Maternal Wealth Podcast - Own Your Birth
The Maternal Wealth Podcast creates a collective space for sharing all birth-related stories. I want to acknowledge birth's uniqueness, honor its variations, and remind us of the power we hold in giving birth.
As a Labor and Delivery Nurse, I see the impact of our stories. Let's share those stories with those who come after us to prepare them for what's to come. For those who came before us, allowing them to reminisce and heal as we realize we were not alone in our experiences.
Maternal Wealth is currently streaming in twenty-five countries: New Zealand, Australia, Slovakia, Canada, Finland, South Africa, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Rwanda, Poland, India, Sweden, Germany, Puerto Rico, China, Italy, Denmark, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, Spain, Greenland, Cyprus, Tanzania and the United States.
Maternal Wealth Podcast - Own Your Birth
Beyond Medicine: Redefining Birth Through a Physician's Eyes
Dr. Lauren Davis takes us on an extraordinary journey from medical resident to holistic maternal health advocate in this captivating conversation about birth choices, postpartum healing, and the powerful integration of conventional and functional medicine.
Originally trained as an osteopathic physician & family medicine, Dr. Davis's perspective on birth and maternal health transformed dramatically after experiencing both a hospital birth during her medical residency and later, an "orgasmic" home birth attended by her physician husband. Her candid comparison of these experiences reveals profound insights about how birth environments affect physiology. "We know, for a woman's body and her physiology, all mammals have a reflex. When we are fearful, when we don't feel comfortable, what happens is that the cervix begins to close," she explains, illuminating how hospital settings can inadvertently trigger fear responses that complicate birth.
The stark contrast between her experiences—a hospital birth with a third-degree tear versus a gentle home birth where "I didn't even push, he pushed himself out"—sparked a career transformation. As a breastfeeding medicine specialist and founder of Latched, Nourished Thriving, Dr. Davis now addresses the critical yet overlooked aspects of postpartum recovery through a functional medicine lens. Her research revealed startling gaps in conventional postpartum care, including that "breastfeeding women need almost double the amount of protein as their baseline" and that all pregnant women develop gut permeability that requires specific healing.
Dr. Davis's ability to bridge medical knowledge with embodied wisdom makes this conversation particularly valuable. Her explanation of orgasmic birth demystifies this concept by connecting it to our neurophysiology and hormone production, while her practical approach to postpartum detoxification addresses modern environmental challenges facing new mothers. Through her programs and books, she's created accessible pathways for women to reclaim their postpartum health beyond the standard six-week checkup.
Ready to transform your understanding of birth and postpartum recovery? Visit Dr. Davis's website to access her free masterclass and discover how functional medicine approaches can support your maternal journey.
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Welcome to the Maternal Wealth Podcast, a space for all things related to maternal health, pregnancy and beyond. I'm your host, stephanie Terrio. I'm a labor and delivery nurse and a mother to three beautiful boys. Each week, we dive into inspiring stories and expert insights to remind us of the power that you hold in childbirth and motherhood. We're here to explore the joys, the challenges and the complexities of maternal health. Every mother's journey is unique and every story deserves to be told. Please note that this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your healthcare provider for medical guidance that is tailored to your specific needs. Are you ready? Let's get into Today.
Speaker 1:We welcome Dr Lauren Davis. She's a mother of two sons, an osteopathic and family medicine physician, an author of two books Thrive Mama, the Ultimate Postpartum Blueprint, and her other book called Nourishing Beginnings, an Integrative Physician's Reference Guide for Successful Lactation. Dr Davis has a longstanding interest in human anatomy and osteopathic principles, which ultimately led her to become duly board certified in family medicine and osteopathic neuromuscular medicine. In family medicine and osteopathic neuromuscular medicine, she founded Latched, nourished and Thriving as a resource for mothers pursuing holistic wellness. As a physician specializing in breastfeeding, she is dedicated to nurturing the maternal journey by enhancing the breastfeeding experience through the perspective of functional medicine. In today's episode, dr Davis will share her personal birth stories. Her first birth occurred in a hospital, while her second was an orgasmic home birth, assisted by her husband, who is also a physician. Today I'm excited to chat with Dr Lauren Davis and even more thrilled for you all to hear her birth story. Dr Lauren Davis, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that you're here. I would love for you to start off in sharing with us about your pursuit into medicine.
