Episode #41: Nutrition and Kids

Today we talk to David Fisher again.  He is a dietician and helps plan nutritious meals for LifeFuel in Grand Rapids.  We asked him to give us some pointers specifically related to children and getting them to eat healthily.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello.  Welcome to Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, your host, and today we’re talking to David Fisher again, who is a registered dietician.  So last time you were here, you mentioned you have two little boys.  They’re one and three?

David:  That’s right.

Alyssa:  So as a dietician, what do meals look like in your home?  Are they even allowed to eat cereal?

David:  So I will add the caveat that I’m a very busy dietician, and for that reason, cereal does make an appearance at times in our home, yes.

Alyssa:  I’m glad.  I’m glad, so this will be realistic.  You have a realistic expectation of a busy parent with kids, who you want them to eat healthy, but — you know, there’s always a “but…” So how do we as parents — because I’m busy, as well, and my daughter loves cereal.  She would eat cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I would let her.  But I try for 80% of the time.  I have an 80/20 rule.  We’re try 80% of the time, we try to be really, really, really good, knowing that there’s going to be times where she’s going to have a cupcake or at school something will come up.  But how do you manage that?

David:  Yeah, I mean, your approach sounds appropriate.  The most important thing for people to understand is that you control what you offer and when you offer it.  And the kid controls whether or not he or she eats it.  You have no control whether a child eats a food or doesn’t.  You control whether it’s presented to the kid or not.  So it’s very important to start right away, like when you are introducing foods to a kid.

Alyssa:  Like at six months?

David:  Yes.  Just set the precedent that the family eats together most of the time; not every single day, but almost every single day, and the kids get the food, the same food that Mom and Dad eat.  And if they eat it, good.  If they don’t, they’re going to be hungry.  Kids do not starve themselves, as long as you’re offering appropriate foods.  You can’t expect a two-year-old to eat a kale salad; that’s unreasonable, but you can expect them to eat healthy foods.  Now, the first time you say, “Oh, you don’t want to eat that?  What do you want to eat?” or “How about this thing that’s much yummier?”  That was a big mistake because that kid knows now that there’s another option.  And so if I take him over to Grandma’s house or something like that, they’re going to know right away if that’s something they can get away with there.  And that’s fine, but at our house, we eat together, and these are the foods we’re eating.  Feel free to eat them, and if you don’t, that’s okay.  So with our three-year-old, he is a very good eater.  But he will sometimes get up because he wants to go play or something, and if we say, “Are you full?” he says, “Yeah, I’m full,” — which he might not be.  So okay, you can go play.  And he’ll go play, and an hour or so later, “I’m hungry.”

Alyssa:  Story of my life!

David:  Right.  So what we do is we pull out the plate of food, the exact same plate he had before, and say, “Here’s your food.”  And I don’t know that we’ve ever once offered some different food later at night, because if we did that, then he would never eat his dinner and he would always eat the other thing later.  And he almost always will eat that dinner later, and I will remind him, “You’re hungry because you didn’t eat earlier.”  And so I think we have, with that approach, with not offering something else, we’ve been pretty successful with that.

Alyssa:  What about with your one-year-old?  What is he eating?

David:  So he’s the same.  Texture becomes important for them because obviously I can’t serve him a whole grape or something like that; it would be dangerous for him.  But he always ate with the family, even before he was able to eat.  He would sit up there with us, and then as he starts to eat really soft things, he’ll be there with us.  And at very first, when they’re six months or seven months and they’re first eating, you may not be able to serve them exactly what you’re eating.  Sometimes you can because you can puree it up or use a baby blender with the food that you’re eating, which is a great way to do it.  Other times, we would, for us personally, we might use some baby food jars or some pureed-up food that we had made the weekend before or something like that, and he would sit at the table with us, and we would kind of feed him and eat.  And that slowly transitioned into him eating what the family’s eating.  But a one-year-old appropriate version of it, so maybe the carrots that we had, for him, are pureed up.   And then eventually he needs less and less modification, and now maybe I just have to cut it up in little pieces or something like that, and he can feed himself.  So he’s always been integrated into the family dinner, and he’s transitioning to just being able to eat like we are.

Alyssa:  What about food allergies?  We found out at around two that our daughter had some — not severe allergies, but she got really bad eczema and tummy aches, and it was the majors: gluten, dairy, eggs.  It’s really hard to find foods for her.  If I just make a mound of meat and veggies — she can eat meat and veggies, basically.  But I feel like I was making two different meals often, and then it got to the point where I was like, “Oh, you can just have this.  You can just have the chicken nuggets or something,” which I know are bad, but she couldn’t eat what we were eating.  I don’t know; what do you tell parents?  Or even if the adult has a food allergy, and they’re the only one in the home: how do you deal with that?

David:  It can be difficult.  I think I would try your best to get everyone eating the same foods when possible.  You can make it clear; oh, so-and-so can’t have this food because she has a food allergy, and kids will understand that eventually.  But I would try not to have separate meals for different people when possible.  And food allergies are kind of difficult, though, because it can be difficult to say, does this person have one and will they outgrow it?  A lot of times, they’ll outgrow it.  That happens, too.  You just try to get the family eating the same thing when possible.

Alyssa: I probably need to do a better job of that.

David:  It sounds like you’re working hard at it.

Alyssa: Trying!

David:  Give yourself credit.

Alyssa:  Trying!  So if you could give parents one piece of advice, besides, you know, eating together at the table, which I think is just good for family in general, and then eating the same thing, is there any piece of advice with nutrition?  What are, in general, kids lacking right now?  What are they missing out on?

David:  So the important thing with kids is just offering them healthy foods, and kids will typically choose to eat the amounts that they need over the course of a week or so.  In any given day, they might eat a lot or a little, and that’s okay.  If they’re offered healthy foods, they will eat what they should be eating.  I don’t worry about kids who are offered a variety of pretty healthy foods.  If kids are starting to be limited — and I see this with parents who are limiting them.  “Oh, he won’t eat that.”  Well, he’s never tried that, right?  So try not to be the one who’s causing your child’s limited diet.  Encourage those healthy eating habits, and the kid will be fine.  If you start introducing a lot of processed and sugary foods, and the kid starts to eat a lot those, that’s when I would start to worry about missing some nutrients.  But outside of that scenario, I don’t really worry about malnutrition in children in the United States.

Alyssa: Good.  So, obviously, it’s best to get our nutrients from fresh veggies and fruits, but what about supplements?  I know that these gummy vitamins for kids are just loaded with sugar, too, and are they even getting the nutrients that they need?  Do you have any thoughts or recommendations on these supplemental vitamins for kids?  And even adults, I suppose?

David:  Yeah, so I’m not aware of research with children and vitamins.  I would have to look into that topic.  From a theoretical point of view, I don’t see why a child would need that if, you know, with the caveat of what I said previously.

Alyssa:  If they’re eating healthy?

David:  If they’re eating a relatively healthy diet, there’s not any reason why a kid would need that.  So I wouldn’t choose to do that.  If there was some circumstance where you were having trouble getting enough healthy food into a child, or maybe a disease state like cystic fibrosis or something where you have difficulty absorbing foods, then maybe we would talk about targeted nutrition supplements, but I wouldn’t head that direction outside of that, personally.

Alyssa:  So as long as your kid is eating pretty healthily, you probably don’t need to try to force a vitamin down them, too?

David:  That’s my opinion, yeah.  And in adults, we do have research that says that taking multivitamins don’t really help your health.  But the interesting thing is that there’s kind of confounding variables, so people who tend to take multivitamins are healthier than people who don’t.  So what you want to be is the kind of person who takes a multivitamin — but you actually need to take the multivitamin.

Alyssa:  Right, it’s kind of like a placebo effect.  We don’t really need it.  I take one every day, but yeah, I don’t notice a difference in my health.  But I’m already a pretty healthy person.

David:  Yeah, exactly.  And it’s not unreasonable to take one.  It’s just that we don’t have data proving that it’s helpful, and we have some pretty large-scale studies.  But it may be helpful for you to feel like you have your bases covered, or even for someone to take one a couple times a week or something is not unreasonable.  It won’t harm you.

Alyssa:  Is this another market to just make money?  Is this, like, this whole multivitamin thing just to make us spend more money, to make us feel like we’re going to get healthier?

David:  Largely, yes.  But sometimes it can even be a distraction, and so I discussed before about eating food that’s close to the way it came out of the earth, and that’s where I start with every single person that I would talk to about nutrition.  Because they’ll come to me and say, “I’m taking my folic acid; I’m taking this; and I’m using my protein shake, and I’m still not meeting my goals of muscle gain or weight loss or whatever it is.”  And it’s like, hold on.  You’re getting distracted.  What’s your food intake?  How close is your food to how it comes from the earth?  If we answer that question, then we’ll come back to this stuff.  Don’t get distracted.

Alyssa: T hat’s interesting.  It is a distraction, because I know my doctor would tell me I don’t get enough protein, so I’m taking a protein shake, but why am I not eating more protein, right?  The look — if you could see the look he just gave me!

David:  I am almost a physician’s assistant, so I will be prescribing things like this, and it is tempting for someone to say, well, take this targeted protein supplement or vitamin or medicine.  But we can address those problems a lot of times with food itself, but it takes a little more work on the part of the doctor and the patient, too.  Now, I do sometimes use protein supplements.  Just to be clear, there can be a time and space for some things like that.  I don’t want to say that they’re never useful, but they’re not the basis.  I want to add one more thing, if I may, about involving kids in eating.  If you involve a kid in the process of food, you’re much more likely to get their buy-in on eating a food.  And so this can go as far back into the food process as you can get them involved.  So I have a garden, and I helped my son pick out some seeds that we were going to plant.  So he was involved from the earlier possible step of picking which peas we were going to plant and helping us plant them.  Then he sees them grow; he can pick them, and usually he eats them while he’s standing right there in the garden, but then when he’s in the kitchen, he can help us cook, and now that he’s three, he old enough to actually help a little bit.  He’s definitely going to eat that food when it comes to the table.  He cuts the asparagus out of our garden, and he will definitely eat it, whereas if he just sits at the table and I just throw some asparagus on his plate, he might be like, what’s that?  I’m not going to eat that.  But he’s invested, so it’s important to get that process started.  Get kids in the kitchen.  In fact, I was at the farmer’s market, and they were giving out little kid knives.  I don’t know if you’ve seen these, but it’s a knife that a kid can use to cut vegetables or anything, and it really works, but it won’t come them.  And so now he loves to come in with me and help prepare dinner.

Alyssa:  That’s a really good point.  We had Katie from Kitchen Stewardship on our show.  She’s all about getting kids cooking in the kitchen because when they cook their own meals, they’re more likely to eat it.  But I’m glad you mentioned the garden, too, because I did the same thing with my daughter.  She helped me plant the seeds, watched them grow, and she’ll literally pluck a carrot out and go rinse it off in the house and just eat it like Bugs Bunny.  And I told her that we can eat beet greens and lettuce, so she’ll walk up and say, “Mommy, can I have a beet green?”  And my friends will look at me, like, did she just ask if she could eat a beet green?  I’m like, girl, you eat all the beet greens you want!  Yes, go!  So it’s true; if they’re in it from the beginning of the process, they’re much more invested.  “I grew these, Mommy, they’re mine!”

David:  And conversely, you mentioned having sweets or something sometimes.  We certainly have them sometimes, too, and so they have their place, and they’re kind of special.  Sometimes we’ll walk down to the ice cream shop.  We’ve discussed that it’s not somewhere we go every day, but sometimes we do, and we enjoy the heck out of it.  And then maybe sometime in the future, we’ll go again.  So those things are fine in their place.

Alyssa:  Right.  Okay, I’ve got some thinking to do with how I get my daughter to eat some meals with me.  But actually, some of the LifeFuel ones, she’s been eating.  Like those pancakes, she loved.  They were gluten-free vegan pancakes, and then she loves meat, so she just devoured the meat, too, so yeah, I probably need to order more specific ones like those that she will eat.  Well, thanks for coming in again.  It’s been fun.  And Genevieve, will we have you back on sometimes?

Genevieve:  Absolutely!

Alyssa: Okay.  You didn’t talk on this one.  Probably no one knew you were here!

Genevieve:  I’m just hanging out in the background.

Alyssa: Genevieve from LifeFuel.  Since you are here, why don’t you tell us your website and how to find LifeFuel if they’re interested in ordering?

Genevieve:  Yes, the website is lifefuelbyvault.com.  You can order meals weekly.  We will deliver them to your house, and they’re healthy and delicious.

Alyssa: I can vouch for that.  You can always find us at goldcoastdoulas.com, Instagram, and Facebook.  And you can listen on iTunes and SoundCloud.  Thanks!

Podcast Episode #41: Nutrition and Kids Read More »

Pilates for pelvic floor

Podcast Episode #40: Pilates for your Pelvic Floor

Today we talk with Iona Ruiter of Pilates in East.  She specializes in pelvic floor health, prenatal and postnatal pilates, and diastasis recti.  She gives us an in-depth look at the health of your pelvic floor and what exercises actually work.  You can listen to this podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.  Be sure to check out our Facebook post for before and after pictures!

 

Alyssa:  Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am your host, Alyssa Veneklase, and today I’m excited to be talking to Iona from Pilates in East.  Hello!

Iona:  Hello!

Alyssa:  Thanks for coming over here on this very hot day.

Iona:  Thank you for having me.  I don’t have central air, so this is great!

Alyssa:  Is it cool enough?

Iona:  Today has been a little warmer than other days, but in here, yes, it feels great.  I always love going to work, as well, because we are air-conditioned in there, as well.  But home, not so much.

Alyssa:  Yeah, it’s not a hot pilates.

Iona:  No, no.

Alyssa:  Tell me a little about Pilates in East because I only found you through social media because somebody was talking about what you specialize in.  So we love, at Gold Coast, talking about pelvic floor issues and all these things that a lot of moms deal with, sometimes even during pregnancy, but then very commonly afterwards.

Iona:  Yes.  So at Pilates in East, in general, a lot of the group classes are more fitness-based.  Some people will have some issues with herniations of disc and osteoporosis, things like that, in our group classes, but personally, myself, I specialize in pelvic floor health, prenatal pilates, postnatal pilates, and diastasis recti.  But I actually discovered I had diastasis after the birth of my son, and he just turned four.

Alyssa:  And explain what that is for somebody who hasn’t had it.

Iona:  It’s becoming very common, so I think a lot more people are starting to learn what it is, but it was always defined as the separation of your abdominals, your rectus abdominus muscles, but that’s actually an inaccurate description of it.  It’s actually the extreme thinning of your linea alba, which is the connective tissue between the rectus abdominus muscles.  So it causes the abdominals to come apart, but it’s actually the connective tissue in between being extremely thinned.  And it doesn’t come back together after birth.

Alyssa:  Is that just from the stretching?

Iona:  Yes and no.  So that can be an underlying issue, which it usually is, and then that stretching and the pressure on the abdominal wall from giving birth and the growing baby creates this extreme thinning where it doesn’t come back.  There’s also umbilical herniations which is very common with the diastasis, and that is where there is a tear in the linea alba, and your intestines can actually protrude out of the fascia, which is the linea alba.  It’s the connective tissue; it’s called fascia.  And that is supposed to be repaired only through surgery, but I am a big advocate for natural healing.  I believe the body can do wonderful things, and I think the mind can do wonderful things, as well, and I think that’s one of my problems with my own journey of healing.  I think I have a lot of anxiety, and I focus a little too much negatively on it, but the results I’ve seen on other women has been amazing.  And honestly, the results I’ve seen in myself have been pretty amazing, as well.  I have photos that I actually brought here, too, that we can look at after, because it is pretty amazing to see the before and afters, and I really like to document because I think for someone to see the results, sometimes we don’t always feel the results, but to see the results, I think, speaks volumes.

Alyssa:  We could even post those or post a link if you have them somewhere if you have approval to show those.

Iona:  Yes, I did get approval from someone who I did two private sessions with, and then there’s something we call a magic green ball.

Alyssa:  I see it right there.  It just looks like a green ball, so what makes it magic?

Iona:  It’s actually a myofascial release ball, so the first thing I like to start with – this is postpartum pilates, but I do this with women while they’re pregnant, as well, because it does help to relax the pelvic floor area, open up those hips a little bit, get them ready for birth.  But it’s especially essential for the postpartum recovery.  It’s a myofascial ball, so what that means is it’s a ball used to release the fascial tissue and smooth it out and help the body to realign because when we have pulls on our muscles in certain areas, it causes misalignment.  And most of us probably go to chiropractors.  If we’re doing a more natural birth, I feel like chiropractic care is very important.  I go to a chiropractor, as well, but one of the things with chiropractic care is it’s only your bones.  They’re not doing anything for your muscles.  And if your muscles are overly tight and working too hard in certain areas, they’re going to create that pull and pull that bone back out.  You know, there’s only so much.  So the ball really helps to release those overly-tight muscles.

Alyssa:  I’m picturing being on my stomach rolling around on it.

Iona:  So there’s an oblique release, which is essential for the recovery of the diastasis, as well.  I can’t do that one on prenatal women, but I do that one on postpartum and on menopausal women, as well.  For any woman with pelvic floor issues, the oblique release is amazing.  You can also do psoas, which is your internal hip flexor.  It is tight on a lot of people, especially if they’re runners and things like that, but it’s inside of your hip, and it’s really essential.  It helps with the function of the core and pelvic floor, everything.  All of that is connected.  We do release work on glutes, which is your butt, and the hamstrings, which is the back of your legs.  I also do release work on sacrum, which is a really important one for me.  I have some sacrum issues, which is the little triangular bone in between your left and right hip.  The tip of your sacrum would be your tailbone, and then the base of the sacrum is right around where those dimples on people’s backs are.  And then I’ll do all the way up and down the spine, doing some release work there, as well.

Alyssa:  And what does that mean, doing release work?  With this ball?

Iona:  With the ball.  So you actually roll on it or you just hold a pose with the ball in an area to do release in that area, and it’s amazing.  My obliques before I used this ball were very overly developed, and that’s partially because of my rectus abdominus muscles being weakened and overly stretched from my diastasis recti, and this ball has released my obliques so much.  And you notice, like if I show you pictures of me, with my belly button, I had a little bit more of a pull to the right, and so I’ve been doing this release work on my sacrum and the oblique release.  My right side’s much stronger; I have to hold that for a lot longer, but my belly button’s becoming more uniformly round, and that’s one of the things in the pictures, when I show them to you and then if we post a few of them, you’ll notice the difference of people’s belly buttons.  It’s really pretty amazing because there’s so many pulls from these muscles and everything.  So there’s a lot of realigning the body and releasing.  That kind of goes hand in hand, and then I put in some movement work for exercises that people can do at home.  They’re really gentle, easy.  I do all this stuff every night, and it takes me probably — I’m pretty quick at it now because my body has released more in areas, but it probably takes about 15 minutes to a half-hour, so it’s easy.  It doesn’t require a lot of time.  And, you know, you can keep adding on and making it harder, and then the more that your separation comes together or the better your pelvic floor health becomes, then you can eventually join group classes and everything.  But if there is enough interest after this podcast, I’d be more than willing to do some private group classes and if anyone wants to reach out to me, we do special pricing and everything with the more people we get for pelvic floor health, the diastasis, and everything like that.

Alyssa:  So what do you do with this magic green ball for pelvic floor?

Iona:  For pelvic floor, it’s very similar because, again, everything is kind of connected.  So with the diastasis recti and pelvic floor, really, the main source of fascia on your body is the thoracolumbar fascia, which is the fascial tissue along the center of your back, more or less.  And it fans out, and fascia really covers your entire body, and then there’s little pockets in the fascia, and that’s where your muscles lie.  But the thickest, largest part of your fascia is along your back, so that’s why it’s so essential to do that.  But then that fascia wraps around your pelvic floor and comes up to the linea alba, so if there’s some kind of disruption in the back of the body, the pelvic floor, or the front, it can cause the diastasis; it can cause some pelvic floor issues.  There’s just all these little contributors because the body works in funny ways, and everything’s really connected.  It really is, and it’s funny because a lot of times, even in my group classes, I’ll do stretching and I’ll just have everyone lift one arm up, and they’ll be like, oh, my gosh, why does that stretch feel so different?  And when I first started pilates, we’re always like, oh, don’t — people when their cores are weaker will lift their shoulders up, and it’s like, oh, your shoulders aren’t connected to your abs; you need to keep them released, but the thing is, everything’s really connected where these nice long lines and this fascia is all connected, it’s just the muscles might not be connected.  So releasing all of that one.  But a big one — some big stuff I do with pelvic floor work is I like to do a lot of working those external rotators of the hips.  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of clam exercise.

Alyssa:  No.

Iona:  It’s where you lie on your side and your knees are bent.  Your feet stay flat together, and your legs are about a 90-degree angle, so they’re straight out from your hips.  And you have to make sure that your top hip does not roll back.  That’s very important because if it does you’re not giving yourself the exercise you need, but you just work by opening and closing that top leg.  That’s a great pelvic floor exercise, and everyone listening could do that at home right now, even.  But realigning the body, again, really does help with getting everything to function as it should.  So that’s why the myofascial ball is so important, or the magic green ball, as we call it.  But the pelvic floor release is another great one for pelvic floor issues because, again, just because someone has pelvic floor issues doesn’t mean that they have a weak pelvic floor.  It just means it might be weak in certain areas.  There’s certain areas overworking, probably, and other areas underworking.  So we want to get it to work together, and so that pelvic floor release is really important to that.  I love squats.  I think squats are another great thing.  It’s a natural pelvic floor engagement, just lifting up every time you stand back up, but making sure you come up all the way tall.  A lot of times I watch people do squats, and they come up, but they don’t come up all the way.  That last little bit’s important, just for your whole entire body, for your kneecaps and everything, getting that last little lift.  But yeah, those are just a couple simple little things that people can do at home and everything with that.

Alyssa:  I’m curious about that.  You have a deflated balloon looking ball.

