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
The Support Every New Mother Deserves: A Postpartum Doula's Journey
What happens when a woman gives birth in a foreign country without family support, speaks minimal Korean, and navigates an unfamiliar healthcare system? Heather Magill's unexpected journey into motherhood began precisely this way in South Korea, setting her on a path that would ultimately transform not just her life but the lives of countless new mothers.
Through three distinctly different birth experiences—from a curtained hospital ward in South Korea to the nurturing environment of a birth center—Heather discovered firsthand the profound impact that proper support makes during the vulnerable postpartum period. Her candid reflections reveal many new mothers' stark reality: "It was never really meant for someone to have a baby and take your baby home to an empty house... see you in six weeks, good luck with everything." This insight became the foundation for her life's work.
Heather introduces the powerful concept of "matrescence"—the developmental transition into motherhood that parallels adolescence in its intensity and transformative nature. This framework helps explain why becoming a mother isn't just about learning baby care skills but involves fundamental shifts in identity, perspective, and place in the world. Through her business, Infant Concierge, she now provides overnight and daytime doula services that fill crucial gaps in postpartum care, offering practical help and knowledgeable, non-judgmental support as families navigate their unique parenting journeys.
Whether you're expecting your first child, supporting someone who is, or simply interested in maternal health, this conversation offers valuable insights into how proper postpartum support can positively impact mental health, family bonding, and the overall experience of new parenthood. Connect with Heather at infantconcierge.com to learn more about her services and upcoming matrescence support groups designed to help mothers of all ages process their unique maternal journeys.
Take advantage of Heather's free tool to help busy moms build a habit of self-compassion and kindness when they need it the most.
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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. Welcome back to the Maternal Wealth Podcast.
Stephanie Theriault:Today, we welcome Heather McGill. She is a mother of three and a postpartum doula and owner of Infant Concierge. Welcome to the podcast, heather. Hi. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. I'm so excited to chat. Heather and I have been trying to get together since last year in the winter. Finally we got something in the book, so I'm excited to have you here today. One of the ways that I really like to start the episodes on the podcast is for you to share a little bit about yourself before you became a mom yourself before you became a mom?
Heather Magill:Yeah, sure. So I became a mom relatively early on. I had my oldest about a year after I graduated from college. Before that, yeah, I grew up in a homeschool family and then I attended college for four years, met my husband there, and after graduation we actually moved to South Korea for a year to teach English, and then my son was born at the end of that year.
Stephanie Theriault:Was your son born in Korea? He was Did you grow up here in the North Shore of Massachusetts?
Heather Magill:I grew up on Cape Cod, actually, but we've been living on the North Shore for Massachusetts. I grew up on Cape Cod, actually, but we've been living on the North Shore for 12 years now, so my kids have grown up here. Where did you go?
Stephanie Theriault:to college, nyack College in New York. All right, so what led you and your husband to decide you want to go and teach in Korea?
Heather Magill:We were both interested in education in general and we did not have specific plans for what we wanted to do after college, so we figured that would be probably the best chance for us to just kind of travel and see the world a bit and get some experience living in a different culture and just be able to save some money and that sort of thing. They have a pretty big program through the South Korean government for people coming from native English speaking countries to come as English teachers, and there's a lot of schools there that will cover your flights and give you a place to live as well as a salary as an English teacher. So it was a great opportunity for us.
Stephanie Theriault:When you became pregnant in South Korea, was it planned or was it a surprise? It was a surprise, were you like, okay, I'm pregnant in South Korea. Were you thinking about wanting to go back to the US?
Heather Magill:or were you like, no, I'm going to do this here back to the US or you're like no, I'm going to do this here. We decided to stay. I think part of the reason you know we were more kind of established there since we went straight after college. We didn't necessarily have a home or jobs lined up in the United States at that point and it, I mean it was a surprise but it wasn't totally unexpected and it was actually kind of beneficial because of that. Just the way the healthcare system was there and honestly to me, I think I was very naive going into it and kind of didn't feel like it was going to necessarily be as difficult as it ended up being.
Stephanie Theriault:Talk to us a little bit about the prenatal care. How did that look like?
