Find your Village - Transcripts

Welcome to module four, Find Your Village. In this module, I'm going to help you discover who is local to you to help you with your birth and labor, with your baby and feeding questions, for your postpartum and your recovery, and the community resources that might be available to you right there in your own neighborhood.

So the reason that I've included this section in Prepping for Parenthood is because many parents, when they're reflecting on their struggles in their early postpartum period, will say something like, “We just didn't know who else to call. We didn't know what kind of help was out there.” So this module is here for you to give you this information so you'll know just who to call when you're struggling with your baby.

So take some time for sure, in the next day or two to put together a list of providers, according to the guidance that I'm going to give you in the next couple of lessons, and then keep that list handy in the coming weeks and months, I suppose, as you, give birth to your baby, as you work through your postpartum recovery, and surround yourself with people who will look after you because they're out there ready to do so. All right, let's dive in.

Okay. The first group of professionals I want to encourage you to add to your birthing village is birth and labor pros. The prenatal medical team, the doctors and nurses that are going to look after you as you give birth are only one small part of the people that can help you with your pregnancy and birth experience.

And I want to emphasize that it is difficult to overstate the value. Of having people at your birth whose work it is to support normal labor and childbirth. So as much as it is within your power, please find a way to surround yourself with people who share your goals and your values.

So I've broken this down into two categories, prenatal pros, and birth pros.

And in terms of folks who will help you prenatally, consider getting in touch with the pelvic floor physical therapist even before your due date so that you can get some education about how to prepare your body and the changes that your body will go through, and what to look out for in the postpartum period as you're recovering to keep yourself healthy and recovering well.

It can also be helpful if your goal is to breastfeed to talk to a lactation specialist or a lactation educator before you give birth so that you understand more about the process of providing milk for your baby. But another good reason to get in touch with a lactation specialist is to learn about breast health in the postpartum period because that's something that they can do as well.

And, in terms of looking after your body, get in touch with the massage therapist, a chiropractor, or an acupuncturist if that, feels good to you, if that's something that you're in the habit of doing already, make use of those people for sure in the prenatal period and to help you prenatally.

For sure, get a childbirth education class on your list. I'm fairly certain you've probably already looked into it because here you are in Prepping for Postpartum and most folks who come into this class have already done childbirth education. But it is an invaluable resource if you haven't done it yet.

All right. And in terms of birth pros, we're looking at your medical team first. Your midwife or OBGYN who will be present when you birth your baby and who are providing really good prenatal support for you in the weeks and months leading up to the birth of your baby.

And you'll also meet several really wonderful labor and delivery nurses who will guide you through your labor and delivery and who will provide all the resources and like education afterwards as well, will teach you how to look after your baby and check up on you to make sure you're recovering well in the early days after you have your baby.

If you don't have a birth doula yet, consider getting in touch with one, especially if you're looking for someone to guide you through the process, to help, support you emotionally and physically through labor and delivery.

A birth photographer and videographer is such a good idea if what you're looking for is someone who can capture the story of your labor and birth. There are birth photographers and videographers who are really good at putting that story together, which you might not notice. There are parts of your story that you won't be aware of enough to note for recollection later, and some things that you might not see the same way as a birth photographer or videographer might. And so if it's really important for you to have a specific kind of memory about your birth and labor experience, get a photographer or videographer to help capture that for you.

And lastly, a placenta encapsulator will look after your placenta and deliver it back to you in a way that could match your recovery goals.

So go ahead and Google any of the above birth pros and add in the Google search bar the words “near me” and see who comes up. Take a note of names and locations and contact information and then jump into your networks and see if the folks around you have any recommendations or referrals to offer.

And then go ahead and reach out to some of the people, especially the ones that feel like, would be the most helpful to you, that feel the most comforting to you as you're looking ahead to your upcoming due date and call those people and get in touch with them, and see what kind of help they have to offer.

Welcome to lesson two: Newborn Pros. Now, it's pretty typical that you'll go to your pediatrician first when you've got questions or issues about your baby, but there are several other newborn experts you might come to rely on, especially folks who aren't in medical care because not everything that sort of confuses or mystifies you about what's going on with your baby will be a medical issue.

So here are some additional specialists that you should know about.

In terms of feeding specialists, here's how it's broken down. The most specialized, the most expert lactation specialists are called IBCLCs. That stands for International Board Certified Lactation Consultants.