Speaker 2:Sure. So my story into medicine began when I was pretty young. My mom got very ill when I was a teenager and ended up spending over a year and a half in the hospital and seeing what she went through and all of the difficulties that she had, I knew I wanted to be in medicine and the question for me was what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be in medicine and the question for me was what I wanted to do. So initially I started off going into medical training, wanting to be a surgeon. I decided that the surgeon lifestyle was absolutely not for me and during medical school I fell in love with osteopathic medicine. So I loved the hands-on care. I had received it in college when I had a rotator cuff injury and it actually got me back to play without surgery, and that's when I decided that's what I wanted to be able to do.
Speaker 2:Fast forward to my residency when I was in family medicine and neuromuscular medicine training and I became a mom for the first time. We had our first son when I was a third-year resident. So for people not familiar with medical residency, you go through college for four years, you go through medical school for four years and then you do specialty training and for me that was an additional four years. So I'm in year three out of four here and I was becoming the next chief resident. And for me I had looked at pregnancy and postpartum care as it should be easy, since I was a doctor, that I kind of knew because I was already guiding people. This was going to be a breeze.
Speaker 2:We just had to figure out what to do with our son and boy was I surprised. So when I got to breastfeeding, especially in postpartum, I couldn't believe how tired I was. I couldn't believe how much work it was, how instinctually different it is to breastfeed, and all of that experience led me to pivot my whole career towards breastfeeding medicine. So I found a group called Dr Milk on Facebook. It's a group now of over 50,000 physician women who are interested in lactation knowledge and passing on breastfeeding to the rest of the physician community to be able to get better breastfeeding care. I have been a moderator of that group since 2019. I've studied to be an IBCLC and I've now specialized for functional medicine in the postpartum period.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear about you being pregnant during your residency. As a labor and delivery nurse, I work with many residents on the OB floor. I would love for you to share with us that experience of being pregnant and working as a resident.
Speaker 2:Sure. So for me that was easier than being a new mom. When I was pregnant it was still pretty intense, you know. Showing up to floor call, showing up to delivery, showing up to code type situations with a big pregnant belly trying to CPR and to run codes and to be thinking on the fly was a little bit hard with that early pregnancy mommy brain. But I had such a supportive crew around me that it actually made it easier. So showing up, having people take over what I was doing, having nurses come in and say I got this, you just stand back, you run the code, you do the things that you're able to do my team was so fantastic that that part was easy. It was actually showing up now, postpartum, as a new mom, where I'm expected to be back to all my regular duties and my brain was not functioning like it used to at that point. That was the hardest part for me.
Speaker 1:After the birth of your son. How supportive was the hospital in helping you initiate breastfeeding?
Speaker 2:Well, it was easier for me because I was giving birth in my own hospital. Easier for me because I was giving birth in my own hospital. So part of what I experienced was that that team that really wanted to support me through pregnancy now felt like they could show up in the delivery room to cheer me on. But having people walk in and out every two to three minutes just to drop by and say, hi, how are you doing, how are you progressing? Really disrupted for me the experience of my birth. I loved the support. I didn't love being taken away from the attention being on my son. It kind of felt like a performance for me.
Speaker 2:Luckily, my husband was also training in the same program at the time. We both had the ability to deliver in the hospital, so he was actually delivering our son. We had an OB on backup that was there in the room in case he needed anything, but they let him step in and they let him take over so I could come back and focus on him and focus on our family a bit more. But having everyone want to see the baby right after he's born, having everyone be in the room we had med students, we had everyone was a little bit more daunting for me, not to say that I would ever take that experience away, but it kind of shined a light for me on what I needed in my future pregnancies Did you go in for an induction or did you have spontaneous labor?
Speaker 2:covered the cost of living of where we were. We were in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country and I could only take my 20 days. My OB was supportive for me in that I'm saying that I kind of have to start to get my 20 days in on this day. So I had an induction at 40 and 3. I had 20 days of maternity leave and then I was back to patient care. I feel that 20 days, that's that's hard. That's hard. Things have changed Two years after.
Speaker 2:Part of what we were involved in as residents at the time was trying to make it so that new parents could take a little bit more time, and we were able to get the ACG and META recognized that at least 12 weeks are covered now, meaning that you don't lose your benefits if you need that time off. For me, if I took my FMLA, we lost benefits, we lost pay, which wasn't feasible for our family at the time. How long was your induction? It was a total of 12 hours from start of induction to delivery. So for me it was pretty quick. Yeah, that is pretty quick.
Speaker 1:How about for the pushing phase? How long did you push for? About three hours. How was your postpartum stay? How many days were you in the hospital?