Heather Magill:Yeah, so they had we would go. It was kind of, I guess, like a clinic type setting that we would go to for our appointments. My husband and I learned very minimal Korean, but fortunately most people who are well-educated, such as doctors, spoke English fairly well, and so we were able to communicate with the doctors that we saw. And I think in general, prenatal care was not very different from how it is in the United States. At that point I hadn't had a baby in the US, so I didn't really have anything to compare it too. But one thing that I did notice is that they would check on the baby using ultrasound basically every visit, and would even share some of those recordings with us.
Stephanie Theriault:Were the visits with OBs or midwives.
Heather Magill:I think they were OBs, but because of the communication barrier we didn't really go into a lot of those specifics and that even wasn't really something that I was educated that much about, about the differences and things like that at that point.
Stephanie Theriault:When it came time for labor, were you induced or did you go into labor naturally?
Heather Magill:I went into labor, naturally, my water broke actually before labor started, and then we headed to the hospital and contractions started within a couple of hours, do you?
Stephanie Theriault:remember how many weeks you were, more or less.
Heather Magill:It was. Yeah, it was after my due date, I think about six, six days or so. No, it was before. I'm sorry, it was six days before my due date. Sorry, it's been 17 years so the details are a little fussy. But yeah, no, he came almost a week early.
Stephanie Theriault:You broke your water, you went to the hospital and then contractions just came on, naturally.
Heather Magill:Yeah, within a couple of hours it was. It went pretty smoothly.
Stephanie Theriault:As far as you know, there weren't really any sort of major complications or anything like that being in a different country and having medical personnel take care of you who, as you mentioned, your Korean was so so you had to learn so much. How was that for you? Going through birth? This is your first time, right? So even if you're in a country and with people who speak your language, how was that experience for you?
Heather Magill:I think in hindsight it's a lot scarier than it was at the time. I really did not have any idea what I was getting myself into. Like I said I was fortunate that things went relatively smoothly. Now, knowing what I know now, I can see all the places where things could have been more difficult. But in general I think it went pretty well. It was a little bit of a different experience. They didn't have private rooms for laboring in, so it's just a room full of beds with curtains in between. So that was definitely different than my experiences after. That didn't have a lot of education as far as you know the best ways to labor and things like that. So I was in a bed the whole time and so that was a little. I can see now that I could have probably done things differently, but it all worked out in the end.
Stephanie Theriault:How about your postpartum period? Like the immediate postpartum period? How long were you in the hospital? And then talk to us a little bit about first couple months being with a newborn in South Korea.
Heather Magill:Yeah, I think I was in the hospital for maybe three or four days. They actually. I feel that the labor experience was maybe a little bit more similar to something that might have happened in an American hospital a few decades ago. But the postpartum experience was very supportive in that they did have private rooms, had traditional foods that I actually didn't eat that much of because it wasn't my tradition and some things were not necessarily to my taste, but it was very high quality traditional foods that they served. They had different services, such as massage and stuff that I was not able to take advantage of just because of the communication barriers, but I felt very well supported in the hospital.
Heather Magill:Coming home from the hospital was a little bit more tricky for me. The culture is set up there so that new moms get a lot of their support from extended family and sometimes they even go back home and live with their parents or things like that after the birth for a little while. So there's not a lot of space in the culture for partner support and my husband ended up going back to work within just a couple of days of the birth, so that made it difficult for me not having my other family members and support around, so that was harder for me than I expected, but I was fortunate that my mom was able to come and visit and stay with us for a few weeks after the birth. The only challenge with that was that she had to book her tickets in advance, obviously, and the first couple of weeks was just me, and then, when she arrived, that was very, very helpful for me.
Stephanie Theriault:How long were you in South Korea after you had your first child?
Heather Magill:We came home when he was about three months old, were you?
Stephanie Theriault:already planning to come home, or did you decide to come home after you had your child?
Heather Magill:Yeah. So we had signed a contract for a year and I had to end my contract early because of having him. My husband stayed for the full year contract and then we headed home. If we hadn't have had a kid, we might have stayed for a second year, but that was the best choice for us at the time.
Stephanie Theriault:Did you come back to the North Shore of Massachusetts?
Heather Magill:We actually flew back to Florida, which is where my in-laws live, and we stayed with them for a couple of weeks, so they got to meet the baby and everything. And then we traveled from Florida back to Massachusetts and we lived for a little while with my mom in her house before we got our own place.
Stephanie Theriault:For your second child. Was there any thoughts of you wanting to go into maternal health, becoming a postpartum doula in the interim or just a journey after you had your other two children?
