EP 148 Creating a Postpartum Wellness Toolkit with The Mama Thrive Method

We need to talk more about postpartum wellness.

Information and resources for thriving during the postpartum period (which is way longer than most people think, by the way), are severely lacking in our culture.

Creating a postpartum wellness toolkit, covering essentials like self-care practices, mental health support, and nutrition guidelines is essential to long-lasting well-being in motherhood, and even can affect the way your body experiences menopause.

In this episode, we're sharing:

• The five components of the Postpartum University Mama Thrive Method at Postpartum University that support healing.
• How the components of whole-body support, nutrition and detoxification, better sleep, nervous system care, and cyclical living, are all interconnected.
• Practical steps to take to put these pieces into place.
• The benefits of preparing this postpartum wellness toolkit.
• Real-life examples of how I put these components into practice in my life with four kids.

Rather than focusing on buying tools to make life easier, this episode emphasizes honoring basic needs and making lifestyle changes for a beautiful life in motherhood.

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Chapters

• 0:02 Creating a Postpartum Wellness Toolkit
• 7:28 Supporting Your Postpartum Journey
• 26:29 Nervous System Reset and Cyclical Living

Transcript

Depression, anxiety, and autoimmune symptoms after birth is not how it's supposed to be. There is a much better way, and I'm here to show you how to do just that. Hey, my friend, I'm Maranda Bower, a mother to four kids and a biology student turned scientist obsessed with changing the world through postpartum care. Join us as we talk to mothers and the providers who serve them and getting evidence-based information that actually supports the mind, body, and soul in the years after birth.

Hey, hey, everyone. Maranda Bower here, of course, and we are going to have an incredible episode today about creating a postpartum wellness toolkit.

I get this question so, so much how do I prepare? What do I need to have? All of the things.

So I really want to take a moment in this episode to just give you all some practical tips and resources to really build your postpartum wellness toolkit.

I want to cover the essentials like self-care practices, mental health support, nutrition guidelines, all of that.

But I want to do it in a way that is not overwhelming, and I tell you this because so many times have I entered into the postpartum experience having no knowledge whatsoever about what to expect and not being given any sort of resources or anything of the nature, and so I remember the first couple of times in postpartum.

The first and the second were incredibly difficult. Even though in the second I knew what to do or what was going to transpire, I didn't necessarily know how to implement things that were actually going to make a difference for me, and so I want to just hand this all over to you now and just give you the tools.

So, whether you are preparing for a postpartum or you're in the depths of postpartum maybe you're struggling, maybe you are trying to find ways to make life a lot easier for yourself, or maybe you are a provider and you are doing this work of supporting others in this space then this episode is absolutely for you.

There are a couple of things that I want to break down before we get into this.

I've talked about the Mama Thrive method, which is what we use here at Postpartum University.

It's a methodology that I created after going through my own postpartum experiences with four kids, but also after supporting thousands of women in their journeys as well.

I was a doula for a very long time.

I was a childbirth educator for many, many years, and then I have coached for even more years.

I've been in this industry almost 15 years, if you can believe that.

So at this point we've kind of created what I call the Mama Thrive method, which is a method to support women and their whole body, healing at the root, and I think that's the key component here.

I see so often people focus on hormones, they focus on adrenal support and you know what?

Those are great, but they're never, ever going to get to the root of the issue, and that's what we do here in the Mama Thrive method at Postpartum University.

1. Whole-body support
2. Nutrition and detoxification
3. Better sleep
4. Nervous system support
5. Rhythms and cyclical living.

I want you to imagine these components and I'm going to go say them again I want you to imagine these in a very circular way, as in a wheel.

All of these components are hanging on a wheel and we're constantly moving through.

Every one of these pieces and every single one of these pieces deeply influences the next section.

So it's really hard to get proper nourishment or even to be detoxifying your body, which I put together in nourishment and I'll tell you a little bit more about that later.

It's hard to do that if you are not getting enough sleep and your nervous system is fried and you have very little support, right?

And the opposite is true.

If you don't have very much support, how are you getting better sleep?

How are you following the rhythms of your needs and your body's needs?

Without it, you're not right, and so each one of these greatly influences the other.

