Speaker 0
Welcome to the Free Birth Podcast, a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring, and celebrating their autonomous choices in childbirth. Together, we'll unpack truths, share personal stories, and claim our ability to birth freely and intuitively. Here's your host, Emily Saldea.
Speaker 1
Hi, everyone. Quick note at the top of the show here. If you wanna support the podcast, you can find me on patreon dot com slash free birth podcast, or head over to the website, free birth society dot com, and you can donate via PayPal if you wanna contribute a one time payment. Thank you so much. Today on the show, we have author and mother, Kimberly Johnson, with her new book on postpartum titled The Fourth Trimester. Kimberly shares her personal story of birthing in a foreign country and suffering from a serious injury and how that led to her own self healing and life's work. Her book on the sacred postpartum time came out this week and I couldn't recommend it enough. Stay tuned for an awesome conversation.
Speaker 2
It's always interesting where a birth story starts, right? And where motherhood story starts because we can start it way back. But essentially, I got pregnant, I pulled out how Stella got her groove back and went to an Island and fell in love with the Brazilian and came home pregnant after two months and decided that I wanted to live in Brazil, which I loved from the moment I stepped foot on. And I had a fantasy that I was gonna be able to have a baby on the island where we lived, but there were no midwives and no hospital. So I wasn't really concerned about the hospital part, but there were no midwives left on the island. So I decided to move to Rio de Janeiro where there was a midwife who I had I had just been googling online, like, okay, Brazil midwife. Ana Paula came up, but after researching her more, I realized, okay, she's yeah, she's Brazilian. No, she's not a midwife. And no, she doesn't live in Brazil, but she came up a lot. And then, Eloisa Lesta is the other person who came up. And so since I didn't speak Portuguese and I you know, just moving to a place, and I didn't even know much about Brazilian birth culture, which after I started learning was like, well, I'm definitely not going to the hospital because there's a ninety eight percent cesarean rate, in private hospitals and an eighty percent cesarean rate nationwide. So basically the only people who don't get cesareans are either the less than one percent who are doing chosen home births or people who just live so far away from anything that they can't have a cesarean. So I knew a lot about birth. I always knew I wanted a home birth. I never I never considered it anything else, and I wasn't afraid of it. I was excited for it, but I did know that I wanted to have a midwife. And what I didn't know was that as much as I knew about birth, there was that much or more to know about the postpartum period. And so like many women, I went into the birth situation fairly prepared, and I went completely blind into the postpartum period. And I was shocked because I had an injury from my birth experience that didn't heal well. I had a I don't know what stage of terror I had at the time because retrospectively, my midwives told me that it was a stage two. But experientially, the my mentor, Ellen Heade, who gave me postpartum care, two years postpartum scar tissue remediation work, told me that it was more like a stage four because I did have rectal sphincter damage. So, at the time, you know, Brazilians are famous for seeing the bright side of everything. Oh, interesting. So they would say, you know, tu dividacer, tu tateu du bang, everything's gonna be fine, you're good, and I would say, well how many stitches do I have, and how how are they located? And and and it was just like, we don't know, we're not sure, And I they felt like that was gonna be disempowering, but I felt like that would be empowering because I knew my body really well and I wanted to know exactly what was going on.
Speaker 1
So do you think that was that was a bit cultural that they were saying that and you you were actually wanting to know, but they were trying to not go there?
Speaker 2
The more women's stories I hear, the more I see that that happens all around the world. Is that Fair enough. People want the same mic damaged.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And also midwives hate it when people tear. They take it personally.
Speaker 1
Do you know why you tore?
Speaker 2
That's a really controversial question, right? Because, we can't ever know why any of
Speaker 1
these companies. Of course.
Speaker 2
But yeah, I have lots of theories. Do you wanna know my theories? Mhmm. Okay. So theory number one is a fact actually is that people who horseback ride elite yoga practitioners, ballet dancers, barre method enthusiasts, all predispose for tearing. So anything that you do that's heavily midline focused, a lot of squeezing together and pulling up, is gonna create a hypertonic perineum. So just like you would have a hypertonic, bicep muscle that, you know, a a gym person would have their arms constantly bent and it would be impossible for them to straighten it without pushing it. The same is true with the perineum. So for somebody like me who had been a yoga practitioner and a dancer pretty much my whole life, I needed to have some internal pelvic floor work to stretch those muscles out, because they're just not gonna have the same amount of resiliency as someone. And I'd never, I'd only practiced squeezing and lifting. I hadn't resist any pushing and bearing down.
Speaker 1
Which is quite common, right, for women? We can all do the squeeze up real easily, but that let go. And then what about emotion?
Speaker 2
They have a tight pussy, right? Like, because we live in the culture of, like, all hail the tight pussy, so everyone thinks their pussy's too loose. And so everyone's constantly, you know, and same with incontinence, people think that the cure for incontinence is squeezing those muscles when half of the time it's the overly tight muscles that are causing it incontinence, whether that's postpartum or, or beforehand. So that's just the physical predisposition. And I do have a lot of friends who were also long time yoga practitioners who also tore a lot. But that population of people also tends to have babies later in life, so that's, I think, also a factor when you're having a first baby at thirty seven or forty or forty three. I was thirty two at the time, but then there's also other compounding factors. So anyway, so that's one reason is because I had a hypertonic perineum. Another reason was because I really entered a space where I felt very alone while I was giving birth. All of my birth attendants and my daughter's father left my house when I was just before transition for a couple of hours.
Speaker 1
What?
Speaker 2
Why? Yeah. Because I guess they thought it was gonna be a long time and everyone was just like, I'm gonna go home and take a nap or I'm gonna Everyone left? Yeah.
Speaker 1
Woah.
Speaker 2
And the birth attendants left, I think, because they thought that my daughter's father would stay. They didn't think he'd then be like, I'm gonna go out for lunch and have a beer too.
Speaker 1
Fair enough.
