Challenging Conventions: Maja Miller's Journey

Are you prepared to challenge conventional wisdom about childbirth, armed with knowledge and the power to make informed decisions? Get ready to join us for a compelling conversation with Maja Miller, a first-time mom who waited until 45 to have her baby. As a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and metabolic health coach, Maja shares her personal journey of waiting two years to implant her embryos, ensuring her body was in peak health. She unpacks her birthing experience, candidly discussing her challenges, her eventual C-section, and how she drew upon her knowledge of functional medicine to navigate her choices.

Our discussion dives into Maja's advocacy for her newborn son when hospital norms didn't align with her beliefs. We explore the significance of informed decisions during childbirth and the role of interventions. Maja shares her experiences of challenging the hospital's protocol, like negotiating for donor breast milk instead of sugar water and formula, and refusing a vitamin K shot containing a preservative. She also discusses her desire to forgo an epidural amid her concerns for potential impacts it can have on breastfeeding, and how she ultimately found a way to mitigate those impacts when she opted for a c-section with spinal anesthesia.

Finally, Maja emphasizes the importance of understanding your body

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☑️emotionally process your fears so that they don’t hold power over you

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:29

Hello, Today I have with me Maya Miller. Maya is a metabolic health coach and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner that's a fancy way of saying that. She uses clinical labs to analyze blood, urine, stool, hair, etc. To find out why her clients feel burned out, exhausted and sick. She then uses those results to create tailored bio-individual protocols to reverse their symptoms. As the owner of Maya Miller Wellness, a six-figure business, she helps highly productive individuals and ambitious professionals transform their bodies from the inside out through her signature programs like the Adrenal Detox, the Inside Out Protocol and Next Level.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Over the course of her career in wellness, she's worked with over 10,000 women, 1,500 of which have been within her online programs. She's been a podcast guest on many shows, including Low Ticket, High Impact, Ideas and Impact, the Mind Fuel, Entrepreneur and Ideas and Impact with Jeremy Jones. She's also been featured in print in Forbes, Austin Fit Magazine and the Austin Business Journal. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, son and pops. Maya, welcome and thank you for joining me. Hello, so happy to be here. I am really excited to hear your birth journey and how your career in functional medicine has impacted your fertility journey.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Ma'an. Well, I'm an old, first-time mom, so I just had my son five months ago. His name's Noah. He's an absolute dream, but I am also 45 years old Not a young mom. I would say Not old, but not a young mom.

Speaker 2: 2:19

I married my husband later on in life. We didn't want to have kids right away. We decided just to do IVF as an insurance policy. I'm so glad that we ended up doing that, because what ended up happening was my entire life exploded. I lost my dad. I almost lost my mom. I had to shut down my business because I was dealing with so many family things.

Speaker 2: 2:40

It was an incredible amount of stress. I knew that with my functional nutrition background, I knew that that level of stress was not going to make for a great pregnancy and could definitely impact the baby negatively in my postpartum time. We decided to wait. Then we had a global pandemic where I wasn't going to have a kid in the middle of COVID. Really, I ended up gosh postponing my birth by five years or so. I was very happy to have had those genetically tested embryos on ice ready to go.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I think one of the most important things about my birth journey is the amount of work that I put into making sure that my body was healthy, that my nervous system was calm. I probably waited a year and a half almost two years, after all of the craziness, to even consider implanting those embryos. I really wanted to make sure that my microbiome was nice and healthy, that my hormones were balanced, that I had eliminated almost all stress out of my life. That took a significant amount of time but it really paid off because I had probably the easiest pregnancy in the world. I had no morning sickness. I had no emotional ups and downs. My pregnancy was just an absolute joy. While my birth was not what I expected, it was also pretty easy. We implanted an embryo last summer and it took after just one implantation, which is pretty rare. Only about 4% of women over 40 have successful IVF outcomes. The first time that we implanted our embryo it took.

Speaker 2: 4:32

I worked with an amazing midwife here in Austin, texas, at the birthing center. I was going to have a granola, no epidural, all the things birth. Noah had just a different plan in mind. Right around 41 weeks I started getting just an intuitive hit that I was going to have to have a C-section. I remember being in the shower and having a conversation with Noah, saying, hey, this is what a hospital C-section is going to look like. This is what a midwife birthing center at birth is going to look like. I told her I trust your wisdom that you're going to choose your delivery exactly how you need to be delivered. I still really thought that he was going to pull it together and we were going to have a regular vaginal delivery at the end of 41 weeks. Well, at the beginning of 41 weeks we started doing all the things the mild circuit.

Speaker 2: 5:28

I do two rounds of castor oil, sex in order to get things going, and just nothing was happening. I did two membrane sweeps. I mean really unheard of. My midwife said that she like one round of castor oil works for about 80% of people. That Wednesday, before I inevitably check into the hospital, I completely lose it. I'm in the middle of the night and sobbing. My husband is like you just need to let this all go.

Speaker 2: 5:54

I think that was the moment where I really realized I was going to have a C-section, something I really did not want to do. It was Saturday night. I told my doula, I said it in my husband. I said hey, because at 42 weeks in the state of Texas. My midwife can't see you anymore. You have to transition. I'm going to a hospital.

Speaker 2: 6:11

It was either give birth for the first time at home on my own, with no medical support, or go to the hospital. I chose the latter. The night before we went to the hospital, I told my doula and my husband. I said hey, we're going to get to the hospital, the induction isn't going to work and I'm going to end up having a C-section. Sure enough, it's Sunday. I'm now 42 weeks.

Speaker 2: 6:31

In one day I've officially turned into a pumpkin with my midwife. All of us head to the hospital. I check in and first induction. They give you a round of cytotech I think it's called to open up your, dilate, your cervix. That didn't work. Six hours later, that didn't work. I'm really proud of myself, actually, for how I was able to handle this decision. I had planned on no interventions, natural childbirth, no epidural, because epidurals impact breastfeeding and a lot of other things. I lost it. When I got to the hospital I started crying and there's a wonderful midwifery program in the hospital. The midwife was like okay, explain the tears, talk to me about what's going on. I just said I don't want to be here.

Speaker 2: 7:16

In general, I have a general distrust of allopathic medicine and especially obstetrics in this country. I believe that many women have traumatic births because OBGYNs are involved. This was the perspective that I came from, where a lot of my clients have had very traumatic, awful births. They aren't listened to. The doctors do what they want. They're coerced into interventions. Those interventions are part of an intervention cascade. They end up getting C-sections. I didn't want that to be me. There are definite implications for baby microbiome from C-sections. Your baby gets about 16 to 20% of his or her microbiome from vaginal delivery. I knew that there were just implications.