Heather Magill:No, this was a journey that started pretty soon after I had my first. There was a lot to process after the birth, just in terms of my own experiences, just in terms of my own experiences, and I did feel like I was kind of blindsided just by how challenging it was to be a mom to a newborn. I kind of figured ahead of time. I had babysitting experience, I was comfortable being around kids and babies, so it should be fine.
Heather Magill:Obviously, becoming a mom is very different than being a babysitter and that is something that I kind of didn't realize until I was in the thick of it. And it was during that time going online, reading different experiences, kind of processing my own experience that I came across the idea of being a postpartum doula and that really resonated with me because it was a very similar support role to my experience with my mom when she was able to visit. So that's kind of when the idea first came into my head and I was exploring what I wanted to do with my life after college and everything like that. But it definitely was a slow process and it took a few years to even get started on that for me.
Stephanie Theriault:Before we get into the birth story of your second child. We all experience our own difficulties or challenges and hardships in the postpartum period. For those who are listening, who aren't mothers yet, what are some of the specific challenges that you faced that made you want to become a postpartum doula?
Heather Magill:That's a good question, I think.
Heather Magill:Looking back in hindsight, I think something that I really struggled with was anxiety, and at the time that wasn't really something that I necessarily was able to identify or understand that. Maybe it was a little bit outside of the normal experience, but it definitely just affected my sleep and kind of my ability to just to be fully present during that time. And then the other concept that has really helped me a lot in hindsight and that I'm focusing a lot of my support on now is just the idea of matrescence and kind of the natural developmental changes that come as we become moms. And it's very interesting to me because originally I just kind of imagined that having a baby would just be, then my life would be me with the baby in it, and really there's so much more that shifts kind of fundamentally physically, emotionally, the way you view yourself and your place in the world. That comes when you become a mom. And so just that whole concept of matrescence has really been helpful for me, that whole concept of matrescence has really been helpful for me.
Heather Magill:For your baby number two. How long did you wait before you decided to have another child? So my kids are all three years apart and it definitely took a solid two years after having my first and several months to a year of more consistent sleep before I felt like I was even ready to start thinking about having a second one. So, yeah, when he was around two is when we decided to think about having another one.
Stephanie Theriault:We pause 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 Healthcare 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 TODAC, friendly practices, all-female practices, LGBTQAI plus inclusivity, language options, access to vaginal breach services and, more Additionally, be sure to check out our Not your Average Birth course. In this course, I discuss the variations that exist in hospital practices based on policies, staffing and budgets, all of which can directly affect your birth experience and outcome. How was the pregnancy for you? Having one at home and being pregnant with your second child?
Heather Magill:It was definitely more challenging in terms of just you know, going through the physical demands of pregnancy while also taking care of a two-year-old, but overall it was pretty smooth.
Stephanie Theriault:Where did you decide to deliver and then did you have a midwife or an OBGYN for your birth provider?
Heather Magill:So by the time I was pregnant for the second time which I also actually ended up doing my original postpartum doula training during that pregnancy and by then we were living on the North shore. We moved up to Salem Originally, my husband ended up going to Salem state to get his master's degree, and so that was also going on during this pregnancy, and my daughter was born at Salem Hospital. I think the person who was there at the birth was an OB, but I saw everyone in the practice throughout my pregnancy, so I think there was at least one midwife that I saw for some of my prenatal visits, as well as the OBs, and actually my daughter will be 14 on Monday, so her birth was almost exactly 14 years ago.
Stephanie Theriault:Did you have another vaginal?
Heather Magill:delivery. Yes, I did have a vaginal delivery and that one was unmedicated. I ended up having an epidural with my first. Like I had mentioned, I really wasn't educated on different options and there wasn't a lot of options available in that hospital in Korea. I was open to trying it unmedicated for the second time. We also had a birth doula with us for the second birth, so that was very helpful and it also was fairly quick, so I did not end up getting an epidural.
Stephanie Theriault:And was this also a spontaneous labor and not an abduction?
Heather Magill:Yes, so her position. She was transverse for a little while towards the end of the pregnancy so we thought we may have to end up having a C-section. But she moved heads down and it was spontaneous, and that time it was actually a few days after my due date.
Stephanie Theriault:And then talk to us about your postpartum period. So in between the two, your first and your second you've done some research. You now trained to be a postpartum doula. Did you find through your research and your certifications helped you with the transition the second time around into the postpartum period with two?