Speaker 2
So during that time I really felt like angry. I didn't know that at the time, but looking back and I felt abandoned. So I just took a point of view that I am going to do this on my own. Like this is me and my daughter against the world. And I these are not trustworthy people. So attendant came back, she apologized because she saw what I was going through and she was like, I'm so sorry. And I just couldn't totally let her in again.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And she told me she thinks I tore because at the moment of crowning right before my daughter came out, my daughter's father was in the other room and I called him, and she said that I left my inner experience and I went external and she feels like that is what caused the difference. I don't really think that's true. I also had an earlier psoas injury from dancing, and my tear mimics that trajectory of how my psoas was torn. So I think I had a weakness in that fascial plane already. And also my daughter had a very, very short umbilical cord, like the shortest that most people have ever seen. And so the pushing phase was long because it was like a bungee cord. Yeah. And I could feel that, and I was feeling frustrated because I could feel that my pushes were really good and I could feel that her head was completely centered. Like it was her head was in like the perfect position and I could feel that. And so I was getting really frustrated, like what is taking so long?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
None of the positions that I thought would feel good, like squatting, squatting was the worst because it pulled the cord so tight.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
So I ended up giving birth in a position that the birth attendant had only seen one other time with someone else with the short cord. And I gave birth with my left leg, like, standing with my left leg in a high squat, and my hair went back to the left towards that sitting bone. Man. So I think those are all the reasons. I also I was a vegetarian for twenty years from when I was twelve until I was thirty two, so I think that my tissue didn't have enough collagen, and I think that I predisposed myself for that by not having a mineral rich, collagen dense diet.
Speaker 1
So a lot of different angles. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Okay. So how did that affect your life? It sounds like that was kind of the start of the rest of your life after that injury occurred.
Speaker 2
Right. Well, first of all, I didn't even understand the injuries were possible as a result of childbirth. So I didn't have any fear about it. I never had any like, Oh, I hope this doesn't happen to me or that doesn't happen to me. I expected it to be completely fine. I totally trusted my body. I trusted birth. I felt like my body knows how to do this. So there was a sense of real like betrayal and confusion. Like what, what just happened? I'm so healthy. I swam in the ocean every day when I was pregnant. I had lots of amazing sex. Like how could this have been the outcome? And then my body was, my midwife stitched me with the new material they were trying out and my body rejected the material. And so my stitching didn't heal right, but then when I would ask for help, they would just say it's fine. And like, I remember even one midwife visit, she came over and she didn't even check my perineum. And looking back, I think, well, why didn't I say again? Like, I need you to check this. But I was in such an altered state, especially being in another country where I was learning the language but didn't speak it perfectly. I didn't have any known foods. I didn't have any known company, and I was in kind of the most isolated situation you could be in. My daughter's father worked nights and slept during the day, and I was just trying to figure it all out on my own. My mom stayed seven days after I had the baby, but I had my baby at forty two weeks and five days, so my mom had already been with me since forty weeks. So she stayed a month in total, but she couldn't stay any longer. I have other siblings and she works and she had other stuff to do. So I really had two weeks of care because then my husband's parents came, and then I was just on my own, and I was having fecal incontinence and searing pain and lower back and SI joint pain, and I couldn't carry my own baby, and I couldn't really stand up. I lost a lot of blood. So I just hadn't ever been that vulnerable and that injured.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And then trying to care for another human. And so I just really didn't I also didn't know anything about the first forty days. I didn't know that there were special needs. I didn't know that I should have saved money for that period of time so that I could hire someone to help me since I wasn't gonna have my own family and my own community around. And it was a really, really dark time and continued to be dark for a long time until I got some hands on help.
Speaker 1
Wow. It's a story that I think, as a birth worker, you don't find to be uncommon, but I think in the mainstream just woman world, this is not talked about at all.
Speaker 2
Right, and the problem, the sad and problematic part of that is that, number one, if you have the simple support, this can be much different, the experience. And number two, it all gets put under women's mental health because that's our history. So it's just easy to say, Oh, yeah, we'll just screen people for mental illness. Well, at that time, I definitely would have qualified as someone who was depressed. And I felt depressed, but I knew it wasn't serotonin. I knew I wasn't having a brain chemistry problem. What I was having was, I wasn't getting enough food because I had to cook for myself. Well, how was I gonna get to the market, get home? And in Brazil, it's not like here, there's not a bunch of prepackaged foods. You can't go to Trader Joe's and, like, heat something up that's organic. And I mean, not that I think that's great food, but it's better than no food at
Speaker 1
all Yeah.
Speaker 2
Which is what my choice was. Like, I was undereating, then, of course, my milk production was in the toilet, and then I was trying to figure that out. So my whole days were structured around just trying to get my basic needs met. My daughter was really anxious because she wasn't getting enough milk. So then that's just a a spiral situation. And
Speaker 1
Man.
Speaker 2
So, I mean, I only tell my story because I really think it's in the ninety ninth percentile of difficult. Like, you can't really make it more difficult because I had a relationship that was a new one and one that wasn't gonna last, and some part of me knew that.
Speaker 1
In a foreign country.
Speaker 2
In a foreign country where I don't speak the language. In an apartment, I rented the apartment just to have the baby. So we had to come to the city and find an apartment that I felt comfortable having a baby in. And it's not that easy to find an apartment in in Brazil. Like, you you can't just rent for twelve months. You have to rent for thirty months. And there's just all of these compounding
Speaker 1
Yeah. And your midwives didn't take you seriously. And it wasn't like you were in some town where you knew all of the local healers and resources and, you know, like, you mentioned in your book, like, going back to Denver and knowing who those people are.
Speaker 2
Right. And that's why I moved back because it was like I felt secure, like, oh, if I am in the US, I know who to ask this question and I know that I will understand one hundred percent of what they're saying to me.
Speaker 1
So, at what point postpartum did you come back to the States? Nine months. Wow. So you dealt with that on your own for nine months.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I was really committed to seeing if the relationship could work out, and I knew that if I came to the US that he probably wouldn't get a visa and wouldn't come. So I also, you know, at some point, you start to not realize how bad it is when it's you. But all of my resources were dwindling, and that's when I was realizing, like, okay, I'm at the end of money. I can't work. I was a yoga teacher. I can't demonstrate. I can't talk. I can't take my baby with me. I mean, I was, I was teaching with her in a sling and adjusting with one hand and holding her, but at a time when I needed to be taken care of, I needed to be mothered. But I do wanna bookmark one thing is that it's true that my midwives were, to a certain extent, brushing me off, and it's also true that they were not equipped to give me the amount of support that I really needed because what I needed was someone to live with me full time.