Speaker 2: 8:01

By the way, just getting sliced open is also a major thing. The midwife was really amazing. She just said I've been a midwife here, but I've been a midwife at home and in birthing center environments. Tell me what's important to you in your birth. I got to say what's important to me is optimal cord cutting. We had a negotiation around that and we ended up with delayed cord cutting and there's a difference between the two. I said I want immediate skin to skin unless there's a medical emergency. My husband in the room. I want him to be able to cut the umbilical cord. She just said we're going to do all of that for you. I really appreciated that Because I was a 45-year-old mom that had gone 42 weeks and one day I'd had two biophysical profiles. So BPPs in the prior week to make sure that everything's okay with Noah.

Speaker 2: 8:46

She came in and said hey, by the way, the second round of cytotech isn't working. I just read your last BPP. This child is going to be anywhere between 10 to 12 pounds. At this point we have to recommend a C-section. He said, hey, walk me through both options. She said, okay, option one we continue the induction. It's not going so well right now. You will probably need lots of pitocin. That's going to stress you out. It's going to be more painful. It's going to stress baby out. He is gigantic, so there's a significantly higher likelihood that his shoulders get stuck. In that situation, two things will happen we will either break his clavicle in order to get him through your birth canal or we will shove him back up through you. Now you are in an emergency C-section. All of those things that you just outlined as very important to you are off the table because now you're going general anesthesia, your husband can't be there, all the things Right away. I just said, okay, let's go.

Speaker 2: 9:45

I think she was really surprised that this crunchy granola mom who was going to have a natural birth just so quickly said yes. I just explained to her that I had had a knowing for the last two weeks that this was going to happen. I'm very in tune with my intuition and I listened to it always. She even said wait, are you sure you want to do this? I was like yes For me if I had a 100% chance of having all the things that were important to me versus a 30% chance of not having that to me. That was one of the earliest parenting decisions that I could make. I decided that at this point in my life I wasn't going to choose suffering just to make a point that I had a natural childbirth with no epidural and I went through all the pains and all of that. I just listened to my gut and my intuition. It's never, not once ever in my life, made me go astray.

Speaker 2: 10:40

Within a couple of hours I had noa in my arms. The C-section was wild. It's a pretty aggressive surgery. My husband after the fact said you were trying to be so calm and there's just a tear streaming down your eyes because I was very surprised at how violent but definitely aggressive that surgery is and your body is being yanked all over the place. I had very little pain and we really practiced, once we brought noa home, some of the birthing postpartum traditions of sitting in. I only left the house, I think, maybe once or twice, I think, for pediatric appointments.

Speaker 2: 11:18

After that it was all about recovery and getting more my minerals and my macronutrients and the micronutrients and making sure that I was very well taken care of, because taking care of mom is taking care of baby. I've had an amazing postpartum as well. No hair loss. Noa was sleeping through the night as of, I think, about one or two weeks in. He was 10 pounds when he was born. In fact, he was a big baby. He's the happiest little boy ever. Gosh, I can't believe, even from the first second, that I used to think that being a mother wasn't going to be enough for me, because it's literally the best thing I've ever done in my life and I can't wait to do it again. I emailed my doctor six weeks in and I said, hey, when can I do number two? She thought I was crazy. I've really had. Everything from implantation to postpartum has just been really easy, breezy and very flowy for me.

Speaker 1: 12:10

That's amazing. I really love how you described that you transitioned through your birth decisions. I think it really highlights how we can do right by women by helping them understand the choices, versus throwing it out there as this is the only option. You still came to the same conclusion that your OB was recommending. This is a huge reason why I'm doing this podcast, because I think it's all in the presentation and in our duty to educate versus this culture that we've had for centuries, where women don't know their bodies and we need to tell them how to do things. Well. First of all, I want to go into a little bit more detail about a couple of things in your C-section how that went for cutting the cord and what they actually allowed you to do within the operating room. Did he cut the umbilical cord or was it a situation where they let him trim the umbilical cord later? Did you do immediate skin to skin? How did that go for you?

Speaker 2: 13:15

Yeah, we did everything, except for my husband didn't cut the umbilical cord. I don't recall if it wasn't an option or if things just got intense and he didn't want to. I think. Just nobody offered. I think he, kind of like this, is just hanging out close to me. I got the baby right away. The baby was on me while they were sewing me out. All of the things that were very important to me happened.

Speaker 1: 13:39

I'm curious. First of all, I'll comment on the umbilical cord. Just because there's a sterile field, Usually it's not an option in most facilities. I've heard what maybe urban legends about people being allowed to cut the umbilical cord that are not trained surgeons or what have you. I'm not sure what that would look like. I think whoever is going to cut the umbilical cord would probably need to be scrubbed in and standing right next to the surgeon, which is obviously we would have liability issues in that regard. However, what we've done in the past and possibly this is what wasn't offered to you sometimes dad can trim the umbilical cord. That's in some of the facilities that I work at, not all, depending on the layout of the OR Dad has that.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Dad did not touch the umbilical cord and I think he was fine with it. Okay, yeah, whatever.

Speaker 1: 14:29

It's kind of disconcerting once you do see the umbilical cord. It's a little, it's gooey and weird. A little gooey. Yes, Most dads are like, oh, I wanted to do this. So I'm impressed that you were able to do skin to skin and I know that I don't work at a facility where immediately the baby goes on mom. I work at one facility where we do skin to skin with dad as an option after the pediatrician has evaluated the baby. So I'm just curious because I'm not entirely sure how that process works at some other facility. I would imagine it's different, it's so many different. But was there a nurse there that was helping you do the skin to skin? Because I know that things get a little. There's just not a lot of space for that.

Speaker 2: 15:12

You know, I don't remember. I know that I was still on the operating table when and baby was on my chest. But we made it. I made it a point to say we passed on HEPB, we passed on the eye ointment. I essentially said nothing is to be done to the child unless there is a medical emergency, and that was very important to me. And so you know.

Speaker 2: 15:36

I think that if you aren't educated on what your rights are as a mother, I think oftentimes options are not presented. What is presented is what's most convenient for the medical team and what it has the least amount of liability for the medical team. But that isn't necessarily what's good for baby and what's good for mom. And what's good for baby and what's good for mom short of a medical emergency is that that baby is on you right away. I'm constantly hearing stories of mothers who struggle with breastfeeding. They're not producing enough milk. That is a direct correlation to how quickly you get the baby, how long the baby stays on you. I know we talked about the golden hour, but it's really a couple of hours Whether or not you had an epidural. Epidurals absolutely impact breastfeeding and so. But nobody is really telling moms this. We're telling moms that the epidural doesn't matter, and so a lot of moms choose that. But I think if they were told that like, by the way, this may impact your breastfeeding journey a lot of moms would forego the epidural, like I wanted to.

Speaker 2: 16:44

And so I think that for me, because of what I do for a living and I work primarily with women who, and most of them, are moms I would say 80% of my clients, 90% of my clients, are also mothers, in addition to whatever they do outside of the home.