Speaker 2:So they were trying to do me a favor and let me leave at 24 hours. But I had a third degree tear with my first. The 45 minute drive home from the hospital to my house was the most torturous experience of any of that. I asked to stay for an additional 24. I ended up at 12. So I ended up going home at 36 hours and to be given a Tylenol before I left was a little hard to make that journey home.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting here closing my eyes because I can. I feel for you. That must have been very difficult and that must have hurt.
Speaker 2:It felt like I was sitting on a football. I was so swollen it felt like I was sitting on a football. That's what I kept telling my husband and both of us were so kind of out of it at that point in those first 48 hours where you're really not having sleep or you're going through all those hormonal changes. Even as a doctor I didn't think to get a donut pillow before I left. So I'm sitting on the thing and he's trying to drive home so gingerly and I'm just. We're hitting bounce after bounce and speed bumps and I'm just I still can't think back to that without having my pelvic floor tighten up.
Speaker 1:We paused this episode for a quick message from our sponsor At Maternal Wealth. We aim to ensure that you have access to the best and the most appropriate care. That's why we created a maternal health care provider database. Maternal health providers can easily create profiles to promote their services and business, helping to increase access for those seeking their care. This is a one-of-a-kind database that offers a new and exciting way for women to search for and find maternal health providers near them and tailored to their specific needs. Profiles feature badges that highlight various services, such as tollback, friendly practices, all female practices, lgbtqai plus inclusivity, language options, access to vaginal breach services and more. For those who are listening, who might not know exactly what a third-degree tear is, do you mind explaining it for them?
Speaker 2:Sure. So when we grade tears after delivery we're looking at the layers of the skin and deeper tissues. So closest to the surface is what's called the mucosa. And if just the mucosa tears, that's a first degree. That usually doesn't need any sort of stitching for repair. If we get past the fascia, which is the next layer down, that's a second degree tear. And if we can see muscle, then that's a third degree. If it tears all the way through to the rectum, then that would be a fourth degree tear, because it tore the mucosa on the other side.
Speaker 1:Earlier, you mentioned that your husband was able to help with the delivery of your son. Was that something that you had talked about previously, or was it kind of like on the fly the obesity come on in, grab a pair of gloves. How did that go?
Speaker 2:We had asked at like our 38-week checkup. I had the same OB throughout my first, which I absolutely loved. He was my favorite person to work with on the unit. I felt like he was just so calm and cool and collected in every room and every delivery that he had done and I was really hoping that he would be on the day that I delivered because he just put me at ease. So at the 38-week checkup we were like, hey, do you think Craig would be able to help you out? He's like honey. He's a big Italian guy, long Island accent. He's like honey, if you want, he can do the whole thing and I'll just stand there and watch.
Speaker 2:And it was amazing that he one felt that comfortable with both of our skills to be able to give us that gift and two was cool enough to say, hey, I'll just take a backseat, I'll be on backup After baby's born. If I need to do the repair, if I need to do anything else, I'll step in. You know, craig can go with the baby, we'll have this all taken care of. And it just relaxed us both so much to make it such a pleasant experience to know that we had backup, even though we were trainees at the time that we had experience because we had both done probably 200 to 300 deliveries a piece at that point, so to have that experience was just amazing.
Speaker 1:How did the initial conversation go with your husband? Did he initiate wanting to deliver or were you kind of putting the nudge in saying, hey, this would be amazing if you could deliver our son?
Speaker 2:You know it's hard to say. With that one, which one of us initiated, I think it was both something that we both wanted so much in our heart that it was just like I wonder if we can find a way to make this happen. Like wouldn't it be amazing if you were the first person to hold our kid and we could both still feel comfortable? Because at that point I hadn't had much out of hospital birth experience.
Speaker 2:For me, my birth lens was everything happens in hospital. Everything has to have a backup, because I've seen where moms need to be rushed into emergency surgery. I've seen where we're doing all of these interventions, versus after my residency when I really got more into the home birthing community and understood that a lot of the things that we sometimes consider emergencies in the hospital are of our own making. Right, and then see D cells when we do interventions like membrane sweeps that mom may not have been ready for and we put her body into a different space, right where her nervous system is no longer regulated, where she's feeling fear and frightened, and the speed with which we move through those transitions, I didn't understand at that time. And to look back and say, would I have had my first as a home birth. I didn't have the knowledge at that point. I viewed birth as the lens through. It happens in the hospital and that's the safest way.