Speaker 1
You know,
Speaker 2
it would have still helped if I had a little bit more, but midwives in general, they don't know that much about perineal health. You would think that they would, but the way that healthcare is, you know, I teach a training to midwives about how to take care of all these things because they're trained for birth and for well woman care that's partially biomechanical and Pap smears, but they're not trained in biomechanics. They're not trained in scar tissue and tissue health. So, they might know some tricks, techniques for birth and how to keep a perineum intact. They're not that great at suturing. I always recommend people go to the hospital if they need suturing. Even if
Speaker 1
well and in a lot of states it's out of their jurisdiction you know where if you know like Colorado I think it recently changed or it's gonna change but you know midwives aren't allowed to suture if it's beyond a second degree in California they're not allowed to suture You know, there's a lot of restrictions around our country, so that that plays into them not being as educated or as prepared and understandably having a bit of anxiety around doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Sure. And again, there tends to be this guilt thing about intact perineums and I I've never blamed I don't blame my midwives for my perineum. There was also I mean, there are so many factors. We they asked me to buy cloth diapers and cloth diapers in the US are like those thick, I mean, you know what a cloth diaper is and how it is the thick in the middle and thin on the outsides.
Speaker 1
Okay. You know
Speaker 2
what I mean? Yeah. The cotton. Well in Brazil, a cloth diaper is like cotton gauze. Like it's, it's like really, really thin material that you fold a bunch of times because it's really hot there. So What
Speaker 1
do you mean for adults? Not for babies. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2
Yeah, so they asked me to buy cloth diapers as part of the birth kit, like buy a plastic sheet and buy all the things you need for home birth. So I read cloth diaper and I had cloth diapers from the US, which were the old fashioned cloth diapers.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Speaker 2
Well, I didn't know what they were gonna use those for. They were gonna use those for perineal compresses.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
But the thin gauzy ones, that's like, that is a whole different feeling between your legs than like a full on cloth diaper. Totally. So when they were trying to put that hot compress on, I was pushing it away because it felt so weird to have this big bulky thing on my perineum. So there's just a lot the the tub was a lot of things just weren't syncing up. Mhmm. But ultimately I'm totally healed now. And, I have full access to my life force and to my sexual expression and to however I wanna use my body. And I, and I realized that my entire life is like this, that like my deepest wounds and the farthest extent that I have to live and experience become my teachings and become hope for other women. Women come to me because they're like, are you serious? Did you really have a prolapse? Like they want to see me in real life and they want to hear out of my mouth that, yes, I did have a prolapse, and, no, I don't have one anymore. Mhmm. And that is what gives them the hope and the confidence that they are not in a situation that's never gonna change.
Speaker 1
Well, that's the crossroads. Right? I mean, when we go to our darkest hour, we can either hang out there and and, you know, just let that start to define us and and feel really stuck there and get depressed, you know, or we can move through it and let it be our great teacher and then let that story connect us, you know, in the world to all these other people, which obviously you've done so brilliantly. Just wrap up the rest of that story for me if you can. So you said that you eventually got healed. Just kind of finish that, you know, however long that took, if you don't mind. Like what healed you? How what does that mean?
Speaker 2
It means well, to me, healing is wholeness. So it means that I feel like my full self again. And that for me, that took six and a half years. Mhmm. So postpartum period, it's different for every person. And for me, I consider mine to be six and a half years.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I, the healing happened in many different ways in many different moments over time. The most significant being the work with my mentor, Ellen Heade, whom I now have a school with, where I had three sessions with her that were specifically related to scar tissue, where in one session my diastasis knit back together when she was working on the posterior side of my pubic bone and we both felt it happening as it was happening. Wow. In one session my hemorrhoids reabsorbed because once the perineal scar tissue started to dissolve, there was a place for the blood vessels to go, and it just got sucked up back into the perineal tissue. And in the other session, my introitus was a little bit asymmetrical because of how the scar was pulling. My introitus just went back to its regular shape, and I didn't have any more lower back or SI pain.
Speaker 1
So was physical body work?
Speaker 2
Yeah. It's internal body work, vaginally and anally. Is this the sex therapist? It's the sex therapist.
Speaker 1
Sorry, say that one more time.
Speaker 2
It's internal body work, vaginally and anally, together with nervous system tracking.
Speaker 1
Wow, and is that sexological body work?
Speaker 2
It's a subset of it. Sexological bodywork is a body of work that includes genitals and bodywork, and there's arousal component to it where you it can be erotic massage or masturbation coaching, and there's other components of it that deal specifically with scar tissue. But this body of work is called STREAM, Scar Tissue Remediation Education and Management. So we are sexological body workers, which is legal in the state of California because touching genitals is illegal and considered sex work unless you're a sexological body worker. But we are working now under a private membership agreement that's specifically about gynecological surgeries, birth injuries, birth trauma, genital injuries, birth trauma, genital reassignment surgery. And, specifically, our code of ethics is that we wear gloves and we remain clothed at all times, and it's an educational modality.
Speaker 1
Awesome. Wow. So this really dove you into your work.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, I was already a yoga teacher and a Ralper. Then I had a baby and I realized it's so fucking hard to get any help and was like Googling out the wazoo and finding only postpartum depression, nothing about anything I was asking about. I kept trying to refine my search, alternative modalities, holistic therapy, perineal health, like, and this was ten years ago, so, you know, now it's, it's gaining traction. Pelvic floor physical therapy is more known. I even knew a pelvic floor physical therapist already and had had some internal work, but that just the amount of information was so hard to find that then people women started telling me their stories. Oh, my tailbone's been hurting for three years. It happened three years ago. I had a baby.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
Okay. Well, has anyone worked on it? No. Okay. Do you want me to try? In Ralphing, we work in mouse and noses. I'm like, it's just different territory. What's the big fucking deal? Totally. So I would work on them, and then their pain would go away, and it would go away forever. And I'm like, this is crazy that women aren't getting this help, because it's so sick a lot of the time. Yeah. You know, I go crazy because people, this tailbone thing is kind of a big deal. Lots of people have tailbone pain and displaced tailbones and broken tailbones and all kinds of things, and then like on our local birth board, someone posts, okay, well my client's sixteen months postpartum and she's still having she has a lot of birth trauma, but she's still having tailbone pain, and people are like, tell her to do pigeon pose. Send her to acupuncture. And I'm like, you guys, the tail it's a structural problem. Like, if she can't tell her to sit on her sitting bones. I'm like, you think she hasn't thought of that, or like, she wouldn't be doing that if she could do it? And then she comes, you know, and people get all mad because cause they think I'm righteous and I think I have the answer to everything, and I'm like, no, by all means. Like, if a pigeon pose is all
Speaker 1
it's gonna
Speaker 2
take, because then they're gonna do a pigeon pose. But then she came to me, and in one session her tailbone pain was gone.