Iona:  Yeah, so this is called a soft gym ball, but yes, it’s deflated.  A lot of times with pelvic floor issues, as well, and possibly with diastasis recti, just all kinds of postpartum issues, we’ll place this in between their thighs, but not their knees.  You want it pretty high up, closer to the pelvis.  And we don’t ask people to press into it, but your legs naturally will press in and engage.  So if I have someone doing a bridge, which I think everyone knows what a bridge is, probably — a pilates bridge is a little bit different.  It’s not so extended; your ribs stay in.  But a lot of times if people have weaker pelvic floor, their knees tend to fan out as they do a bridge.  Their legs don’t stay inward, and so it creates this uneven tension in certain areas, wrong muscles overworking, weaker muscles underworking.  So if you place this ball in between, you can’t open your knees out because you’ll drop it, but you’ll notice this natural inner thigh, your adductors, working, which is going to help work the muscles inside the pelvic floor and everything as well, because all of that is attached to different areas of your pelvis.  In the past, women were always told to do Kegels to strengthen the pelvic floor, but looking at this photo of your pelvic floor, there’s actually two layers of your pelvic floor.  The two areas are your pelvic diaphragm area and then your urogenital triangle.  So the pelvic floor is more intricate than a lot of us realize, and when you’re doing just a Kegel, you’re only working actually the superficial muscles of the pelvic floor, which would be more of the urogenital triangle.  So if you’re doing that, you’re really just strengthening the sphincter area, but there’s all these muscles here that aren’t really engaging.  So this would be the pelvic diaphragm, which actually, it’s called the diaphragm because like our breathing diaphragm, it actually does move.  So another good exercise for people with pelvic floor issues is pelvic tilts, so getting on hands and knees and then bringing the tailbone to pubic bone, pubic bone to chest.  That’s a really good movement of the pelvic diaphragm.  It’s getting to move; it’s getting to slide, so you’re getting kind of a Kegel, but you’re getting more than a Kegel because you’re actually exercising the entire pelvic floor, especially by adding that little bit of tilt.  And that’s something pregnant women can do, as well, because that will help if your baby is either occipital-posterior or breech.  So those pelvic tilts are really important, and I think they’re just important for women’s health in general.

Alyssa:  Now when you do the pelvic tilt, I’m picturing like a cat-cow, but you don’t have to do so much?

Iona:  Yeah, you’re actually not going to be going between the cat-cow.  It’s more of a hands and knees, and then you just want to really let your neck relax.  If it wants to hang down, that’s fine.  Just let your upper body relax more, but then your body is going to be more in a neutral position, so more of a flat back.

Alyssa:  And try to just move your pelvis?

Iona:  Yeah, and just move your pelvis.  A lot of times when people do cat, it goes into their upper back, which is called their thoracic spine, and it’s more of the lumbar spine which is your lower part of your spine.  But again, it’s more of the pelvic floor and the tailbone, sacrum, hip area that’s moving.  So it’s a really easy cue, and it’s one I learned when I did my pelvic floor diastasis course, but it’s just coming into hands and knees and then bringing tailbone to pubic bone; very gentle; you’ll feel a little glute engagement as well.  And then pubic bone to chest, where your low back should go more flat.  Because our backs — if you look at anyone standing, their low back naturally dips in.  That’s the natural curve of the lumbar, but you’re getting your low back to come more flat.

Alyssa:  So all of this stuff — let’s say someone hears this and says, oh my gosh, I have to do this.  You only do these in private classes, or you also kind of talk about it in group classes?

Iona:  So the great thing about Pilates in East is we are given kind of an outline for our class on how every class has to go, so there’s certain things we have to do.  We have to do arms, legs, standing, abs, things like that, but we are given free rein on what we do, and we all have our own specialties and different things that we’re interested in, so all of our own personalities come across in the classes.  And then the other great thing is every single class, we kind of have, whether people realize it or not, a little lesson that we talk about in the beginning of class, and we kind of stick with that for our theme as we teach the class.  So there’s other parts of the body — if you have low back pain, there’s this area along your spine called the multifidus, and that’s something I really like to do as well because I suffered from low back for a little bit after the birth of my daughter.  She liked to be held a lot, and the way we hold our children isn’t always the best for our body, even if you’re doing a baby carrier.  It can be hard, so the multifidus is a nice way to create more length in your back to help cushion.  You can kind of think of it as the balloons that they do balloon animals with, and you think of them being one on either side of your back.  And a good way to find your multifidus is if you place your fingertips on the center of your spine, so where you feel the bony part that protrudes, that’s your spinous processes.  And if you just slide your fingertips off to the side where it dips in a little.  And then the best way to feel is actually if you walk around.  You can feel the muscles kind of puff, puff.  Do you feel that?

Alyssa:  Yes!

Iona:  So that is your multifidus.  There’s more superficial muscles that are working, as well, but if you just think of when your drawing your abdominals in, puffing that area out just a little bit, even just breathing in and then exhale; just gently think of that area that you just felt puffing out a little bit.  It creates more space in that low back because that area typically is stronger.  It does run all the way up along your spine, but people don’t usually feel it up here.  But the low part of the back is usually stronger.  Those muscles are usually bigger, as well, so it’s a great way to feel less discomfort in the low back and everything as well, just thinking of that puffing up of the balloons or of the multifidus.

Alyssa:  It’s always funny when an instructor who knows what they’re talking about says something little, like puffing.  If you had just told me to puff up the back of my back — like, what?  And then you feel it and you move, and you’re like oh, okay, yeah, I do feel myself puffing up.

Iona:  That’s a hard one for a lot of peoples, so a lot of times I will have everyone feel it first, if I know it’s going to be something hard for everyone to comprehend at first.  It’s like, okay, I know most people are not visual learners; they’re hands-on learners, so how can I teach you where you feel it, and then see the outcome; get to understand that connection and everything.  One thing a lot of women do notice that have had a C-section is numbness down low, and part of the reason is — so we were talking about fascia earlier, and the fascia — think about looking at a piece of meat.  So the red part is the muscle, and then the white part is actually the fascia that we call fat.  So the fibers — we all know that meat has fibers, so there’s a direction; you know, when you’re cutting your beef.

Alyssa:  Against the grain or with it.

Iona:  Exactly, exactly.  So that’s the direction of your muscle, and our muscles are the exact same way.  They have these fibers that are in certain directions.  Your fascia is exactly the same way, so they have directions that they move and lie.  And just like our skin, our fascia, and the rest of our body, it’s all made up of a lot of water.  Now, what happens is when your abdominal wall and your fascia and your skin is cut into, everything — if you think of a book, where everything is this smooth surface where the pages are, and I’m thinking more of a soft-cover book, everything has this nice directional line.  If you end up being cut with something, like you have an appendectomy or a C-section, what happens is that fascia, as you put it back, it doesn’t live in its nice place.  It’s put together so that — almost like if you were to put your fingers together and lace them together, that’s how it normally is, and then when you’re cut open, it’s almost like putting your knuckles together.  So you notice that it doesn’t really fit.  So you really want to break that scar tissue up, so one of the first things I always ask women with a C-section is, do you massage your scar?  Because that is the number one most important thing that you could possibly do after having a C-section.  And it’s really a matter of when it feels comfortable for you.  They say your skin takes a full year to heal, and I think you can massage your scars sooner than a year, but if you don’t feel comfortable for a year, that’s completely okay.  You can start by just using two fingers and rolling the area that the scar is, but the best way is to actually get your fingers into the scar and then pull up or pull in towards the center line of your body.  Obviously, me doing it on someone is the best way to show someone, but yeah, with C-sections, diastasis is actually very common after that, as well, because of the uneven pull of the fascia system.  And that’s what I had actually learned with my diastasis, because I for the longest time was like why did I get this?  Why did I get this?  Everything I read says women over the age of 35 that are not fit, you know, have weaker abdominals.  I’m like, I’m a pilates instructor; my abdominals were strong.  I’m 32 years old.  I shouldn’t be having this issue.  Why am I having it?  And when I did the course that I had taken, it answered a lot of questions because I had also noticed a lot of women with C-sections having the diastasis, and what I didn’t realize is one, I had my appendix removed when I was seven, so that caused uneven pulls on my fascial system.  So my body had to find new ways to kind of move and shift.  The skin had to find new ways to pull, and the muscles, too.  And then I actually was in a car accident at 17 years old where my sacrum was fractured diagonally from the top all the way to the opposite side.  So my sacrum ended up not living in the place that it should have, which caused uneven pulls because you don’t get sacrum surgeries or things like that.  People do hip replacements, but they don’t do actually surgeries on the bones themselves.  You can’t do anything, and you can’t put your pelvis in a cast, so…

Alyssa:  Were you just sitting on a donut?  What did you?

Iona:  Yeah, when I had the car accident, I was given a claw to grab things, and I was given a donut to sit on, and that was basically it.  Yeah, so what I found was my body wasn’t aligned as it should, and that’s why that myofascial release, again, is so important.  So women with a C-section or anyone who’s had back surgeries, it’s really important.  They’re going to be more prone to a diastasis as well or maybe pelvic floor issues, things like that, because of that all being connected and wrapping up and around the pelvic floor.

Alyssa:  That makes a lot of sense.  Well, I think it’s encouraging for moms to know that if they have pelvic floor issues or even have back issues or have issues with their abs, that they don’t just have to deal with it or they don’t have to go get surgery, or there’s at least some options to try for a while.  How do people find you?  Is the best way through the website?

Iona:  The website or my email.   People email me a lot, or you can message me on Facebook.  That’s always a lot of people messaging me on Facebook through Grand Rapids Natural Parenting and a bunch of different sites, but my name is Iona Ruiter, so you can Facebook message me.  Otherwise, iona.ruiter@gmail.com is another great way, and that’s just my personal email that I use for the studio and everything like that.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Hopefully we can get some interest through this.  I know that once we click stop here, I want to have you show me a couple things.   Thanks so much for joining us today!

Iona:  Thanks so much for having me.  It was great.

Alyssa:  Hopefully you guys will look her up!  As always, you can find us at www.goldcoastdoulas.com.  You can email us with info or suggestions at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  We are on Facebook, Instagram, and you can listen on SoundCloud and iTunes.  Thanks!

Podcast Episode #40: Pilates for your Pelvic Floor Read More »

Cindy's Suds

Podcast Episode #39: Newborn Skin Issues

Alyssa and Cindy from Cindy’s Suds talk today about common newborn skin issues.  Ever heard of cradle cap?  How do you prevent diaper rash?  Do babies really get pimples? You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello!  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula, and I’m excited to talk to my friend Cindy again today from Cindy’s Suds.

Cindy:  Hey, how are you?

Alyssa:  Hey, good!  So I just taught a newborn class the other night, and in that class, I have a section where we go over common illnesses for babies that a lot of babies get and freak parents out.  Cradle cap, baby acne, and diaper rash are three of the ones we go over.  And I was thinking that, because your products are so amazing and you have the healthcare background as a —

Cindy:  Yeah, Physician’s Assistant.

Alyssa:  You would have some good ideas and you can tell people what is cradle cap really, and why do babies get baby acne, and then how your products can actually help.  Let’s start with cradle cap because it’s so weird.

Cindy:  Cradle cap is so weird, and especially to a new mom that’s never experienced it before, you’re thinking what in the world?  My kid has this scale on his head, and it looks so awful and so gross.

Alyssa:  It’s like a really disgusting form of adult dandruff, and it turns yellow.

Cindy:  Actually, that’s what it is.  That’s exactly what it is, yeah.  So the medical name is seborrheic dermatitis, and it’s just scaly, yellow flakes.  It looks so gross, and you can get it not only the hairline; you can get it on the eyebrows, behind the ears, kind of patchy; anywhere there’s hair, you can get it.  It’s typically a self-limiting situation where it’s just going to slowly get better on its own.   We don’t necessarily know why babies get it.  A lot of babies do.  The worst thing to do, and the thing that moms want to do, is pick off those little scales because it’s gross to you, but that’s the worst thing to do because you can bleed and then you can get a secondary infection from picking and bleeding on their little scalp.  So you’re better off leaving it alone, and it usually kind of gets better on its own.  You can use some symptomatic treatments, though, and one of those things is you can just use our healing salve and you can kind of goop that on their scalp and let it sit, and then slowly, over a few applications — and when I say few, it could be a few weeks of doing something like that — it will slowly soften and get better, and they’ll grow out of it.  You can do the same thing with coconut oil; I’ve heard people use that with decent results, too.  Our healing salve just has other benefits and other herbs in it that also kind of help in the healing process, but certainly, if you have coconut oil at home, certainly try that first, if you want.  But it’s just something that is going to be more of an unattractive phase for a while.  It’s not anything dangerous, harmful.  It’s nothing that they’re going to have for the rest of their life.  It’s typically self-limiting, and it’s just their little bodies are going through so much change, and it could be hormone fluxes, they’re saying, just from —

Alyssa:  I heard the other day it could be the first sign of a food allergy.

Cindy:  And then also it could have a component of a fungal infection, too.  They just really don’t know, so they’re kind of grasping at straws, and they’ve always kind of not known.  So it’s just one of those things where they’re — you know, this decade, they’re saying, oh, could be food allergies.  Last decade, they’re saying, oh, could be fungal.  It’s just one of those things that are fairly common for newborns, but also, you know, you’ve got mother-in-law going oh, you’ve got to pick that or treat it, and I’ve also heard a lot of people say use a baby comb and comb it off, which is kind of the same thing as picking, unless you’ve softened that area first with the coconut oil or with the healing salve.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I tell people if you use coconut oil, and a very soft-bristled, like baby toothbrush, and go very, very lightly in small circles.   And it’s like you said; it could take weeks, but it’s just a slow process over time.

Cindy:  Right, and you never want to do that dry.  So you never want to dry brush or dry comb.  It’s always after that coconut oil or healing salve has settled into the scalp and softened up some of those plaques, and then just try to get rid of it really slowly.  Or even a washcloth; you can kind of just slowly go over their scalp with a washcloth, but it’s not a quick fix.  So plan on this being a several weeks-long process, and also know that it will go away.   Don’t listen if someone says oh, you need to wash them more.  Babies, in general, you really shouldn’t bathe unless you’re doing it maybe once a week, but they don’t need to be bathed.  Their pH is changing; their skin is just adjusting to being part of this world instead of in the womb, so there’s so many things going on.  You don’t need shampoo, and that’s the last thing that you should be using anyway.  That’s a whole other topic, but stay away from any of those “baby shampoos” or baby this, baby that, because —

Alyssa:  Adding chemicals and petroleum to your baby’s poor, delicate skin is not a good idea.

Cindy:  Yeah, not a smart idea.  But anyway, that’s seborrheic dermatitis, also called cradle cap.  It will go away; it just looks ugly.

Alyssa:  So what about baby acne?  Is it actually pimples?

Cindy:  It actually is, and that’s the funny thing.  It’s leftover hormones from Mom, and so those still are circulating in baby’s immature body.  Their oil glands are still immature, so you’ve got a combination of Mom’s hormones raging out of baby and slowly fading out, and then baby’s immature skin system and sebum production and oil production is immature still, and so you end up with acne.  And this too will go away, but it’s also — it almost always happens when you’re ready to take those first one-month pictures, two-month pictures, and all of a sudden, you’re like, my beautiful, fair-skinned baby is like a teenager!  And it almost always happens, and they say about 40 to 50% of babies get this, so it is super, super common.  It also will go away.

Alyssa:  Don’t touch it; don’t pick it.

Cindy:  Don’t pick!  Don’t pick!  Sometimes, though, just like in regular acne, you will have spots that flare up and look more red and look irritated and almost look like they’re getting infected.  That would be a good time to use our healing salve because that’s a natural product.  It will help to decrease any early infection that’s starting.  It’s going to be an anti-inflammatory for those spots on the face.  You can certainly use it any point during the baby acne phase, but you don’t need to.  That’s more of a mom thing; we’re like, I feel like I need to try something.  You can certainly try it; you can certainly use it, but you don’t need to.

Alyssa:  It’s best just to leave it alone.

Cindy:  It’s best to leave it alone, and do not pick.  I’m a picker, and I love to pick, and it was so hard not to pick.  I think it’s because I’m a PA, and it’s part of what you do.  You get to do things like that at work.  But don’t pick because it will scar, and you don’t want to do that to your baby.  There’s also something called milia, which look like those under the skin whiteheads that you can sometimes see on the nose and cheeks and sometimes forehead.  That’s something different, and that’s also just like a trapping of skin cells underneath the surface of the skin.  That also will go away, but it’s not baby acne.  They’re two separate things.  They both will go away on their own.  It’s just more — especially for a new mom, it’s kind of unnerving to see this facial change and these skin changes happen to your baby because it’s such an outward sign, and you have people always commenting; strangers, mothers-in-law, whomever: oh, my kid never had that!  What are you using?  What aren’t you using?  So just know — I just would love to give moms the confidence to know that this is natural; this is normal; this will go away.  If they need to use something on it, something natural like a coconut oil or our healing salve would be great and fine, but you do not need to.  It will go away on its own.

Alyssa:  And what about diaper rash?  Because that — I’d say probably 100% of babies at some point, whether it’s just a mild diaper rash — you know, the biggest thing I tell my students in class is just to keep baby’s butt dry; after a shower, even after wiping with a wet wipe.  You’re putting moisture on the baby’s butt, and then you cover it with this dark diaper.  Now you have this dark, damp, moist environment to grow bacteria and get a diaper rash in.

Cindy:  Absolutely.  So diaper rash is pretty ubiquitous for when you have kids.  It can start early on.  With some kids, it doesn’t start until after they start solids because of the whole transition of what that is doing to their GI tract, but you will probably experience diaper rash at some point.  Like you said, the biggest challenge is keeping that area dry, and if you notice any pee or poop, you’ve got to change right away.  If you’re cloth diapering, same thing; you’re going to have to be more on top of it if you cloth diaper because there’s not a barrier like in the disposables, so you’ll just need to be on top of it and just constantly changing.  It’s short-lived in the grand scheme of life.

Alyssa:  Three years feels like forever.

Cindy:  It certainly does, but in the grand scheme of life, it will get better.  As they get older, they obviously don’t go as often, but you’ve got to be on top of it, especially when they’re really little, because their skin is so immature and it cannot fight those early fungal infections that can lead to bacterial infections, and it’s usually a combination.  Like if you get a rip-roaring diaper rash, there’s usually going to be some kind of a fungal component just because, like you were describing, damp, dark, stuff just left there; that’s the perfect growing conditions for any kind of a fungus or bacteria.  So after you do a diaper change, if you can just kind of air-dry with your hand waving before you diaper, or if you can just let them have a minute of some air time to dry that off, that’s the best.  If you’ve already kind of gone over the threshold of darn, we now have a breach in the skin and we now do actually have a diaper rash, reach for something natural.  Our diaper balm and healing salve are amazing.

Alyssa:  What’s the different between the two?

Cindy:  The only difference is the base oil, so the healing salve has an olive oil base, and the diaper balm has an almond oil base.  The only reason why we made two is so that moms had a visual so that if they wanted to always keep a dirty can by the diaper changing table, they had a color visual because that color is yellow, whereas the healing salve color is a greenish-blue, label-wise.  But they’re the same product; they work the exact same.  It’s just a different base oil, and it’s just more or less just so mom has a visual to keep one “clean” vs. “dirty” for a diaper change.  But if you do get the rash, actually, you can be very liberal with putting that diaper balm or healing salve on their bottom.  The great thing about it is it’s not going to sting when you put it on; it’s not going to sting if you wipe it off; it’s going to keep a nice barrier that’s going to start healing that skin, especially if it’s broken.  New moms, too, they freak out, as we all did, when they have their first diaper rash that’s now excoriated and bleeding.  You feel awful as a mom, and it could just be the simple fact that you were stuck in traffic and you realized baby’s pooped in the backseat and you just can’t get home in time, and then it happens.  It happens to all of us, so don’t do a guilt trip, moms.  Unfortunately, we just live this kind of a pace right now where you can’t physically be there sometimes every single second when they go, but as soon as you notice it, you clean off; you air-dry a little bit, and then use a healing salve or diaper balm very liberally on the diaper rash, and you will notice a huge improvement.  Just make sure that you’re continually keeping up on those diaper changes and applying the salve.

Alyssa:  So not only does it start to heal; it also kind of creates a barrier, right, so when they pee and poop next — it’s like water and oil don’t mix, so it kind of just rolls off.

Cindy:  Absolutely, so it’s creating that barrier so that you’re not going to have that skin-to-poop contact, and poop is quite acidic, especially once they start getting any kind of a solid.  But it’s acidic, and so that’s what’s going to start eating through and irritating that super-sensitive skin.  So be vigilant on doing your diaper changes; dry off before you re-diaper.  You can use the healing salve or diaper balm preventatively and just put a little barrier on, if you want to.  You don’t need to.  I would probably just not, if it were me.  It’s one more thing to do.

Alyssa:  Probably start it when you notice early signs.

Cindy:  Right, when you notice the redness, that’s when you should start using it.  And then if it gets really, really bad, you just goop it on.  You’re just kind of dabbing it on; not wiping, but more of a dab, and just be really careful to just keep doing those diaper changes so they’re not ever sitting in any pee or poop.

Alyssa:  And it’s hard because, like you said, when they’re little, the pee all the time, and you’re literally —

Cindy:  It’s like a drizzle sometimes.

Alyssa:  And you’re like, oh, I don’t want to change a diaper again; I just did, or these diapers cost so much money, so I get it for families who are like, I can’t change the baby’s diaper twelve times a day.  You just have to be really careful.

Cindy:  Really, really careful, yeah.  Or maybe cloth diapering would be a better alternative since you can rewash those diapers.  You’ve got to find what works best for you.  Some people could not do cloth diapers for the expense because there is a big expense up front for those.  Some people think that disposable is a bigger expense.  You just have to do what’s right for your family, whatever you want to do, but you just have to be on top of it, and you really should have some kind of a natural diaper cream, diaper balm there before it’s too late because it will happen.  So be a little bit proactive and have some at the ready for when this will happen to your baby, and don’t beat yourself up over it.  Just realize that, okay, I may have been even a half hour of sitting in poop if you’re in the car, that will really wreak havoc on their bottoms, so just got to be on top of it, and it’s something that we all struggle with.

Alyssa:  Yeah, and it does not make baby happy at all.  Baby feels it.  So people can find your products at Cindy’s Suds?

Cindy:  At www.cindyssuds.com, and if you live in the Grand Rapids area, we are carried at Harvest Health and Kingma’s, Hopscotch, Bridge Street Baby in Rockford.  So you can find us in several Grand Rapids locations.