Speaker 1:Before we get into learning more about your decision to have a home birth for your second, I'm curious what type of medicine does your husband practice? What residency was he in when you were pregnant with your first?
Speaker 2:He was also in family medicine and osteopathic neuromuscular medicine. Okay.
Speaker 1:So the same as you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How long after you had your first were you thinking about having your second child?
Speaker 2:For a long time. So our first was born in May of 2018. We were going to have our second at the beginning of 2020, and then the pandemic hit and at that point, my husband and I were supposed to open a wellness center for a large hospital. All of the money had been reallocated and our contracts stipulated that they could move us into a different position, so I was, instead of being wellness and doing osteopathic manipulation through the pandemic, I was an urgent care physician and, without us knowing everything that we do about COVID, I wasn't comfortable going to work every day pregnant and seeing every single COVID patient, essentially in the county. So we delayed our second and we have a five-year gap between our first and our second because we waited until we were both comfortable to start trying again.
Speaker 1:When you became pregnant with your second. Going back to what you were speaking of earlier in understanding the process in which hospitals treat and induce mothers and laboring patients, where and when did that shift happen for you that maybe this time you are going to have a child at home?
Speaker 2:So for me, when we decided to open our own private practice, I was doing breastfeeding medicine, I was doing osteopathic manipulation and I was doing integrative and functional medicine, and I had a lot of new moms come to me after birth to help with their infants, for OMM and to help with breastfeeding issues, and what I saw was a large portion of the home birth community actually found me because they were looking for alternative ways to support themselves and their babies after delivery, trying to avoid tongue tie revisions or trying to get their baby to not be as colicky at home with hands-on care. And I was exposed to a whole different population than I had really ever experienced before. I had done a lot of OMT on newborns Most of that was in hospital and hospital follow-ups and to get a lot of women in who are telling me these amazing home birth stories and who are giving me all these insightful things about. Oh, this is why I didn't want to have birth in the hospital. I wanted. You know my midwife was really hands-off. My body did all the work myself. I felt comfortable. I felt so at ease at home. For me, I think the at ease felt like home because my first birth was with everyone I knew. I knew every person walking in the room. I knew my husband was capable of delivering the baby. I knew that the person who had taught me to deliver was standing in the room in case anything happened.
Speaker 2:Not everyone gets to have that experience of an in-hospital birth. When you have other people walking in the room who you don't know, when you have new nurses who you don't trust, or you've had shift change and the person that's been with you for 12 hours while you're crowning is like, hey, I've got to leave. You know, I've got to do my own stuff. I have life outside of work and you're getting a brand new person there to support you, that can be hard for a lot of women to feel comfortable in that situation and to hear all of the home birth stories of nope. My midwife was with me through the whole thing. I had the same provider giving me care the whole time.
Speaker 2:When I became pregnant with my second, the OB group that I was going to was much different than I had had with my first experience. It was a large, large group. I was seeing a different provider every time. Half of them didn't even know that I was a physician when they came into the room to talk to me. Half of them didn't ask my name when they walked in the door, to then find out that I'm a physician and then ask me questions like why are you even here? Then it was very, very difficult.
Speaker 2:So we decided that that was not the experience we wanted. Bringing our child into the world. My husband just said you know I'm comfortable delivering. Are you comfortable having him at home? I said yeah, you know what? I think I am, because we were so turned off by that system of care, by not knowing the person who was going to be in the delivery room. You know, when you go to a system that has a laborist, a specialist who only does in-hospital deliveries, the person that is taking care of you you have never met outside of that moment, and to put your trust into that is a big jump for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:So much of what you are speaking of right now resonates with me. I think about my patients in difficult situations in the hospital, feel it heavily, thinking about my patients who are in situations where they're not comfortable with a new physician, new nurses. The trust isn't there. Language barriers that is a common theme that exists in the hospital setting when it comes to birth.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately for the people who are in it, that is their everyday, normal right. It's been normalized for the people inside the system. You know I work with this doctor every day but as a patient coming in who's seen the outpatient providers the whole time, you don't know this person at all, you don't know their capabilities, you don't know anything about how they want to support you. You're coming in with a birth plan that may or may not be accepted as okay by that provider, especially if you want something different, right. I think where the divide is coming in is that patients are coming in with these requests, right, and sometimes it's just not feasible in the system we're working in. Sometimes we can meet their needs with a little bit of change and a little bit of work on our part, but there's so much to be done on a labor and delivery unit there's so many places that everyone is drawn and most places are understaffed that that extra burden on us as a provider is sometimes seen as the straw that'll break the camel's back right, is sometimes seen as the straw that'll break the camel's back right as opposed to. This is what's going to make my patient comfortable. This is what's going to make them trust me, this is what's going to make them like their birth experience. I think if we can reframe it for ourselves as providers, it makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2:We know, for a woman's body and her physiology all mammals have a reflex. When we are fearful, when we don't feel comfortable, what happens is that the cervix begins to close. It's documented in rabbits, it's documented in other mammals that they're actually able to have a baby in the birth canal, be scared by a predator, pull those babies back up into the uterus, move their body to a safe space and then finish their delivery. Well, can we imagine, if we're giving fear signals all along the path, that when we see failure to progress, when we see women who are having high anxiety, that that same process may be taking place in their body without us as a provider or without them recognizing it?