Heather Magill:I definitely think I was better able to prepare and it helped a lot that I was living close by to my sister at the time and my mom was just a couple of hours away, maybe an hour drive away, and we just we did have more support around that time. My, my husband also had not only more flexibility in his schedule but he was also more aware of what we were getting into and the types of support we would need and he was more comfortable. He had very, very little experience taking care of babies or young children before we had our first, so by the time the second one came around, he had more experience with that as well, and so that was very helpful. And, yeah, I think I just emotionally I did feel more stable during the second one, to less surprised by the intensity of the experience.
Stephanie Theriault:After your second child, were you working with other moms as a postpartum doula? Were you working with other moms as a postpartum doula.
Heather Magill:No, I really didn't start doing that. I worked very slightly during those years with maybe two clients a year. When my kids were very little, I was the primary caregiver for them while my husband was working and in grad school and I was doing other types of education to support my postpartum doula journey with reading and taking workshops and things like that. But I worked very little at that point.
Stephanie Theriault:How long did you wait until you decided to have a third baby? Was your third baby planned or a surprise?
Heather Magill:He came along three years after the second one and again right around the two-year mark, we kind of felt like we were ready for another one. So we didn't really have a plan starting out of how many children we wanted to have, but we were just kind of seeing how things went as we went along. But we were trying kind of seeing how things went as we went along. So but we were trying for another one. Talk to us about your third birth.
Stephanie Theriault:How did it go? From my experience working as like labor and delivery nurse, like the third is like a give or take. It could either go super fast or no, it just takes a little bit of time.
Heather Magill:Yeah, I feel like that experience was a little bit of both. I had contractions off and on, for it felt like weeks. It was probably close to a week before things really got started, and so that was a very difficult time, not knowing like waking up every morning, not knowing if this was going to be it or not. Sometimes I would spend the entire day having kind of minor contractions and then go to bed at night thinking probably in a couple of hours we'll be up and heading out, and then wake up the next morning and do it all over again. It did feel like it took a long time, but then once things really started getting active, it happened very quickly. So I feel like I kind of got both.
Stephanie Theriault:Did you deliver at Salem Hospital again?
Heather Magill:No, we were lucky enough to be at the birth center at Beverly For those who are listening.
Stephanie Theriault:Unfortunately, the birth center is no longer open. That's nice to hear that you were able to take advantage of the birth center before it closed. To hear that you were able to take advantage of the birth center before it closed. Talk to us a little bit about why you decided you had two hospital births for your third. Why did you decide to transition to a birth center?
Heather Magill:By that point I had a lot more knowledge about birth and the different ways that births can be and what they can look like, and I think in general I tend to have a little bit of a personal attraction towards doing things a little more naturally and low intervention. I've always had in the back of my mind a kind of low-grade interest in doing a home birth, although circumstantially that never really worked out for us. The birth center was a great compromise, I think, in being able to do that.
Heather Magill:And it was just really appealing to me. You know it was less of a medical environment and the rooms at the birth center had, you know, like a real bed and not a hospital bed and there was a bathroom with a tub and just you know kind of a small scale without so many people around and so much going on.
Stephanie Theriault:You to deliver the birth center. They don't do inductions right, it's just everyone in spontaneous labor when it comes on, or correct me if I'm wrong my birth was a spontaneous.
Heather Magill:I don't know for sure what their policy in general was for inductions, but I didn't have one okay, how many weeks were you when you went into labor with your third? That is is a very good question. He was full term. I think it was right around his birthday. Again, you know give or take a couple of days of his due date. I can't remember if it was a little bit before or a little bit after. I just remember it felt like forever because of having contractions for a week before I went into labor.
Stephanie Theriault:So you went to the birth center, you labored there. Talk to us about, like, how did it feel for you to labor in a birth center, give birth in the birth center, have that immediate postpartum at the birth center compared to the other two hospital births?
Heather Magill:Yeah, so I was really only laboring at the birth center for a few hours. I think I was kind of reluctant once things started getting active. I think I was kind of reluctant Once things started getting active I was still like kind of trying not to get my hopes up and my husband kind of had to talk me into like I think I think we need to go. And it was definitely an interesting experience because we had to brought our two older kids with us and my mom was driving from a couple of hours away to come and get them. Things were moving very quickly at that point so we actually had a friend come and watch them for the first couple of hours before my mom could get there and while my husband was literally out in the parking lot switching their car seats over, I was afraid he was going to miss the birth because things were just moving that quickly.