So I want to talk about a couple of things that you can do to really prepare yourself to create this wellness toolkit and to build a lifestyle around this, so that you're not constantly searching for the next thing, you're not feeling as if, oh gosh, now I have to do a cleanse.

Oh gosh, I'm, I am tripping and falling and smashing into the ground and I am just dead, tired, and exhausted from my day, and this is really not how things are supposed to be.

I'm going to tell you, the Mama Thrive method and the tools that I'm giving you here are really about supporting yourself in a lifestyle shift and a lifestyle change because that's what motherhood is.

It's what it does to us. It shifts our entire lives, and we can prepare for it so much when we have the right tools in which to do it and then go with the flow.

Some tools might work better for you than others.

Some you might hear and you're like nope, that's not going to fit in my life and that's perfect.

That's really good information to know and you can use that to your advantage to create yourself something better. It does exist.

So, okay, I'm going to go through this again.

The Mama Thrive Method

Let's start with whole body support.

Whole-Body Support

So the first thing that I recommend doing is taking our postpartum recovery quiz.

So this is a quiz and we have it linked here for you in the show notes is really about understanding where you are in your life.

What are you experiencing? 30 questions.

I tell you what. It'll only take you two minutes to take this quiz, but it assesses everything.

Your emotional standpoint, where you are with your hormones, the way you feel physically, headaches, how you're eating all of the things, whatever it is that you are feeling.

The beautiful thing about this is that you can print off what it is that you had created in the recovery quiz.

So like if you have questions and then your response to it, print that off and you can use that with your providers so you can turn that into your provider and say, hey, this is what I'm experiencing. This is everything that I'm experiencing right now.

You know, sometimes, when we go see our provider or you know our care practitioner, sometimes we have maybe three minutes with them and it feels like nothing and we don't get our needs addressed and then we walk away thinking, wow, I didn't get to tell them about this and I didn't get to tell them about that.

This is supporting you and making sure that all of what you're experiencing is going to be heard, and you can use this not just with your medical provider, right?

You can use this with your midwife, the nurses that you're going to be seeing in your postpartum experience initially, or even going into labor.

You can take it to your chiropractor I don't care who you have, who's supporting you.

Use it to your advantage and use it as a basis for how you're going to implement the key strategies that I'm telling you here.

So the great thing is that, once you take that quiz, you're going to get a beautiful printout of what's going on in your body that's specific to you and your needs, and you're going to hear, as you're going to get, a step-by-step guide of exactly how to support yourself in that, so then you can take that and then you can use that for the rest of years.

So I highly recommend always, always, always, when you're beginning your healthcare journey or wherever you are in your journey, that you're taking assessment and you're constantly reassessing.

So that postpartum recovery quiz is so huge for that and if you're a provider, have them fill that out and print that out for you so you get a complete understanding of what's transpiring in their life. It's a game-changer.

I highly recommend that everyone get down some paper and some pencil and start asking questions in local Facebook groups and mom groups.

• Who can I go to for breastfeeding support?
• Who can I go to for mental health support?
• What happens when I have a question about my baby?
• Where is a solid place that I can get real, non-judgmental information and take some time to really hash out all of these details?
• Who can I call on to watch my dogs?
• Who can I give and delegate the task of managing my housework?
• Whatever tasks that you have if you have any, which we all know you have probably way too much.
• Who can I have help pay the bills?

Maybe it's your partner who needs to step up on a couple of obligations that you tend to have in your month that you need to hand over to somebody else.

Think of the things in your life that are really stressing you out or have the potential to stress you out.

Think of the things in your life that you have to consistently do that take up time, space, energy and figure out who can I call on for support when I have this need.

You should have a really long piece of paper filled with tons of people that you can call on for support.

Now that doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily call on these people.

It just means that they're in your back pocket and you know what to do and who to call when that situation arises.

Because so often we are in a space of stress and anxiety we don't know what to do and we feel overwhelmed, and in those moments we don't know who to call on because our nervous system is too heightened.

We're in a different state of mind.

So doing that and doing this exercise now is going to greatly relieve that stress of not knowing what to do when that moment comes and we all have those moments.