Alyssa:  I was looking for your stuff at Harvest Health a while back.  I went with my daughter, and I was walking up and down these aisles, like what the heck, and they were like, can I help you, ma’am?  I’m like, yes, I’m looking for Cindy’s Suds.  “Oh, she has her own little area over here.”  I was like, all right, Cindy!  You had your own little display under the front wall.  It was really nice.

Cindy:  Yeah, it’s nice.  They’ve been great.  We’ve been partners with Harvest Health for years, and so it’s just been fun just to work with them over the years, and they have a display on an endcap for us and kind of a separate area, so if you can’t find it at Harvest Health or Kingma’s, they will gladly show you.  It is there, and both of those stores are amazing local stores and they carry almost all of our products, and they carry a nice, large display.  So we are there, so if you can’t find us, just ask, and they will gladly point you in the right direction.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Thanks again.  Email us: info@goldcoastdoulas.  You can find us online, www.goldcoastdoulas.com.  we’re also on Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and iTunes.  We’ll talk to you next time.

Podcast Episode #39: Newborn Skin Issues Read More »

Amber Brandt Coziness Consultant

Podcast Episode #38: Amber’s HypnoBirthing Story

We love hearing birth stories, especially from our clients.  Listen as Amber tells us her birth story and how HypnoBirthing helped both her and her husband through 23 hours of labor.  You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud.  You can sign up for our HypnoBirthing classes here

 

Alyssa:  Hello!  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula.  I also am a gentle sleep consultant, and I teach our newborn survival class.  We are here with Amber again.   We talked to her before; she’s The Coziness Consultant, but she’s also a past client.  She took our HypnoBirthing series with her husband, Kyle, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about your journey through HypnoBirthing and then how that relayed into your birth.

Amber:  So I became familiar with HypnoBirthing through, specifically, a friend who had a horrible experience with her first birth.  She didn’t do any preparation.  She kind of just went into it thinking everything would work smoothly and she would do what the doctor said, and she had a very traumatic experience.  So when she got pregnant with her second baby, she decided she was going to educate herself and prepare.  So she went through HypnoBirthing and just sang the praises of HypnoBirthing, so then we decided to do that because I felt really strongly that I wanted to go into it educated.  I didn’t want to feel like I was unprepared.  And I didn’t just want to focus only on breathing.  I knew that I was determined to have as natural a birth as I could, and I wanted some skills and some tools.  So that’s how we ended up coming to HypnoBirthing, and the experience for us, honestly, at the end of the day, was the difference between making it through the birth unmedicated and following the birth plan that we really wanted.  I wasn’t so married to my birth plan.  I knew if some extenuating circumstance happened and I ended up with a C-section, that was going to be okay, too, but my goal – what I could control was to be as prepared as possible, and HypnoBirthing really allowed us that opportunity.

Alyssa:  For somebody who’s never heard of HypnoBirthing or maybe has but doesn’t understand it, what would your elevator speech be to a new parent thinking about HypnoBirthing?

Amber:  So it’s much less New-Agey than it sounds.  It’s basically just kind of an approach to having a framework to understand that your body is designed to give birth, and so when you go through HypnoBirthing, you learn how each of the muscles are working; how each surge, they call them, or contraction, is actually progressing you toward having a baby.  And then it’s tools and techniques designed to help you get in line with that, to understand what your body is trying to do and try to get out of the way and allow your body to do that thing.  In HypnoBirthing, they talk about this cycle that you feel discomfort and so you’re fearful, and then you’re fearful so your body tightens up, and then you feel more discomfort, and you can’t get out of it.  So HypnoBirthing gives you the opportunity to get out of that cycle, to be able to think through what is happening in your body and breathe and relax.  They give you some really practical ways to do that, to work with your body instead of fighting it.

Alyssa:  So tell me, what did that class look like for you and Kyle together, since couples take this class together?

Amber:  So we showed up weekly; sat down together, and our instructor talked about – well, she always showed a video of someone actually delivering through HypnoBirth, and they were all very different.  Their reactions were all very different, but all inspiring.  And then we would learn about the body, learn about the stages of labor, and each week kind of built on the last.  But we were also given these techniques of how to practice.  So every week we learned a different style of relaxation, a different way to – something to visualize or whatever.  So as a couple, I would notice, like, okay, so this week, I didn’t really resonate with that, but then the following week, there would be something that I would be sitting there and realize, like, oh, I’m holding a lot of tension in my face.  Every time I go to take a deep breath or do the things she says, I realize I’m holding my shoulders up by my ears.  And so it really created an awareness for me of my own body and my own tendency towards holding tension.  And so then I could turn to Kyle and say, “Okay, when we’re in labor, these are the things I know about myself.  I need you to remind me.  If you see me furling my brow, I need you to mention that – gently.  Really kindly.  If you see my shoulders, that I’m holding my shoulders, please bring my attention to that.”  And so then when it came to the actual delivery, it was one contraction at a time, just taking one at a time, and him being aware of those things we had talked about.

Alyssa:  And what would he do?

Amber:  So that first – you know, if you’ve ever had a baby, if you’ve ever been in labor, you know that contraction is coming, and it’s like amping up, and then it kind of hits that initial intensity.  And he would just be talking right in my ear: “Amber, okay, relax.  Let your breath out.  You need to breathe.  You’re holding your breath.”  And it’s like talking me through that initial peak of each one so that then I could get my head back in the game and relax my body through the remainder of the surge.  My water broke, and my daughter was born 23 hours later, so we had a LOT of practice going through those surges together

Alyssa:  So tell me how HypnoBirthing – you said it was kind of the make-it-or-break-it.  It was such a long labor and all that practice.  Did you want to give up?  Why didn’t you give up?

Amber:  I think I’m pretty stubborn, so I was really determined.  And I also knew we were giving birth in the low intervention suites at Butterworth, so I knew if I decided that I wanted meds, I had to move to a different room.  I knew going into it that there was some pressure on me to stick to this, and I really wanted to anyway.  But I think the difference for HypnoBirthing for me was leading up to it – one of the things that you learn in HypnoBirthing is that they give you scripts and you get some audio clips that are basically different things that you can listen to, to relax to.  They’re kind of like guided medications.  So I created my own and had it recorded, and I listened to it every night leading up to my birth so that I got used to and in the habit of relaxing, first in my head, then in my shoulders…

Alyssa:  You came up with the scripts that worked for you?

Amber:  Yes, and then I practiced to it.  So we listened to it every night, and he would always fall asleep during it.  I never would; I would listen all the way to the end, of course.  But so then when it was go time, we had it there, and a lot of the hours that passed, I spent listening to that and relaxing to that because I had practiced to it.  And so then when it was game time, it was like I could pull it out and just work through it.  And there were certain parts I would listen to over and over because I had written it in a certain way knowing that I hold tension in my face; I hold tension in my shoulders.  So for us, it was a combination of me listening to the audio that I had practiced to, the two of us listening to it, and then also him reminding me, using the things we knew.  And even when I got to transition – and that was the one time I shed a tear.  I just let the tear fall, and I was like, I don’t think I can do this.  And Kyle said, “This is what we learned.  We know when you start to say, ‘I don’t think I can do this, I’m giving up, I can’t do anymore’ – this is when we’re almost to the end.”  And so having someone there that knew, that had heard all the same things I had, had heard it in a different way, and was able to access that when I couldn’t, was the difference for me.  I really don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t been there and if we didn’t have the tools.

Alyssa:  It sounds like he was a much more involved part of the process because of the HypnoBirthing classes.

Amber:  He was, and he took it seriously.  I think for some guys, scenarios like that are really uncomfortable, but he just saw the entire things as a team event, that we were doing this together, and he was just as much as part of it as I was.  And so it was really cool because we were alone – I was in the tub laboring when I had to push, and it’s one of my favorite memories because it was hilarious.  It was like, “Oh, I think I need to PUSH!”  And he was like, “Okay, I’m going to go find someone to help us!”  But then I’m pushing, and they transitioned me to the bed, and we hadn’t discussed it, but the midwife said, “Okay, Kyle, you jump up and put your back against the headboard.”  So he had his back against the headboard and his legs out in front of him, and then I sat in front of him and leaned against him.  And it was such a payoff to deliver that way after laboring that entire way together.

Alyssa:  Which you couldn’t have done in another room?

Amber:  No.  And it was so beautiful because we didn’t talk about that.  That was kind of a gift that – I’m sure they do that with a lot of moms, but that was a surprise to me, and it was just a really sweet thing.  But even then, as I’m pushing and as I’m laboring, in that last, intense couple of hours, he’s right there in my ear – you know, literally.  His face is right there, and it was just all the difference in the world to have the support and have the reminding because yeah, it’s hard to keep your head about you when it’s all happening.  You need a teammate to help you remember and to feed you those solutions and help and options to get your brain out of the intensity of what’s happening.  So it made all the difference for us.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  We should get Kyle in here sometime to talk about it.

Amber:  Yeah, his side of the story is that – the part when I had to push, he always says, “I just had to go find an adult.  We needed an adult in that room.”

Alyssa:  Well, thanks for sharing.  It’s a lovely story.  I love hearing HypnoBirthing birth stories.

Amber:  It was great.

Alyssa:  If you have any questions about HypnoBirthing, email us: info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  You can always find us online, on Facebook, and on Instagram.  Thanks, Amber.

Amber:  Thank you.

Podcast Episode #38: Amber’s HypnoBirthing Story Read More »

LifeFuel Dietician

Podcast Episode #37: Meal Advice from a Dietician

What is a micro and macro nutrient?  What does processed really mean?  Today we talk to David Fisher, a licensed dietician and consultant for Life Fuel in Grand Rapids.  He is a wealth of knowledge and you won’t want to miss what he has to say about our eating habits!  You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, and I’m excited today to be talking to David Fisher, who is a consultant with Life Fuel.  We talked to Genevieve a few weeks ago now about Life Fuel, and David is their dietician, correct?

David:  That’s right.

Alyssa:  Okay, tell me who you are and what you do.

David:  Yeah, so I’m a registered dietician, and I’m consulting on the menus for Life Fuel.  And I’m also a few months away from finishing becoming a physician’s assistant.  And then also more importantly, I’m also a father of a couple of little boys, so that keeps me busy.

Alyssa:  How old?

David:  One and three.

Alyssa:  One and three.  Holy cow, you are busy.

David:  Yes, I’m busy and exhausted.

Alyssa:  So do you actually use Life Fuel, then?  Do you order their meals that you help create?

David:  Yes, it’s a savior to myself and my wife trying to feed ourselves and our kids healthfully without having any time.  It’s very helpful to have them.

Alyssa:  It’s definitely saved my life the past several weeks, too.  It’s been my favorite so far.  Everything has been so good.  So how did you connect with Life Fuel?

David:  So actually Genevieve and I knew each other a little bit before she started it, and it kind of started because she ran some nutrition questions by me trying to make sure her menu was nutritionally adequate.  And that turned into a couple more conversations, and before long, it was like, well, why don’t I just review all the menus and be a little bit more involved?  So that’s what we started.

Alyssa:  So what does that process look like?  Does Genevieve come to you with an idea, and then you tell her you need to add this; you need to take that out?  What does that even look like?

David:  Sort of.  She’s the chef behind it all, so she creates all the meals.  We had a lot of discussions in the beginning about nutrition theory and what I think adequate nutrition looks like, and then I review the menus that she comes up with.  So she’ll have a whole week’s menu, and I look them over for nutritional adequacy, macro nutrients and micro nutrients, and give feedback like this should be tweaked; this might be something that you’re missing; this is something that you’re doing excellently; that kind of thing.

Alyssa:  Tell me and anyone else listening who doesn’t know what a macro and micro nutrient is.

David:  Oh, sorry.  I’ll try to watch the jargon.

Alyssa:  That’s okay.  If I don’t understand, I will ask.

David:  So macro nutrients are proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.  And then micro nutrients are vitamins and minerals and other things that are in very small quantities like antioxidants, vital chemicals, things like that.

Alyssa:  So you just know which foods have what?

David:  I use software to help me know, but at this point I do kind of know.  I can look at a list of foods or at a menu and know you’re probably missing this nutrient or that, but I still use things to help me make sure I don’t miss anything.

Alyssa:  So what would you say – if we had a pregnant mom eating a meal versus someone who’s not pregnant or maybe a postpartum mom – are there different things they need to be looking for?

David:  Yeah, good question.  Fundamentally, no.  I’ll just say this: no matter who I’m consulting on nutrition; could be a pregnant mom or an 80-year-old with diabetes, but 90% of my advice is the same.  It’s only that last 10% that I might customize it to a particular person.  And that advice is always about eating food that’s unprocessed; eating food that is close to the way it comes from the earth.  Only once you get that down can you come and talk to me about whether you need this supplement or this specific nutrient, because none of that targeted effort is going to help if the base of your diet is not unprocessed, fresh food.  If it is, if that’s taken care of, and I have someone who’s pregnant or lactating and they want to come talk to me, maybe we’ll start to talk about a few extra things.  But if you’re eating a varied diet of fresh, unprocessed foods, your bases are covered.  Now, the one that people talk about is folic acid, folate, things like that.  And that’s true.  The need for that, though, is honestly before you even know you’re pregnant, most times.  So we have to get that base covered before you’ve even gotten pregnant.  Don’t come at 30 weeks talking about your folate.  That’s fine, but that ship has sailed.  And that’s where getting that base down before we even get to being pregnant is the most important part.

Alyssa:  Before conception, even?  While you’re trying?

David:  Yeah, exactly.

Alyssa:  Explain maybe what “processed” means.  At the very basic level, what is a processed food and why is it bad?

David:  I’m really glad that you asked this question because I used to think that you could just explain to someone, “Don’t eat processed food,” and they would sort of understand it, but I’ve figured out over time that people don’t know exactly what that is.

Alyssa:  They assume it’s – I’m trying to think of the worst thing, like a hot dog.  Which it is, but there’s so many other things that are not as bad as a hot dog that are still bad.

David:  Right, or people apply a very subjective meaning to it.  So to one person, a processed food is one thing, and another person says, “Well, I’m eating yogurt.”  Well, that yogurt has as much sugar as a Snickers bar in it.  That’s still a processed food.  So the way I’ve described it best is kind of what I mentioned, which is food that is close to the way it came from the earth.  If you get someone to conceptualize that question, like whether you’re evaluating a particular food or a plate of food or a week’s worth of menus, you can ask yourself the question, “How close is this food to the way it came out of the earth?”  And that allows you to think about the steps it took to go from a salmon swimming in Lake Michigan to the salmon that I’m eating on my plate.  And that answer is, it didn’t take a whole lot, versus the Twinkie, which is also my example of the opposite end of the spectrum.

Alyssa:  Is that even anything that came from the earth?  It’s all chemicals in a bowl, right?

David:  Right.  You know, the amount of steps that it took is kind of mind-boggling, right?  And most things fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, but it allows you to conceptualize how far something came from the way it came from the earth.  And your goal always needs to be shooting towards closer to the earth, something you could grow in your own garden.

Alyssa:  And looking at ingredients is kind of a first step of understanding how processed it is, correct?  Or not?

David:  Yes and no.  What I like to – so I have to teach people sometimes how to read nutrition labels, as a dietician.  And what I tell them is, okay, congratulations.  You now know how to read a label.  Now I want you to go buy nothing that has a label on it.  Because if something has a label, it by definition has multiple ingredients in it.  It’s in a box or a package, right?  But if you’re at the grocery store produce aisle, nothing is in a box or a package.  Nothing has an ingredients list because it’s ridiculous to put an ingredients list on an apple.  Everybody knows what an apple is.  Well, they all know what it is because it’s directly the way it came from the earth, right?  So if you to go to the store, the pretty healthy, unprocessed foods are the ones that have no nutrition label on them at all.  The ones with the nutrition label – some are healthy; some are not, but you’re already starting to get into that processed side of foods.  Now, of course, I buy things that have a label on them, and that’s when I start to evaluate, okay, what are the ingredients on this label?  Is this a slightly processed food, or is this a very processed food I should really be careful of?  So then it does become important at that point to be able to interpret a label and look at the ingredients list and try to avoid things that have things you don’t recognize in the ingredients and that kind of thing.  But I like to point out that the first thing is to eat foods that don’t have a label.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I started a garden a few years ago, and it makes me – forces me to eat because I don’t like wasting things.  So if I have a mound of cucumbers and carrots and tomatoes, I end up eating lots of veggies.  So that’s one good way to force myself to do it.

David:  CSAs are like that, too, because you get a lot of whatever’s in season.  You’re like, okay, my CSA gave me beets again; what am I going to do with them this time?

Alyssa:  Right, you get really creative.  And I also have a juicer, which for when I have a mound of cucumbers and they’re starting to get soft, I don’t want to throw them away, so we juice them.  What’s your opinion on juicing?  This is totally off topic.

David:  That’s okay.  I had a teacher who used to say the devil is in the details, and to me, that applies to juicing because it really – you could have juicing that I think is somewhat healthful, and a lot of juicing that I think is not healthful.  So my questions are going to be, obviously, what goes into it?

Alyssa:  Is it all fruit?

David:  Right, exactly, and what kind of juicing are you doing, and is it something that you just bought from the store versus your own cucumbers from your own garden?  I mean, that’s a vast difference from a purchased kids’ fruit juice at a store.  But also how much of the fiber and the actual pulp is in the juice because that affects how it’s digested and absorbed.  So it’s hard for me to give a straight-out answer, but if you’re more vegetable than fruit, and if it’s very fresh, then you don’t lose a lot of the nutrients, which you lose nutrients over time with storage.

Alyssa:  Because it sits.  It sits on the shelf for who knows how long.

David: Yeah, and a lot of the good – some nutrients aren’t very shelf-stable, so you’ll lose them over time, and then what remains is the sugar component and less of the fresh stuff.

Alyssa:  That makes sense.  Okay, well, back on topic to Life Fuel.  How do you – we talked briefly about the macro and micro, and you’re looking at carbs and things like that.  What’s your baseline for, okay, the meals each need to have this?  How much protein and how many carbs?  You don’t even have a ton of carbs in your meals, really, do you?

Genevieve:  So I would say we don’t necessarily have a strict baseline for macro nutrients, proteins, carbs, and fat.  We try to offer variety because we know that our customers eat a variety of different foods and have different requirements, so we try to just offer different variety so that each customer can kind of customize it to their own requirements.  David does offer a lot of advice as far as – carbohydrates aren’t necessarily bad, I think, is a thing we talk about a lot.  Even though a lot of our customers want a low-carb diet, they are necessary to fuel our bodies, so we do try to include a healthy amount.

Alyssa:  Like the sweet potatoes I ate yesterday?

Genevieve:  Correct, yes.  And we use healthy grains like quinoa and brown rice and things like that.

David:  I think the carbohydrate part is one that we’ve discussed more than anything else on the menus.

Genevieve:  Yes, it’s a very hot topic these days.

David:  It is, and she’s right that a lot of people want lower-carb meals, which is fine, but I think that there are a lot of healthy sources of carbs that people might be missing out on, and some people need more carbs than they’re allowing themselves.  That’s something I’ve seen working with people.

Alyssa:  What does a healthy carb look like?

David:  It has a lot of fiber.  Period.  That’s one simple way to look at it; it needs to have fiber, and so the classic example of that is brown rice and white rice.  White rice has zero fiber.  Brown rice or wild rice has a lot more fiber.  The fiber slows down how fast you digest and absorb it, so it slows down how quickly the starch, which turns into sugar, hits your bloodstream, so that’s what makes it healthier.  And that’s the kind of carbohydrates that we’ve eaten for thousands of years.  It’s only in the last hundred or so that we’ve had the modern techniques of removing all the fiber out of foods.

Alyssa:  Is that how you get white rice?  They just remove the fiber from brown rice?

David:  Yes.  I mean, they remove the coating on the rice, and that has not only the fiber, but also some of the other nutrients that you’re missing out on, so all you’re really left with is starch, plus some nutrients that we add back in the steps of processing, called fortifying.  So the other thing to think about with healthy carbohydrates is back to the question that I said before: how close is this food to the way it comes out of the ground?  Wild rice, we’ve eaten for a long, long time, and you can literally grow it in wet environments where we grow rice, and you can eat it just like that.  You don’t find white rice in the wild.  You have to go through these steps of processing, so there’s steps to get to the point of being white rice.  It’s removed from –

Alyssa:  I thought we grew white rice.  I had no idea.  I thought there were little shoots of white rice.  I didn’t know they literally had to pull it off – so if I took wild rice and took the hull off, like you said, it would be white rice inside?

Genevieve:  I think a good comparison might be whole wheat versus white flour.  It’s the same process.  They remove the hull and they remove the bran, which is all the fiber, where all the fiber is, to get white flour versus a whole wheat flour.  And so whole wheat is obviously better because you’re getting a lot more nutrients.

Alyssa:  Who did this?  And who started it, and why?  Like, how did this even come about?  Why would they say, I don’t like the color of brown flour; I want to make it white?

Genevieve:  From what I understand of the history of it, it’s just that for flour at least, the white flour was considered a luxury item, and so very rich, wealthy people, that’s what they wanted.  And so it just became more and more popular because obviously, everyone wants to imitate the rich and powerful, and so yeah, it just became the natural way that we eat flour.

David:  My understanding, too, is there’s better shelf stability when you remove some of those nutrient components, and so we can store these things better.  So maybe at first, we might have thought that was great, and now we’ve learned a few things about how that’s not so great.

Alyssa:  My mind is blown.  I had no idea.  I knew it was bad, but it’s like you don’t really know how – again, it’s the whole processed thing, and that’s what the definition of processed is.

Genevieve:  And we’re coming to a really cool point in time right now where people do want to be educated about what they’re putting in their bodies, and I feel maybe for the last 50 years, it wasn’t that way.  People wanted the things that were shelf stable and wouldn’t go bad, and that was the priority, and convenience, especially.  And now people are realizing this isn’t helping us.  We’re not healthy.  We’re going to the doctor for all these reasons that have been preventable for many years.  So people are really paying attention to their diets again.

David:  They are, but I think a lot of people don’t – we haven’t learned how to cook and how to be a home chef very well, and so people think, oh, I’m supposed to eat these things.  They go to the store and they buy these healthy vegetables, and then they come home, and they either don’t know how to make it and it goes bad, or they make something mediocre.  And that’s one thing I like about Life Fuel is that it’s healthy foods, but it’s all delicious.  You know, people would like the foods whether or not they were trying to change their diet or eat healthy.