Speaker 2: 16:58

For me, knowledge is power, and it helps me feel less anxious about something that I was very anxious about. I was very nervous to deliver a baby, and so for me, I read I think it's gosh the Thinking Woman's Guide to a Natural Birth, I think is one of the books where it literally walks you through every single intervention and will pros and the cons. So I did a lot of work on the front end so that I was able to push back where I needed to push back, because I think oftentimes we're in this vulnerable position we're scared, we've never been there, we may be in pain and we maybe don't have a doula, we don't have somebody that has earned their stripes and knows the system and knows where you can push back and not. And I think, as women, we often give away our power, and so, for me, I was able to do that because of the work that I had done ahead of time and also being an older mom, right.

Speaker 1: 17:55

I think there's an importance of informed decisions and so maybe not that there's one right way that every mom gets to understand the pros and cons and choose what works for them, just like you chose to with all the information that you're given. Ultimately, that it was better for you to have that C-section because you got 100% of the things that were important to you in that delivery, and I think that everybody should have that opportunity, and it's important that everybody educates themselves and then chooses for themselves what's important and then is able to be flexible with the plan when some of those options that were preferable slowly sometimes they get taken off the table just because it's not safe or just because what you were saying the option for the vaginal delivery was taking the things off the table that were important to you. So it's like you're weighing all of these different options and deciding what combination works best for you as a person.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Yeah, and had I not had this intuitive hunch, I knew that I was going to have a C-section two weeks before it happened, and so had I not had that kind of intuitive hit, then I probably would have continued with the induction and we would have just waited it out.

Speaker 2: 19:09

But I knew that this was going to happen, and I decided that I could have suffered and still had the same outcome more than likely, and I chose something different, which is a really big deal for me, because in the past I probably would have been like grin and bear it, no pain, no gain, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and that just I don't think it would have served me in this situation.

Speaker 2: 19:34

And so I think that, going into any sort of medical decisions as a woman, it's very important that you understand what your options are and where you can and cannot push back, and at the end of the day, you have to give consent to anything that's had that happens to your body. And so I would say there was one situation that I didn't love in the hospital, and I think this is a I'll bring it up because it's a good example of this. So for some reason, they do three blood sugar tests on newborns and at this particular hospital they were fasting. It was standard at that hospital, standard at this hospital. Not because he's a C-section baby, not because I was an older mom.

Speaker 1: 20:16

Not because he was large how big was he?

Speaker 2: 20:19

So he was 10 pounds, 14 ounces, so essentially 10 pounds. That's large for gestational age.

Speaker 1: 20:24

So that puts him at risk for not being able to maintain his blood sugars after delivery.

Speaker 2: 20:29

So my understanding is that they do this with all babies at this particular hospital, and what they do at this particular hospital, which they don't do at other hospitals in Austin and this is coming from one of the nurses I'll kind of tell you the whole story but is that they actually do fasting? So I would feed him and then they would wait three hours and then they would check his blood sugar. Well, the first one was fine. The second one was one point below where it was supposed to be. I don't remember the number. But then, all of a sudden, so they used the glucometer in my room but they also did serum blood sugar and somehow there was like a 13, 14 point difference between what they got with the glucometer and serum. And so the nurse practitioner came in and like we need to give the baby formula and I said well, what, what?

Speaker 2: 21:16

talk to me, what's going on. She said his blood sugar is really low and I said really, it's only one point low. And I'm looking at like whole baby here and he's waking to feed, he is not lethargic, he's acting exactly how he's supposed to. And I said you know well, can you tell me what is what the ingredients are in your formula? Well, the first one is high fructose corn syrup, and then the second ingredient is canola oil. And so I looked at her and I said, okay, well, that's a hard no for me, because canola oil is literally toxic and it's poison, and high fructose corn syrup is also poison. And so, like, what are the options here? And she goes well, I could take your child and I can check him into the NICU and give him sugar water.

Speaker 2: 22:02

And at this point, like that's a very to me, I took that as a threat and my midwife happened to be visiting, because this is, I think, like the second day in the hospital, and the nurse practitioner said you know, at this point your child actually needs those things. And so I looked at her and I'm crying at this point, right, because I'm upset, and this has been a conversation and it seemed very threatening at this point and I said you know, if my son needed high fructose corn syrup and canola oil, my breasts would be producing that. And so I just said I need you to leave my room. I need five minutes to talk this decision over with my midwife, and my husband and my son is like, totally fine, not in distress Because my midwife is there and she goes. You know, the birthing center is 15 minutes away. I'll go get you some breast milk. That's a great.

Speaker 2: 22:48

So the nurse practitioner comes back in and says which of the two options did you decide NICU or formula? I said neither. My midwife is already left. She's going to be here in 15 minutes with donor breast milk. And at that point she said well, you know that this is dangerous. It's a bodily fluid and I kind of like lose it at this point. And I'm like you know, are you looking for a solution here or not? Because this gets his blood sugar up right. And it was interesting because when she left the room the nurse looked at me and said there's another nurse and said you keep fighting for what you believe in, mama.

Speaker 2: 23:24

And I at that point decided I was going to feed my baby right before I was going to fast him and I had this conversation with the nurse practitioner. I said look, I'm a nutritionist and when my clients have low blood sugar, this is a volume issue. He just needs to eat more often. And why are you fasting him? Like what's going to happen this is normal mechanism is he's going to have low blood sugar three hours after he eats and that blood sugar is going to get him up and have him cry or whatever, and that's going to be a sign that he needs to eat again. And so she was like well, it's different with babies. And I said oh really, you know, here's how the cortisol blood sugar reaction kind of works in adults. I'm always looking to learn more. Can you explain to me how it's different in a baby? It's not, it's the exact same autonomic nervous system, right?

Speaker 2: 24:15

And she literally looked at me, turned around, walked away, and she, because she knew that it wasn't different, and one of these other nurses was like I don't know why they're fasting your kid. And I had already decided we were going to do because at this point I said we're done with you get one more blood sugar test, stop pricking his feet. And so the nurse was like I'm going to be back in here at 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock and feed him right before. So I haven't had nurses kind of telling me like hey, this nurse practitioner is being crazy and they don't do fasting blood sugar at any of the other hospitals I work at in Austin. So it's just one of those things where it's like, ok, I'm obviously. This is a traumatic situation. I don't want to feed my child formula With that particular formulation.

Speaker 2: 26:47

There are other formulas that don't have canola oil and literal garbage in them. I understand the importance of baby microbiome and he's already a C-section baby. That's just an incredibly stressful way to start life In that situation. I even asked. I said hey, they've never presented breast milk as an antiviral, which they happen to have in the NICU. They could have easily given me breast milk. Instead, I had to have my midwife go to the birthing center and bring breast milk back. It's just there's same thing. We said no to the vitamin K shot because it has polysorbate 80 in it, which crosses over the blood brain barrier. There's other things in it that I think it's like 20,000 times the amount of vitamin K where baby actually needs. It's oftentimes more than the liver can process. What typically then also happens after that vitamin K shot is the baby has jaundice. Shocking, we were going to do vitamin K drops Again. They had a problem with that. They said oh well, by the way, we have a preservative-free vitamin K shot. I'm like why is there a secret in and out menu here?