We can have the most beautiful, best experience when it comes to postpartum and pregnancy and labor and birth, and it could be just like this super joyous thing.

I swear to you, it really can be that thing. It can be such a beautiful, sacred experience.

But we're going to have questions and there's going to be challenges because that's what children do they help us grow.

And so when you have a challenge or you have a question like hey, is this right?

Like I noticed this thing on my baby, or there's this period of time of crying, or I noticed that I'm feeling this, is that a normal thing?

Like sometimes we just need reassurance. Who do we call on during that time? Okay, so take the postpartum recovery quiz. Get a list of people you can trust, that you can call on.

And here's another one find a community support space, preferably in person.

Okay, this is your whole body support.

Now, if you want to take this further, I want you to find, like, a chiropractor or a massage therapist or somebody who can do some hands-on work with you.

An acupuncturist is amazing as well. Someone who can just like physically hold you and hold you.

Well, if you're in a position to have that in your postpartum space, then please, please, please make that happen, because there's no better time than now to do that work. There's no better time now.

Then in the postpartum years, we need to be held, we need to be touched in this way, and supported in this way. It's a beautiful thing.

We have whole-body support. That's what I recommend here.

Functional nutrition this is where we're going next.

Functional Nutrition

Functional nutrition, which is also where I put detoxification in, and I want to talk to you a little bit about that, because I feel that these two are so similar and that it's what we are putting in our bodies.

Oftentimes it's also what we're putting around our bodies or on our bodies.

But you cannot detox well, especially supporting the natural detoxification pathways of your body, if we're not first taking care of our functional nutrition needs, our nutritional nourishment needs.

I always recommend to clients that before you do any detoxing or safe detoxing or anything of the nature, you make sure that you are getting full nutrients within your body.

We see this often when the detoxification pathways begin to open, and we see it with cleanses and juices and all sorts of things.

Oftentimes those processes tend to make us sicker. It even happens in emotional detoxing.

If you are emotionally detoxing from something, oftentimes what follows, or what happens if we're not well nourished, is that the toxins that are within our body get stuck.

The pathways are not fully open, our body is not able to function as it should, and that ends up making us very sick in the process.

Those things just float around the body, making us sick, and then they end up finding another place to be stored in.

First and foremost, we have to make sure that all the gears are moving right within our bodies, that they are fully nourished and have everything they need to function at the level that they need to function, and even at a high state because that's what detoxification is.

When we are in pregnancy, our body's natural detoxification pathways are not working as they normally would.

Because we are sustaining life of another human being with our own bodies.

That detoxification pathway closes a little bit so that we can keep that baby in womb and keep that baby safe.

Then, after the birth of a baby, is a major detox of our bodies.

Initially, in the postpartum period, the body naturally goes into the state of well, I have to release everything that I've collected in the pregnancy that I wasn't able to release previously.

We're exposed to so many toxins. It doesn't matter if you live a very non-toxic life.

The chances are you still have to go to the gas station, you still have to walk into the grocery store and smell the chemicals in the chemical aisle.

There are things that we are exposed to all the time that we don't really have control over.

Sometimes it's a matter of I'm going to walk along this road and it just so happens the field next to me was just recently sprayed by pesticides.

But I didn't know because it's not something that requires public knowledge. Again, we're constantly given toxins in our bodies to deal with in today's world.

A lot of toxins to deal with, more than what the body is naturally prepared to deal with.

In the postpartum period -- I explained this all in detail -- I have a massive training in the professional membership for how to detox naturally in postpartum and do so safely.

But that early stage where we are sweating profusely, we are peeing like crazy. Yes, it's releasing a lot of those pregnancy hormones, but it's also releasing a lot of those pregnancy toxins, the things that have built up that we weren't able to release previously.

Many cultures we use heat therapy to support the detoxification pathways in the postpartum period.

Many cultures around the world practice the use of saunas, for example, in postpartum to help the cleansing of our body.

I want you to look at nutrition as one of these amazing tools to support your body. It's actually one of the most foundational pieces to support your body.

If you are in the pregnancy space and you are preparing for your postpartum, the best thing you can do is meal plan.

Make sure that you are prepping meals that are going to support your whole self and do so in a way that is appropriate for a postpartum body.