Heather Magill:I was able to labor in the tub for a little while right after we arrived at the birth center. Eventually they did ask me to get out and make my way over to the bed so that they could monitor him a little bit more easily. They had some concerns. They mentioned possibly having to transfer me over to the hospital, but at that point I could tell that how quickly things were moving and I knew that that wasn't going to happen because he was coming very, very soon. So my water broke on the walk from the tub over to the bed and then I started pushing very soon after that. When you say concerns.
Stephanie Theriault:Was it the fetal heart rate? Was it meconium? Was it blood pressures? Do you remember what kind of concerns?
Heather Magill:It's all kind of a blur, but I'm pretty sure it was related to his heart rate and not necessarily that it was like an immediate concern, but more it was just something that they were being extra watchful of. So that's why they asked me to get out of the tub and make my way over to the bed so they could keep an eye on the heart rate more easily. How long did you push? For? Not long, not long. I think I was only there for a total of maybe four hours, from the time I walked in the door till the time he was born. It was actually quite funny because when my husband called my mom to say that he was born and she had arrived and picked up the kids from our friends and taken them out for pizza and ice cream and they were still eating, and my husband called her and said, oh, the baby's here. And she thought he was joking because it just happened just so quickly, I'm curious, because this birth center was located on the grounds of a hospital.
Stephanie Theriault:After the women had delivered to the birth center, did you stay there overnight? Was there like a specific timeframe that the midwives wanted you to stay in the birth center for a postpartum period? Like in a hospital, it's 24 to 48 hours. Was that the same for the birth center or were they more lenient to discharge you earlier?
Heather Magill:There was a limit to how long you could stay at the birth center after the birth. They only had, if I remember correctly, three beds there and I want to say the maximum amount of time you could say after the birth was like 10 hours or 12 hours, something like that. And then you had the option of either getting discharged to go home or you could transfer over to the hospital and do kind of a typical postpartum stay at the hospital after the birth, because they, you know, like you said, they were all on the same ground and I ended up choosing to do that, partly just to get a little rest from having two children other children at home who needed care, and also because if we had gone home right after the birth we would have had to take the baby out the next day to see the pediatrician and to do all the checks, and we figured it would be easier just to do that from the hospital.
Stephanie Theriault:So you have your three kids. Now I want to hear about being a mom with three kids and then you start a business. You start the infant concierge business. Being a mom with three kids starting a business it's hard, right, like I like this, I love this, I'm going to do this and have my own business and have my own income, and then you having three kids.
Heather Magill:Yeah, it's definitely a challenge. I kind of consider my business to be my fourth baby, in terms of just the time and the commitment that it takes to build something like this, and similar to when I was pregnant with my first baby. I came into it with very little knowledge of, realistically, what it looks like to start a business and just kind of stumbled into it in a sense, and who knows if I would have done things differently in hindsight, knowing what I know now. But you know, we are where we are and it it all worked out in the end.
Heather Magill:It did take me uh, again three or four years after having my third baby to really start getting momentum and getting more into actually working and having a business. While my kids were young, I did do some other jobs child care jobs and some other part-time jobs here and there which were less demanding than starting my own business. But I also slowly worked on my postpartum doula certification, working with a few clients here and there. I completed my certification through Dona right before giving birth to baby number three and then, when he was around three years old, I ended up also signing up to work with a few agencies. So that was very helpful for me in terms of getting more postpartum doula work and experience and income without having to necessarily do as much of the behind the scenes, advertising and business building.
Stephanie Theriault:For those listening to the podcast who might not have heard of a postpartum doula what is a postpartum doula and what are the benefits to having a postpartum doula?
Heather Magill:So the benefits there are so many benefits, obviously, to having support after a birth and one of the big lessons that I learned through my journey is that birth and one of the big lessons that I learned through my journey is that you know, it was never really meant for someone to have a baby and the whole kind of system that seems so normal to us, like here's your baby, take your baby home to an empty house. You know, just you, your partner, your baby or whatever your family situation might be, we'll see you in six weeks. Good luck with everything. That's not necessarily the way that humanity over time has spent most of their history having babies and raising their babies, and just how important it is to have that kind of community, extended family, neighbors, whoever is around to help support families when they have newborns. And obviously for a lot of us in our society that can be much more difficult to find or have, or there's many reasons why we don't necessarily have that community and extended family support or as much of it as we need. So the role of a postpartum doula is to fill in a lot of those gaps and to help support families that don't necessarily have the types of support available in other ways.