Speaker 1
Wow.
Speaker 2
So it's just, yeah, it was non negotiable. It was like, okay, now that I can see this absence of this black hole in our cultural fabric, I've gotta do this, and I don't care if it's legal or not legal. I've gotta help people. And people don't believe that it's not legal. They're like, wait, you're a woman helping other women heal and that's illegal? And I'm like,
Speaker 1
yeah. Talk about attending births and yeah. So much around standing with women and helping women is actually illegal. It's it's crazy. It blows my mind every every single day. Wow. Okay. So so talk to me a little bit about before I dive into my postpartum questions, talk to me a little bit about the birth of this book. I mean, obviously, your story has a huge amount to do with it, but Yeah. Anything else to share about it?
Speaker 2
Well, the book is the book I wanted, the book I wish I had, the book that I would have totally read and understood. And, you know, there's beautiful illustrations that are showing women, like, this is what happens to your energy body. It's not some new age newfangled idea. Like once you go through birth, you'll, you'll know, you'll feel that. And this is the transition that your energy body needs to go through when you come through the birth process yourself. And here are considerations if you have a birth injury or here here's what it even means. Here's what these terms mean. Here is what sexual anatomy looks like. Your perineum has erectile tissue in it, so if you cut it, you're cutting your sexual anatomy and your pleasure area. It's connecting the biological, the gynecological, the sexual, the spiritual, all in one place. And, you know, I have a page that says sexual mother at the top, and I love that page because it's like, are we even allowed to say those words together? And like even reading it out.
Speaker 1
You're a dirty combination. And I
Speaker 2
read it, my, it's funny, I wrote it and I still look at it and I'm like, woah, wow, radical. So it is, yeah, it's bringing these conversations together in one place. I told you before we were on the air, I got my first negative review, and one of the reviews was, what she said was that once she saw the word sex and me telling people how to have sex, she stopped reading. And I thought that's so interesting that you would pick up a book on postpartum health and on women's health and then that would be a big surprise to you that sex would be in there. It makes no sense.
Speaker 1
Not just a surprise, but a deal breaker.
Speaker 2
Right. And, you know, I wanted to have the word sexuality on the cover. Like the, the title, the subtitle is Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions and Restoring Your Vitality. But I originally, there was different versions of it, but I wanted one to be like integrating your new identity as a mother or, restoring your sexuality, reclaiming your sexuality. But they're like, Oh no, that's gonna be like, we want this to have a bigger appeal and that will deter some people. And I thought, Really? Because I think that's what would have attracted me because I'd be like, Oh my God, like finally someone's talking about it. So, yeah, it just brings a lot of conversations together that haven't been brought together before. And, you know, certainly like there have been great books written on this, very few though, you know, like Aviva Ramm's book, Natural Health After Childbirth is a great book, came out in the early 2000s, terrible cover, which I believe is probably why it didn't do that well, but also because Collective wasn't ready for that. And then, Robin Lim has a great book from the early nineteen, 1990s, and it's out of print. So both of those are beautiful books, and there's a lot of great information that I, those were the books that saved me that when I finally found it. But I mean, I didn't find Robin Lim's book until I was four years postpartum and I was someone actively looking for this material, like, well, lucky for you.
Speaker 1
You had two and a half more years of postpartum.
Speaker 2
That's right. Well, that's probably why, because it shortened, shortened it because I finally had some other input and influence, but you know, you know, you're pregnant and you work with pregnant people, like pregnant women eat books for breakfast. It's like, they can't get enough of pregnancy books and then you have a baby and then everything is baby books, and sleep training, and what you feed them, and there's nothing about what happens to the mom.
Speaker 1
Well, that's what you said in the book. I thought it was so, so poignant that everybody reads pregnancy books and then goes right into parenting books or newborn care books, and that it's that we're hopping over, you know, what our culture would almost call a selfish, you know, indulgence, to think about us in postpartum, you know, to put to put emphasis and focus on you know, it it's even come up for me, which if it's coming up for me and I'm not someone who has a problem asking for help, and I totally understand and hold so much reverence for postpartum, but it's even come up for me of being like, am I really gonna ask people to, like, make food for me? You know, and I hate that I'd even have to ask, but I probably will because I don't live in some amazing Korean culture where the family rallies around everybody and it's just a given and there's these built in traditions. And I was thinking about it when I was reading part of your book last night that, you know, you're you're referencing all of these cultures around the world. And white culture, American culture doesn't have any. You know? There was a line that you said that stood out to me in the book about, you you mentioned a bunch of different cultures and you said something like, you know, so whichever ones you're gonna be pulling from. And I was like, yeah. That's pretty much what's up with American culture or I should specifically say white because there's many, many, many cultures within America that do have postpartum, traditions. And, obviously, white is not the American culture, but my culture is white American, and we don't have any sort of built in you know, our our built in traditions is go back to work. You know? Our built in traditions is keep going, get your body back, you know, shut up, don't complain, focus on the baby, be grateful.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
You know? That's what I think of when I think of what I've seen in white culture.
Speaker 2
I love the be grateful. You're alive. Be grateful.