Speaker 1: 28:07

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 28:08

Which, by the way, still has polysorbate 80 in it, which I didn't know. I took them at face value. I trusted what they said, that it didn't have the things that I had a problem with, and it did. Why do I have to be highly educated and have a personality type that I don't mind swinging my weight around in order to get what I want, which is not very typical for many women? If two things happen and it's like okay, had I not been educated on this, had I not had a midwife standing next to me, then that could have gone very differently.

Speaker 2: 28:44

The reality is is I work with a lot of women that were C-section babies. Guess what? They have a problem with Gut microbiome, which means that they have a problem with their immune system, because 80% of your immune system is in your gut, which also means that they often have anxiety and depression, because about 70, 80% of your serotonin is created in your gut. These decisions that we make very early in life for our children have lasting implications for generations to come, and they are being stolen and taken away from us.

Speaker 1: 29:17

Yeah, Wow, I'm just shocked that they were doing the three hour fasting. It's not evidence-based. As you were talking, I was like, well, why did you have to go through the birth center to get the breast milk? One of the hospitals that I work at does have the donor breast milk for babies that need it. We also have the backdoor vitamin K because in the NICU the NICU babies get the preservative free vitamin K. Then the drops we don't offer just because the American Academy of Pediatrics, the studies have shown that there's less of a absorption of the vitamin K with the drops. But regardless, you're giving your baby vitamin K. We should be able to educate ourselves on the options and have the options presented to us.

Speaker 2: 30:00

What does that mean? Why am I having to practice defensive parenting right away? It's defensive nutrition where it's like okay, now something is grass-fed but not grass-finished, which is just as gross. Now you have to say 100% grass-fed and grass-finished Free range is different. Now you have to just got to be pasture raised. It's like the second that a consumer says I am not okay with food this way. Then they say okay, they use new term and we're constantly having to one up and fool.

Speaker 2: 30:36

I had a really big problem with this one particular nurse practitioner. Everybody else, the nurses were amazing, that midwife was amazing. It was just this one particular nurse practitioner that really I felt like was stepping outside of her bounds. This is why I believe we have to empower ourselves with information as mothers, so that we understand the implications of these decisions. One of the other things that I did which all credit to my midwife I did vaginal seating with my son.

Speaker 2: 31:09

As soon as we knew that he was going to be a C-section baby, I asked the midwife for sterile gauze and sterile swab. You put it up into your vagina and get the bacteria that's in your vagina. When the baby's born, you put it on his hands and on his nose and his mouth and around his eyes, so that you seed the gut microbiome that he would have naturally had exposure to had he been vaginally delivered. I appreciate there was another nurse in the room and the midwife looks at the nurse and she goes earmuffs. The nurse goes like this this isn't something that we normally do but yeah, go ahead, here's a sterile plastic bag, here's your sterile gauze, and let's go for it.

Speaker 2: 31:57

It also highlighted to me that maybe, oh, I've got these negative perceptions of allopathic medicine. There was a really great midwife and some really great nurses and that maybe I had gotten it a little wrong in this particular situation. But had I not been as educated as I was, I wouldn't have known the difference Exactly. Again, why is there a secret in and out menu at the hospital? Why aren't all babies being given the quote, unquote, preservative-free vitamin K shot? The reality is you have to either have a lot of time or money in order to know this stuff. That means that there's a whole subsection of the population that these choices aren't even available for.

Speaker 1: 32:42

Yeah, it's maddening, especially working at the hospital, because I can only do so much as a nurse. Sometimes it is just empowering moms to make that choice and letting them do what they need to do. First of all, I just want to clarify your group beta strep status, I would imagine was not positive, it's negative.

Speaker 1: 33:01

Okay, yeah, correct. As far as vaginal seeding, if your baby is coming through your vagina, your baby is going to be exposed, regardless of your group beta strep Positive or negative, positive or negative. Right, they would have given antibiotics had you been positive if you had had a vaginal delivery. There is evidence that, yes, that is an option to do vaginal seeding. Whether it's a policy at the hospital, that's a different story. That's something that it's like, just like if you want to keep your placenta, that's on you. That's not something that the hospital will just provide as a standard. There's other options of what to do with your placenta too. I've noticed that hospital policy does not necessarily keep up with the latest evidence.

Speaker 2: 33:45

Just because the hospital has a policy does not mean that I am forced to adhere to that policy, and I think that that's another misconception, that some nurse or a doctor or some administrative person said that's not our policy and I have to cower to that and say, okay, well, then do what you need to do. The hospital policy is not put there for the best outcome for mothers. The hospital policy is there to mitigate risk and liability for the hospital.

Speaker 1: 34:12

There's some things that hospital policy we can't waver on. Your husband can't do your c-section, that's a hospital policy, right. But If it's a hospital policy to, I don't even want to pretend that that formula thing was a hospital policy, I can't wrap my head around that. But there has to be an alternative, right, there has to be. If you're just one point below your blood sugar, it seems like there should be some other options you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 34:44

Also, when blood serum sits around in the lab, there's degradation to the blood and oftentimes that's the. There was, I think, a 13, 14 point difference between the glucometer in the room and the blood serum glucose test, cause they would do it in the room and they would send it off to the lab as well. And again I brought that up to the nurse practitioner. I said, well, typically, cause I run blood chemistry on people, right, like I am trained in blood chem, and so it's kind of like this lady's like worst nightmare and I'm like you're essentially like tell me I'm being a bad mom, that my kid is gonna go into shock, cause blood sugar regulation is very important. You can die from low blood sugar.

Speaker 2: 35:22

But again, I'm looking at the whole baby, right, I'm looking at the whole baby. The baby is like feeding the baby, like everything was really fine, and so it's just unfortunate that a lot of this is kind of how things happen oftentimes. But I think that we can prevent a lot of this from happening by having a really good team. So I had a midwife that was in my corner, I had a doula during the actual birth and leading up to it, and then I had my husband, who was also kind of supporting me through all this. He was awesome and so really having a team to support you because you're you know, you are emotionally, physically drained at this point after either a vaginal delivery or a C-section. And what a lot of these doctors. These doctors are not trained in gut microbiome.

Speaker 2: 36:09

They're not trained in nutrition and, for example, breastfed babies and babies that get exposed to gut microbiome have a lower chance of contracting RSV and rotavirus. Right Like this is evidence-based, and so I really think that nature got it right, and I am so grateful for modern medicine when there's an acute issue, but when it comes to childbirth is not a medical event. No, it's just not. It may be done in a medical setting, but childbirth is not a medical event, and the best thing that most doctors and nurses and nurse practitioners can do is get out of the way and let the body do things naturally Instead. We have a C-section rate of 40% in this country, one of the highest maternal mortality rates in industrial nations. It's just, it's wild what's happening to women here, and I think it's important that we are educated on these things and that we stand in our power.