Alyssa:  Right.  So we’re going to stop this one here, and I want to talk to you again because you have two little boys at home, and I want to talk about getting them to eat.  So thanks for joining us today.  And thank you, Genevieve, for being here from Life Fuel.  Why don’t you tell us your website?

Genevieve:  So the website is www.lifefuelbyvault.com.

Alyssa:  I’m going to go home and eat one for lunch today!  You can always find us at goldcoastdoulas.com, and you can listen on iTunes and SoundCloud.  Thanks for listening!

Podcast Episode #37: Meal Advice from a Dietician Read More »

Cindy's Suds

Podcast Episode #36: Minimizing Products

Today Alyssa and Cindy of Cindy’s Suds talk about ways to minimize your bath products.  Can we get by with just one lotion?  Can we use soap as shaving gel?  Find out on today’s episode!  Listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello!  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am your host, Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula, and I’m talking with Cindy from Cindy’s Suds again today.  Hey, Cindy.

Cindy:  Hey, how are you?

Alyssa:  Today we’re going to talk about minimizing all the products.  So I am very much a minimalist, and it drives me crazy that when I open the drawers in my bathroom, I have ten different care products and probably three different face lotions and three or four different eye creams.  I just have so much stuff.

Cindy:  Stuff, yeah.  And they each promise something a little bit different, and so you feel like you need it.

Alyssa:  Yes, like, oh, I need to try that, or oh, this face cream has zinc oxide, and then I try it and my face turns purple, so then I don’t like it anymore.  So now I have to buy a new one, but I don’t want to throw that one away because it probably cost $20 or something.

Cindy:  Exactly, yeah.

Alyssa:  So, yeah, I have drawers and drawers and drawers of stuff, and I’ve been very intentionally trying to minimize all this extra stuff that I have.

Cindy:  It’s funny because I’ve been doing the same thing at my house, too.  We’ve had kind of a crazy year, like I’ve shared with you, and it makes me so happy to just go through a drawer and just dump it all and very carefully hand-select the five things that I use out of that drawer of fifty.  So I’m totally with you on that.

Alyssa:  I have a mom who will take anything, so she loves it when I give her stuff that I don’t use anymore.  That’s kind of what I do as my backup plan.  But I love that I’ve found you since partnering with you at Gold Coast.  I absolutely love your products.

Cindy:  Thanks.

Alyssa:  So my daughter, as you know, because of food allergies, had really bad eczema.  The healing salve and the body butter for her is amazing, and whether it’s just dry skin, whether it’s the eczema, whether it’s a sunburn, anything.  When I felt that body butter, I was like, oh my God.  I’m in love.  So now we order eight at a time online when I get online, and I love it.  You know, even for Mother’s Day, I loved the almond so much that I got it my mother and my mother-in-law, the almond body butter.  You know, just that you can have this one little thing to use as your one lotion.

Cindy:  For multiple uses, right.

Alyssa:  And then with the unscented one, I can put a very small amount on my hands and actually use it on my face.

Cindy:  Exactly, yeah.

Alyssa:  So just going through and trying to minimize.  I still need an eye cream; I still need a sunscreen for my face.  So there’s things that I need, but I don’t need three different options of each.  And we use your soap now in the shower.  For some reason, I thought I wouldn’t like having a bar of soap.

Cindy:  Were you a body wash person before that?

Alyssa:  Yeah, I used this Dr. Bronner’s that can be used for anything.  It’s super simple.  But for some reason, I like having a bar of soap.  I never thought I would.  And I use exfoliation gloves, so I just put that soap right in between there, and it gets all sudsy.

Cindy:  Yeah, so that works great for increasing the suds.  I’ve done stuff like that, too.  So I just use our bar of soap for everything, and it doesn’t matter what I’m using it for.  You can use it on your face, use it on your body.  You can shave with it.  It produces a great lather for shaving for both women with their legs and guys with their faces.

Alyssa:  I haven’t tried it for shaving yet.  Then I could get rid of my shaving cream.

Cindy:  You can get rid of your shaving cream, yeah.  It’s amazing for that.  Plus, it also, being natural soap, it’s going to moisturize your legs much better than regular bar soap would.  So use it for shaving – guys, too.

Alyssa:  And you won’t get a razor burn?

Cindy:  Heck, no.  Never.  Never, never, never.

Alyssa:  So how sudsy does it have to get?  I’m just picturing this, like – oh, razor going on my legs…

Cindy:  Tomorrow, you do it and then you tell me.  And you’ll be like, oh, I didn’t realize.  Yeah, and that’s kind of a misnomer, too.  You don’t necessarily have to have suds to shave well.  When you’re using a natural soap, there’s so many good emollients in it just with the products.

Alyssa:  And you don’t have the sodium laurel sulphate, which produces the fake suds, right?

Cindy:  No, no, no, exactly.  So it’s not going to suds up like a crazy sudsing product.  I mean, if you use your exfoliation gloves or if you use a brush, like guys use brushes to create lather, you can certainly do that and make it look more sudsy.

Alyssa:  What do you mean, a brush to create a lather?

Cindy:  You know how guys use a brush when they shave?  So the same thing with our soap.  You can use our soap with a brush to do the wet shaving that guys do, and all you do is you get that brush hot and just swirl, swirl, swirl a couple times on top of your soap, and it creates a lather with just the mechanical action.

Alyssa:  And you rub it in your legs and your armpits and whatever.

Cindy:  You can, but that’s the whole thing.  If you want to, if that makes you happy to get the suds, awesome.  Totally do it.  But you don’t need to.  You can just rub it between your hands, and whatever small amount of lather you get, just the fact that it’s a natural soap, it’s going to be great for shaving.  So just try it tomorrow and tell me how you’ll like it, and you’ll be like, ding, one more product I can get rid of; throw it into the trash.  And also too for guys – like my husband is practically bald, so he has a little bit of hair on the sides and he keeps it super short.  He just uses the soap.

Alyssa:  There’s no need for shampoo and conditioner, right?

Cindy:  No.  So you just use the soap on your head.  And guys with short hair, too – I mean, you have short hair, but I would probably still not use –

Alyssa:  I was going to ask you.  I have short hair…

Cindy:  I wouldn’t just because when I’ve tried it – I have very long hair, but you can try it.  It might feel tacky.  But for guys that literally have, like, stubble hair, it’s perfect and easy, and it’s also one less thing that you’re buying because you’re just really trying to get the oil off your scalp.  So it works great for guys who are bald to near-bald.  They don’t need any kind of special shampoo with chemicals in it to make you feel like you’re getting sudsiness on your head.  So yeah, the soap is so multipurpose.  Then the tip that I was going to give you: so when I wash my face, I just get lather in my hands, and I sprinkle a little sugar in my hands inside the lather, and then I use that on my face.

Alyssa:  Oh, for exfoliating.

Cindy:  So it’s an exfoliation, and sugar also helps to seal in moisture.

Alyssa:  What?

Cindy:  Yeah.

Alyssa:  Is that why you see sugar scrubs?

Cindy:  Right, yeah.  And we have a sugar scrub too, but for my face, I just wash with our bar soap, and I sprinkle some sugar.

Alyssa:  So do you keep a little jar of sugar in your shower?

Cindy:  Not in my shower; next to my sink, I do.  I really do.  It sounds silly, but that’s what I do when I wash my face at night.  I don’t do it in the morning.  I don’t do it twice a day.  I just do it a night.

Alyssa:  Interesting.

Cindy:  So you have the soap that you can use for multiple things: shaving; washing; if you have short hair or balding hair, you can use it for that.  Our one jar of healing salve, you can use that for so many things, like you mentioned: cuts, scrapes, burns, sunburns, poison ivy.  Use it like you would a Neosporin if you’re trying to get away from petroleum-based products and chemicals.  Try the healing stuff first.  What did I miss?  Diaper rash; regular rashes.  A lot of kids even ask for it, like, “I want boo-boo cream,” because they know it works.  They know that it feels good.

Alyssa:  And it doesn’t sting.

Cindy:  It doesn’t sting, and kids know.  You know, if something stings, that kind of is a little red flag.  Why is this stinging?  Something shouldn’t sting if you’re using it on your skin.  So yeah, so there’s another easy product to kind of hit a bunch of others right into the trash.  You don’t need to have a certain cream for rashes and a certain cream for poison ivy and a certain cream for scratches and bug bites.

Alyssa:  Which is what I had for her when we found out – you know, the dermatologist just says, well, it’s eczema; put cortisone cream on it.  So I had three different types of cortisone cream, and I had probably three different types of body lotions which were all horrible for her.  Now, literally, I have the body butter and the healing salve, and I have a tiny little bit of cortisone cream for when it get really, really, really bad.

Cindy:  For the flares, exactly.  And if you are a true eczema sufferer, that cortisone can be your saving grace when you have a flare-up of it.  So I’m not one of those that are like, “It’s all or none.  You have to just use natural.”  There is a place and a time for everything, and I would certainly hang on to your cortisone because if you need it, man, a couple days of that brings you right back to square one, and you can then continue using the healing salve and keeping that skin healthy.

Alyssa:  That’s exactly what we do.

Cindy:  Yeah, you don’t want to get rid of that because there is definitely a place to use it, but you don’t need all of those jars and ointments and blah blah blah.  So it’s all about really trying to think through what’s healthy for me; what’s good for me.  And on that level too, and I know you’re very into this, if you have too much stuff around, that makes you feel unhealthy because you just feel stressed and anxious about all the stuff.  So that not only is helping on a physical health level by choosing healthy products, but also mentally, you’re clearing some of that clutter from your mental awareness, and that, too, just allows you to breathe easier.

Alyssa:  I’m all about the clearing the clutter.

Cindy:  I know.  Right?

Alyssa:  Now I need to go back to my bathroom drawers and rethink all the clutter that I thought I got rid of, but it’s still pretty bad.

Cindy:  I know, yeah.  It’s kind of a constant process.

Alyssa:  Yeah.  Well, I think everyone needs to go and start with one drawer.  Pick one of the three drawers in the bathroom; just pick one, like on a Sunday afternoon or something.  Just start to – here’s stuff I don’t need.  Here’s maybe stuff that’s not necessarily good for me, and what am I going to replace it with?

Cindy:  The other thing that I’ll say real quick is that if something is a year old or older, pitch it.

Alyssa:  Really?

Cindy:  You really shouldn’t hang on to things.

Alyssa:  Because of bacteria growth?

Cindy:  Bacteria growth, yeah.  Even if it’s store-bought.  And a caveat to that: if it’s a strictly oil-based product, like our healing salve, an oil-based product that is nothing else.  Anything with water in it really should be used up within a year.  But if it’s an oil-based product, no water added, those are good for two to three years.  But if you’re looking at anything that you’ve bought conventionally and you look on the ingredients, if there is water in it, it’s going to have to have a preservative, and in that situation, you really should pitch it if it’s been a year.  Makeup, too.  Makeup can get nasty bacteria, too, after a year.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I’ve thrown out makeup before.  And I wash my brushes a lot, too, because I think that’s probably – that grosses me out too.

Cindy:  Yep, super smart.  Yeah.

Alyssa:  A little bit of germaphobe in me, as well.

Cindy:  You know, that’s probably why you’re so healthy.

Alyssa:  All sorts of issues.  Well, cool.  Thanks for coming again.  Tell people where to find you.  They probably already know, but let’s tell them again.

Cindy:  Okay.  You can find us at www.cindyssuds.com, and you can find us locally at Harvest Health, Kingma’s, Hopscotch, Bridge Street Baby, and there’s several other vendors in the Grand Rapids area that carry us in smaller amounts, as well.

Alyssa:  Cool.  Check them out.  And as always, you can find us at www.goldcoastdoulas.com.  Email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.  And you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and iTunes.  Thanks!

Podcast Episode #36: Minimizing Products Read More »

4d moments

Podcast Episode #35: 4D Moments Ultrasound

Ever wondered what the difference is between a 3D and 4D ultrasound?  Are they safe?  Today we talk to Jessica from 4D Moments to answer all these questions!  You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello!  Welcome to Ask the Doulas podcast.  I am your host, Alyssa Veneklase.  I am co-owner at Gold Coast and also a postpartum doula.  Today we’re talking to Jessica from 4D Moments.  How are you, Jessica?

Jessica:  I’m great.

Alyssa:  So we recently connected because we were going to do an event together, and then we got talking a little bit more.  And I would love for you to tell our moms more about your service.  And I’m curious, too, because I don’t know much about you.  Is this your business?

Jessica:  I am the owner.  I’ve been open for just over five years in Kalamazoo, and then I’ve been coming to Grand Rapids here for the past three years.  And we’re now in our own location on Alpine in Grand Rapids.

Alyssa:  Which I visited to pick up your lovely fliers.  It’s really nice.  Tell us about your facility.

Jessica:  There’s just one scan room.  People, when they walk around the corner, they typically go, wow, because we have a big, very nice, regular mattress bed.  Moms always comment on how comfortable it is.  And it’s kind of high up because I’m tall, so I like to be able to reach them well without leaning, so they’re kind of like a queen on that bed.  And we have a nice couch in there and a bench; we can bring in several chairs.  We can seat eight to ten people, and I’ve had more than a dozen or more, if they want to squeeze in, so that everyone can enjoy it.

Alyssa:  Wow, so they bring their whole family?  And if there’s other kids?

Jessica:  Yes, kids of course are welcome!

Alyssa:  Fun!  So what’s the difference – your brochure says 3D and 4D ultrasound.  What’s the difference between those two?

Jessica:  3D is a still image, like the color baby pictures that you see on our website and our brochure; that’s a 3D image.  4D is when you put that to time, so it’s like the video version of that.  So the fourth dimension is time.

Alyssa:  Okay.  So do you have different packages, then, if people want just 3D; if they want both?  Do you actually print out pictures?  What does that look like?

Jessica:  Yes, 3D and 4D come together.  You can’t get one without the other.  We do have different package options; some that are just 2D because there are some stages of the pregnancy where 3D/4D isn’t the most attractive because Baby is small and skeletal.  So early on in the pregnancy is not always the best time for that, so we do have some 2D options, just the black and white, regular ultrasound that you get at your doctor’s office.  And then we have several options for the 3D/4D.  You can get those anytime from 12 to 40 weeks, but the best time for the 3D/4D facial videos and pictures is 28 – 32 weeks.  Anywhere from 24 – 36 weeks is usually very good.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I remember doing that with my daughter, and she just wouldn’t budge.  She was turned the wrong way and I couldn’t see her face, so I had to go again.  How often does that happen?

Jessica:  Yeah, that happens about 10% of the time that you come and the baby’s just in a bad mood or sleeping and will not move or is tougher than I am and I cannot make them get their hands out of their face or their feet out of their face.  So we just have a courtesy to bring you back one time for no charge to try again.  Most of the time, that works great.  We just catch them on a better day.

Alyssa:  So what made you get into this?

Jessica:  I was looking for a new business to start.  We were selling a different business and looking for the next idea, and I found the one over in Detroit area that just totally captured me.  I’m the mother of eight, so…

Alyssa:  Eight?

Jessica:  Yes, eight!

Alyssa:  I did not know that about you!

Jessica:  Yes!  And so babies are kind of my thing, and I just loved the idea, that this could be a non-clinical, just a fun way to bond and spend time with the baby.  You know, we can involve the grandparents, the older brothers and sisters, and just make it a fun thing rather than what the doctor’s office has to do with all the clinical stuff.  So we get to skip most of that and just make it fun.  So I started my own over here in Kalamazoo and now in Grand Rapids.

Alyssa:  So what’s the reason most parents come to you?  Are they looking to find out the gender, or do they normally do that at the doctor, and then they just want a picture from you?

Jessica:  Three main reasons; the two most common are just they want a good picture of their baby’s face.  The second biggest reason is to find out gender early.  We recommend 16 weeks; we’re able to find it over 99% of the time at that age.  We find it at 15 weeks and 14 weeks, too, with a lower percentage of chances, but still, over 99% accuracy no matter what.  We’re not going to make a call unless we can get it right.  And so that brings a lot of people in because, you know, you’re a pregnant mom; you wake up, you all of a sudden have to know what you’re having today.  And so once they come in for that and then they see the office and how comfortable it is and how nice it is, most of the time I get them back later in their pregnancy.  The third reason that’s less common is those who just want to come in at that 12 weeks and get a great picture of their baby in 2D so they can announce it to the family.  Or just peace of mind, if they have to wait until their 20 weeks to get one at their doctor’s office.  They just want to see their baby and feel better about it.

Alyssa:  Have you had a mom come in often, like more than one or two times?   What’s the most that someone’s come in for an ultrasound?

Jessica:  Not counting bring-backs, which are the free returns, probably about four is the most; four paid visits.  We don’t want you in every week; that’s not what we’re here for, but you know, they come in maybe early to find the gender, and then a month later, they can’t wait to see again, and then they’re getting close near the end, so they come again.  Plus we have a two-visit package as one of our options, so that’s automatically two if they do one early, and then they might want to do it again later.

Alyssa:  So for a mom who wants to see their baby more often like that, maybe three or four times instead of one, are there any safety precautions or anything they need to worry about?

Jessica:  Great question.  There are no safety concerns, especially after 12 weeks.  Ultrasound is just soundwaves.  It’s completely safe.  There are many medical conditions that require you to have to do it every day later in pregnancy.  Doctors know that it’s completely safe for the baby and for you.  There’s never, ever been an injury after 12 weeks of an ultrasound on a baby.

Alyssa:  I’ve heard people say that they think there’s radiation.  That’s absolutely not true?

Jessica:  Not true, and the 3D/4D is the same soundwaves.  It’s not like stronger soundwaves or something more dangerous.  It is not any different than just soundwaves.  You can feel vibrations coming through the probe, like the mom sometimes can tell when the machine shuts off and stops running or freezes because the vibrations stop.  Your baby does often – I think that they can tell when I’m there sometimes because they feel those sound vibrations hitting them, but it’s just sound; just soundwaves.

Alyssa:  So what’s the process?  If we had a mom who wanted to get an ultrasound, what do they do?  Call you?

Jessica:  They can call.  They can go to our website and request an appointment or just a contact through our website, and then I’ll get an email and either give them a call or an email back.  Or they can go to our Facebook page.  We have a very active Facebook page.  We run a contest every month for a free ultrasound.  Right now, we actually give two away every month.  Or you can contact me and message me through Facebook.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  And what’s your website?

Jessica:  It’s www.4dmoments.com.  Our Facebook page: just search 4D Moments.  And our phone number is 269-384-2229.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Well, thanks for coming.  We’re excited to partner with you.  We’ve been giving away your information to our moms at classes and stuff.

Jessica:  Great!  Thanks for having me.  I really appreciate it!

Alyssa:  Sure!  As always, you can find Gold Coast on our website, goldcoastdoulas.com.  Email us with questions about this or suggestions for different topics.  Our email is info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  You can find us on Facebook and Instagram, and you can listen on iTunes and Soundcloud.  Remember these moments are golden.  Have a good day!

Podcast Episode #35: 4D Moments Ultrasound Read More »

rise wellness chiropractic

Podcast Episode #34: Chiropractic Care During Pregnancy

Today we talk to Dr. Annie of Rise Wellness about what chiropractic care looks like during pregnancy.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or Soundcloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula at Gold Coast.  Today, we have Dr. Annie with us.  She is a local chiropractor, and many of our clients have seen her.  Hello!

Dr. Annie:  Hello!

Alyssa:  So we get a lot of questions about what a chiropractor actually does during pregnancy.  How do you support women, and why should they go see you when they’re pregnant?

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, so chiropractic philosophy is kind of based on the premise that life expresses intelligence and that normal physiology knows exactly what it’s doing.  And this is probably the most prevalent in pregnancy or the most seen in pregnancy because we see this baby developing within this woman, and –

Alyssa:  It just happens.

Dr. Annie:  It just happens.  It’s an amazing thing, and I think a lot of times today that the beauty of that process kind of gets taken away.  So that’s something great about chiropractic is that we honor the system of the body, and we honor the mother.  And we just try to make sure that they’re communicating, brain and body, and everything’s developing properly the way that it’s supposed to.

Alyssa:  So for someone who understands chiropractic care and has maybe seen a chiropractor, does anything change when you’re pregnant?  I know there’s different things happening in your body as a woman who’s pregnant, but does the care change?

Dr. Annie:  Yes, the care does change.  So for one thing, the chiropractor is still going to address your nervous system and make sure that your spine and everything is in good alignment, but because of some of the biomechanical changes that are occurring during pregnancy, the woman has a lot more relaxin, which is a hormone that’s secreted during pregnancy that allows ligament laxity.  So that is in preparation for labor, for stretching of the pelvis and everything.  So the way the chiropractor would address this issue is they’re going to focus more on the pelvis and the bony alignment of the pelvis, where the sacrum is in relation to pelvic bones, and make sure that there isn’t any twisting there because that can cause muscle imbalances.  And the uterus is also attached and tethered to the bony pelvis, so if there is any kind of misalignment in the pelvis, then the chiropractor needs to address that because that tethering to the uterus can cause some constraint in the uterus, as well.  So we want to make sure that everything is lined up.  And then the nervous system runs through all of those bones, so we want to make sure that if all of those bones are aligned, that the nervous system is communicating the way that it’s supposed to so everything can develop correctly.

Alyssa:  And did I hear that you are now the only Webster-certified chiropractor?

Dr. Annie:  I’m not the only Webster-certified in Grand Rapids, but I am now Webster-certified.  But I will be, I think, the only one within the city of Grand Rapids fully certified for pediatric and pregnancy care.  So I’ve done all of the ICPA courses.  I have a three-month exam that I need to take in order to be fully certified, but I’m working on it.

Alyssa: So what does that mean to me, having no idea what Webster-certified means?   And you said you’re also certified for pediatric and pregnancy – there’s two different certifications?

Dr. Annie:  No, Webster is a technique and analysis of the pelvis, and it’s actually applicable to any gender, any age, but it’s used most in pregnant women to balance the pelvis and make sure that there is enough room for the baby to come through.  The Webster certification is done through the ICPA, which is International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, so that is a one-module course that chiropractors can take.  They go down for the weekend, learn all about the adjusting technique and the analysis and everything, and then get tested on it there and then become Webster-certified.  The full certification process for pediatrics, also through the ICPA, is 14 modules, 2 research projects, and then a big exam at the end.