Speaker 1
You're alive. You're alive. There's nothing else to consider. Good luck. So, you know, and and I was saying to you before we were recording that as a birth worker who's at the tail end of her pregnancy, I've been wanting a book that was gonna feel enjoyable to read, and a lot of books I read I I only read books on on birth and birth culture and pretty much all I've read since I was sixteen. And, you know, I've kinda covered the gamut of all, like, the the the main books. And I I don't wanna read a super heavy book right now. You know? I I I get it. I'm in the world, you know, of all of this, and and I'm I just finished a couple. And so I really I've been thinking in my mind, man, I would really love just a, a nice book about something about the end of pregnancy or postpartum to just kind of, like, nestle up with and pull pull in this new, in this new phase. But I know a lot about physiological birth and don't really feel like I need to be diving into that any further. Anyway, long story short, you sending me those thirty pages, I was realizing that I had found it and that I had found a book. I was I just love how things are so divinely timed. Yeah. You know? And I I was impressed by the book, not to toot my own horn, but because I already know a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
But that doesn't mean that reading it as a pregnant woman, you know, isn't super important. And so I'm reading it totally different, you know, reading the the chapters you sent me last night. I was just letting myself be a pregnant woman hearing this information instead of the birth worker of thirteen years, blah blah blah, that I give advice and counsel all the time. Mhmm. And that felt really good, and it felt like it held up, well well above, held up the wisdom and the, just the way that you wove the information together felt super relevant to any person at the end of their pregnancy whether or or already in postpartum, if they did have an injury or if they didn't. You know? And and, obviously, I'm hoping that I will not. Right. And so, yeah, I finished those thirty pages and was bummed that it was over. And it, yeah, it really just got me excited, not only to finish the book, but it got me excited to spend more time and intention, on really dreaming up what that can look like and putting some, you know, some plans into action. So it was a real cliffhanger for me.
Speaker 2
Awesome. Well, I'll send you a copy, but I also, I, you know, originally the book was gonna be about the first three years postpartum because, you know, becoming a mother is a process that takes time. It's not like it just happens at any one time. And the rite of passage element is a very, it's like happening as a spiral. So there's the rite of passage that happens when you become pregnant and and never not being pregnant again and then, you know, coming towards the birth. And then there's there's so many levels and layers of it. And my hope is that women I mean, this is like, it's the most amazing mother blessing or shower gift ever. And there's so much value in getting it before you have a baby. I know a lot of women will buy it between babies because they'll realize they didn't have what they needed the first time. And now they know that they need something for the next time.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Of course, birth workers will know that it's relevant and be recommending it to their clients. But there's also, I mean, I still get things out of it when I read it because there's so, you know, the whole chapter called The Birth That Needs Healing, many women don't understand that even if they had a birth that they think was great, there's still gems in there for our soul path. And there's a whole chapter on discovering the mother you are. And, and as you said, women learn so well through stories and there's just some beautiful stories in the book of men who shared their own words. One of my favorites is from a woman in the book named Maggie. And she talks about how when she became a mother, all of a sudden she it was like a tandem, a parallel track that she ran with her own mother where it reawakened herself as a daughter in the ways that her mom didn't meet her. But at the same time, now she had a new level of respect for her mother because she was now mothering. And so she'd forgive her mother on a whole other level. And so this sort of tandem awakening and how we could feel those at the same time. So profoundly disappointed or let down or abandoned in some way. And on the other level, like, wow, this is what it takes and this is what did happen. And so, you know, I really tried to bridge so many worlds and bring things like somatic experiencing, trauma resolution therapy, and Pam England's work of birth story medicine as very real and necessary evolutionary modalities of what women actually need when we have babies. We really don't need to be diagnosed as much as we need to be surrounded. And, you know, unfortunately, or I mean, it's just the reality that now a lot of what would have been shored up by what's become kind of, archetypal tribe, that maybe we imagine in a way that it is it never even happened. But, you know, if if we were sitting with our like, in my case, my aunts, I have four aunts. I probably have more, but right now I have four. My parents each have yeah. I have five aunts, and each of them had three kids. All the everyone in my family has three kids except me. So that's what that's twenty wait, fifteen. Right? Five. Yeah. So five aunts had three kids. That's fifteen children that were raised. If I would have just had all my aunts in a room, they probably could have helped me solve most of what I was working with, and maybe I wouldn't have resonated with some of their suggestions more than others. But for sure, one of them would have had low milk supply.
Speaker 1
Right. You have a collective consciousness of of women in your family to brainstorm and support and normalize.
Speaker 2
Right. And so that's, that's I've already had some people read the book. Like my, the woman who edited my proposal asked me for a copy and gave it to her friend and her friend, because she read the book, moved in with her mom postpartum. Wow. And that was like already felt like a victory for me, like the Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1
Last night I was I as I was reading it, I was thinking, as I told you, we're gonna be in Maui and, I'm gonna have my sisters and my mom come out, but but I I didn't text my mom because it was too late. But I almost texted her and said, let's talk about extending your trip, you know, because she's only planning to come for two weeks. And, it was such a good yeah, just a good reminder, you know, and and how how to pull more or create more reverence for this time period because, obviously, a full cup of the postpartum mom is everything. And it's just it's a lot of reconfiguring. And and one of my favorite lines that you said was was something about, talking about postpartum being forever and that it's you only go forward, you know, after you've had a child. You never of course, you never go back to a pre pregnancy state in any capacity physically or emotionally, but, I thought that was a really nice way to frame it that your postpartum period is actually forever in a way because you're always forever after you're after a baby, which is such a I don't know. That just struck that struck me. I thought that was a really cool way to think about it. So let's pivot a little bit to some postpartum wisdom from you. And actually, I guess kind of because we're on the topic, I'll just lead with the question. Within fourth trimester, for women listening to this who are thinking, well, yeah, that would be great to have my friend my, you know, sisters and my mom around, but I hate my mom, or she's terrible, or I don't have anybody. With lack of this, you know, ideal community situation of grandmothers or or aunts or, you know, friends who are really gonna carve out space for it. What can somebody who's close to entering or maybe who's already in postpartum, you know, what are some ideas that she can do when we don't have that kind of community available?
Speaker 2
Mhmm. So it's a front loaded investment. So anything that we do that we invest in these first, in the fourth trimester, whether that's the first forty days or the first three months, the return is gonna be immense. So universally, it's like people never say I I had too much support postpartum. They say I did not have enough. And so there is help for hire, and my recommendation is hiring one person who knows how to do most of the things. I really get my hackles up when women are driving around every day to their craniosacral therapist, and the next day they're acupuncturist, and the next day they're pediatrician. And all those services are great, and I love all of those things, but women shouldn't be driving around getting services when they're postpartum. I understand that there's desperation and that's what becomes this thing of like, ah, I feel so anxious and things are just not right. But the that necessity to search, can be completely eliminated if somebody trusted is coming to you. And there are many postpartum doulas who know how to do some form of body work, and one should hire those people. Don't hire baby nurses. Hire people who know how to take care of mothers. Invest in that, Because if you are eating the right food and you are receiving bodywork and loving touch and you have a spiritual companion that you can talk to about what's really going on, you're not gonna need all that other stuff. It takes care of itself. Yeah. So invest in it, number one. Number two, if that's not possible, sometimes we gotta get humble. And I feel the same way I feel about men in general is that people have a lot of women have this narrative that, like, men are pigs and and men do this. I'm gonna say five percent of men are assholes. Like, because in my practice, I barely even see that five percent. The rest, it's, like, up to us to teach them how to treat us, which is up to it's up to us all the time to teach people how to treat us. And I'm gonna say the same thing with moms. I think five percent of moms probably just suck beyond repair where it's like, you just gotta move on because they've got mental problems or, they just blew it so hard when you were a kid that you can't even go there. But the nine there's probably ninety five percent that it's workable.