Speaker 2:And for me, that's what I didn't want. I didn't want interventions, I didn't want to have a lot of stuff done and I knew that if I were at a hospital, I might be talked into it, because I didn't want to be the patient who was a problem for the unit. First, be there having a Doppler so we can check. You know, being able to move through birth with a completely different experience and sitting in a really safe space so that birth trauma doesn't develop, so that I felt seen, that I felt heard and supported by my husband, by one of my best friends who made the trip here from Greece to be with me.
Speaker 1:Comparing the two I can. Who recognizes and honors the birth process, learners, the birth process.
Speaker 2:I love that you had the courage to follow your instincts, to follow your heart, and that you had the support of your husband in which you created a safe space for you to labor and birth your second child, and I know my story is different than a lot of people who are going to talk about it, even from a home birth standpoint.
Speaker 2:Right? Not everyone is privileged enough that their partner is a physician who's delivered many babies and will feel comfortable doing that for them, right? When we look at the free birth community, when we look at other home birthing communities, many times it's a cost privilege, right? There aren't many home birth midwives that work with insurances. There aren't people who are supporting home births as physicians and attending at home because of the cost of malpractice insurance. So all of you know what I would have my practice look like in the ideal world versus what I can actually do is a little bit different. But I think that women deserve this support and this care and this information. If we're not giving them the other side of the story of what's possible, because of our own blinders and our own ability to block out the other option of what is possible, are we truly giving informed consent?
Speaker 1:I would love to hear about your birth at home. How did labor come on? What?
Speaker 2:did that look like for you. So one of my really great friends was coming in to help support us after birth. She travels all over the world, she is a sexual educator and she showed up about a week and a half before my due date. So she and her partner land, they get all settled into our guest room. They're there throughout the day, which for them, coming from Greece, was really middle of the night, and they're settling into bed around 7 or 8 pm.
Speaker 2:My husband and I finally lay down. I fall asleep. I wake up at 1130 and my water had broke. So my husband goes in. I'm not really having contractions, I'm just kind of hanging out. He's like hey, sayada, I just wanted you to know. Lauren's water broke. We're going to be up probably most of the night, but she's not having contractions. Things probably won't progress for a little while.
Speaker 2:So they go back to sleep and around 1 am I started having pretty frequent contractions. So Craig gets them back up, says sorry if you want to be here for the birth, lauren's really having contractions. She's in the tub. She would really love for you to come in. So Saida comes in. She sits behind me in the tub, is rubbing my shoulders, is being the most supportive, caring person ever. Finally, I'm crowning about 2.45 in the morning so I move over to our bed. I delivered our son within the next 15 minutes. I didn't even push, he pushed himself out. And to have that space to feel supported, to have someone there who's giving me a nice light touch, massage, is connecting with me and is just watching this whole process unfold, was just absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1:People will say how is it possible that someone can have an orgasmic birth from somebody who did experience that? How is it possible?
Speaker 2:So when we look at orgasm, orgasm for women can be triggered by our physiology. But if we look at some of my patients that have had spinal cord injuries, they get arousal areas that are on their skin above the level where you can stroke the skin, say of their back, of their shoulder, and they will have an orgasm. Some of them learn to just have thought-triggered orgasms. It is simply a response of our mind to our physiologic input. So if we can reach a state in meditation where we enter that space and allow orgasm to arise, we can have that without any physical touch stimuli. We can enhance it with physical touch.