Alyssa:  Okay, so it’s kind of like, in my world, the difference between a CLC, which is a certified lactation consultant, and an IBCLC, which an International Board-Certified.  It’s a lot more work, a lot more extensive.  You both know what you’re talking about, but one has just tons of hours and hours and hours put into this certification.

Dr. Annie:  Exactly, and the full certification covers not only Webster technique, but it covers chiropractic research in pregnancy and pediatrics; it covers nutrition; neurology.  So it’s a lot of intensive information about specific pediatric care; how to adjust babies; how to analyze babies; because we don’t want to treat them like they’re little adults and adjust them the same way that we would an adult.  We want to be able to recognize things because they’re going through growth milestones.  We want to be able to analyze, especially for a newborn, since they can’t communicate where certain things are or where they’re having symptoms.  We need to be able to analyze their spine in a different way and in a unique way and be able to adjust it.

Alyssa:  So that’s something your certification would include, but not the weekend one?

Dr. Annie:  Right.  The Webster technique is primarily for adults, but it’s really good for pregnant women, like I said.  So it is adjusting the pelvis and then working with some of the ligaments in order to facilitate the growth of the baby.

Alyssa:  So I think a lot of people when they hear Webster think that chiropractors who practice Webster turn babies.  True or not true?

Dr. Annie:  I would say not true.  So turning babies isn’t really what the premise behind Webster technique is for.  Like I said, it’s about balancing the pelvis, making sure everything’s in correct alignment.  Some of the benefits of that, though, are – let me back up a little bit.  So Williams Obstetrics talks about dystocia, which is difficulty during labor.  There’s three primary causes of difficulty during labor.  One is power; one is passage, and one is passenger.  So the power has to do with how well your uterus can contract during labor.  So neurologically, having chiropractic to make sure everything is in line will help the neurology work there so that the uterus can contact and coordinate its contractions appropriately.  With passage, that’s the bony pelvis; that’s what we’re talking about, so that’s the pelvic outlet; that’s where the baby’s going to come through.  So we want to make sure everything’s in line there.  And then passenger: the baby needs to be in a good position for everything to go smoothly so there’s no difficulties during labor.  So what Webster technique is focused on is making sure that those first two things are working appropriately, and then the baby, if it has enough room within the uterus and within the bony pelvis, if everything’s lined up, then most of the time, they can turn on their own.  They innately know what position they’re supposed to be in, so as long as there’s no interference to that system, then they should be able to turn themselves.

Alyssa:  I love that, the passenger.  That’s really fun.  So it’s really not about turning babies; it’s making – if everything else is lined up properly, the baby just knows inherently to do it on its own?

Dr. Annie:  Exactly, yeah.  It’s all about optimizing position and then the mom’s body and getting it ready for labor.

Alyssa:  So do you have stats on the passenger – like if a mother is seeing a Webster-certified chiropractor and maybe wants you to turn her baby, how often does it actually work?

Dr. Annie:  Well, there’s a couple of studies that have been done by the ICPA.  One in 2012 had 81 pregnant patients with mispositioned babies.  So they were testing it, just adjusting the pelvis, focusing on that, and 70% of the babies turned to the correct position after Webster care, which is pretty awesome.  I found another study that was in 2007 where they studies 102 moms, and 92% of them turned on their own with Webster care, which is really awesome.  They say that 9% will spontaneously turn anyway without any sort of care or intervention because the baby is supposed to be in the head-down position.

Alyssa:  That’s a pretty small percent, though.  If you’re nearing your due date and your baby is flipped, you have a 9% chance; that’s it?

Dr. Annie:  Exactly.  There’s a lot of C-sections that happen because of breech babies, which is kind of – I don’t want to say it’s unnecessary trauma, but if there’s something that you can do to prevent having surgery, then that is a pretty good chance.

Alyssa:  Yeah, 92% is really good.  So what else do we need to know about Webster-certified care that maybe most parents don’t know about?

Dr. Annie:  It’s safe.  It’s safe as long as you have a good, healthy pregnancy.  There are some contraindications to having Webster care.  And some of those things are modifiable, too, so Webster itself is kind of like a traditional chiropractic adjustment, but there are some modifications that you can do to make it a lot easier for the mom, as well.  So if there are any contraindications like preeclampsia, placenta previa, things like that, bleeding during pregnancy and stuff, those are all contraindications because we just want Mom to be in the healthiest position.  So if Mom isn’t having a healthy pregnancy, then we don’t want to go in and intervene with anything like that because we just want her to be as healthy as possible and make sure that the baby is healthy, too.  But that being said, there are modifications and gentler things that we can do, as well.  Not to say that Webster’s not gentle, but it is making sure that those bones are aligned in the pelvis.

Alyssa:  So is it more of the cracking technique versus –

Dr. Annie:  Some of it is utilizing the drop in the table, too, which can be a little abrupt.  We always say the baby’s going to hear this, probably, because it’s a loud sound, but it’s not going to hurt the baby at all, which I think is important for mothers to realize, too.  But we do modify a lot of things, like we use the activator technique in our practice.

Alyssa:  Which is very gentle?

Dr. Annie:  Yeah, very, very gentle, too, but it gets the same job done.

Alyssa:  Cool.  Well, I think that explains it really well.  I think we will have you on again to talk about chiropractic care for babies.  I think that would be a good topic.

Dr. Annie:  I would love that.

Alyssa:  Tell us where people can find Rise Wellness.

Dr. Annie:  So you can find us online at www.risewellnesschiro.com, or we’re also on Facebook and Instagram, and both those are @risewellnesschiro.

Alyssa:  Thank you so much.

Dr. Annie:  Thank you.

Alyssa:  And you can always contact us at goldcoastdoulas.com.  Email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and of course, iTunes.  Talk to you next time.

Podcast Episode #34: Chiropractic Care During Pregnancy Read More »

summer safety

Podcast Episode #33: Summertime Safety

Today Cindy and Alyssa talk about some summer safety tips including water safety at the beach and pool and tips for avoiding a sunburn.  You can listen to the complete podcast episode on iTunes or Soundcloud

 

Alyssa:  Hello.  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I’m so excited to be here with my friend Cindy again from Cindy’s Suds.

Cindy:  Hello.

Alyssa:  Hi.  Today we’re going to talk about a very relevant topic because it’s summer time and everyone’s swimming.  We’re going to talk about water safety.

Cindy:  Great.

Alyssa:  I was recently at a pool party for the 4th of July, and my friend and I both have five-year-olds in the water.  We’re very conscious about making sure somebody had eyes on them at all times because it can be really scary.  I know you have a personal story.

Cindy:  I actually have several, and the thing that is so crazy about that is that at pool parties, I look around and I see moms hanging out with moms, and no one’s watching the kids.  And it really, really freaks me out because drowning is a silent activity, and that’s what most people don’t realize.  Most people think, because it’s portrayed on TV by splashing –

Alyssa:  Splashing, yelling.

Cindy:  Hands in the air, “help, help.”  But drowning is silent, and I’ve witnessed several near-drownings just with my own family, friends, things like that, and it’s something that will stick with you forever once you see it initially.  It first started out when I was growing up.  I’m quite a bit older than my sisters, and I had to take my sisters to swimming lessons when they were little.  And all of the moms were chit-chatting; they probably had cocktails, and they were all in a little circle.  There was one pool instructor in the water with eight or ten kids, and I’m watching the kids.  I’m obviously young, so I’m not hanging with the moms.  I’m just sitting, focusing on the water, and my sister, actually, just slipped right below the water.  The pool instructor had her back to her.  The other moms were happy doing their little mom chit-chat, and I just remember my sister’s eyes boring into my eyes.

Alyssa:  From under the water?

Cindy:  From under the water, slipping slowly under the water.  And I just – it took a second, and I’m just thinking, there’s nobody around.  Nobody’s paying attention.  And I jumped in the water, pulled her out, got her out.  She was hysterical.  She was coughing up water, and it was so scary.  And none of the adults were any the wiser.  Obviously, after I jumped in, they were like oh, what happened?  But no one saw it because it’s so silent and it’s so quick.  And it just happens in the blink of an eye, and if you’re visiting with your girlfriends or have any kind of distraction, like we all do, you could miss something that could potentially be such a tragic incident.

Alyssa:  Did your sister ever go back to swim lessons?

Cindy:  She did, but it took some convincing, obviously, and she was scared to death because she was trusting that people were going to watch her.  She was little.  She didn’t know.

Alyssa:  How old was she at the time?

Cindy:  I want to say she was probably around your daughter’s age, five or six.  Maybe a little bit younger, but right around that age.  And so it was just that image, just burned into my mind.

Alyssa:  I can tell you can still see it.

Cindy:  Yeah, I can visualize it.  It’s right there, and this was at least 30 years ago.  It’s just something that is seared in my mind.  And then it happened with our own kids when were taking them to swim lessons.  You turn your back for a second, and there’s one instructor with a bunch of kids.  They can’t possibly watch all the kids, and kids are playing games and goofing off.  The same thing happened with one of our kids, just kind of doing that quick slip below the water, but because their hands are right near the edge, it was super easy to reach down and pull them up.  But the whole point is that as moms, we have to be aware that drowning is silent, and you have to have your eyes on your kids all the time.  Even when they’re older, if you’re in a lake, lake waves and undertows and rip currents are a very real phenomenon, and just because you have older kids, that doesn’t give you the license to just all of a sudden mind your own business and hang out with your friends.  You’ve got to treat water safety with such high regard all the time, no matter how old your kids are, no matter how great of a swimmer they are.  It’s something that is just such a scary potential that you have to have your brain on all the time.  You’ve got to have your eyes focus on your kids.  If you are with girlfriends, that’s fine.  Just don’t look at them when you’re talking.  Just watch the water.  You can still visit, but you’ve got to have your eyes on your kids, and that’s just something that I learned unfortunately early on just with the experience that I had with my own sister.

Alyssa:  I don’t know if it was an article I read or a podcast I heard, but a gal had a similar circumstance where her child actually did almost drown, to the point of resuscitation.  She is adamant about, first of all, water safety, teaching kids to swim, but also, if you’re having a party, you hire a lifeguard.  Whether that’s a 14-year-old kid from down the road, but somebody who’s job is to watch; I know there’s five kids in this pool: I’m going to count five heads all the time.

Cindy:  Yep, continually making that count, all the time.

Alyssa:  And I thought that was such a brilliant idea.  Even this 4th of July party where there were only three kids in the water and you think it’s easy to manage.  I was very adamant, like I said, about either I was in the pool with the kids, or the dads were in the pool: somebody was always in there with them, watching them.  But it’s so easy just to get caught up in grilling, go pour a cocktail, you know, there’s 800 reasons that you turn your back to the pool.

Cindy:  Absolutely, and none of those are bad reasons, but you have to realize that this is a very, very serious problem that could potentially happen if you’re not aware, and you just have to have your awareness on high alert whenever you’re around water, especially with those younger kids that haven’t gone through proper swimming lessons yet and they just don’t know.  You’re not out of the woods, obviously, if your kids can swim, because of the other things we just talked about, but especially before they’re strong swimmer or before they’ve gone through swim lessons, you’ve just got to have your eyes on your kids all the time.  And also kids that aren’t yours.  I’ve been at the beach before, too, where I’ve grabbed little kids right out of a wave that toppled them and they were just continually spinning and spinning.  I’ve pulled them up, looked around – where’s Mom?

Alyssa:  I’ve done the same thing at the beach.

Cindy:  You know?  Yeah.

Alyssa:  And actually, on the opposite end, I saw a very old man who had fallen and the waves kept coming up, and he couldn’t get up.  And I’m watching and thinking, is he just lounging in there?  What in the world?  And it didn’t take very long for me to realize that this man had been knocked over by a wave, and I ran to him and pulled him up.  But just keep your eyes on everybody!

Cindy:  Be aware!  Yeah, and it’s like you just said, it’s not just your own kids, because unfortunately, other moms or other people, if they’re elderly, they just may not be able to sustain their grounding and the waves that we have at Lake Michigan.  And you hear about drownings all the time.  It’s not something that is unusual.   We live by a wonderful body of water, but it’s also to be highly regarded because it can be very dangerous.

Alyssa:  Teaching your children water safety early is crucial.

Cindy:  It’s huge, yeah.  Crucial, crucial.  And also just making sure that as a mom or any parent that’s there, you really should just, even if you want to say, hey, you know, I’m chatting with you, but my eyes are going to be facing the water, and just kind of set that as a rule with whomever you’re going to the beach with, even if it’s just your spouse and you.  Just say, hey, you know, let’s just watch the water and talk.  We don’t need to look at each other to talk.

Alyssa:  And I always say, hey, I’m going to go use the restroom; you keep your eyes on her.  Let them know when you’re leaving and that it’s their responsibility until you get back.

Cindy:  Absolutely.

Alyssa:  So on a lighter note…

Cindy:  I know, that was so heavy!

Alyssa:  I know, it makes my stomach turn just thinking about it.  But sunburns.  I’m adamant with my daughter’s skin because she so fair-skinned.  She can get a nice little tan, but I’m going to turn 40 this year, and you start seeing all the wrinkles and seeing all the damage that I did to myself as a kid sitting out in the sun literally with oil on me.

Cindy:  Oh, yeah.  We used to do baby oil on a rooftop with one of those tin foil-ish blankets under us.  Really?  What were we thinking?

Alyssa:  Why didn’t people tell us?  So bad!

Cindy:  Well, you don’t know what you don’t know.  I mean, at the time, that’s what it was.  You wanted to get as dark as you could.  Burn, because it will turn into a tan.  But obviously we know better now, and we now can take what information is available and apply it to ourselves and our children.  And so obviously when you’re at the beach – or anything outside, but the beach and water are going to have more of that reflective sun damage that occurs just because of the nature of sand and water.  But sunscreen really needs to be something that you’re pretty careful about putting on.  The safe sunscreens nowadays, they’re saying really the safest bet is just to use a mineral-based sunscreen like a zinc oxide.  Titanium dioxide is also kind of like a cousin to that.  They still are saying that zinc oxide is still the best.  So just read labels; see what you’re putting on.

Alyssa:  I think, too, with zinc oxide, it’s hard because you don’t want to look white.  Sometimes it makes your skin look purple, so it’s hard to find one that rubs in really well and doesn’t leave this white film all over, which there are a couple I’ve found.

Cindy:  You’ll have to let me know, because I’m in the process of still trying to find those.  I know a mutual friend of ours has – Kitchen Stewardship, Katie, has a lot of great information on sunscreens that her family has tried.  So we’re going through some of those now to try them on our family to see if they work for our family.

Alyssa:  They’re probably on her list.  In fact, I think they are.

Cindy:  Perfect.  So we’ve gone through several of those, but even just over the 4th of July, my kids were freaking out because I only had brought the zinc oxide, and they’re like, “Why are we white, and we can’t rub it in?”  So I’m like, “Well, sorry, deal with it!”  And my kids are all older.  They are almost 15, almost 17, and almost 19.  So they’re on their own as far as, you know, guys, you’ve got to be responsible, especially my almost-19-year-old.  She’s an adult.  I’m not going to make sure you have your sunscreen on.  I’m going to remind you, like I always do, because the mom part never is gone, but I kept reminding them, “Guys, you’ve got to reapply.  You’ve got to reapply.”  And that night, I had three lobsters, burned, burned, burned badly.

Alyssa:  Is it because they didn’t want to use the zinc oxide?

Cindy:  Probably.  They said they reapplied, but when you’re in the water, you do need to reapply frequently.  It needs to be something that you’re constantly doing.  You dry off with a towel; that mechanical action of towel-on-skin pulls off the sunscreen, so it is something that you need to be conscientious of reapplying all day long.  Plus, we were outside from 10am till 10pm on the 4th of July, so there were many factors.

Alyssa:  Finding some shade in the midst of a long day like that, too, is key.

Cindy:  Right, it is key.  I myself was sitting under a little umbrella because I don’t like being in the sun, so I’m sitting there watching them all, going, “Guys, sunscreen!”

Alyssa:  The sunscreen police in the corner.

Cindy:  Yes, exactly.

Alyssa:  So what did you do for them after the fact?

Cindy:  Thankfully, as many of you know, I have a natural bath and body company called Cindy’s Suds, and so we have a plethora of products at home that I was able to just slather on over and over.

Alyssa:  So would you use the healing salve?  Is it the best?

Cindy:  My top two, and it’s interesting because my kids when they’re burned don’t like the feel of healing salve on their skin because they feel like it makes them greasy.  I prefer that feeling when I’m burned, but they do not, so they prefer the unscented body butter.  The first ingredient in the unscented body butter is aloe vera gel, so that also would make sense as to why for them they prefer that feel.  It’s cooling, and when you put it on, it decreases that skin temperature.  So it’s interesting to me because I have always preferred the healing salve, and my kids prefer the unscented body butter.  But they’re both amazing, and I was slathering their poor bodies with whichever one we had laying next to them.  We probably went through a jar each for each of the kids because they were so badly burned.

Alyssa:  That’s literally to the point of blistering and peeling, right?

Cindy:  Yeah.  Right now, they’re all in the peeling phase.  And yeah, we’ve all done it, but it’s something that is so preventable, and that’s what I shake my fist at and be like, “You all know better.  You all know better.”  I’d much, much rather have you prevent with the sunscreen than to be reactive and now putting on healing salve and body butter because you’ve burned yourself and now you’ve got the consequences of how that feels and what damage it’s done to your skin.  So yeah, so the healing salve and body butter are both amazing at clearing up sunburn and helping it to transition to skin that is not so damaged and burned.  It decreases the body temperature on the surface because you can just feel that heat radiating from those burns.  So either one of those works fabulous, and it’s kind of just more of a personal preference if you like that one feel versus another feel.  And regardless, your skin’s going to be absorbing it so quickly because it is so damaged and so burned, so whatever you’re doing, just make sure that you’re repeating and reapplying and keeping that skin covered to try to help that transition of severe burns to getting that skin healthy again.

Alyssa:  So moral of our story today is prevention and being proactive.

Cindy:  Exactly.

Alyssa:  So for summertime, sun and fun –

Cindy:  Just be aware.

Alyssa:  Be aware of everything.  Cool.  Well, I know we’ve told people before how to find you, but what’s your website, and tell us the stores locally that carry your products.

Cindy:  So the website is cindysuds.com.  We are carried in Harvest Health stores, the Kingma’s stores, Hopscotch, a couple stores in Lowell, Mi Hometown Furnishings and the Lowell Ace Hardware.  We’re now carried in Rockford at a new baby store there, Bridge Street Baby.  I think that covers the local stores, so yeah, stop in.  They carry the majority of our products, and you’re supporting local when you’re purchasing through our local retailers.

Alyssa:  I love your stuff.  I’m a fan.

Cindy:  Thanks.

Alyssa:  So thank you again for coming.  We’ll talk to you again soon, and if anyone has questions for us or for Cindy, you can always email us: info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  Find us on our website, www.goldcoastdoulas.com, Facebook, and Instagram, and you can listen to our podcast, Ask the Doulas, on iTunes and Soundcloud.  Thanks!

 

Gold Coast Doulas is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

 

Podcast Episode #33: Summertime Safety Read More »

rise wellness chiropractic

Podcast Episode #31: Rise Wellness Chiropractic

Dr. Annie and Dr. Rachel of Rise Wellness Chiropractic in Grand Rapids talk about their approach to helping mothers and babies, as well as how and why they decided to start their own practice.  You can listen to the podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud.

 

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and post-partum doula at Gold Coast.  Today, I’m so excited to be talking to Dr. Annie and Dr. Rachel of Rise Wellness.  Hello, ladies.  I want of hear about your new business venture together, Rise Wellness.  We knew you when you worked for a different chiropractor’s office, and what made you both kind of venture out on this alone?

Well, we worked together, so when you work for another chiropractor, you’re kind of under their whole umbrella of their philosophy, their vision, which works for a while until you get to a point when you’re like, this isn’t my philosophy and vision, and there’s other ways I want to help people.  And so we talked about it, and we’re like, let’s open our own.

Yeah.

And we talked to you.  You were like, I got a great space for you.

Yeah, I did.  We’re neighbors.  We’re both in East Town now.

Yeah, it definitely helped facilitate that once Dr. Rachel went on maternity leave to have her twins.  We kind of changed our whole philosophy and our focus to wanting to work more with pregnant moms and babies, too, and we realized that was a huge subset of the population that wasn’t receiving the care that we felt like they needed.  So that’s where we wanted to focus.

Now, most people would get pregnant, and especially pregnant with twins, and not say, “Hey, let’s quit my job and start my own business right when I have these twins.”

It just seemed right.

But you did, and how did that work?  I mean, I know you said timing-wise, it worked because you went on maternity leave and then –

Yeah, I just never went back.

Like, you’re done.

Yeah, it worked out well for that.  I mean, I’m lucky I had Dr. Annie as a partner because she honestly did a lot of it.  And I’m lucky I have a husband that has an MBA and knows how to set up a business and has an accountant.  It really wasn’t that difficult, and it worked out for, like, how am I going to be a mom still but still work and do what I love doing.  And when you work for someone, I really didn’t have the option of working my own hours.  So it just made sense; I’m going to go do my own thing now.

Yeah, that was a big driver for us.

Yeah, that was a big driver.  Okay, I can work the hours I want to work, but I can still stay at home with the girls when I want to be home with them.

And you are my chiropractor, so I’m in your office quite a bit.  And I loved that you have a dresser filled with diapers.  And it’s not just because you have a lot of babies in there, but tell me what you said, Dr. Annie, when I was like, oh, why do you have all these diapers?

Oh, accidental blow-outs.  So after babies get adjusted, their nervous systems are working better, and so their digestion sometimes kicks on right after an adjustment.  And we just want to be prepared and have a space for moms so they don’t have to rush home or rush to the bathroom or anything.  It’s like we can just be available right there and make it easy.  We have a diaper genie, so you don’t have to worry about it stinking up the office or anything.

Yeah, it’s a very baby-friendly space.

Yeah, we want to be accessible and available for everyone who wants to come in, especially moms with kids and stuff.  We know that can sometimes be hectic and messy, and we want to make it as safe an environment for them as possible.