Heather Magill:So I support families as a postpartum doula during both daytime and overnight hours.
Heather Magill:So for me, the majority of the clients that I support, I'm actually in their homes overnight, helping them to get more sleep by taking care of their babies overnight, and also providing education on newborn care, feeding, soothing sleep all of those things answering questions and being there to support them in that way.
Heather Magill:Also, postpartum doulas can also support families during daytime hours. I do this a little bit as well, and that is a lot of the same types of support education, answering questions, emotional support, just with kind of all that processing and questions or just kind of that need to talk to someone about your birth story or whatever happened. And then some more hands-on things too as well. So I'm happy to help out with things like laundry, loading the dishwasher. Sometimes I help with grocery shopping or cooking or just giving mom and dad a break so they can take a shower, go, take a nap, just all the ways that all the kind of daily things that we struggle with, while also trying to take care of a newborn and being another pair of hands and listening ears during that time in your work?
Stephanie Theriault:do you see a correlation to positive postpartum mental health in having the extra support, your extra support as a postpartum doula in the immediate postpartum period?
Heather Magill:I think for sure.
Heather Magill:Yes, and just having someone else around.
Heather Magill:For me personally that was one of the hardest parts, especially after having my oldest and living in a foreign country and knowing very few people there and just being alone with him kind of day in and day out for weeks on end was very challenging just in terms of mental health and just kind of getting through the day.
Heather Magill:So I think even just having another person around whether that's a friend, a family member, a neighbor or a postpartum doula, just having someone else there can really be very helpful as far as just mental health and mood and that sort of thing. And then some of the benefits of specifically having a postpartum doula there is that you have someone who is knowledgeable and educated about infant care and safety recommendations, which may be different Sometimes. Some of the challenges, for example, of having a parent or a parent-in-law or someone else there to support they may not know all of the current safety recommendations or different things that people, different ways that people choose to parent now that may be different from when they were younger. And also there's a nonjudgmental aspect where I support families in doing whatever works for them and helping them to figure out what they want to do, without pressuring them to do things in a certain way.
Stephanie Theriault:If someone is listening to the podcast and they're located in the North Shore, Massachusetts, and want to learn more about you and your services, how can they find you?
Heather Magill:My website is infantconciergecom. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram at infantconcierge. Also I am supporting just starting to broaden my support a little bit, both geographically as well as this kind of the stage of motherhood. I'm getting ready to offer virtual support groups for matricence specifically. That's for new moms, but also any mom of any age, even up to grandmothers, as we're all processing the transitions and just the developmental aspect and our experiences as mothers in our culture with the different kind of expectations and judgments and challenges that we all face. So that is also on my website as well.
Stephanie Theriault:Correct me if I'm wrong. Are you hosting support groups for moms?
Heather Magill:locally Did. Last year I did an in-person support group at Beyond Birthing in Beverly. I'm currently not offering that right now, but I may be doing that again in the future as well.
Stephanie Theriault:Matrescence. It's a word that's in the maternal health community, that is circulating. For somebody who listening and maybe hearing this term for the first time, what does matrescence mean to you?
Heather Magill:Separately from our experiences raising our children, which obviously is a big part of being a mother. But I found that a lot of postpartum support tends to be focused specifically on childcare and what to buy for baby and how to change a diaper and how to do all these things to take care of a baby. So for me, with my matricence support, I'm focused really on supporting moms and helping them to just kind of be more in, you know, in this the way that they want to be as moms. And so the term matrescence is kind of a parallel term to adolescence, so it's describing this developmental stage where there's a lot of change and growth and development happening and it can feel very disorienting and chaotic and it's not something that is necessarily widely recognized among the general population. So just being able to have a word to kind of describe that experience and to recognize it as a normal experience, I think is something that for me personally was very helpful.
Stephanie Theriault:Heather, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for being vulnerable and opening up. If anyone is interested in learning more about Heather and her work and matrescence, we will have a direct link on the episode to her website. Thank you so much, Heather. I hope you have a wonderful day and hopefully we'll meet in person sometime soon.
Heather Magill:Thank you. You too, it was lovely talking with you.
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