Speaker 1
Oh, you mean moms of the birthday mother?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Gotcha.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Like your own mom, so or your mother-in-law. I understand. But what I tell my clients who are like, I can't stand my mom or my mother-in-law, I'm like, okay, I get it, and so who's gonna mother you?
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
Because if you don't have someone to mother you, you are gonna be ten times more resentful than you are right now. Right, like if it's
Speaker 1
not toxic, if it's just like annoying, you know, work with it and take what you you can get out of that. And I think that's such a good point that there is a level of responsibility, you know, that that I would like to see more birthing women step into around creating this dynamic of saying, you know, I'm not gonna just wait to see who gives me stuff postpartum. I'm not gonna just sit at home, you know, on my phone and breastfeeding, watching tv, feeling alone in the world. I'm gonna actively say, hey, mom, this is what I need from you and hey, you know, neighbor. And, hey, so and so, this is my meal train, you know, website. And I'm setting this up for my family, and please assist me in this. You know? I don't I don't see a lot of women doing that, you know? And and Right. There is a
Speaker 2
And it's hard to do, especially if you've never done it. And especially if you're in, you know, in a mode where you're working right up till the day you're gonna have a baby because you're saving up your time after you have the baby and you're in that, you know, which by the way, I mean, I don't understand how somebody I get why people are doing that. And really, they're kind of trying to do it to honor the postpartum time. But to go from having your foot on the accelerator, like pedal to the floor, to then trying to have some kind of parasympathetic nervous system functioning that you need for birth is just too much to ask for most nervous systems. So that can definitely contribute to difficulty postpartum is like your system never had a time to even recalibrate. But the other thing, you know, if I was gonna have another baby, which I'm not, because I'm forty three and it's not happening, is I would have like a three to four month calendar and I would ask all my best friends to come stay with me for three or four days at a time. And I would, if they needed the ticket, I would save up miles. I would ask my parents for miles. I would ask my clients for miles and I would make sure that most of the time I had company because new moms should not be alone all day with infants.
Speaker 1
Let me ask you this then, this is kind of a selfish question, but, as I told you before we were recording, I have a husband who won't have to go back to work and so that's a huge luxury and and abnormal, I would say, in our culture. But so I personally have been thinking about that advice because I get totally give that advice to other people. And I'm wondering with myself if I really need to do that because I will have my best friend, you know, though male, but still very intuitive and and wonderful, fully available and present. And so, yeah, that's not gonna be the, like, maternal, you know, he's done this before, any of that wonderful stuff.
Speaker 2
You still need women around. I mean, maybe you don't need them as much, but you do because there's just ways that a woman who's been through it before is gonna be able to sit with you differently. And there may be times when, you know, relationships change as well, and both of you need support. I mean, it's not just support for you to support the baby, it's like support for both of you. Totally. Time that he can be alone and feel okay going off for a day or half of a day not feeling like oh now I'm bailing her and my baby that like there's some it provides space.
Speaker 1
Yeah. I guess the other side of that is I'm projecting that it's such a private time and that he's particularly I
Speaker 2
think that's what most people say. Yeah. And that's what I hear from most women is like, we're gonna do this on our own. We don't really like the families we come from that much and we wanna make a new family and we wanna do it a new way. Way. And so our way is we are in a cocoon together and we're going to figure this out.
Speaker 1
And then they're all stressed out.
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, it's, I know one, one couple that that worked for.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
But you, I mean, you can always tell people to go in the other room or go to the beach or whatever, but it's like, they're just, I mean, imagine, you're sitting on the bed and you're nursing and you need a glass of water. You can't get it, so so someone's gotta get that for you. Do you think your husband's gonna be super stoked to get you that glass of water twenty the proverbial glass of water, like forty five times a day over the span of six months? Right. I mean, it's a lot of responsibility and shoring up all of the house tasks and the cooking. Like, just having someone over. Even, I mean, I tell women, if you can't, if you really can't afford anything, and by the way, I mean, the doula community, bless their hearts, it's full of a bunch of people who are martyrs, and who, have poverty mentality. So, there's a lot of people who just want experience, who basically work for free. And, by the way, if you're a birth worker doing that, don't do it.
Speaker 1
Right. Stop doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 2
There's plenty of people doing that. When people say to me, Oh, well, I can't hire a doula, I'm like, Are you kidding me? Because all you have to do is ask a birth worker, in five minutes someone posts something online, and there's like twelve people going, I'll go to the birth, I'll go to the birth. Same thing postpartum. People need hours, people need, you know, so But my thing is this, postpartum doulas don't charge that much either. Like, you know, a high end postpartum doula is sixty five dollars an hour and usually has like a minimum of a certain amount of hours.
Speaker 1
An average is like thirty, thirty five.
Speaker 2
Right. So if you knew that only once a week, once a week for eight weeks, somebody was gonna come to your house for three hours and they were gonna make you a couple of meals and they were gonna sit and talk to you and they were gonna give you some bodywork, Like, doesn't that just feel amazing in your system compared to not having that at all? And that's just not even barely anything. I mean, when we talk about Iyer doulas and like the Maharishi Mahesh tradition, in Korean tradition, that's like bodywork every day, people there cooking for you twenty fourseven. Like, as Americans, we're white Americans, but even, I mean, because white American culture is basically becomes the dominant culture that everyone wants to imitate and therefore falls into step under, like, we think that that is luxurious and spoiled and excessive and invading our privacy and not like, wow, wonderful, like, that that would be really relaxing to have that support. And what about maybe your partner needs some bodywork? Mhmm. I've had tons of couples where, like, in the birth I'm giving bodywork to the partner. Totally.