Now quite a lot of IBCLCs are also nurses and work as labor and delivery nurses, or in a hospital or else in a lactation clinic. But there could also be lactation specialists in your area who make home visits and their care may or may not be covered by your health insurance. So if you're planning on getting extra help with breastfeeding or for your breast health, it's a good idea to talk to your health insurance about what's covered and find out who in your hospital or outside of your hospital is available to support you once you've been discharged.

And there are also lactation specialists who are not IBCLCs, like lactation counselors or breastfeeding counselors or lactation educators who can help you through your feeding journey.

Additionally, you might find there are resources available in terms of infant feeding specialists. That's a specialist role for working with babies who have feeding difficulties, or if you have questions about formula feeding, or breastfeeding, or reflux, an infant feeding specialist might be just the right fit for you.

And then on top of that if your baby does have feeding troubles, you'll almost certainly want to meet with a pediatric dentist or an ENT doctor. That's an otolaryngologist to talk about tongue or lip tie revisions, especially for breastfeeding babies, but also for bottle-fed babies.

It can be helpful to call around and find out who your insurance covers and what kind of wait list they have for families these days.

Even for infants, you might want to consider body work. And so I've listed these three infant body work specialists as a way to give you some ideas of where to turn if you feel like your baby had a stressful birth or if they seem especially tense or uncomfortable, there are infant chiropractors who can help, craniosacral therapists or massage therapists for infants that can look after your baby.

And then if you're looking for extra help, a couple of extra hands around the house, Newborn Care Specialists are probably the way to go. They're short form to NCSs. An NCS is someone who comes to your house and looks after your baby in the day or in the night. They're usually there for the long term, for three months or more, and they usually come daily. So if that's the kind of support that you're looking for, you're looking for a newborn care specialist as opposed to a nanny, perhaps.

A postpartum doula for daytime or overnight care is also an option. Postpartum doulas are specialized in the postpartum experience and are there to look after you, not just your baby.

A newborn care specialist will be primarily concerned with taking care of the baby so that you don't have to, or so that you can rest or in place of you, like in the night. A postpartum doula, however, will want to know how you are coping, what you need help with, what your questions are, and will be more collaborative as they're looking after the house, making sure that you're eating well, and sometimes holding the baby and looking after the baby while you look after yourself.

And then beyond that, you might also look into getting a night nurse or a night nanny for the baby, only for overnight hours. Those tend to be less specialized though more, more just for childcare.

So if any of these baby pros look like folks you might want to get in touch with, make sure you Google them, find out who's near you, and see who comes up, And make your contacts now before you meet your baby. And many of them are happy to chat about the questions that you have, even if you're not sure you're going to make an appointment or hire them yet.

So give them a call and see what happens, and we'll jump into lesson three next.

Welcome to lesson three: Postpartum Pros. Now, the medical care that you receive after you give birth might feel pretty basic here, in the States in any case, but there are many other providers who work closely with new parents through their recovery from pregnancy and adjustment to parenthood.

And though this list is probably a bit short it's a good general overview and it depends on what you want in your lifestyle anyway, so I've included all of these different care providers as a way to spark ideas for you. Make note of the ones that stand out to you, the ones that sort of draw you in and keep looking. If there's something missing that you're looking for, make sure you look around and who's out there.

So for your medical care, you will be in touch with your midwife or OBGYM after you've given birth in the postpartum period.

Your labor and delivery department, if you've given birth at the hospital, can also be very helpful in answering your questions or looking after you if you're having medical issues or questions about what's going on with you medically, if you're bleeding more all of a sudden, or if you had a C-section and there's a lot of pain in your C-section scar, you can call your labor and delivery department, your midwife, or your OBGYN to look after you.

For overall non-medical care, a postpartum doula is really good for that. They will help you understand what's happening to your body as you're recovering, they will help you look after your household, your other children perhaps, make sure you're eating well and look after the baby for you.

There are lactation and feeding specialists to help you with your breast health and help you as you're learning to feed your baby.

And there's a huge community of mental health specialists like therapists, counselors, one-on-one, or group support for new parents especially. So if that's something that you feel vulnerable to make sure you're looking for that support and establish it before you give birth.

There are also physical therapists and pelvic floor physical therapists who work especially with postpartum women to make sure that their recovery progresses smoothly and you can go back to your previous good health.

Massage therapists, chiropractors, and other body work specialists can also specialize in looking after the postpartum body.

Naturopathic doctors, herbalists, placenta calculators, of course, nutritionist or dieticians, postpartum chefs can help fuel your recovery and help you get back to the not-pregnant health that you had before.

So if that's something that's really important to you in your recovery, make sure you're reaching out to these professionals, find out who you've got locally, and see what you can do about adding them to your village team.