A postpartum body digests foods very, very differently than a body that is not postpartum.

The warm soups, the broths, the stews, and the foods that are so easy to digest, are an absolute necessity.

I will tell you smoothies, cold smoothies, and salads are some of the worst foods to eat. I don't want to go into this in this episode.

I go into it in a multitude of episodes.

We can link those here in the show notes for you, but I highly recommend, if you're not familiar with this, taking a listen into that and preparing your postpartum meals.

We have the postpartum nutrition plan, so if you want that, you are welcome to use that.

Rather than spending so much time and energy trying to learn about the process, I have an entire thing that will teach you and give you six weeks of meals and snacks and all of the beautiful things along with it.

So you don't have to worry or spend a great deal of time because we already know that you're probably swamped for time, as we are as moms.

So get that nutrition up. Start now in pregnancy. If you're already in postpartum, then you don't have any time. Go get the postpartum nutrition plan.

Start those meals right away. Bone broth is going to be one of your best.

Again, I mentioned soups and stews easy, healthy snacks, just lots of fats and proteins. That's going to be your basis for success.

It'll help you with healing hormone balance, regulation of breast milk production so not making too much but not making too little really supporting overall health and well-being of your body and supporting those natural detoxification pathways that are already working in your favor.

So this is my biggest. If you take anything away from this podcast episode, it's make sure you are getting the nourishment that you truly, truly need in this postpartum experience, because if you're not, then what happens is is that you rely on far more support, which we know is very difficult to come by.

We don't sleep very well because you are nutrients and nutrient depletion deeply affects how you sleep.

It impacts your hormones, your nervous system, everything. So that is one of the most foundational pieces. I can't stress that enough.

So plan your meals that is it, that is your functional nutrition and allow your body to be very nourished so that it can do what it needs to do.

And if you have access to sauna experiences and your healthcare provider is all for it, like you don't have any heart issues or something that would prevent you from enjoying a sauna then absolutely please hands down, use it to your advantage for detoxifying your body. So there's that.

Next is better sleep.

Better Sleep

I tell you what we don't get very much sleep, right, as moms, we know this, we deeply know it, and when we have children, we know it even more.

And there's so many things that surround sleep and so many misconceptions that surround sleep and so many areas that we can get into.

But I'm going to tell you that it's one of the non-negotiables in my life.

Personally speaking, if I don't get sleep, I'm a disaster. I cannot function at all with anything.

Sleep is so incredibly important to me and my body. So I highly recommend that you make sleep your number one priority, after nutrition.

It is so, so critical.

In my book, Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness, and also in the pro membership, I have an entire assessment for creating your sleep plan and it legit walks you through a step-by-step process of how you can get the best sleep, how you can maximize your sleep, and it's perfect for everyone.

So, no matter how your lifestyle is, no matter where your baby sleeps all of the things that are so different and interdependent on how our personal lives when it comes to sleep and infant care and children and all the things this is the plan that you want to get for yourself.

And I also say be careful about "sleep training" and sleep training in quotations.

Not all sleep training programs are created equal and it is so tempting to get a sleep trainer who can just help our baby sleep and do their magic, but I'm going to tell you that a lot of those scenarios that are being implemented, we know are not supportive of our baby's natural sleep cycles.

They're not supportive of developmentally appropriate means of sleep and babies actually don't need to be trained. I hate that word.

I think there's so much more that we could do to support our babies and learn appropriate sleep that is meant for their age and their needs.

So it's very, very critical to make sure that you are addressing that in a way that feels very, very safe for you and your family. So just be cautious of that.

Follow your mama heart and your intuition and do what's best for you and your family.

Ok, real quick, let's talk about nervous system reset.

Nervous System Reset

There are so many tools that I could give you hands down, but I want to stress the importance of nervous system reset.

Now, I know I say that with every one, right. Whole body support is so important. Nutrition number one. Sleep oh my gosh, make it your number one priority, like I get it. I'm saying that with everyone, but that's the mama thrive method.

These are the root causes of discomfort, dysfunction and disease, right here.

So nervous system reset in terms of supporting yourself and your nervous system, there's so many tools that I can recommend. There are two.