Speaker 1
So what what would you say in pregnancy are some good ways to start steering or encompassing the journey towards a, a really reverent and rich postpartum? What are some I mean, I heard you say, of course, line up some help. That's the obvious one, probably the most important one. Line up some help. What else?
Speaker 2
Prioritize rest.
Speaker 1
In the pregnancy?
Speaker 2
Pregnancy and postpartum, but yeah, because if you learn how to do it when you're pregnant, you'll know how to do it when you're, you know, if your system knows how to rest. I mean, that's what's kind of a funny part of the book, but it's like, it's kind of like know to rest and then learn how to rest, because we're in an age where people don't know how to rest. So we have to teach ourselves how to rest.
Speaker 1
Totally. And, like, not that doesn't mean with the TV on or looking at Twitter. You know? It's, like, actually learning how to take a nap. Silence. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And stare at a wall, be okay with not producing things. Identify what are the things that help you to downshift if that's reading a book or listening to music or, you know, doing less. I mean, in my book, there's a whole postpartum plan that's meant for women to be able to fill out either by themselves or with their care providers or with their partner. But a lot of it is setting up your relationship for success and having some conversations about what do you anticipate is going to be difficult for you and if that's happening, how will I know? And, beginning check ins with each other that for some couples there are already well established, but for some couples aren't, they're not used to saying, you know, how are you doing right now? How are you doing? And then how are you doing as a husband? And how are you doing as a wife? And how are you doing as a father? How are you doing as a mother? Building in times to have those meaningful check ins because people think of sex as like, oh, we gotta get back to like penis and vagina penetration. But it's like, we've gotta create a continuity and a harmony over time and a habit of how do we come back to each other so that sex is an outgrowth of that, not like sex is a light switch that all of a sudden you shut the door and it's time to get sexual when you haven't had any space or time to know how each other are doing or how was the birth for that other person. There's a whole section in my book about the partners telling their birth story. How was the birth for them? Because those things are highly impactful. And just like in my birth, I had a meme that got imprinted that was like, I'm alone in the world, and it's me and my daughter against the world, Partners often have those things that also get imprinted, and we don't know unless we're having interactions about it. Sure. Yeah. Even when the birth is great, that's what people don't understand. It doesn't mean, oh, because your birth has to be awful to be traumatized or to have it be worth something to mine. Even revelatory rapturous births blow us open into a place that we're unfamiliar with and sometimes don't know how to reintegrate.
Speaker 1
And it takes
Speaker 2
a while.
Speaker 1
And like so many births, the overall experience might be great and there might be moments where the partner felt super helpless or was really scared or, you know, wasn't as informed about the birth process, and so something surprised him. And, exactly, yeah, giving giving him or or the mom, of course, that space to to be with that and to see each other. So what are some common mistakes that you see pregnant women or postpartum families making or new moms? I mean, we've I feel like we've touched on definitely a couple.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, mostly it's just expectations of how things are supposed to go. And things usually don't go exactly as we have planned. And everyone has moments of difficulty. You know, there's no perfect This isn't about being perfect. This is about setting up conditions where you can allow the imperfections to happen and not get completely derailed. So, I see people prioritizing, imagining that the baby's health is separate from their own health and prioritizing one or another. And I see, especially with attachment parenting, that people forget that like the couple is at the top of the pyramid and the baby is below that, and it's not advisable to have the baby take that place in the middle or even become at the top because the parents are the foundation of that, and that love and that connection are what created that life. And so keeping that in mind that this is not a democracy, like animals are not democratic. We're mammals and there needs to be a hierarchy of who's in charge and how things work and a mother's health. You know, I see a lot of women, a sort of a refashioning of the martyr myth, you know, the old martyr looked like Betty Crocker, the new martyr looks like somebody who tandem nurses till their kids are, you know, six and carries them everywhere in spite of the fact that perhaps their backs are killing them or
Speaker 1
they haven't been treated. Right,
Speaker 2
or depleted. Or, yeah, and they are they've cascaded into an autoimmune disorder and not recognizing that this is an interdependent unit and each person's well-being depends on each other. In some cultures like in Swahili, that's not a culture, it's a language, but in Swahili, it's called Mametodo and it means mother baby and it's what is it's the unit. And so because we come from such an individualistic culture and our idea is that there's this separation, we forget that it's okay. Like, we might not be able to do everything that is ideal in our mind, in our mental construct.
Speaker 1
But we guaranteed we'll not be able to.
Speaker 2
Right. Yeah. And if we do, we're probably doing a tremendous amount of pushing around of life force that's gonna have some pendulum swing and, like, come back and smack us. Because if we think that we have that much control and we are like the general manager of the universe and we are somehow going to be able to craft, sculpt, and formulate this perfect situation, there will be backfire to that. So I just wish for women that this time is a return to a kind of wildness, a kind of naturalness that doesn't mean it's going to look the same for everyone, but there's an inevitability to it because it's, people say, oh, well, if you, you know, you're propagating natural birth, and I'm like, I don't have to propagate anything. Like, I don't have to be pro, I'm not gonna, pro natural birth? What does that mean? Like, no one has to be pro it. It just is. It just is. Like, birth happens a certain way physiologically. It just happens. It's it's there's no reason it's like I'm not pro pooping.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
I mean, I hope people do it. Yeah. And I hope it goes well, which normally it's not in our culture, but I you don't need to have a movement for that. It's just like, that's obvious. Like, that's how pooping happens, when there's health in the system. And when there's not health and there's not conducive conditions, it doesn't happen. So I just really believe that this is a huge opportunity, which is why I spent five years of my life writing a book about it, because I wasn't somebody who, like, was like, oh, I've got to write a book. It was like life pushed me and kept saying Totally. You're just gonna do this. This is your work. This is your work. And I kept saying, you know what, maybe it's just not meant to be, you know, maybe I'm just not meant to do this. And then life would be like, you've got to do this. You've got to do this. So it's because this is, this is an entry point. If we get if we can learn how to do this, it will change everything. Totally. It will change patriarchy. If we can put mother experience at the center, which doesn't mean above partner experience.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
It's not a hierarchy.
Speaker 1
Let's just put it in the game.
Speaker 2
Let's just If we can just attend to that part, Women will be more radiant, will be more whole, will couples will survive this transition.
Speaker 1
And I and I talk all the time about how, you know, if we can respect and honor birth, the world will change and postpartum is not separate from that and it's important to it's it's a good reminder for me to keep including that because postpartum is birth. It's all a continuum of the same thing. I wanna end with just a final question.