Speaker 2:Right when I talk to other women about the vulva, if penetration were supposed to be the most orgasmic part of intercourse, why are all the nerve endings on the outside at the clitoris? To me that seems like an innate design where we're supposed to be able to use that pleasure for something else. And if birth is one of the things that is natural, is supposed to have all of the oxytocin release, if it's supposed to have extra pitocin release, that is such an amazing way to access those hormones. So when we look at meditations and we look at reaching things like flow state, the thing that sticks out to me the most is that we get brainwave pattern shifts and we also get hormone release. That includes pitocin and oxytocin. So it's a beautiful way to approach birth through that meditative space right. And some people will reach that through things like hypnosis, and it's why hypnobirthing is so big, because we can reach that state without having to have a lot of the physical inputs the immediate postpartum period.
Speaker 1:Talk to us about you delivered your son. He's in your arms. How was that for you compared to being in the hospital?
Speaker 2:It was very different. So we had basically put space heaters in the room, turned the temperature of the room up. My husband puts him on my chest, he's delivering the placenta, syed is there with us, she's giving us both love and support, and my son was immediately nursing. So with my first I felt like I tried to get that to happen. But, being a new mom and just taking the breastfeeding classes, I didn't know what a good latch looked like and even though there was stimulation of the nipple, he wasn't able to get the whole thing in his mouth. I didn't know how to get a deep latch on. So immediately with my second, got him on. Deep felt lovely, you know contractions of the uterus, so that it was pushing the placenta out and just felt so connected to the moment as opposed to feeling like there are people all around me rushing to do everything else.
Speaker 1:I'm curious about any tearing because you had a third degree with your first. How was that for your second?
Speaker 2:I had a first degree right over the space where my third degree with your first. How was that for your second? I had a first degree right over the space where my third degree was, but it didn't need any repair. My placenta was a little slow to come out, but my husband was able to get it. It took probably 30, 45 minutes.
Speaker 2:I'm curious what did you do with your placenta? We did not save it. I lean toward estrogen dominant. So when we look at functional medicine and hormone balance, I lean towards estrogen dominant and I knew that estrogen dominance as a breastfeeding provider can cause low milk supply. So we didn't do any estrogen or any encapsulation because I didn't want the extra estrogens, because I had experienced a low milk supply the first time.
Speaker 1:So my husband did a placenta print on a page for us and we just got rid of the placenta your oldest son to his little brother at home. I know you delivered in the night or in the early morning hours, but how was that being at home and then introducing your older son to his new little sibling?
Speaker 2:So my older son was there, Syeda's partner was with him. They were hanging out. We had a couch kind of in a little sitting room off of our bedroom so he was sitting on the couch with Aaron and they were playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was so excited that he got to play video games in the middle of the night. And he came over and he met his baby brother right after he was born. He said I didn't know he'd be so messy and then walked away and then loved on him once he was cleaned up in the morning. Just so cute.
Speaker 1:And I love just the imagery in my head new generation of little boys growing up to be men. He's going to remember that and his foundation of seeing his mother give birth in the power that holds, the power that we have in creating our family and being a family and that core value. That's amazing. Yes.
Speaker 2:He, our oldest, is diagnosed with ADHD and sometimes he can be extra energy. He can be kind of over the top with the energy bouncing all around and everything. In that moment he was so calm. He walked up. He looked at his baby brother. He went oh, he's so cute, but he's so messy. Can I give him a kiss later, when he's cleaned up? I'm like yeah, buddy, it's fine. I have a photo where Aaron took. I'm holding the baby. He's standing next to the bed behind me. He's got his hands on his cheeks in this big like oh my gosh face and his excitement. You can just see it radiating off of his face.
Speaker 1:I love it, that's. It's just beautiful Women like yourself who are taking ownership of what you want and taking ownership of how you want to live your life and bring life into the world. It's making waves and sharing your story so other women could hear it. It's so important that you're doing this, so I'm so glad you're here and sharing this story.
Speaker 1:I'm so happy to be here you're a physician and from my experience of working with physicians obstetricians home birth is a difficult topic to talk about and I'm curious in your community, with your colleagues who are also physicians, how was it received that you were making a decision to have a home birth and then afterwards, after the home birth happened, how was that received?
Speaker 2:For my closer friends. They tend to be osteopaths, they tend to be functional medicine providers, they tend to be out-of-the-box thinkers and for them they were just so excited that I got what I wanted For the wider community at large. Sometimes it's still not received well. Sometimes it's still not received well, but we all have our own experience, we all have our own bias. And to be an OB provider, to be the one that is the end-all be-all who doesn't get to see the easy home births who doesn't get to see, you know, the women who decide to never experience in-hospital care, the women who go to birthing centers. They don't get that experience unless they pursue it and have it on their own. So I can't fault them for being afraid for me. But what I remember is that I don't have to take on someone else's fear and make it my own on someone else's fear and make it my own. If I'm not afraid, if I'm reassured by the fact that my home is 15 minutes from the closest hospital, that hospital has a NICU.