I'll give you three here that I absolutely love the most.

It's something called TRE therapy. Again, I talk about it in my book. I have it in my pro membership. I walk you through the process of how to do this.

This is something that you can do in your own home.

It's also known as shake therapy, but it is the ability to physically remove trauma and stress from the cells of our body, and so, by putting yourself in a state of shaking and doing so in a way that is a very safe space, like even your children, can do this. You can do this with your children if you want it.

It's a beautiful thing. It's not some woo-woo kind of off-base like scary, you need a practitioner kind of thing.

Although there are TRE therapy practitioners and I highly recommend them but again, this is something that you can do in the comfort of your own home.

I do it all the time. I actually do it nightly and I do it anytime something really big comes up for me that I just really need to release.

So TRE therapy highly recommend, and also journaling.

Journaling is something that has really saved my life. I'm just going to throw it out there just as it is.

Truth be told, I don't know what I would do without the ability to journal, without being able to write down how I'm feeling, and be able to use that as a tool to understand my feelings and my inner workings so much more.

I mean, there's times in my life and I'm sure you can feel the same of where sometimes something happens and you just have a big emotion, you feel angry or you feel sad and you're like why do I feel this?

I don't understand this or I don't know how this cascaded into this. Like I just love the clarity that journaling truly provides.

It is something that is just such a beautiful journey and I'm just so grateful for it and I can't recommend it enough.

I know so many people are like, well, I hate writing or I don't have the time for it.

I'm telling you, even if it's five minutes a day, do it.

And if it's not necessarily journaling which, I will tell you, has so much scientific backing in terms of the cancer patients healing their bodies through journaling, like, the amount of information that's out there on the healing process that takes place physically and emotionally and mentally with healing is just so profound.

But if that is something that you have to work into, which is like meditation, which I also highly recommend that was my third, something that you learn, something that you have to practice in order to be good at. Sometimes that's the case with journaling too. Do that.

And sometimes, rather than writing words, maybe it's journaling images and doodling, but always, always, even when it comes down to the science behind it.

It was like doodling is great, drawing is great, art therapy is a thing, but it has the maximum benefit when you actually journal about it afterwards, journaling about your experience.

Ok, meditation also highly recommend and again, it's something that you learn.

Maybe it's something you do for five minutes and it's not necessarily meditating on a certain word or a certain phrase or clearing your mind so that there's nothing there that is hard stuff.

Maybe it's just meditating on feeling your body for a moment and paying attention to your breathing for a moment and just trying to close your eyes and be still for a moment and just be present.

That in itself is a meditation too, and oftentimes an overlooked meditation type, and, I think, one that is so beautiful for us moms who have babies with high needs and we have kids running around and it's so hard to just how do you get rid of the chaos and the noise and all of that.

Oftentimes you sit with it and just be in that moment, sit in it, close your eyes and just pay attention to how your body feels in that moment.

That in itself is a meditation and it's such a beautiful experience for our nervous system.

Cyclical Living and Rhythms

Ok, here's cyclical rhythms and cyclical living, which is very much a huge part of the mama thrive method and one that I get questions about so often, and it's really about living moment to moment.

Oftentimes in our lives as moms, we're in this go, go, go, go go space, which is a very masculine energy.

We have legit created an entire life here, especially in the United States, built on the idea that we have to go, we have to succeed.

We have this linear approach to movement, like, and everything has to be in motion, and it's painful to be in that space as a mother nonstop.

It's not possible, it's not doable and it leads to burnout.

So cyclical living and finding your rhythms is really about just honoring what's happening in the moments and being present in the moment and recognizing that not everything is go, go, go, that that's impossible.

For me and for many of the people that I work with, it's about honoring the time when there is this go, go, go energy, but also honoring the time when I just need to sleep and I don't even. I might not even know why I need to sleep.

It might not feel like there's a rhythm or a rhyme to it, but I'm going to honor my body's needs.

I'm going to honor the times when I'm hungry.

I'm going to honor the time when I just have to go pee.

I'm not going to sit around holding it because I'm a mom and I'm supposed to. That's not going to fly here.

I'm going to honor my body in the moments it needs me.