Yeah, I brought my five-year-old in with me last time, and she of course loved the coloring books and the dolls.

Oh, did she come in?

She did, yeah.  She missed you.  I’ll have to bring her in again.

I had my girls in on Saturday, and of course they pooped while we were there.

Which is another nice thing about owning your own space, right?  You owning your business; if you need to bring your daughters in, who’s going to yell at you?

Annie, I guess.  No, just joking.

I would never yell about having them in there!

Tell me about the different approach.  So you were NUCCA chiropractors before, and now you’re doing something completely different.  Can you tell me about what you’re doing now?

Yeah, so we’re definitely focused more on pediatrics and pregnancy care.  We still see everybody, but that’s where we definitely wanted to focus, and we’re both doing additional training in that.  Before we were at an upper cervical practice, which is the top bones of the spine, so we were focused on that.  And we just had a little different philosophy.  We felt like the whole spine was just as important, so we wanted to take what we had learned from the practice that we were at and still say, okay, this is really important, but we’re also going to focus on other areas of the spine and see where changes need to be made there, as well.  So now we’re scanning and checking everything and making sure that everything is lined up and working the way it’s supposed to.

Yeah, with kids and moms and stuff, kids definitely – it’s important to pay attention to the upper cervical area because a lot of things can happen there from birth trauma, but there’s also a lot of things that show up in other areas of the spine, too, especially in kids as they’re starting to pull themselves up and falling down on their butts.  The sacrum is going to be a big one that we’re going to be checking, too, especially if there’s any digestive issues or things like that.

Plus with NUCCA, it was very structural-based.  Like, what’s the structure of the spine.  It’s here; we want it here.  And you had to x-ray.  And obviously you’re not going to be x-raying pregnant women, and with children, you don’t really want to x-ray as often, either.  So there just had to be a different approach, and we use a different exam and we checked the functionality of the nervous system to really look at how is your body functioning?  Not just, well, are you in pain; are your legs level?  It’s like, is your nervous system functioning at its optimum?

Right.  I mean, structure is great.  Posture is great.  A lot of chiropractors use that, but we definitely wanted to take more of a functional approach and say, like, okay, we can actually look at how your nervous system is functioning, how your body’s adapting, how your body’s developing and growing, and saying, we can make that better?  And that to us is more important than is your posture perfect or is your head sitting right on top of your shoulders.  That’s really important too, but if we can actually dive into the nervous system and see how your body’s functioning and adapting, that seems way more powerful and way more –

That’s what changes lives.  It’s not like, oh, my head is –

Yeah, exactly.  At least I look good with my good posture, but is your body functioning right?

So tell people about the scans.  I had never seen anything quite like that, and when you did that to me – do you do that to kids too, the same thing?

Yeah, so that’s relatively new in chiropractic, those scans are.  And it’s really cool.  So we look at thermography, which is the temperature of the back, so we run it along the spine and see what the temperature differences are.

And to let people know, it’s like a tiny little handheld thing with rollers, right?  Is it rollers that I felt, up and down my spine?

Yeah, and then the EMG, which is electromyography.  That’s measuring the energy that the muscles are using to hold you up, so it’s measuring the electricity there.  And that one is just like sensors that go along your spine, as well, at different levels.  And then we do HRV, which is heartrate variability, so kind of similar to measuring your heartrate with a fitness monitor; this is looking at variations in that heartrate.  That’s been used in medical research and literature as a longevity outcome measure, too, so it really shows us how your body’s functioning and how it’s adapting and how your overall health and well-being is.

I’m going to live forever.

You are!  Yours is the best we’ve seen!  It’s better than Dr. Annie’s.

Well, I just – you know, we just opened a practice!

Yeah, it was a really interesting process.  I guess I didn’t really know what I was getting into when you did it, but it was really cool to see the different levels.

Yeah, and the cool thing is when we do those scans, it’s not putting anything into the body.  It’s just measuring what your body’s already doing, so there isn’t any radiation or anything like that.  And that was something that we really liked about doing this approach, more so than taking x-rays.

A pregnant mom can do it.  What about a baby?

Yeah, babies – I mean, it’s difficult, but you can.  It’s just my girls are so squirmy.  So they’re a little more –

Yeah, so thermography’s the easiest thing to do on an infant or on a child.  EMG is a little harder because they have to hold still because, again, you’re measuring what the muscles are doing.  And then for the HRV, instead of putting their hand on the reader, there’s an ear clip that we can use.  So sometimes they don’t like that either, but we just get as much information as we can so we can make the best clinical decisions.

Well, we’re so excited to have you next to us.  It just makes so much sense.

It’s a match made in heaven, right?

Yeah, we’re excited, too.

We know; we happen to know pregnant women.  You can help them.  So what would you like people to know about your practice?

I’m Webster-certified now, and I’ve gone through all of the modules for the full pediatric certification.  I’m just working through my exam right now, so by the end of the summer, I will be fully specialized in pediatrics and pregnancy care, too.  I think there’s maybe two others in Kent County or something like that, so that’s –

Not many.

Yeah, within the city of Grand Rapids, I’ll be the only one, which is just – I think it’s awesome, and I’m excited that I get to specialize in that and work with pregnant moms and kids because it’s so much fun to see those changes in their development and stuff.

Yeah, and kids love it.  Once they start getting adjusted, they know it makes them feel good.  They can tell, and they love it.

And pregnant women, too.

I wouldn’t have made it through my pregnancy.  Guaranteed, I would not have made it through if not –

As long as you did.   I mean, you did amazing.  You went, what, 38?

Almost 39 weeks, yeah.

Almost 39 weeks!  And then gave birth to two eight-and-a-half pound babies!  You did a really good job!

Yeah, and I worked out until about the end there.

And what pregnant mom doesn’t want an easier pregnancy and a quicker, easier labor?

Right.  Well, and I know from my daughter’s perspective, she doesn’t like the cracking kind of chiropractic.  That scares little kids, so yours is very gentle.

It scares a lot of adults too, yeah.  So we use a really kind of unique adjusting tool.  I don’t think a lot of people around here use it.  It’s called an activator.  We have a couple other adjusting tools that we use, but they’re so easy and it’s just really easy for the body to take.  And it’s, again, no twisting.

Yeah, really gentle; really specific.

So if you had to tell a parent who’s never had chiropractic care, if you had to tell them one thing, either about their bodies or their kids’, what do you think people are missing out on?

Optimal health.

Optimal health, yeah.  I mean, that you really – what is that saying?  You live your life through your nervous system.  I mean, your nervous system controls everything.  Everyone thinks chiropractors and they think bones; they think cracking; they think neck pain; they think back pain.  Those are a small piece of it, and the results you get from chiropractic care, like you feel better, but really, we’re dealing with the nervous system, and the nervous system controls everything; everything that goes on in our body.

Yeah, well, and it’s sensation for everything, too, so everything that we perceive in our environment, the way kids – they have tactile exercises and stuff like that for kids, so they want tactile toys and they want a lot of colors.  All of that sensation is helping their neurodevelopment, so that’s every sensation that you have, every emotion that you have, every experience that you have, is all run through your nervous system, and then your body takes that information and decides what to do with it, and then that’s your response to it, too.  So really your entire life experience is run through your nervous system.

And so what chiropractic really does is we remove any interference that might be from the outside world to how you’re interpreting –

In that communicating system.

So we remove it through adjusting the spine and so you really can just live optimally, then.  Your body can function optimally.

In the very, very most basic form, like, our brains run our body, right?

Yep.

And that’s the center for the nervous system?

Absolutely.

It’s where all the nerves come down, and if like you said, everything from a traumatic childbirth to some neck injury from walking and falling on their bums, to 18-year-olds – you know, like how many times did I fall snowboarding?  Who know what I did to my body, right?  All those little tweaks adjust how your nerves —

How your brain’s communicating with your body.   But not just that, but also toxins that we take in or being really stressed out.  That’s also going to show up in your nervous system, so not just trauma.  We call it the three Ts in chiropractic: toxins, trauma, and thoughts, yeah, are causes of subluxation, and so that’s what chiropractors specialize in is removing that interference and restoring that normal communication in the body.

Very well put. 

You can tell we’re pretty passionate about what we do!

Well, you guys should come check out their space.  So they are just a couple doors down from us in the Kingsley Building.  We’re in East Town.  The offices are on the second floor.  You guys are in Suite 201.  Would somebody – if they just wanted to drop in and say hi?  Because you’re there —

Yeah, please.  They can come check out the giraffe table, yeah.

Please stop in.

We’ve got LaCroix and bottled water, coffee.  Come hang out.

And then if they don’t want to stop in, tell people how to find you.

So our website is www.risewellnesschiro.com.  We’re also on Facebook and Instagram at Rise Wellness Chiro, or you can call us.  Or phone number is 616-258-8480.  Otherwise, wave to us on the street.  I usually walk to work, so you’ve probably seen me in my Rise and Shine shirt.

We wear our shirts all the time.

I’ll get a picture of you in your shirts.  Awesome.  Well, thank you both for being here.  I love what you’re doing.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you, yeah.

And as always, you can find us on our website, www.goldcoastdoulas.com, and we are also on Facebook and Instagram.  You can listen to our podcasts on SoundCloud and iTunes.  Thanks.  Remember, these moments are golden.

Podcast Episode #31: Rise Wellness Chiropractic Read More »

Amber Brandt Coziness Consultant

Podcast Episode #30: Amber the Coziness Consultant

How do you make a space cozy when you have children and babies taking over your house?  Amber, The Coziness Consultant, gives us some easy tips for maintaining your sanity during this season of life.  You can listen to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello.  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner at Gold Coast, and I’m also a postpartum doula.  Today we are talking to Amber Brandt.  She is The Coziness Consultant.  Hey Amber.

Amber:  Hello.

Alyssa:  We’ve actually gotten some of your advice for our new office space, and I wanted to kind of talk to you about what you do for specifically new moms.  We’re busy; maybe we’re working.  Even if you’re not working, you have a newborn; maybe you also have a toddler at home.  How do you create an environment at home that feels cozy?

Amber:  So the coziness consultant side hustle started as this idea that people need to be comfortable in their own homes, and if we’re not happy and cozy and our spaces aren’t working for us, then our sanity is in question.  And so for me, I just really feel like for starters, people’s homes need to be a reflection of who they are.  When you come home, you should be able to sit down and let your hair down, and people who come to visit should feel welcome and know who you are by being in your space.  So a couple things that I really try to focus on when I’m talking with a client or a new mom, especially, is the idea of capacity, for one; that we can only be and do so much, and there’s this idea that our lives are like a pendulum of work and rest.  When we’re younger and we’re single and we have very few responsibilities, we go to work and then we just rest.  We go to happy hour; we hang out; you know, we do our thing.  And our pendulum is really wide, that swing.  But when we’re a mom, especially a new mom, our pendulums are really short, and instead it’s like your work is picking up this toy and then your rest is a sip of coffee, and then you’re right back to work again.  So finding a way to make your spaces work for you in the season of life that you’re in, I think, is really important.  So capacity, yeah; the fact that you can only be and do so much.  You need to make your spaces work for you, quirks and all.  The other thing that I talk about is intentionality: looking at a space to determine how does it need to be used.  If you have a dining room that also you homeschool in, or you don’t have a good play area because your child’s bedroom is so small and toys are everywhere – figuring out how to wrangle that and make it work.  And then at the end of the day, how do you want to feel in this space?  If you have these issues that every time you come home and you look around, you’re like, well, there’s that pile of papers again, or oh, these toys aren’t wrangled, then it’s going to affect how you feel about the rest of your life.  And so if you can get your home comfortable and cozy and make it intentional and work, then it’s going to take a lot of pressure off of those other areas of your life.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I feel like I’ve had to let go of some of that as a mom.  I mean, it’s funny you talk about that pendulum because before baby, my husband and I – people would come over and be like, does anyone live here?  This place is so neat and orderly; there’s nothing even on the counter.  And now, in my mind, it’s like a toy explosion.  People still come over and they’re like oh, it looks so great still, and I’m like, oh, my God.  In my mind, it’s a mess, but I’m okay with it.  But I’ve figured out what works for me, like what messes – they’re still a little bit contained, like I keep the toy mess back in her room, and I just deal with that maybe once a week.  Have her help me, right?  But the rest is a space that I feel comfortable in, like you said, and I’m comfortable with a certain amount of untidiness.

Amber:  Right, and realizing that it’s a season, that your kids’ diapers are for a season, and that all the toys that make music and sing and drive you insane are for a season, you know, and it’s understanding the time of life that you’re in and finding that balance of making it work and accepting that this is where I am right now.  I have a client who had me come over, and their house is really midcentury-modern inspired, and she had this long channel in her living room, this narrow space, that used to – when the original builders built it, it was a planter, like a built-in planter.  And they had pulled everything out of it, and it was just this hollow, long, rectangular space.  And she said, it’s so awkward; I don’t know what to do with it.  But every Tuesday night, we have these families that come over for dinner, and the kids always just sit on it.  And I was like, well, then make it a bench.  Eventually you can make it a planter again if you want.  You can tear it out if you want.  But for now, if that’s how it’s used, put a cushion on it and make it storage, and make it work for this season of your life that you’re in.  You don’t have to keep it that way forever.

Alyssa:  Right.  It’s good to do things that you’re able to change.  Nothing’s permanent.

Amber:  Well, and I think, too, something as simple as the way that you look at throw pillows.  Knowing the season of your life you’re in, you’re like, okay, well, I can buy a lovely cream pillow that’s going to get trashed.  Or you can either choose a different color, or you can buy the cream pillow, but don’t spend a lot of money on it and it’s disposable.  Or buy an expensive one that has a zipper, and you can wash it.  Find a way that makes sense.  If you really are going to toss your throw pillow when it gets too trashed, that’s okay.  That’s the season of life that you’re in, and eventually you can invest more in it.  But figure out what makes sense for you so that they’re less of a headache, so that you’re not constantly yelling at kids to get their feet off of them, you know.  If it’s something that they can live with and you can live with, and it’s just the season you’re in, then that’s what works, and do that thing.

Alyssa:  We moved into our house and bought a brand-new sofa and had our baby, and I think a week later she spit up all over it.  And I was just, oh, no, it’s a brand-new sofa!  And my husband’s like, this is probably the first time of many that this is going to happen.  You’re just going to have to deal with it.  And it was.  I mean, I think she spit up breastmilk on it a couple times.  I’ve eaten a chocolate chip cookie on it and gotten chocolate on it.  It happens, so you have to just realize that it is what it is.  It’s kids and even me.  I’m messy, too.

Amber:  Well, and you can be mad about it, or you can just shrug it off and say this is where we are.  The same thing happened with us.  We bought a brand-new mattress for our bed, and it was the kind that comes in a box like a Casper.  And it came, and we unrolled it, and it looked so lovely.  And we sat down on it, and Winslow, our daughter, who seemed fine one second earlier, threw up.  Not spit up; just threw up on the new mattress.  There wasn’t even a sheet on it.  And we both just looked at each other like, okay, well, this is our life now.  And it’s like – it’s just what it is, you know?  And we’re all doing that thing, right?  We all have those stories, and we’re all figuring it out.  But whatever you can do to stack the deck in your favor makes a big difference.  Just a couple things that – when I was thinking about coming here today, I thought that I want to leave these women with something really practical.  So I actually came up with just a couple of things that I do that someone shared with me years ago that have made a big difference.  And one of them is buying all-white towels.  A super simple thing, but there’s that long period of time with interior decorating where everyone bought everything that was matchy-matchy, and how many loads of laundry is that?  So I remember someone told me once, buy really expensive, really nice hotel-quality towels that are all white.  Spend some money on it, and then just simplify your life.  And I was like, that’s such good advice.

Alyssa:  Then you can just throw them all in.

Amber:  One load.  One load, done.  And they’re elegant and lovely, and who doesn’t like stepping out of a shower and feeling like it’s sort of luxurious, you know?  The other thing is keeping a box in your basement or in the garage for garage sale items that have actual stickers.  Just put the stickers right in there, so anytime you walk out to the garage or you have something you need to get rid of, you go out and put a – if you’re into the garage sale thing.  If you’re into donating, by all means, donate it.  But if your goal is to sell it eventually, put a sticker on it with the price immediately.

Alyssa:  And then it’s done.  It’s ready.

Amber:  Yeah.  That’s one that I’m still not great about, and every time, I’m like, man, why don’t I do this?  It’s so good.  So two really practical things to take away from the conversation that are just about simplifying your life and making your head space clearer.

Alyssa:  Thinking ahead – sometimes, especially as a new mom, you can’t wrap your brain around it.  You’re living in the moment.  How do I get through this hour and this day?  Not thinking ahead about what will save me time.

Amber:  Yeah.  But if you can find things that are tiny, you know, like the actual effort to walk the thing to the garage and put a sticker on it, is so much more manageable and bite-sized than thinking about pricing an entire pile; collecting those things and then pricing them all.  So two really helpful things that simplify your life.

Alyssa:  I appreciate it.

Amber:  You’re welcome.

Alyssa:  So how do our moms find you?

Amber:  So my website is www.thecozinessconsultant.com.  Same on Facebook; www.facebook/thecozinessconsultant.  I’m also on Instagram, same handle, and I share little tips and some personal insights on Instagram, and that also feeds into my website.  So those are the best places to find me.

Alyssa:  Well, thanks for being here today.

Amber:  Yeah, thank you.

Alyssa:  We’ll have you on again because you are actually a past client, as well.

Amber:  Yes.

Alyssa:  So we’ll have you on to talk about some of that another time.  But thanks for your advice today!

Amber:  Thank you!

Podcast Episode #30: Amber the Coziness Consultant Read More »

kids cook real food

Podcast Episode #29: Kids in the Kitchen

Today on Ask the Doulas, Katie Kimball of Kitchen Stewardship and Kids Cook Real Food talks to us about how to get your little ones started safely in the kitchen.  There’s also a free download, so be sure to listen so you don’t miss it!  You can catch the podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes

 

Alyssa:  Hello, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, and today we are talking to Katie Kimball of Kitchen Stewardship.  Hi, Katie.

Katie:  Hi, Alyssa.  Thanks for having me!

Alyssa:  Yeah.  So I actually ran into you at an event a while ago and we started talking.  And I had heard of your website before but dug into it a little bit more after meeting you, and there’s so much information here that I think we could probably do ten different podcasts, but we’re going to focus on one right now, and that’s kids in the kitchen.  And I love this because I have a five-year-old who wants to be in the kitchen all the time, and I still don’t feel safe having her around me for most of the things I’m doing – cutting, boiling water.  So I’m sure I’m not the only one, and you could probably give some tips for me and our listeners about how to start kids in the kitchen.  What do we do and how early; you know, is it too early at two to start a kid in the kitchen?

Katie:  Definitely not, and I usually recommend to parents, as a former teacher myself who learned a lot about childhood development in college and then now teaching an online cooking class for kids – I work with a lot of families, and the earlier, the better, honestly.  I recommend getting kids in a sling or a baby carrier, watching you, you know, handing them carrots and things for them to just put in their mouth and teethe on.  Any experience with food and in the kitchen is a good thing, and so the sooner they can get their hands in, the sooner we can kind of get over ourselves and get them in there, the better.

Alyssa:  That’s a great idea, to put them in a carrier.  I never thought about that, like having them watch you do your kitchen duties, you know, chopping, slicing, without them actually getting in the way.

Katie:  Right, absolutely.  And then even as young as 18 months – you know, they really are highly motivated to be involved at that time, and so we don’t want to waste that, right?  We don’t want to be pushing them out just because we are nervous or unsure or we think they’re going to make a mess.  You know, life is messy at that age; might as well have them close to us.  And so I love having kids that age to be smelling spices and maybe even, you know, put a little spice or herb in your hand and let them touch it and let them put it on their tongue just for experiential sake.  You know, we give our kids butter knives at 18 months or 2 years of age and teach them how to be safe with those butter knives, and then by the time they’re five or six, we’re moving on to sharp knives already, to tell you the truth.

Alyssa:  Oh, wow!  I wish!

Katie:  But it’s a process, and you don’t want to go right to sharp knives, but definitely a butter knife and a banana, with a parent who’s showing you where to put your other hand that’s not holding the knife, is a pretty safe endeavor, and it’s so empowering for the kids to feel like they’ve done something real and helpful.

Alyssa:  Right.  So how do you graduate them?  What does the kitchen look like for a two-year-old versus a five-year-old versus an eight-year-old?

Katie:  Yeah, for me it’s all about counter height.  So if you think about an adult and where the counter feels comfortable, it’s usually about your belly button.  Any higher than that, and your elbows are kind of going awkward when you’re working.  So I try to do the same things for the little ones.  For both the two- and the five-year-olds, I prefer to get them to the table.  Unless you have one of those cool things where the kids can climb right in and be up at the counter without worrying about falling off a chair, I like to get them right to the kitchen table because it’s lower and still on a chair and up on their knees so that they are high up above their food.  They can see what they’re doing, and that keeps them in control and keeps them safe.  Also, they’re out of the kitchen, so there’s less elbow-room-jostling, you know.  Mom or Dad is working in the kitchen, and you’re like, oh, I don’t want people in here.  So if you can teach your kids some skills, and then you can set them up at the table practicing their skills while you’re in the kitchen, you’re still together but they’re not in your way.

Alyssa:  Right.  That’s a great idea because I’m probably just as clumsy as my daughter, and I don’t trust myself half the time with the sharp knife.  So having her too close is probably not a good thing.  So you have a PDF that you’ve been working on for us, specifically, because you have online right now some PDFs for 10 snacks that your kids can make, and they’re healthy, but you have tailored one for us that is preschool-age specifically.  Let’s tell people how to find it and why they’d want to download this.  What’s on it?

Katie:  Yeah, exactly.  You can go to www.kidscookrealfood.com/doula, and Kids Cook Real Food is, again, our online video cooking class for kids.  My kids and I put that together, and we’re offering a totally free download for ten snacks your preschooler can make today, and I think today is the most important word because it’s not – you know, it’s just telling you that they’re easy; it’s possible to get preschoolers, kids who are three and four years old, really, really young, in the kitchen, and not only in the kitchen but doing actual things, not just stirring and dumping ingredients in.  Like, they can really help and do at least half if not all of each of these recipes.