Speaker 2:If anything were to happen, I know how to support. My husband knows how to support. We had people here. We had the tools at home with us to bridge that 15-minute gap, should anything happen. That is within my comfort zone and I can't ask someone else to accept my risk tolerance. What I can ask for them is that they respect my choice. Right, I can't ask them to agree with it, but I can say this was my choice, this was how I wanted my experience to go. Can you find that happiness for me that everything worked out well and most of them can do that?
Speaker 1:I love for our listeners to learn more about Latched, nourished and Thriving. How did you come up with this idea and how is it supporting moms who are pursuing more of a holistic wellness for themselves and their families?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So after my first, my experience was that I had a harder time recovering than I could have ever thought possible. So in my background, my history, I have a history of celiac disease, autoimmune condition, and what I experienced was flares of things that felt like my celiac, even though I knew I was still gluten-free. What I experienced was a lot of gut issues and brain fog, fatigue. All of these things that I knew had to have an underlying cause. So I spent kind of four or five years diving into the research, looking at what women need for nutrition, what's happening in the body during pregnancy that changes our physiology, changes our metabolism, changes our gene expression, and what I discovered were a few things. So the first is that breastfeeding women need almost double the amount of protein as their baseline. So if we put women back on the same diet and food plan that they had, or worse, if we restrict, trying to bounce back, we end up at a protein deficiency. And what do we know about protein deficiency? It leads to thin skin, hair loss, fatigue, brittle nails, brain fog, muscle wasting, bone loss all the things that we attribute to normal postpartum experience. The second was that all women actually end up having leakiness of their gut during pregnancy. It's how our breast microbiome develops. So during the third trimester we get opening of those cell walls, we get bacteria that are passed through our lymphatic channels to get to the breast from our gut and that's how we make our breast microbiome. Well, if we don't repair, if we have these traumatic experiences, if we have high cortisol, which is a normal part of pregnancy, all of it leads to prolonged leaky gut. So why are we seeing autoimmune conditions? Why are we seeing more women feel fatigued after birth? Well, it's because we're not addressing the gut and we're not healing it in a way that most cultures instinctively do. So bone broth and well-cooked foods and lots of micronutrients are a big part of traditional cultures, yet it's not something we really practice here in the US.
Speaker 2:So how do we nourish the body in a way that repairs the gut, in a way that actually meets all the body's needs? How do we look at things that interfere in this process, like endocrine disrupting chemicals and microplastics that are now everywhere in our environment? And how do we prioritize keeping our health during a time where our focus is on someone else? And what I came up with were kind of three main things. One, nutrition we nourish mama right. The second is we rebalance hormones and we detox in a way that's safe for us and baby and that's called our Detox Mama program. And third, we do it in a community of women who are focusing on this together. So I've built a community for women to come in to get all of this information, to get advanced functional medicine testing, to get to the root cause of why they're having these issues in the first place. And especially when we're talking about women having babies back to back to back.
Speaker 2:Now that level of depletion just builds from pregnancy to postpartum, to pregnancy to postpartum periods. So how do we stop that cycle? How do we intervene? So how do we stop that cycle? How do we intervene? So that is what I do at Latch Nurse Thriving. I educate women, we have courses, we have community, we have group coaching programs and we have the book. So anything is accessible to anyone who needs the information. I've also recently started a provider training program on how to train postpartum providers, doulas, midwives, nurses on these principles and how they can implement them with their patients, and that's called our Thrive Mama Method program.
Speaker 1:My perspective as a labor and delivery nurse. I do see a lot of thinking about my patients and I'm seeing a lot of women who are having the hormonal and endocrine complications presenting in their thyroid. Is that also something you are seeing with?
Speaker 2:Yes. So we know, we know the postpartum period 90% of women are going to have intrusive thoughts. It's from the brain rewiring, it's from that neuroplasticity and the new connections that are happening. We know that 60% of women are going to be deficient in micronutrients, so we're looking at iron, zinc, potassium, magnesium. We know that 20% are going to go on to develop a postpartum thyroid issue and we know that up to 70% are going to experience some sort of hormonal imbalance. And it's all because of, one, how we're treating women and, two, the ecosystem that our bodies are in right. When we have microplastics in the water, when we know that 100% of cord blood samples now have some sort of endocrine disrupting chemical within them, those are inside our bodies to get there in the first place.