Speaker 1: 37:14

Yeah, yeah, and I do. I think that's important. I think with it it's important, we start talking about it, and unfortunately, with allopathic medicine, there's this expectation that, in order to have convincing evidence, you have to have a randomized controlled trial. But that's unethical with mothers and babies, and so then what we have is this slow, anecdotal evidence.

Speaker 2: 37:34

They don't have randomized controlled trials for any of the vaccines they're giving our kids. They, yeah, they do Not for most. Yeah, they're armed. They have babies, yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:42

No, no, with vaccines they do. They'll have a group that's a control group and a group that's not a control group, and some one group will get the vaccine and the other one will not. But you can't do that with babies and mothers. You can't say, okay, I'm gonna give formula to this baby and then I'm not gonna treat the blood sugar in this baby, and so it's a total evidence.

Speaker 1: 38:01

So yeah, that's what I mean by randomized controlled trials. So when you sign up a child for a vaccine randomized controlled trial like when they had the COVID vaccine that was coming out they signed up children to get smaller doses of the COVID vaccine and some children didn't get it and you didn't know if you were getting it. So that was, that's randomized controlled. But with delivery, for instance, they don't have a randomized controlled trial where you can give your mom Potosin or just let her go. You have to make choice. You have to deliver the baby and you have to deliver the baby in the safest way possible. You just don't wait it out and see if the baby just comes out on its own, if there's a need for intervention, if there's a need for C-section, or if the baby is not doing well or if the mom's not doing well. You can't, you can't just like, not intervene.

Speaker 2: 38:46

Yeah, I think that there is. In some of those cases you can't intervene, but then we have preventative measures that you know. Often it's this kind of intervention cascade.

Speaker 1: 38:59

Of course, yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:00

For example, you know, when it comes to, you know, getting an IV, okay. So you'd think like, okay, that's pretty benign, right, I'm just getting saline water. Okay, so I get an IV. I now am, you know, bloated. The baby is bloated. Their weight is artificially inflated. Now, all of a sudden, the right that artificial water weight goes away. Now it looks like the baby has lost way too much weight.

Speaker 2: 39:29

Now they have to be. You know, now they're in the NICU, now they don't have as much skin to skin contact with mom. I mean, there's all of these interventions that lead to other interventions, and I think the difficulty is how do you know what is what Like, what is an emergency and what isn't an emergency? And I think that's where you know the devil is definitely in the details. Yeah, I think that there is a philosophy with obstetrics that the doctor is delivering the baby and I believe that the mother is delivering the baby Absolutely, and I think that is a very big difference.

Speaker 1: 40:08

Right and, like you said, with the IV, I mean even and I don't know how it is where you were at, but it's not standard for a cervical ripening induction to have any fluids going in their IV for any of the facilities where I work Because, like you said, you can get fluid overload. We have to monitor intake and output and make sure that we're not giving too much fluid to this patient. That's getting these interventions that we are providing right Because you can get fluid overload. However, then if your baby starts to react in a way that looks as if they need some interventions, one of the interventions that we know can help is to give a fluid bolus. So then it's like the risks and the benefits have to be weighed. We try things first, like turning you and putting you in a different position that might help the baby get oxygen perfusion through the placenta and the umbilical cord. If that doesn't, we might recommend the fluid bolus. But we have the IV in place, the saline lock in place, so that we can have access to that intervention as needed. And just like, on the same lines, it used to be standard to give oxygen when the baby was having what we call decels right, so the baby's heart rate's going down. Well, now evidence has shown that. Not only I mean, we've learned in nursing school that oxygen is a drug and we don't just standard across the board, give it to people, but we are giving 10 liters of oxygen by face mask to mothers in labor whose oxygen levels on the monitor were 100%, just because the baby was having decels, because practitioners thought, oh well, the baby looks better after we give oxygen. Well, maybe the baby looks better because we're turning and giving fluid and managing this labor appropriately versus giving oxygen.

Speaker 1: 41:46

So we are learning and as we learn, the evidence needs to be made available to mothers because, like you said, birth is not a medical process.

Speaker 1: 41:55

It is a natural process.

Speaker 1: 41:57

However, medicine has evolved somewhat to be able to intervene when it becomes an emergency in order to continue that birthing process in a safe manner.

Speaker 1: 42:08

But then, once we find out that maybe some of those interventions don't work as well as we thought, like the oxygen, it's no longer the ACOG has come out saying that we no longer need to be standardized, giving people oxygen when they're having a deceleration. Then we need to do better and we all need to do better and we need to take that information and use it so that we can do better for people and so that we're not causing harm. And it's frustrating how slow allopathic medicine can be in implementing these policies because and, like you said, the nurses I mean we stay up to date on these evidence-based practices and we know and then we try to encourage hospitals to change and it's just such a slow process for that to happen and it's so frustrating. And it's frustrating that the consumer, patient, the client, the mom, the family, that the mother, baby, dyad doesn't necessarily have access to that information as readily as we do and then they trust the hospital to do what is evidence-based and it's not always the case.

Speaker 2: 43:06

Yeah, and, like I said, the policies are often there to protect from litigation and liability, and if the system was great right, we would have great outcomes, and we just do not have great outcomes in this country, and so I think that it's really important to look at the system and say I either wanna opt out of this system, which is what I tried to do. I didn't have one cervical check in during any of my prenatal visits. That was something that I have a lot of trauma around that. My midwife is like that's fine, I don't need to check your cervix. My friends that go to OB-GYNs they're constantly getting cervical checks and my trauma is around a sexual assault and multiple IVS procedures and it's just. There's a lot going on down there for me.

Speaker 2: 43:55

And so I think that we think that we just give up control and power over our bodies, and I think that's something that we need to take back as women.

Speaker 1: 44:03

I think that's interesting, that people are still being told that a cervical check is necessary. It could be presented as an option, if you're curious to know.

Speaker 2: 44:12

I need to see how far dilated you are, as if dilation is the only thing that impacts your ability to deliver a baby, and things are often presented not as options, or they're presented in a way. I had a friend whose OB literally told her that if she doesn't get the flu shot, that if she got the flu, it'll kill her baby.

Speaker 2: 44:32

I mean, it's recommended to get the flu shot, but we definitely have people that decline, that's so interesting and you can recommend all you want, but to tell a mother that if she got the flu her baby's gonna die, it's like, come on, we've gotta do better in this country. And again, if the system was good and if the system was helpful, we would have better, kind of normal outcomes. I'm grateful for the modern medical system in acute issues, like if I have a broken leg or a heart attack or a stroke, right like I think it's great. But when it comes to like preventative medicine and it comes to getting and keeping people healthy, it's not the right system and I think that's where folks that are practitioners, that are functional medicine practitioners or functional nutrition practitioners like myself, can kind of step in and help in that regard.