There is also you know, it's something to learn and also there is something I call the monthly cycle tracker.

If you're not tracking your cycles, even if you're postpartum or pregnant and you don't necessarily have a menstrual cycle, even if you are postmenopausal and you don't have a menstrual cycle, track the rhythms of your body. Track every single day about the emotions.

There's a little chart that I use again in the pro membership it's also available in my book and it tracks. Okay, here's how I'm feeling in these moments.

Here are the days where I feel agitated, or here are the days where I just felt like really connected to my partner.

Here are the days when I just felt really content.

Here are the days when I felt angry.

And I'm also tracking my menstrual cycle. I'm tracking my cervical mucus.

I'm tracking what it means for me to be in my rhythmic body and what you find is that during certain parts of the month, you'll experience anger more than any other times.

No matter if you have a menstrual cycle or not, you'll notice the patterns and rhythms of your body. I find this so, so fascinating.

Even in the rhythms of my body, I don't have PMS symptoms whatsoever. I don't.

It's a little bit of a pain because I really like to know when my period's coming. I have to be really on point and make sure that I know the day.

There's sometimes a little twinge that I feel in my ovaries and then I can a little bit plan ahead. You know, maybe sometimes I just put on like a cloth pad.

I know I'm giving you TMI, but this is real-life stuff that we need to talk about here just in case, because I'm not going to feel it, because I don't have those symptoms whatsoever.

But when I'm ovulating I do. I have a heightened sense of joy and excitement, but I'm also quick to anger and I notice that about myself.

And so by tracking this, which is during a time I mean usually, we hear, oftentimes that you know ovulation is supposed to be this beautiful, flowy space, but sometimes for me it's not.

It's a high-energy space which also includes that, that anger sometimes.

I'm easy to anger and so by knowing this and knowing where I am in my cycle, it takes the edge off. It feels better. I can plan around it. I can honor it.

Right, I know my needs. I know my needs when my period starts. I honor that time. I don't plan a bunch of meetings and things around that time because I know that I'm just going to need a little bit of extra rest. And the same with my kids, right, I don't plan a lot of activities.

I'm not going to go take them ice skating or sledding or whatever the case may be. We're not going to have a fun family outing. I'm sorry. We're sitting in. We're watching a movie as a family together. That's the plan. Right, those are the things that I'm not going to make a huge plan to like OK, we're going to revamp our you know pantry way.

I've talked about this in previous episodes. I am in desperate need of a new pantry and I am not going to plan that during certain times of the month.

I'm going to honor those.

This might sound interesting and you might be listening into this and thinking, wow, this postpartum wellness toolkit offered me no things to purchase in terms of baby gear, stroller, herbs, all of the things.

And I want to reiterate that that is precisely it, because, in creating a postpartum wellness toolkit, the most beautiful gifts that you can give yourself is the change in your lifestyle, and supporting your health and well-being, and the basics.

These are basics of living.

These are the root causes of everything that we have here in our lives, from wellness to illness.

When we honor these places of our life, making sure we are getting whole-body support, making sure we're getting nourishment, better sleep, nervous system care, and following the cyclical rhythms of our bodies then from that space we can create so much beauty.

We can live and honor in the flow of motherhood and feel good about it, because that's what motherhood is supposed to be. It's a gift, not a burden.

Sometimes, yes, it feels we have the waves, the ins and outs of motherhood, and those are to be honored as well. But it's so much easier to do that when your basic needs are met.

So let's stop thinking about all of the things that we can go buy and purchase in the tools that we could use to help our baby sleep better.

Whatever it is that is on the market right now to sell to you, to make your life easier.

Focus instead on the lifestyle changes that are required here to have a beautiful life.

This is your Postpartum Wellness Toolkit.

I am so grateful you turned into the Postpartum University podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode enough to leave us a quick review and, more importantly, I hope more than ever that you take what you've learned here, apply it to your own life, and consider joining us in the Postpartum University membership. It's a private space where mothers and providers learn the real truth and the real tools needed to heal in the years to come and the real tools needed to heal in the years Postpartum. You can learn more at www.postpartumu. That's the letter U.com. We'll see you next week.