Speaker 2
Postpartum lasts a whole lot longer than birth. Forever. Birth can only last three days, you know, like episodes.
Speaker 1
Well, and that we know that birth can make or break a woman, and postpartum can too, you know, because they're the same thing, essentially. I wanted to end with asking you about the common themes that you've seen in cultures around the world that do honor, the postpartum time. And, of course, your book goes in, you know, and lists a lot of those and talks about them. But for the listeners, like, what what are the common themes that you've seen of traditions that that hold respect and and honor for this time, that work that we can, you know, leave with in in this episode and that, you know, the women listening can start to kinda marinate on? You don't need to go too far into each one, but just, maybe a little list of
Speaker 2
Okay. So the first is the extended rest period. So all over the world, some somewhere between thirty days and forty five days where there's seclusion. So where you're just staying indoors and midwives say five days in the bed, five days on the bed, five days around the bed. So fifteen days just kind of in your room, and then after that around your house and maybe at the most sitting outside on a bench or, you know, breathing in outside air. But really for that time, it's for the mother's nervous system and the baby's nervous system to have a chance to reintegrate this life altering, transforming experience. And that cannot be emphasized enough because you see what happens as people say you go home. I mean, everybody who gives birth in a hospital talks about the trip home, right? Like, it is an ordeal because even just the frickin' car seat test is such an ordeal, right? And so, no one is prepared to be making a journey at that time. It's just not the time. But I realize that that's the reality of what a lot of people are doing.
Speaker 1
Or with home birth to go out to the pediatrician on day three.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
Same thing.
Speaker 2
And all the all the rules about it, right? It's just like, well, we have to do it at this time and it's unquestioned, you know?
Speaker 1
Of course, the rich are having the pediatricians come to the house. I I mean, most people are leaving their home no matter what.
Speaker 2
Sure. So and okay. So you have to go out that one time, but does that also have to include a trip to Target? Exactly. And does that also have to include a stop at Starbucks? And does that also have to turn into a four hour thing instead of just, okay, I am going to energetically protect myself and I am going to go and come back and I'm going to keep this space because I recognize, I mean, there's things that come up. People have other kids. Sometimes they have to work with that. But again, it's like if you have your period, is it better to like lay low? Yeah. But sometimes I get my period on the day I didn't expect to and I have a day full of clients, but then I expect less. I allow myself to go slower. I don't try to give one hundred percent. Right? So during that period of time, even if women did that twenty five percent more than what they're doing, I mean, I can't even tell you, I lose my mind when I go places like the park or Pizzaport and people are there with their nine day olds, And I'm just like, go home. And everyone's like, oh my God, that's amazing. You're amazing. No, you're not amazing. You're nuts.
Speaker 1
Yeah, you're nuts. Okay, so the line in period.
Speaker 2
Extended rest period. Nourishing food. So mineral rich collagen dense, every culture has its version of it. Korean culture, lots of seaweed soups, Hong Kong, China, different kinds of chicken with different herbs, jujubes, certain kinds of dates. It's all very mineral rich, dense.
Speaker 1
And warm, right?
Speaker 2
And warm, yeah. And warm in general. So warm goes across the board. So warm environment, warm yourself, keep socks on, keep your neck covered, keep your lower back covered, keep your head covered most of the time.
Speaker 1
And I love that because so many women postpartum talk about feeling really blown wide open, and that warmth and the covering and the socks and the hat, that gives such a nice way to close it up.
Speaker 2
That's right. And that's also part of, so bodywork, every tradition has a different kind of bodywork and some of that includes belly binding or some version of containment. So that, that feeling blown open or that emptiness there's contour and that's energetic and physical. It's like pulling things together and just feeling like, okay, I can feel where my skin is, which is a
Speaker 1
part of the nervous system. So Even just putting a scarf around your stomach and just doing a tight scarf just to sit in bed with that can feel really good.
Speaker 2
This isn't about being perfect. It's about doing a little bit more, paying a little bit more attention, setting yourself up for a little more success. When you have a breast feeding station, make sure there's a pair of socks in it. Make sure you've got some snacks in there. Instead of feeling like secretly you're trying to lose weight, so you're going to eat salads and smoothies that you're like, no, at this time I need to be eating dal. This is why we need people to cook for us. If we were just eating cold food, then you don't I mean, you can assemble a salad from a lot of different whole foods, but, you know, to make dal, it's actually a simple thing to make, but to have Khichdi on hand is like warm food and that you're having the right teas and those things that are helping your body flush out all of the hormones, complete the detox from the whole hormonal shift and be restoring yourself as you're building your milk supply.
Speaker 1
And do you have in your book some food suggestions? Do you go into that part?
Speaker 2
There's a whole, my colleague Sentewa, I think her website is sentewa dot com. She's a food medicine amazing human and she did all the recipes in the book. Cool. And so the appendices has, I think, eight or nine recipes at least. And then we go over all the principles according to Ayurveda and Chinese medicine tradition because they share a lot of wisdom when it comes to the postpartum time.
Speaker 1
And we really need this as white culture because, like, like, we said earlier, we don't have this stuff built in. And so it's so much easier, like, you kind of referenced, even even for better or worse to just, you know, have somebody pick stuff up at Trader Joe's or, you know, something that's not, really nutrient rich. And and like you're saying, you know, these other cultures that have this incredible warm, you know, foods and soups and things like dal. So awesome. I'm excited to see that in the book. Well, how can people find you and when's your book coming out and any
Speaker 2
My book comes out December twenty sixth. So it's available for pre order on Amazon now. And I, my website is magamama dot com. Maga means sorceress in Portuguese. And my Instagram is magamamas with an S on the end. And where else am I? And I have a podcast called Maga Mama with Kimberly and Johnson.
Speaker 1
I didn't know that. What's the podcast about?
Speaker 2
Birth, sex, motherhood, relationships, and intimacy.
Speaker 1
Beautiful. Cool. Well, thank you so much. I'm really excited to finish the book and excited to get this episode out there and excited to hear the feedback about it.
Speaker 2
Awesome. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Thank you for your time. That's it for today, everyone. Join us next week for another episode of the free birth podcast. Thanks for joining us, and remember, your body, your choice. Lots of
Speaker 2
love.