Speaker 1: 45:21

Yeah, well, and I think that there's reasons for and there's reasons against everything and it needs to be tailored and individualized. Like, if you are high risk because you have some sort of underlying medical condition and it's more recommended for you to get the flu shot, then maybe there needs to be more education there. But if you're low risk and just decline the flu shot because you've looked at the evidence, it's not right for you. Now it's not something that I personally recommend. I always get my flu shot, but if somebody comes in and says, no, I declined the flu shot, I just move on, yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:51

And the interesting thing is is I've never had a flu shot in my life and I'm not gonna start something new during pregnancy, and so you know again, like, how we present things, I think is really important. You can present something as an option, but if you pressure somebody and make them feel like they're being a bad mom or they're gonna hurt their child, that's not really ethical in my perspective either.

Speaker 1: 46:16

So no, not at all, and I mean I can hold Evans in my brain right. That makes me feel like I want to further educate a person on why I strongly feel like this option would be best for them, and I can do it in a way that isn't bullying Correct, and I think that saying that your baby is going to die it sounds like we're intentionally trying to be shocking and there's ways to say it, to take the time to say it and educate and try to strongly impress on this patient why you think that this is the best option for them. But they still have the right to decline Because and you know, people don't necessarily make what you consider to be the right decision all the time, and that's just that's part of life. My biggest beef with medicine right now and mostly it's because of insurance companies is that they don't give practitioners the time to explain these things. Visits are supposed to be 15 minutes. You can build for like 15 minutes and what. That is insane.

Speaker 2: 47:17

Yeah, no on. On average, I see my clients have seen 12 doctors that have told them everything's fine, labs are normal and In the meantime they have insomnia, anxiety, depression, ibs, eczema, psoriasis in many markers for autoimmune disease and, on average, my clients have seen 12 doctors and they either refuse to run labs or they run basic labs that don't do much and they say, oh, everything's normal, everything's in range, right. And I don't even know if the doctors know that the range is just telling you what's common.

Speaker 2: 47:54

It's not telling you what's optimal for like a hundred sixty pound man, even the pregnancy lab so that, yeah, so so you know, like again, you know I'm dealing with a population of women who Looked to their doctors and their medical community for help, and they are ignored Oftentimes, are told that they're lying specifically around like weight gain. You know where they say this is what I'm eating, and the doctor says you must be lying, or you must not be telling me everything, or you must be sneaking some Oreos here and there, I mean, and the reality is, is there they've like no estrogen, no progesterone, no testosterone, some Major weight gain and things that you know the doctors never even was able to to identify, and so so I think that this is it's really important to to have access to a medical team that has other tools in there in their toolbox.

Speaker 1: 48:49

Yeah, and unfortunately, with allopathic medicine you specialize and that's your only wheelhouse and so if somebody falls outside of those very specific lines, not every practitioner has the ability or the access to to get the information. I think that's where functional medicine comes in, because it's not necessarily a condition that fits into a box that you're treating.

Speaker 2: 49:12

Yeah and you know, I think, a lot of the the benefits of functional nutrition or functional medicine is that we look at the body as a whole and we don't chop up the body into systems, and so, for me, I am looking at the body as a whole. I am running labs that paint a picture of what is happening in the entire system, because every single system impacts the other systems and.

Speaker 2: 49:35

There, there isn't like a nice me border around certain things in the body, like everything impacts everything, and so I think that's that's really important to work with a practitioner that if I see something that going on with the skin, I at 100% know something's going on with liver and gut and.

Speaker 2: 49:52

I'm not. I'm not sending my client to a dermatologist because that eczema has nothing to do With with your skin. It has everything to do with your immune system in and the liver. So I think that that having that type of training which I don't think that's how it's done unless you're being functionally trained.

Speaker 1: 50:11

Mm-hmm, I have a couple questions for you and I think it's gonna kind of go off on a tangent either either way. Okay, both questions. The first question I kind of want to go back to what you're talking about with the epidural because, like we were talking about, you have to weigh the pros and cons. There's no right way to do it right. And you had us, I would imagine you had a spinal Anaesthetic or you could have had a combined spinal epidural and so then you weighed those risks and benefits with your Anaesthesia.

Speaker 1: 50:37

Obviously you didn't want to be completely Unanesthetized for your C-section and you just and you didn't want to go under general anesthesia so that you didn't get to meet your baby after he was born. But then you talked about the effects of the Spinal or epidural anesthesia on breastfeeding. So I'm curious what? First of all, I don't know a whole lot about how the spinal or the epidural, what it does to affect breastfeeding. So I have some questions surrounding that and my mind's kind of going in a lot of different ways about how that could that would affect it. But when you were weighing the pros and the cons, what information did you have that you were weighing that you might be able to share with some of my listeners who so may be deciding this too at some point.

Speaker 2: 51:22

So for me, immediate skin to skin, not just for the gold, I know we call it the golden hour, but it's really a golden couple of hours oh, of course, and To me, I know that that immediate skin to skin, immediate on the boob, feeding, that connection, the smelling, the looking into the eyes, all of that it helps map your nervous system and your child's nervous system together and that was my number one priority. So anything that risk that for me and my child was off off the table. I would have undergone 24 c-sections. I would have sacrificed anything in order to preserve that Sacred time with my child. Sacred emotionally, sacred biologically. That was like my number one.

Speaker 2: 52:16

If I had like a single thing that I was really working towards, if I didn't have that Intuitive hit that I was that I was gonna have to have a c-section anyway, I probably would have said, okay, let's continue with induction. But that's not, you know, and this isn't evidence-based right. A lot of this is. I'm a highly intuitive person, I know my body right and that is what felt right for me and I think that, at the end of the day, is what I think we need to listen to is you know, Just this.

Speaker 2: 52:43

Does this feel right? That is why I didn't want to have an epidural to begin with. It's why I didn't want to have a hospital birth to begin with. I wanted to Because this is not a medical Procedure, this is a natural process. I Wanted my body. I wanted to give my body the best chance to Let the body do what the body does, and so that is why I chose.

Speaker 2: 53:13

I also know people that have had ecstatic births. Right, we can also kind of get into. I know women that have felt no pain during birth, and so then we can kind of get into a conversation around like pain. Do we as a society tell women that childbirth is awful and incredibly painful with every single book and movie? And then is the environment essentially ripe for a traumatic birth, so that all of these women have traumatic births? And then we turn around and talk to our friends about how traumatic the birth was or the outcomes, a direct result of the environment. I would venture to say yes, which is why I wanted to opt out of that environment. So, yes, so you know that was my, that was my decision.