Alyssa:  Right.  So I have your other PDF, the ten snacks kids can make, and I really love that you’ve – because my daughter is just learning how to read, but she can’t read the word tablespoon or teaspoon.  So you actually have these portions called mom, dad, kid, and baby, and my daughter could read those words, and she would know what those are when you set those all out.  So I thought that was a brilliant way to teach that to a preschooler.

Katie:  Thank you!  It’s all about empowering kids to be able to do things on their own, right?  And that helps the whole family.  So when we can teach the kids – first of all, putting things in size order is totally a preschool skill; it’s developmentally perfect for what they’re doing.  So if they can lay out your basic tablespoon, teaspoon, half-teaspoon, quarter, in order, and you just say, this is dad, mom, kid, baby – it’s language they know.  Even if they can’t read those words, we use little picture images.  They’re very easy to see, and so not only can they follow a recipe, really, as long as they know a couple numbers, but you can tell them from across the room, oh, grab the kid-size or grab the mom-size and measure some salt, and they can practice measuring.  We have our kids of that age putting together homemade taco seasoning and homemade ranch dressing mix and dry seasoning mixes.  Or like if I’m doing a slow-cooker meal, a three-year-old could measure out the herbs and the salt that go in there while I’m prepping the rest, and again, they’re genuinely contributing to the family, which for a child that age is halfway to a miracle, right?

Alyssa:  Right!  So how closely do you have to watch a three-year-old who’s putting salt in and accidently pours the whole bottle – I just feel like if I left my five-year-old kind of have total control, who knows how this would end up tasting.

Katie:  Right.  Well, it’s a training thing, right?  So I look at everything in the kitchen as a specific skill.  So once they learn the skill of measuring, where you’re very much next to them and working with them, and it’s not dinner time.  You know, when you’re teaching a new skill, it’s right after lunch when everyone is fed and happy, and you’re going to teach this skill with a big bowl of cheap salt or a 9×13 pan of cheap flour, right?  That’s how we teach the measuring, so it doesn’t matter.  There’s no goal other than teaching them how to measure flat, how to hold things, and then they can practice on something like that.  It’s almost like a center in preschool.  So we’ll have that 9×13 of flour, just throw the lid on, and we can get it out the next day when I’m in the kitchen and they want to be near, and then I can – once I’ve shown them close by, I can kind of direct from a little further away with my words, and so it’s definitely an individual thing.  Once the child has shown that they know how to measure flat – we call it no holes, no hills, so it’s easy to remember, then you can trust them.  Now, I mean, I’ve caught my seven-year-old or eight-year-old almost putting in a third-cup of baking powder.  It’s supposed to be a half-teaspoon.  So everybody makes mistakes, right?  So it’s not always about age.  It’s just an experience thing, and definitely, there’s an audit system where you should be able to look in and know if it’s a teaspoon or tablespoon of salt before you add it, but that’s why we’ll have them measure in small bowls, not into the big pot right away.

Alyssa:  And that kind of leads me to – I was reading somewhere, I don’t know if it was on the PDF or on your website, where at first when you started thinking about doing this and thinking about getting your children involved, it was like thinking about those craft projects where for two months, you’re finding glitter all over the house.  This was kind of the same thing for you, of oh, do I really want to do this?  How do you get over that?  Like clean freaks; you know, I’m a clean freak.  I’m constantly cleaning up after myself in the kitchen so I always have a clean workspace.  You just kind of have to let that go with kids, right?

Katie:  I mean, you really do.  With good training, they are less messy.  There is no guarantee of no mess; that’s impossible, but they are less messy when they know what they’re doing.  So we even teach four or five different ways to stir so there’s not that pop of, you know, you’re stirring and the spoon makes everything fly all over.  Not that that doesn’t still happen; it does, but you work on it.  I think for me, I’m super practical, so as much as I want to be clean, I also know in my head that my kids need these skills.  Eating healthy is really important to me.  I want them to be able to help out because I can’t do it all.  You know, just physically, it’s not going to work, especially the closer my boys get to being teenagers.  Like, I can’t cook that much food by myself!  So I need help, and then I need them to be able to be independent and to feed themselves, right, so we’re raising independent adults, hopefully.  And so I just have to tell myself, this will be worth it.  This is an investment, and it’s totally worth it.

Alyssa:  Yep.  Let it go; that’s kind of the common theme for having children in general, I think, is just let it go.  Let go of some of that control.

Katie:  They teach you a new normal.

Alyssa:  Right, right.  Well, I’m so excited to see this PDF.  Tell us one more time how to find you and how to find the PDF.

Katie:  Yeah, so our online cooking class is at www.kidscookrealfood.com, and then the free gift for listeners is www.kidscookrealfood.com/doula, and that’s 10 Snacks Your Preschooler Can Make Today.

Alyssa:  Amazing.  Thank you, and we’re going to have you on again to talk about kids’ eating habits another time, but thanks for sharing today!

Katie:  Sounds great!  Thanks for having me, Alyssa.

Alyssa:  And as always, everyone, you can find us at www.goldcoastdoulas.com.   Email us with info, suggestions, comments, and that’s info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  Remember, these moments are golden.

Podcast Episode #29: Kids in the Kitchen Read More »

plagiocephaly and torticollis

Podcast Episode #28: Plagiocephaly and Torticollis

What is Plagiocephaly?  Torticollis what?  Jessica Buikema of Hulst Jepsen Physical Therapy talks about both and what parents can do to prevent them and how physical therapy can help their baby.  Listen to the podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud.

 

Alyssa:  Hello.  Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula at Gold Coast.  Today we’re talking to Jessica Buikema of Hulst Jepsen Physical Therapy.  Hey, Jess.

Jessica:  Hey, thanks for having me.

Alyssa:  Yeah.  We recently spoke to one of your colleagues, JoEllen Bender, who works at a different location but does pelvic floor physical therapy.  And we had an event with both of you together, and I want to talk to you separately about what you specialize in, plagiocephaly and torticollis.  Now, those are super big, long, fancy words for people who don’t know what they are.  Can you break down what each of those are and what that means for a new mom and a new baby?  And then, how you can help?

Jessica:  Yeah, definitely.  So torticollis is going to be tightness or a mild lump in a muscle called your sternocleidomastoid.  It’s a neck muscle, and basically what you’ll notice with your baby is that they tend to prefer to tilt one way, and they tend to want to rotate the opposite way of the tilt.  So that’s when you know that torticollis could be an issue with your baby.  Plagiocephaly is going to be any form of head flattening due to external pressure on the skull.  We’ve seen a huge increase in both of these with the Back is Best campaign to prevent sudden infant death syndrome, and it’s very important to continue doing Back is Best, but these two conditions have increased almost five-fold since that has started.  They both can be caused from the same issues, as well, but we advise you to just kind of look at your baby, and if you’re noticing that, bring that up to the pediatrician.  A lot of times, the pediatrician will notice it right away, too, and they’ll have those conversations with you.

Alyssa:  So I’ve noticed in babies, you know, if they do have a tightness in one side, you’ll try to put a toy over there or try to get them to look, and it’s just their eyes that will move, but they won’t actually move their head.  And then there can be breastfeeding issues, too?

Jessica:  Right.

Alyssa:  They might prefer one side over the other because it actually hurts to move their head that way to get to the breast on that one side.

Jessica:  Yes.  So it’s important that the baby does get treatment if we’re noticing that either of these are significant.  Especially, they can have issues with posturing of their mouth, so they’ll have an open mouth posture.

Alyssa:  What does that mean, posture of the mouth?

Jessica:  So their mouth will stay open, and it will lead to issues with breastfeeding.  Suck and swallow issues, too, with breastfeeding, when there’s tightness in either –

Alyssa:  So it will hurt to actually close their mouth, so they just leave it open?

Jessica:  No, it’s just the way that they’re positioned because of the way the muscle attaches, so their posturing of both their head and neck will be different.  It will be offset.  So you’ll notice, as a mom, these could be issues leading up to problems with breastfeeding, and this could be one of the culprits.  I know that you guys, especially your lactation consultants, will kind of try to figure out what the cause of breastfeeding issues is, and this is one of the issues that could come up.

Alyssa:  So who do you mostly see?   Do you see very, very newborn babies?  Do you see them months later?

Jessica:  In an ideal world, we would see the babies fairly early.  Because everyone goes to their pediatrician quite frequently when the baby is born, this does typically get caught early, and the earlier the better, because again, this – torticollis and plagiocephaly can be caused from so many different things, and a lot of times, it’s caused in the womb.  It’s not caused because you as a mom did something wrong, so that’s something I definitely want to stress, because that can stress parents out.  They’re trying to do everything right, and they think they caused this, when in fact it could be caused due to the positioning in the womb; if you had low amniotic fluid; if there was any trauma at birth; multiple births, this is very common because they run out of space.  Prematurity, if they’re in the NICU for a while; that can cause that as well.  And plagiocephaly and torticollis kind of go hand in hand, so you can have both or you can have one or the other, and they’re actually both caused from very similar things, so any of the things that I mentioned can cause it.

Alyssa:  So what do you tell parents who – you know, I see a lot of babies, like you said, with helmets now because – I mean, a lot of times it’s because of sleeping on the back, but it’s what’s recommended; it’s what we have to do.  Is there anything they can do to prevent that from happening with sleeping on the back, or is the helmet the only fixer?

Jessica:  No, so the earlier we see babies, the better because we can teach parents very early on ways to play with their child and ways to position their baby in various environments.  So although we provide a lot of manual treatment, like we do massage to the neck and work on positioning, but there is so much education that goes with this.  We’re only seeing the baby, dependent on what’s needed, but we’re only seeing the baby for 30, 45-minute sessions a couple times a week.  So much of it goes into what you’re doing outside of physical therapy.  So different positions when you’re playing; different positions when you’re carrying the baby; different positions when you’re breastfeeding; those are all things that we can provide at these sessions when we treat them.

Alyssa:  So if a mom came to you before there was even an issue, they could potentially prevent it?

Jessica:  Yeah, if there was – prevention would be huge as well.  As you know, especially with when the baby comes out of the birth canal, their skull is very soft to allow them to be able to come out, so their skull is susceptible to getting flat spots due to pressure after birth, as well.  So learning different positioning techniques would be very helpful to prevent that, and just telling moms what to look for to help prevent that.

Alyssa:  How do we find you?  If we have a mom who says, I need help with this?

Jessica:  I’m located at Hulst Jepsen Physical Therapy’s Cascade location, so I am at 5136 Cascade Road Southeast.  It is at the corner of Cascade and Spalding, and our number is 616-301-1215.  If my location’s not convenient for you, there are multiple Hulst Jepsen clinics that have physical therapists that enjoy treating plagiocephaly and torticollis and could definitely help you as well, and you could call any clinic and they could give you the information on the closest clinic for you.

Alyssa:  Yeah, there are several.  I keep seeing them.  How many locations are there?

Jessica:  We have 14 locations.  Our website, www.hjphysicaltherapy.com, will also list the locations, and then we also have our specialties broken down.  But if you can’t find it on the website, don’t hesitate to call any location.  They can direct you in the right place that’s most convenient for you.

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Well, thanks for coming in today!

Jessica:  Yeah, thanks for having me!

Alyssa:  Email us if you have questions for us or Jessica or anything about their physical therapy offices.  You can email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  Find us at www.goldcoastdoulas.com,  Facebook, and Instagram.  You can listen to our podcast, Ask the Doulas, on SoundCloud and iTunes.

Podcast Episode #28: Plagiocephaly and Torticollis Read More »

Hulst Jepsen

Podcast Episode #27: Let’s Talk About the Pelvic Floor

Today on Ask the Doulas, we talk to JoEllen Bender of Hulst Jepsen Physical Therapy in East Grand Rapids.  She is a physical therapist who specializes in women’s pelvic issues.  Listen as she gives some tips and dispels some myths about the pelvic floor.  You’re doing kegels right now, aren’t you?!

Listen to the podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud!

 

Alyssa:  Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas!  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula.  Today we are talking to JoEllen Bender of Hulst Jepsen Physical Therapy.  Hello.

JoEllen:  Hi.

Alyssa:  We actually had an event recently.

JoEllen:  Yes, we did.

Alyssa:  And I learned so much about what you do for pelvic floor.  I wanted to talk a little bit about what that actually means and what you do for your patients, but when we say pelvic floor, what does it even mean?

JoEllen:  So the pelvic floor specifically is a group of muscles that are at the base, where there’s the vaginal and anal opening.  It spans pretty wide, so it’s from both hips and then the front of your pubic bone back to your coccyx or your tailbone, and that’s pretty much the typical pelvic floor musculature, but it spans and helps the whole body.  So if you think about it, all the pressure that comes from the bottom of the body, so your legs when you hit the ground – your pelvic floor is your core.  It’s a shock absorber.  And then everything from above; so if you lift something, it also is a shock absorber for any of that pressure or weight.  So it’s a pretty big area.  The muscles themselves are in a smaller group, but it helps with so many things throughout your day.

Alyssa:  So it doesn’t just have to do with peeing when you do jumping jacks?

JoEllen:  No, it doesn’t.  It’s so much more.

Alyssa:  So you’re saying even when you’re working your core, you’re working your pelvic floor?

JoEllen:  Exactly, yes.  And that’s when issues can come in if you don’t use your pelvic floor and you specifically just use those six-pack muscles, those rock-hard abs type of muscles.  So it’s very important to train the pelvic floor along with the core.  I know when people typically think “core,” it’s those muscles in the front from your chest down to your pelvis, your hips, but it’s so much more than that.  You have to add the core, the base of it, your pelvic floor in there, too.

Alyssa:  So what does a typical woman come to see you for?

JoEllen:  So there’s a whole host of things.  A lot of it will be low back pain.  There will be pelvic pain, constipation, coccyx pain.  You could also have – there’s multiple diseases like vulvodynia, endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, lots of those types of things.  But then the main thing that I like to specialize in is postpartum or pregnancy, so that is the bulk of my client baseload, but there’s a whole host of things that you could come in for with pelvic pain or things related to that.

Alyssa:  So a pregnant mom comes in.  Is she just doing preventative work, or is she usually having some leaking, or does it usually have to do with the bladder?

JoEllen:  It can be to do with the bladder.  There’s so many things that a pregnant mother could have issues with, so we would –

Alyssa:  Like pelvic pain?

JoEllen:  Exactly, yeah, so we can combat any of that.  A lot of the typical symptoms would be low back pain.  You start to grow a baby in the front there; it offsets your balance and your weight, and you’re using different muscles.  Elastin in the body increases by 30% when you get pregnant, which increases the laxity of your connective tissue and your joints, your ligaments, all of that type of stuff.  So back pain, I would say, is the biggest.  Incontinence, leakage, would be probably second, and then a lot of times they’ll even come in with lower extremity swelling.  So we can help with some of that, too, increase that lymph flow and all of that.  So whatever they come in with, we try to meet them where they’re at and then just progress through the pregnancy as they need.

Alyssa:  And then same with postpartum?

JoEllen:  Correct.

Alyssa:  Things have now shifted; you’ve had your baby, and there’s probably a whole host of other issues that now come along with the pelvic floor.

JoEllen:  Exactly.  So some of them can be the same of what happened pregnancy-wise, but then postpartum, I would say, biggest is probably leakage, incontinence; sometimes constipation still will happen frequently, and the low back pain is pretty constant, too.  Most of the time, if it’s more preventative, it will be someone that wants to return to, let’s say, running, or some type of exercise, and now all of a sudden, they’ve had this impairment of leakage or pain or something like that.  So then we’ll just take them through more of a postpartum exercise routine or things that you can reintegrate your pelvic floor to help get you back to the things that you want to do.

Alyssa:  Okay, so that was my next question.  What does that look like?  What do you do as a pelvic floor physical therapist?  And I know when we had our event together, you kind of mentioned that there were external things as well as internal, right?

JoEllen:  Yes.

Alyssa:  So how do those differ?

JoEllen:  So internal would mean that we would go in vaginally, one gloved finger.  It’s all up to patient comfort, and we can feel those internal muscles.  There are ways that you can feel the more internal muscles externally, so if a patient came in and they weren’t comfortable with internal, of course we could always stick to external.  It doesn’t mean that you always have to go internal when you see a pelvic floor physical therapist.  I think a lot of people are worried about that and so they don’t come in, but we meet you wherever you’re at.  So internal would be more releasing the muscles or giving tactile cues on how to find your pelvic floor or contract it.  Externally, you could do the same, simple type of things, but it would be more like those tactile cues on how to find your pelvic floor or contract certain muscles or relax certain muscles.

Alyssa:  So everyone thinks of Kegels; I mean, that’s what I think of.  But it’s so much more than that, right?

JoEllen:  Exactly.

Alyssa:  And did you tell me that you can even do Kegels too much and have the opposite effect?

JoEllen:  Right, so if you hold your pelvic floor at a higher tone, a higher resting tone – so it’s not in the good type of strength; it’s more of that high-tone irritability that can cause pain.  You can’t get a full release to then get a full contraction, so you need the muscle to go through its full length of motion, meaning it needs to drop down and fully relax so that you then can contract it.  If you’re doing Kegels all day, it’s the same as any other muscle.  Let’s say you contract your bicep all day, and then all of a sudden you need to use it.  Let’s say you feel like a leak’s coming on or something; it’s just going to give way and then you are going to leak; it’s going to go out.  So same thing with the bicep; use it all day, and then you go and try to pick up your purse or something heavy: it’s just going to give, and it’s not going to be able to do what it needs to do.

Alyssa:  Okay.  So are there different exercises then that you said – you mentioned the core, but the lower core?  So there’s different exercises like crunches and certain things that you would tell people to do?

JoEllen:  Yes; not typically crunches, though.  So there’s different types of muscles that are more postural and the ones that can transmit forces from, let’s say, your right side to your left side, which are the ones that we really want to get after.  So those would be your deeper muscles, your typical pelvic floor muscles, and then those smaller abdominal muscles, not that six-pack, typical type of ab muscles.

Alyssa:  These are abdominal muscles that you can’t necessarily touch by doing crunches; it’s a different exercise?

JoEllen:  Correct.  You can’t really see them; it’s a deeper type of muscle area.  So a lot of times the first thing that I’ll take someone through is breathing because the top of the pelvic floor is actually your diaphragm, so it creates this cannister within you.  The top is the diaphragm; the bottom is the pelvic floor.  When you inhale, your diaphragm contracts and drops down, and your pelvic floor can then relax and drop down, so that would be the lengthening of the muscle.  When you exhale, then the pelvic floor comes up; it contracts, and your diaphragm comes back up, also.  So it’s kind of like a piston; they both drop down together, and then they come back up together, so the way to activate the pelvic floor in the beginning would be first by trying to find your diaphragmatic breathing; get that good expansion.  A lot of people have that high chest-breathing; everybody’s stressed lately, and as a mother, postpartum, they have so many things that they have to think of, and it’s more of a stressful time.  So they breathe with that chest, when really, we need to activate the pelvic floor which would be breathing with your diaphragm.  So that would be first exercise, and then we would just progress from there.

Alyssa:  So is there anything else about the pelvic floor for either prenatal or postpartum, things that maybe people think of as a misconception or that you would want people to know about?

JoEllen:  So my big thing is, it seems to be that all of a sudden at six weeks you’re just magically better and you can return to whatever you want to do.

Alyssa:  Postpartum, you mean?

JoEllen:  Exactly, yes.  I wish people would not say that because it took nine months for you to get to where you are, and your body changed drastically.  It’s going to take about nine months to get back to where you were before, so I don’t want moms to think, oh my gosh, I’m not back to where I was.  Or they see another mom that is now running marathons.  Everybody changes so much differently, and we’re going to meet you where you’re at and then get you back to where you were, safely, rather than you trying to push yourself and then cause all these other types of issues.

Alyssa:  That’s good advice.  So how do our moms find you?

JoEllen:  So I am at Hulst Jepsen Physical Therapy.  It’s an outpatient clinic.  The address specifically is 2000 Burton Street SE.  We’re Suite 1, and that’s in East Grand Rapids.

Alyssa:  So are you near Anthropologie?  Is that a good landmark?

JoEllen:  We are pretty close, right in that area, yeah.  So the best way would be to call.  The number is 616-608-8485.  And then you would just schedule with me, JoEllen Bender.  Just ask to schedule for pelvic floor physical therapy, and then we can get you started on whatever types of issues you’re having or if it’s preventative during pregnancy or any of that.

Alyssa:  Now how far – this is something I didn’t ask.  How far postpartum can you see a mom?

JoEllen:  They could come in as early as they wanted, and then we would just space out treatment based on the timeframe that exercises would be safe to begin.  So they could come right after, and we could work on some breathing and postural type things, and then after that, I would be comfortable starting more of the typical strength training types of things probably around the four- to six-week area.

Alyssa:  And then what about a mom whose daughter turned five and still can’t do jumping jacks without peeing?  What about someone like that?

JoEllen:  Come in ASAP!  There is still hope!

Alyssa:  Speaking from experience…

JoEllen:  I would love for anybody like that to come in.  There’s always – I mean, don’t think you’re too far gone or anything like that.  We can always work on it, and you’ll get back to what you want to do.

Alyssa:   Good, awesome.  Well, thank you for all that information.  Get ahold of her if you have any questions, and then as always, if you have questions for us, you can email us: info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  Find us on Facebook and Instagram, and you can listen on iTunes and SoundCloud.  Thanks.

JoEllen:  Thank you for having me.

 

Podcast Episode #27: Let’s Talk About the Pelvic Floor Read More »

EcoBuns

Podcast Episode #26: EcoBuns Cloth Diapering

On this episode of Ask the Doulas,  Marissa, owner of EcoBuns Baby + Co in Holland, Michigan dispels all the myths about cloth diapering that we’ve heard. Learn how easy and economical they can be for your family!  You can listen to the full podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud

 

Alyssa:  Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas podcast with Gold Coast Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula.  Today we’re talking to Marissa with EcoBuns Baby & Company again.  Last time we talked about her baby registry, and you mentioned cloth diapering and that the store actually started out as a cloth diapering store.  So I would like to hone in on cloth diapers today because I know there’s a lot of misconceptions and a lot of weird ideas.  In a lot of my classes, my newborn class and with a lot of the postpartum clients that I support, there’s the ick factor; there’s, “Isn’t it so expensive?” And I know you have a couple other things that you get asked a lot about it.  Let’s talk about some of those and dispel some myths.