Speaker 2:We talk about women not detoxing their bodies during pregnancy or breastfeeding. But again, if we have these cycles where we're back to back to back, how long do we wait to prioritize our own health? So I found a way for women to be able to detox safely while still breastfeeding. A lot of it depends on our gut right. Our gut is what we call phase three of our detox process and if we're not revamping and sealing and healing the gut, we're not going to be able to effectively remove things from our body. Well, what do we know about toxins inside a woman's body? Is that they're fat soluble, and what is one of the biggest things that we're mobilizing fat for postpartum? It's our breast milk. We're going to concentrate those things in breast milk if we don't figure out a way to remove them from our body.
Speaker 2:So is that a reason why we're seeing more protein intolerances than ever? Is it a reason why we're seeing more eczema in infants than ever? I think so. We don't have the research to back it up yet, but I know when I work with people and we get a mom's gut working well, most of the time the things that they're having and seeing in their babies go away. So when we prioritize our own health as moms and their babies go away, so when we prioritize our own health as moms, we then have the ability to pass on that health to our infants.
Speaker 2:And we know from all of the studies that a number one predictor of a baby's future health is their mother's happiness. I know for me, when I'm not feeling well, I get cranky, I'm not happy, I'm not the mom I want to show up to be as when I'm inflamed right when my gut is off, when I've had gluten on accident at a restaurant out for two or three days. I don't feel like me. That was most of my experience my first six months postpartum, with my first, and until I figured this out and I figured out how to heal my own gut and I figured out how to reseal the gut barrier and I figured out how to detox myself, I was not showing up as the version of me that I wanted to be for my kids.
Speaker 1:For women who are postpartum but are six months a year or more two years out and they're interested in detoxing the Detox Mama program, would it still benefit them, even though they're outside of the breastfeeding phase?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The Detox Mama program teaches the principles of detox in a way that make it safe for breastfeeding moms. They're applicable at any point in our life, but what I've done with that program that's unique and different is that I've pointed out all of the ways that breastfeeding moms can still do things, and what herbals are safe for them, what binders are safe for them to use, what not to use and avoid in the products that they're picking out, how to do it naturally through food and through gut healing to prevent absorption of toxins. And then how to look at our environment to get the things out of our environment that are the biggest factors. So I personally consider postpartum up to two years. So we know that you can still be developed with postpartum anxiety and depression, to some will say four years after birth. So if we are still being affected, if our brain is still changing and rewiring two years after birth, we're technically postpartum forever. But the program is really designed for moms in those first two years after birth.
Speaker 1:To our listeners who are interested in learning more about yourself, about your books and your program. How can they find you and how can they learn?
Speaker 2:more. So on our website we have a chat feature. I have uploaded a masterclass on there that kind of goes through all of these pieces of the puzzle and they can register for that and watch it for free. The book is on our website. It's also another great way to get the information and get my thought processes as a pretty low ticket item. So it's $9.99. You get the PDF version, you get the ebook version and you get the audio so you can listen to it, consume it in any way that you want. And when people are ready to really change, I offer a free discovery call so that they can meet me, so that we can talk about if this will work for them or not and if there are ways that they can get the information right that we can kind of custom tailor their package based on their needs. So, whether that be just enrolling in the courses or joining our membership program or joining our functional medicine programs, we can talk about what the best solution is for them.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for coming on to the show. We have a common theme where we say that birth is healing and for the listeners, for the women that I'm interviewing talking about birth, the transformation that we go through. It has been also healing for myself. Listening to you and how you're sharing your story and the experiences that I have been through at bedside in the hospital and hearing you speak your truth has healed me in ways that I can't even begin to explain. Thank you, stephanie. Hey there, amazing listeners. If you love what we do and want to see our podcast grow, we need your help. By making a donation, you'll be supporting us and bringing you even more great content.
Speaker 1:I truly believe creating this space for women all across the globe to share their story will allow us to collectively heal, grow and become more empowered in the space that we deserve to be Motherhood, womanhood and however that looks and feels for each and every one of us, every contribution, big or small, will make a huge difference. If you can head over to support us today, there's a link in the bio to support the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being a part of this journey to support the podcast From the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being a part of this journey. Thank you for listening. Be sure to check out our social media. All links are provided in the episode description. We're excited to have you here. Please give us a follow If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the show. Reach out to us via email at info at maternalwealthcom. And remember stay healthy, embrace your power and you got this, thank you.