Speaker 2: 53:53

I knew that that breastfeeding babies is incredibly important and I always look at good, better, best in my practice with my clients and I believe that, given normal circumstances, right, it is best to breastfeed your baby.

Speaker 2: 54:13

But if you are having a mental breakdown because of the breastfeeding, then it is best to feed your tits and formula, and so you have to. I think so many times we detach the mother from the breasts where it's like yes, the breast milk is Technically the best thing for the baby. Colostrum and breast milk is the best thing for the baby. However, that's only if the breasts are not attached to a whole human being who, you know, has a lot of things, you know work or maybe access to postpartum care. Maybe they have a supportive partner, maybe they don't. Maybe you know my husband had four months paid paternity time. I am lucky enough that I can choose when and how I work. You know, not everybody has these privileges and I'm very aware of that. So, you know, in isolation is breast milk the best? Yes, it is, but when you all of a sudden look at like the whole picture which is like there's a human here, we need to have broader conversations around around that. But for me, preserving breastfeeding was very important for me.

Speaker 1: 55:15

Oh yeah, and I think I think most of the moms that I work with that is their goal. But then I do see those other things crop up and I think it's really important to, like you said, to get that good, better, best and Attach the human to the equation. And so then I guess where I'm curious is so, personally, for me, my first delivery, I wanted to have a natural birth and I labored at home for as long as I could and when I started feeling pushy I went to the hospital. I got there, they told me I was six centimeters and After several hours of laboring on my back and the most unoptimal I wasn't quite as educated as I am now. I did ask for an epidural because I got to the point when I felt like my stress levels were so high that I was not going to be able to emotionally Yep, contribute to birthing that child. Yeah, my tension level was so high I couldn't use my brain to relax my body anymore.

Speaker 2: 56:09

Yeah, and cortisol will halt the birthing process, exactly. I mean, the cortisol is just regulate.

Speaker 1: 56:17

It was Disregulating my birthing process and I think that also my dehydration was not helping, you know. And so that's where I wish personally that some of those interventions that I didn't know that I had access for. So this is kind of the flip side, because I want everybody to know what the tools are and we can't go into all of them today, obviously but know what the tools are and what they're there for. I wish that I had had someone say oh, would you like an IV bolus? Because then in my blood pressure dropped and this isn't standard the way that they did it when my daughter was still delivered. I've since learned that you're supposed to have that IV bolus before the epidural and I wasn't given that. And you know, laboring on my back wasn't optimal on a stretcher also.

Speaker 2: 56:57

Isn't optimal anywhere. It's right. I mean, I'm a classically trained, all apparatus trained Pilates instructor. I understand, like the pelvis, the pelvic Hacker Turning your knees out right there. Yeah, we're constantly turning knees out for for moms. I don't it? Literally is making your pelvis clamp down around the baby smaller. Yeah you can go knees in feet out.

Speaker 1: 57:21

Right and still gives room.

Speaker 2: 57:23

So yeah, I mean, it's just it's wild. It's wild that all this stuff happens. I wish it, I wish it didn't right.

Speaker 1: 57:30

I really want moms to know what their options are and why. That it's across the board. So what I see is both sides right. I see across the board somebody will come and they will just say no to everything, and I see that as them shutting down and trying to protect themselves. But did they necessarily know the reasons that they have access to these interventions? But I also get why we're shutting everything down, because the culture is so clooked in this power struggle, in this environment where we take Autonomy away from moms, that I get why they come in defensive.

Speaker 2: 58:05

We no longer trust the modern medical model. Right, Just don't. And it's not perfect.

Speaker 1: 58:09

I'll give you that. But there are interventions that are sometimes helpful and I guess my goal and when I'm treating my patients is to try to kind of do what your nurses did and say you know, I get that you're fighting for what you believe in and I I want to give you that power and maybe the thing, the way that we're suggesting Isn't the best way, it's just hospital policy or this nursing nurse practitioners preference, and it Infuriates me that there are people that don't have Resources, that are in this environment and aren't given the best options, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 58:38

That just hurts my soul. Same. And then the other question that I had for you. So I know you said that you have online programs and we're talking about people that maybe have limited resources. I would imagine that someone with limited resources might not be able to work privately one-on-one with you, but if someone wanted to Improve their health through functional medicine, are there options that you provide that are a little bit more self-driven but also could help them kind of get on the right path if they didn't have the means?

Speaker 2: 59:11

Yeah, I mean I'll tell you three things that you could do right now. Then and all of this is covered and I have a program called the adrenal detox and the adrenals are part of your autonomic nervous system and kind of that fight-or-flight or rest or digest mechanism in your body. We want to obviously spend the majority of our time in rest and digest. We do not want to be in fight-or-flight, but our modern world puts us in constant acute stress, prolonged acute stress, and cortisol is a catabolic hormone which means that it breaks you down at a cellular level. So it's great in small quantities when you're trying to run away from the saber-toothed tiger. But now, in our modern worlds, you know whether a stressor is physical, biochemical or emotional. The body doesn't know the difference and the response is the same. You know surge, cortisol and what ends up happening when you're in this constant state of fight-or-flight.

Speaker 2: 1:00:07

Your autonomic nervous system essentially prioritizes everything that it perceives as necessary for short-term survival. So getting more blood to your big muscle movers so that you can run away from the saber-toothed tiger, getting more oxygen, dilating pupils. But things are prioritized and the things that are de-prioritized because the body is always trying to find balance are things like your immune system, because it doesn't matter if you could fight cancer if the saber-toothed tiger eats you. Right, right, things like digestion. It's why when, oftentimes, when we're scared, we empty our bowels or our bladder Reproduction, I mean, there's so many women that can't get pregnant, can't stay pregnant it's because they're in a constant state of stress.

Speaker 2: 1:00:45

Cortisol literally turns things off that are necessary for long-term survival, like DNA repair, reproduction, all of those things, and it prioritizes short-term survival, and so getting out of a state of fight-or-flight is incredibly important, and there are a couple of very simple things that you can do. The first thing that you can do is get warning light. So and these are free, right, like it costs a lot of money to work with me, but these are things that are free. I'm just telling you about right.

Speaker 2: 1:01:13

Yeah, and these are things that I do with my clients right away, which is are you getting 15, 20, 30 minutes of light in the morning, optimally within an hour or so of sunrise and then also a sunset? Are you eating a high protein, low carb breakfast within 30 to 45 minutes of waking up? Very, very important. And then sleep hygiene is so incredibly important. Minimizing red light don't, have you know, follow patterns of the sun, so when the sun goes down you shouldn't have every single canister light in your light on right. Not having access to blue light, your phones, your screens, having your room nice and cold when you go to sleep. It's basic. I mean, look up sleep hygiene on the end of the internet, and I cover all of this stuff in a really, really inexpensive workshop called the Adrenal Detox, and those are just three things that you can do. You know in a matter of minutes a week that I think are really important. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:02:04

Normally, at the end of the episode, I will ask a mom if you could go back and talk to yourself before this journey. What would you want to tell yourself? It seems like you came into this journey very in tuned to your own body and your own desires and very educated. So I'm not sure if there's anything that you would want to go back and tell yourself, but I'm wondering if, maybe, if you went a little bit further back to like before starting this journey, if there is something that you would want to tell yourself, just because it's helpful for new moms that are starting their journey to hear what people wish they'd known.