Marissa:  Yes, are you ready?  Because I could talk about this all day long!

Alyssa:  Yes!  You have about 15 minutes.

Marissa:  Okay, I think we can condense it down.  So the first thing that you asked about is the ick factor of things, right?  That’s the first thing that people are like, oh my goodness, how am I going to cloth diaper?  We get asked that a lot by first-time parents, and I’m really sorry to say, first-time parents, you’re going to be dealing with ick with a new baby.  I don’t have a magic pill that makes Baby stop pooping.

Alyssa:  Right, whether it’s poop, pee, or puke, there’s always something coming.

Marissa:  There’s always something, yep, and I always say, oh, did you ever think when you were planning about future children that you’d ever have to sit down and have a conversation about choices of diapering?  You know, and so we always tell new parents – because that’s one of the biggest things is parents will say, I don’t want poop in my washing machine.  And what I say to them is, you’re going to have poop in your washing machine, whether it’s on the baby’s clothes because they’ve exploded out the sides of the disposable diaper, or inside of a cloth diaper.  Now, that being said, we don’t put actual baby poop that maybe people think of inside of the washing machine.  We do want to get rid of that before it goes into the washing machine, and there’s a couple ways.  We have liners; we have sprayers; there’s not the dunk and swish method that my mom and dad used.  There’s not a bucket of bleach water that my mom and dad, back in the ‘80s, soaked cloth diapers in.  Disposable liners are a really popular pick for parents who don’t want to deal with an ick factor.  You lay it on the diaper before you put the diaper on the baby.  When Baby poops, you can take that liner off and just dispose of the liner and wash the diaper.  So it makes it super convenient for any parent to do.

Alyssa:  So I’ve never seen the disposable liner.  Is it – obviously, biodegradable?  Better than a disposable diaper?

Marissa:  Biodegradable, yeah, absolutely.  It almost looks like a dryer sheet.  It’s very, very thin; if you hold it up, it’s very porous.  So all urine will go through it, but any solid waste is going to stay.

Alyssa:  So for a newborn baby, it’s not really –

Marissa:  Newborns, not even an issue.

Alyssa:  But once they’re older and eating solids?

Marissa:  Yeah, so usually the solid food transition is when people will gravitate towards the liners because – I always say that everyone wants you to feed your baby, but nobody talks about what the diaper changes are like after you start feeding your baby solid foods.

Alyssa:  It’s instantaneous, too.

Marissa:  Oh, my goodness.  First bite of food, and your life is completely changed.  So yeah, that’s a big factor.  The other thing that a lot of people come in to talk about is the cost factor of it.  You know, there is an upfront cost with cloth diapers, but what we look at is, people don’t necessarily realize how much disposable diapers cost because they’re spreading it out over time.  Your average Pampers are costing you around 28 to 30 cents per diaper change.  You’re going through 7,000 to 9,000 diaper changes from birth to potty training, so that can cost an average family upwards of $2,000.  If you’re using something like Bambo Nature or Honest Company, you’re going to spending closer to $4,200 from birth to potty training.  Cloth diapers, even if you’re going with the most expensive, all-organic, easiest-to-use solutions, you’re still probably looking at $1,800 to $2,000, but you can reuse them on future children.  And there are options that make it that you can go from birth to potty training for $150.  So it’s really where you want to be at.  The other cool thing with cloth diapering is it’s not an all or nothing thing.  You don’t have to come into EcoBuns and say, “Okay, Marissa.  I’m doing cloth diapers 100% of the time.”  We have so many families who come in and say, you know, when Grandma’s watching the baby, we’re going to do disposable diapers, or we travel a lot; we’re going to do disposable diapers when we travel.  It’s not an all or nothing kind of thing.  But the average family does save about $2,000 over the lifetime of their diapers.  What we say with cloth diapers is that if you use the cloth diaper for three months, you’ve broken even on the cost of it.

Alyssa:  Wow.

Marissa:  So huge cost savings there.  My eye doctor out at Complete Eye Health in Holland – he told me that he and his wife cloth diapered, and every week when they would have bought disposable diapers, they took those funds that they would have spent on disposable diapers and put it into a savings account.  At the end of their cloth diapering journey, they had enough money in their savings account to buy a brand-new high-efficiency washing machine and dryer; they had saved that much money.  So that’s huge.

Alyssa:  That’s amazing.

Marissa:  Yeah.  The other big thing that we talk about, too, is daycare because a lot of families will come in, and they’re like, we can’t cloth diaper because of daycare.

Alyssa:  That’s something I’ve never even thought of, but yeah, I can see where it’s a valid concern.

Marissa:  But in 2014, Michigan changed their daycare regulations, and if they’re a state-licensed daycare, they have to allow cloth diapers.  They can’t turn a child away because the parent is providing cloth diapers.  Now, there is a rule – there’s actually two rules inside of that.  One is that the daycare can’t reuse a portion of the diaper until after it’s been cleaned.  To kind of break that down, there’s a lot of different styles of cloth diapers.  Some of them have a reusable cover option.  Daycare can’t reuse a cover.  They have to put on a new cover every time.  And then the other rule is that it has to go into a double-layer bag, which our wet bags that families use for dirty diaper storage count as a double-layer bag, so they meet the criteria for the Michigan state regulations.

Alyssa:  So you just have to send the double-layer bag and extra covers, and they just throw them in there?

Marissa:  Yep, throw them in there.  You can wash them at home, and then the daycare’s changing the diapers; all you have to do is wash them.  That makes it so easy!  And so many daycares – especially when you bring in an all-in-one diaper, which is a cloth diaper that looks almost exactly like a disposable diaper; it has the waterproof piece and the absorbent piece all sewn together.  You bring that into them, and they’re like, oh, this is what a cloth diaper is like?  There’s no pins; there’s no rubber pants.  And then they’re definitely more open to the suggestion of cloth diapers.

Alyssa:  So there are a lot of different options, and you could even, like you said, if you do want to go cloth 100%, have these all-in-ones for daycare, for Grandpa and Grandma, and then have the other ones with all the different inserts and stuff at home.

Marissa:  What I always tell people is that families who have the most success with cloth diapers usually have three different brands or styles.  Moms usually like one; dads like a different one; grandparents like another one.  Or maybe you love the print of this one, so you have to have it.  And that’s the other thing I tell our parents of newborns is that even if you’re not cloth diapering in the newborn stage, pick up some for newborn pictures because it just makes such a big difference in how the newborn pictures look if they’re in a cloth diaper vs. the disposable diaper.

Alyssa:  Not something that says Pampers on it with a yellow line down the middle.

Marissa:  Right, yeah, you can get dinosaurs or unicorns or sunflowers!

Alyssa:  Awesome!  So tell us one more myth you’d like to dispel about cloth.

Marissa:  Yeah, I would say probably a convenience factor is definitely the biggest thing.  I cloth-diapered both of my kids.  When Olivia, my second child, came out a girl, I was super excited.  I was like, get the purple diaper because we’ve been Team Blue for the last two years.  And I was able to cloth diaper her from birth to potty training, and I never put a disposable diaper on her.  And so it’s totally possible to do.  At the time that Olivia was born, I was a single mom, and so I had two kids under the age of three in diapers.  And it made my life so much easier because I never had a 2am run to Meijer for more diapers.  I was able to cut back on my trash because I didn’t have so many disposable diapers going out into the trash.  I was able to just have my still every-other-week pickup so I saved money that way.  I never had to drag toddlers into the store to go grab more diapers.  If I ran out of diapers, I just washed them.  You know, it was really convenient.  Kind of what we talk about is that you’re going to be changing diapers regardless, and then is it, are you going to have to take the diaper to the garbage or take the diaper to the hamper to wash it?  So the amount of time that goes into it isn’t a huge difference.  We do offer a class at the store, and we do virtual classes, as well.  We’ve had some of our customers deployed overseas, and so we’ll do a Google hangout for our customers like that.  We go over all the different styles, all the different options, and then we cover, you know, a lot of the reasons why people come in to talk about cloth diapers.  I think one of the biggest reasons that always surprises people is that we don’t know how long it takes for a disposable diaper to decompose.  Our best guess is somewhere between 250 and 500 years.

Alyssa:  Good grief.

Marissa:  Yeah, so the disposable diapers being used today are still going to be around when our great-great-great-great-grandchildren are alive.  So a lot of parents will come in, and they’re like, oh, you know, we had this wonderful birth experience; we had all these plans that we wanted for our children, and now we find out how awful, how many chemicals are in disposable diapers; how long it takes for these disposable diapers to decompose.  And sometimes that’s the real reason that people come in to talk about cloth diapers with us.  And so that’s kind of a neat thing to see so many people interested in leaving things better for future generations.

Alyssa:   Absolutely.  So do you have two different types of classes?  You have a class telling people about cloth diapers and what to buy, and then one, once they do buy, the $25 one you talked about last time, where you come in and actually learn?

Marissa:  So everything happens all in one class.  We spend the first little bit of class kind of talking about why people are there, like, what most excites you about cloth diapers?  We talk about things like the fact that cloth diapers overall reduce diaper rash.  We talk about the correlation between asthmatic-like symptoms and newborn disposable diapers.  We just give a lot of facts.  We talk about water usage in the house vs. how much water it takes to manufacture a disposable diaper.  All of that information is laid out.  And then the last half of class is really fun where we talk about the different styles, and we always end the class with what to do about the poop because really, that’s what everyone really wants to know, and that’s when we go over all the styles of, you know, a spray pal vs. liners vs. the different options that are out.  So all one class.

Alyssa:  Excellent.  So good.  Like I told you last time, I wish I would have known about that.  It would have saved me.

Marissa:  Oh, yeah, and the other thing is, too, is that when you get your diapers, you get your laundry detergent; you get your set up – you get us, then.  We don’t just get you set up and then send you out the door and say, okay, happy parenting.  If the cloth diapers aren’t working for you, come back in and see us.  And that’s really where people can get a huge benefit from getting the cloth diapers from EcoBuns vs. what they can get from an online store where they don’t have immediate access.  They get our support; we want people to be successful with cloth diapering if that’s what they want to do.

Alyssa:  So tell me how people get set up for this.  What should they do?  Should they come see you first?  Should they find you online?

Marissa:  Yeah, so you can definitely sign up for the class online.  Our summer schedule is up right now.  For sure, the next month’s schedule is up, but we usually try to do the full summer, too.  So that’s up.  You can sign up for the class right online, or yeah, absolutely, you can sign up in store if you just want to come and check us out first and see all the options that we have.  You can definitely do that in store, as well.

Alyssa:  Okay.  Tell us your website.

Marissa:  Our website is www.ecobunsstore.com.

Alyssa:  Perfect.  Everyone needs to go.  I think you should go check out the store in person.  You’ll probably fall in love with the cloth diapers just by looking at them.

Marissa:  We have a really nice area in the store, even if you already have a baby, we have areas to feed babies; we have a bathroom and changing table, and if you want to come out for the day, Electric Hero delivers to the store, so if you need to have some food delivered while you’re looking, Electric Hero delivers for free.

Alyssa:  Perfect.  Sounds like a lovely afternoon.

Marissa:  Oh, it’s perfect.

Alyssa:  Well, thanks again.

Marissa:  Yeah, thanks for having me on!  It’s always fun seeing you.

Alyssa:  Yeah!  Everyone, check out EcoBuns online, and then you can check us out at goldcoastdoulas.com.  Find us on Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and iTunes.  Thanks for listening!

Podcast Episode #26: EcoBuns Cloth Diapering Read More »

ecobuns

Podcast Episode #25: EcoBuns Baby Registry

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa talks with Marissa, the owner of EcoBuns, about her boutique baby store.  You’ll also learn about the new opportunity to register for Gold Coast services!  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on SoundCloud or iTunes.

 

Alyssa:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas.  I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula at Gold Coast, and today we’re talking to Marissa from EcoBuns Baby & Company.  How are you?

Marissa:  Good, thanks for having me!  It’s such an honor to be on the podcast with you.

Alyssa:  Thanks for coming all the way from Holland.

Marissa:  Well, it’s a beautiful day to drive out!

Alyssa:  Yeah, good drive!  So for those of our listeners that maybe don’t get to Holland very often or have not heard of EcoBuns, can you tell us about your store?

Marissa:  Yeah, so we do have the physical store in Holland, which is great, and we offer a full baby registry at the store, so if you’re looking for anything for your new baby, you’ll definitely want to come out and check out the store.  But for our Grand Rapids friends and friends across the world, we do have an online store as well that people can take advantage of.

Alyssa:  Do you sell more online than you do in the store?

Marissa:  Definitely more in the store.  Our store is very relational.

Alyssa:  In the store!  Oh, that’s the opposite of what I would think.  Most places seem to have a bigger online presence.

Marissa:  Yeah, a lot of baby stores will have a larger online presence.  What we found, though, is new parenting is very relational, and our customers really like coming into the store so we can, you know, give them hands-free shopping by holding their babies while they’re shopping or – you know, being a new parent is lonely, and sometimes just having that face-to-face connection is huge.  So it’s definitely worth the drive to come out to the store from Grand Rapids.

Alyssa:  Yeah, I know with things like baby-wearing and diapering, you kind of like to see and touch and feel and maybe even try something with your baby in it.

Marissa:  Yeah, absolutely.

Alyssa:  So I agree that the hands-on thing is really important.  So tell us more about your registry.

Marissa:  So I am super excited about the registry.  The store is about five years old.  We bought the store five years ago, and when we bought it, it was just cloth diapers.  So a lot of people in the community still see us as just a cloth diaper store, which we are.  We have so much fun with cloth diapers; it’s still one of our main product lines.  But over the last five years, we’ve evolved into this whole store.  Originally it was just cloth diapers, but then we have the baby carriers.  We have feeding products.  We have crib sheets.  We have swaddle blankets.  We have high chairs, activity centers, everything that you would need.  And so with the baby registry, we have so many parents who are like, oh, I want to register for all these great-quality, eco-friendly items; I don’t want my family to go out and buy things that I don’t want.  But we needed to do it in a really cool way.  Being a small business, there’s some challenges with creating a baby registry for a small business, but this last year we just launched a new baby registry where you can actually come in with your smart phone or mobile device and scan items right from the store right to your registry.  So we used to do a paper registry, which was okay, but people have a lot more fun coming in now and actually scanning items.

Alyssa:  It’s kind of part of the fun of registering, like at one of the big box stores.  So now you can do it on your phone?

Marissa:  Right from your phone.

Alyssa:  And I have to assume that it felt a little bit antiquated to do it on paper, right?

Marissa:  Oh, yeah.

Alyssa:  People want to feel like – I don’t know, use their technology.

Marissa:  And it was very time-consuming for both the families coming in to register to have to write everything down, and for us, then, to have to go in and input it to the online store.  So that is the cool thing with the registry is that when somebody comes in and registers, it’s an in-store and an online registry.  So families who have family from out of town, we do a lot of in-store pickups for our – so let’s say a family from Grand Rapids or Muskegon, even, is registering at EcoBuns, and their shower is in Grand Rapids or Muskegon.  A lot of times, they’ll have whoever’s hosting the shower just say, oh, just order online and choose in-store pickup, and then Sarah, who’s hosting the shower, will drive out to EcoBuns.  We have everything in a nice big box for them, gift-wrapped and ready to go.  They pick it up and bring it to the shower.  So we try to make it as easy as possible.  You know, and that’s a lot of things, like why are people registering at big box stores vs. someone like EcoBuns, and it’s a convenience factor.  So we like to let people know that we can make it just as convenient with free shipping or in-store pickup options.  Gift certificates are also available.

Alyssa:  Awesome.

Marissa:  Yeah, so there’s a couple gift certificates that you can register for.

Alyssa:  Yeah, tell us about the newest one!

Marissa:  So we’re really excited about this partnership that we just launched with Gold Coast Doulas.

Alyssa:  Yay!

Marissa:  And starting today, you can now register for a Gold Coast Doula gift certificate at EcoBuns baby registry.  So it’s really neat if you’re definitely wanting to go with a doula service, and you guys offer so many different services.  It’s a really great way, then, to be able to register for it to kind of offset that cost.  So we see a lot of, even, second, third, fourth-time moms say, oh, I don’t know what to register for.  My family wants to gift me something.  Well, you know, a postpartum doulas would be definitely at the top of my list!  So it’s a neat way to be able to offset the cost of that service by adding it to the registry.  So we’re really excited about that.

Alyssa:  Yeah, we’re really excited about it too!  And since it just launched, we don’t really know how it’s going to work, but yeah, postpartum services, and then I can imagine that if they maybe don’t want as many hours as they get, we can use that for anything.  You know, we have classes; we have lactation; we have sleep consults.  I think we’ll probably end up using that for whatever service they may want.  We’re really excited.

Marissa:  We have a full list on our website of the services available, so if you want to go check it out, you can head to the EcoBuns registry and search for Gold Coast Doulas and it will pop up, and you’ll see the full list.  And it will also link back to the Gold Coast website if you want more information on all the fun things that Gold Coast has to offer.

Alyssa:  It’s so exciting!

Marissa:  I know!

Alyssa:  So I love that you have all these options; everything that a mom wants or needs, and they’re all eco-friendly.

Marissa:  Yeah, we try really hard to –

Alyssa:  You’ve done all the research for them.

Marissa:  Exactly.

Alyssa:  Which is huge.

Marissa:  Yeah, yeah.  There’s so much out there.  I always tell people, especially with the cloth diapers; people will come in and they’ll say, oh, I don’t even know where to start, and I’ll say, I own a cloth diaper store and I get overwhelmed on what’s on the internet!  Everyone has opinions; everyone has best practices, and a lot of it ends up being very regional as far as types of water and laundry, and it gets so overcomplicated, and that’s where we say, take a breath.  It’s not meant to be overcomplicated.  Just come in and talk to us.  The cool thing about being a small business is we can change things as often as we need to.  For example, if all of a sudden we have a diaper that the manufacturing changed on it and people hate it, it’s very easy for us to say, our customers no longer like this.  It was cool five years ago, but our customers hate it now; something has better has come out.  So we can kind of move and shift faster than bigger companies can, which is really great.

Alyssa:  Do you educate people about cloth diapering?  Do you have community events?

Marissa:  Yeah, so we do a cloth diaper class.  We actually call it Buns Bootcamp, which is a little play on EcoBuns, and we do that two to three times a month.  It’s a $25 class per couple, so we’ll usually see the partners come in.  We do invite, if a couple is having maybe a grandparent take care of the baby, we invite the grandparents into the class as well.  It’s $25 for the class, but then at the end of the class, you get a $10 off of a $50 or more purchase the day of class.  It’s about an hour long, hour and a half, depending on who’s in the class and how much talking we get into.  And it’s a fun class because it does get really overwhelming, but the class kind of brings it back, and my goal is to make sure that no one walks out with their eyes glazed over, you know, that we’re not doing too much information.  Just enough so that you guys feel educated in your decision that you make.

Alyssa:  I wish I would have known about that.  I wanted to cloth diaper so bad; bought the whole shebang, spend hundreds of dollars, and had zero education, so I gave up after weeks.

Marissa:  And that’s huge.  We have so many parents who say – you know, we’re an email away.  We have a lot of parents email us pictures, like why isn’t this working?  And a lot of times you don’t know what questions to ask, and so we can look at something and say, oh, this button just needs to be here, or this insert needs to go like this, and boom, all the problems are solved.  But, really, we’re the first generation who isn’t going to our parents and grandparents for advice.  We’re going to the internet for advice, and that’s shifted the way that a lot of parents handle parenting decisions, even.  And so it’s nice to have a trusted resource that you can go to who has kept up with modern parenting, who knows the products that are out there, who knows what the current and best practices are, to be able to go to and ask advice.  So that’s huge, and we do that with our carriers, too.  We do free fit checks on carriers purchased from us.  Any time a carrier is purchased from us, it automatically comes with a free half-hour lesson on how to use it.

Alyssa:  So awesome!

Marissa:  You know, so many times, you get a carrier home, and it overwhelms you, and then you throw it back in the box, and you never pull it out because no one taught you how to use it, and we don’t want that to happen.

Alyssa:  It’s amazing.  Okay, so tell me again if someone from Grand Rapids registers at your store, they don’t necessarily want to drive to Holland, you actually do deliver to them?

Marissa:  Yep, so we do shipping.  So we have free shipping on orders over $75, and then we offer first-class and priority shipping, so it’s super easy to get people their products.  And I know the Amazon two-day shipping is huge, but first-class shipping from Holland gets to Grand Rapids in one day, so it gets to everyone really, really fast.

Alyssa:   That’s really awesome.  So tell our listeners where to find you and how to register.

Marissa:  So if you want to come to our actual store, we’re in Holland on the corner on James Street and US 31 in the Holland Town Center.  If you’re familiar with Holland, it’s the old outlet mall with the big orange ropes on them.  So we’re right between Carters and Gap Outlet.  So from Grand Rapids, if you want to just plan a whole shopping day, Carter’s is there; we’re there; Gap’s there.  It’s a great day.  Otherwise, we’re online.  We are at www.ecobunstore.com.  Our store in Holland, though, is open seven days a week, so we’re there Monday through Sunday.  Monday through Friday, we’re there from 9am to 7pm.  Saturdays, 10am to 7pm, and Sundays, noon to 6pm.  And we have Lake Michigan, so it’s definitely worth the drive from Grand Rapids!

Alyssa:  Right, and now it’s beautiful!

Marissa:  And we do offer – so every other month, we have Gold Coast Doulas come out for a really fun Mom’s Night Out, our prenatal edition.  So again another really fun reason to come out to the store.

Alyssa:  Yeah, come meet the doulas and check out the store!

Marissa:  Yeah, absolutely!

Alyssa:  Awesome.  Well, thanks.  We’ll have you on again to talk about – I think we need to talk about cloth diapering and we should talk about baby-wearing.

Marissa:  Yeah, absolutely.

Alyssa:  So we’ll you back on another time.

Marissa:  Awesome.  Thank you so much.

Alyssa:  Thank you so much!  Let us know what you think.  Check out EcoBuns online and then as always you can check us out at Gold Coast Doulas.com.  Find us on SoundCloud, iTunes, and don’t forget to subscribe.  Thanks for listening!

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Podcast Episode #25: EcoBuns Baby Registry Read More »