Okay, lastly, we've got the Community Resources. So besides birth and baby and postpartum pros, there are also lots of other community resources, hopefully, available to you to help you look after your baby and yourself as you recover. But sometimes it does take a little bit of digging, so I've given you a couple of ideas here.

And I want to encourage you not to overlook the usefulness of the free help that might be offered by your community and in your own network of friendships and relationships, and to do your best to find a way to work through any awkwardness or guilt that you feel about seeking or accepting help from the generous people who are out there who want to help you and support you and your family.

So I've broken this down just like above, into lactation support for new parents, mental health support, and your own personal network. So if there's any of these that sort of stand out to you, “Hey, we have that locally!” get their number off the internet right now, and make sure that's available to you when you get into the middle of the newborn stage, the busy newborn stage.

So in terms of community lactation support, it's fairly likely that you've got a La Leche League International chapter right there in your own city. So I would take a look and see what kind of meetings they've got and consider joining one before you even meet your baby so you can see what kind of folks are out there and how they support families with babies.

It's also possible that you've got a citywide or county breastfeeding support network that's established, that's not La Leche League International. So I would type in whatever your city is, like the Seattle breastfeeding support and then it might be King County that ends up having a resource like that.

Additionally, if you've got a baby store nearby, not one of the big box ones, but a smaller neighborhood one, it's entirely possible that they have a lactation lounge, or drop in breastfeeding support, or consultations with their staff. So I would go and take a look, give them a call and see what kind of community support they have for new parents.

So in terms of support for parents especially, the two big groups that come to mind are PEPS and MOPS. So PEPS is the Program for Early Parent Support and they've got something like 300, 360 chapters here in the States. MOPS is Mothers of Preschoolers and that's a church affiliated group where you can bring your baby and then the baby will go to a nursery where other folks are looking after the babies so that you can meet other new parents.

Usually they have a speaker or something to encourage you and let you know that you're not on your own, and this is a hard time in your life. And there are probably lots of other group support networks for new parents in your area with lots of different models and organizations or focuses. So look for meetings and gatherings or groups that include parents just like you.

If you're like a military family or a single parent or you’re queer, find one that feels like a good fit for you that matches where you're at and that will support you in the postpartum period.

In terms of mental health support, Postpartum Support International is a nonprofit organization that has a warm line, like a hotline, but not for medical emergencies.

A warm line for mothers and fathers and lots of other resources for parents who are struggling emotionally or with their mental health in the early postpartum period. I would encourage you to look for other support that is available to you locally like this. For example, in Washington, we've got an organization called Perinatal Support Washington, and that's a database for mental health providers so that you can find out who's local to you,

And I want to encourage you not to overlook your own network, your family and relatives, your friends, your neighbors, the folks in your own neighborhood. Perhaps you've got a good group of coworkers or your partner does. People from your faith community look inside your local Facebook groups. The Buy nothing group here in town is super supportive for families in need.

Maybe you've got a team or a hobby group that you meet with. It's okay to rely on them as well. Try not to feel any kind of awkwardness or guilt about seeking or accepting help from generous people because they want to support you and your family.

I encourage you to research these options that you might have local to you. Write them down on a piece of paper. Connect with the ones that you want to and make sure you have this list available for you in the early postpartum period. All right, let's wrap this up.

All right, welcome to the wrap up for Module Four. We've collected the names and contact information for the birth, baby, and postpartum pros you might need to reach out to. So keep this information handy as you meet your baby.

And if you didn't collect the names and numbers of the birth and baby and postpartum pros that sort of tickled you here, as you were doing each of the lessons, now is the time.

Please grab a piece of paper, or a Google Doc, or your notes app, and take a half an hour to do the research for the care providers that appeal to you.

Look for local in-person support and virtual and accessible care, and consider who you want to add to your village.

We talked about midwives and OBGYNs, pelvic floor physical therapists, lactation specialists like IBCLCs, breastfeeding counselors or La Leche League International, body workers for you or your baby childbirth educators, birth and postpartum doulas for the day or the night.

Newborn care specialists and night nannies, maternity, birth, or newborn photographers, naturopaths, nutritionists, placenta encapsulators to help you regain your energy after you have your baby, mental health resources that are out there, and a reminder about the people in your community, in your network who might be, willing and able to support you.

And then I want you to set a reminder, like on your phone, to follow up with providers and resources you like in five days. And then keep this list handy for the next few months.

And of course, I want to invite you to join me for the next Q and A call where I can answer your questions, you can tell me your story, and we can go a little bit deeper on some of these topics.

Thanks so much for all this work, and I'll see you in the final video.