Speaker 2: 1:02:37

Yeah, I mean for me. I didn't have anybody in my life that had a positive birth story. So with every movie that I watched knocked up, where there's screaming in pain, purple, pushing, sweating, swearing at your partner you did this to me, you know. And then all of the traumatic births that my friends have had and also how awful their postpartum was because they didn't do the work that they needed to ahead of time in order to have a healthy pregnancy, like balancing minerals, like a spore based probiotic, prebiotics, like all of these things. Reducing stress really didn't touch on some of that stuff, but it's like so, so, so important. So I had this negative perception of the childbirth and that was probably one of the reasons I prolonged it so long, because I was terrified. I had this very logical fear of birth because of my experience in the medical system, the stories that were ceded by my friends and family, and I wish that I had access to some of this information earlier because then I would understand that, like, my body was born to do this and it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my entire life and maybe I wouldn't be 45 dang years old, you know, trying to keep up with the five month old and wanting to have additional children with my husband, and so you know, I think that would be something that I would tell myself. And then also the importance of minerals. I wish I would have, even I even knew this, but like I just didn't start early enough, I do a hair tissue mineral analysis on all my clients. My prenatal was a custom mineral blend that was tailored specifically to me, and then I did another custom mineral blend when I was breastfeeding, you know. So I kind of had three custom mineral brands before I got pregnant, when I got pregnant and then when I was breastfeeding, and I think that is so, so important.

Speaker 2: 1:04:38

Minerals are like the spark plugs to your body. Literally, every single metabolic process in your body means minerals. Magnesium, which is one of our primary minerals, is responsible for over 600 metabolic processes in the body, like DNA and RNA production. Literally, as you are growing a human, you need massive loads of magnesium. And then also understanding that you also need to have a balance between minerals. I think it is a tragedy that doctors do not understand about the importance of minerals and micrometrines in general. So your vitamins, your minerals, your amino acids and your essential fatty acids and I wish I would have started balancing my minerals more quickly, because I kind of like I maybe did it started doing it six months in advance and I should have done it probably a year or two in advance.

Speaker 1: 1:05:27

Yeah, that's so important. Yeah, I feel like your typical prenatal vitamin doesn't. It's kind of a joke.

Speaker 2: 1:05:32

Well, your typical prenatal, for example, has folic acid in it. There's estimates that 40% of women have the MTHFR gene mutation, which does not allow you to methylate, and so you can't methylate it.

Speaker 2: 1:05:46

So essentially, folic acid is toxic, it's poison for you and it oftentimes leads to the same symptoms as postpartum depression. So you've got all of these women who are taking this garbage prenatal and they are loading up toxic folic acid that their body cannot use. It's not bioavailable for them because they do not methylate and, sure enough, as soon as they stop taking that prenatal, their postpartum depression miraculously goes away. And so, understanding the importance of a good quality prenatal using a methylated folate it's already in a bioavailable form. I think all of these things are really, really important.

Speaker 2: 1:06:29

But again, doctors don't know and they're like, yeah, just take a centrum one a day or whatever that some garbage. Or take magnesium, but they're taking magnesium oxide, which only 4% is bioavailable, right? So it's like really understanding about minerals and micronutrients and really preparing the body for birth, because your body depletes you of about 20 to 30% of all of your minerals with every single pregnancy. So now imagine you're a mom on your second or your third pregnancy and you're like so depleted and that's where we have a lot of issues with the postpartum depression, anxiety and all of those things, the hair loss, just complete dysregulation in that fourth trimester and beyond. I think those are the things that I would tell myself. Which is? Your body was built to do this and don't be afraid of it. Lean into it, enjoy it. Childbirth can be awesome. Nobody ever told me that.

Speaker 1: 1:07:23

Yeah, what form of magnesium is better than magnesium oxide. There's a couple.

Speaker 2: 1:07:30

So magnesium glycinate is great. There's nine, or there's like nine plus, different types of magnesium. Oftentimes it's also magnesium citrate, which is great if you are having a hard time going to the bathroom. Number two you've got to take the right form and I think so often people are just kind of like piece, kneeling things together from like a podcast or an article or a TV show, and I think you know preparing yourself for birth is important and find somebody that can support you in that. I'm working with a client right now who just had her fourth IVF retrieval, has had really low quality eggs and embryos and you know she made the decision to not implant the embryos that she does have based off of some of the labs that we just ran no calcium, no magnesium, off the charts sodium and potassium, which means she's in a hyper stressed out state. She has off the charts mercury levels Wow, off the charts mercury levels.

Speaker 1: 1:08:26

Why?

Speaker 2: 1:08:26

Because mercury is in our our makeup, our contact solution oh my God, it's in the blood, it's in our makeup, our contact solution. It's in vaccines that you know forms of it has been in, definitely, vaccines that I took as a kid. You know. It's in our water, it's in everything and if you, you know, if you don't methylate, it means that you don't detox appropriately.

Speaker 1: 1:08:48

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:08:49

Now that toxin barrel is already filled and you can't empty the barrel right. And so you know, and a lot of these, these IVF doctors, they're not incented for a healthy outcome. They're in, they get paid by how many retrievals they do and how many implantations that they do. So they're not really incented to make sure that you can stay pregnant and carry a and they're not incented to see whether or not you're. You absolutely lose your mind after in your in your postpartum. So working with somebody that is kind of incented to you know, make sure that you are happy, healthy and whole and living a big life I think is is really important, just getting a team around you that can help you with that. And so, yeah, she's decided to hold off on implanting these embryos until we can work on on reducing the stress and inflammation in her body, which I think is really really important. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:09:38

Well, Maya, is there anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to talk about?

Speaker 2: 1:09:41

You know, I think that there are two really important things that I would leave with with all of your listeners, from a kind of preparation perspective, is healing the gut microbiome, and if we have the autoimmune rates that we do in this country, we know that that's related to gut microbiome. Like, in order for an autoimmune condition to pop off, a couple of things have to happen. The first thing is that you have to have a genetic predisposition. The second thing is that you need to have gut permeability, which is essentially low-grade sepsis, and then the third is you need to have a stressor, and oftentimes that stressor is physical and it's childbirth. So oftentimes after childbirth, when you have those three things that are kind of happening is when a lot of women get Hashimoto's or mature arthritis or one of the other autoimmune conditions that are out there, and a lot of that can be prevented just because you have a genetic predisposition right. Your genetics load the gun, but your environment pulls the trigger.

Speaker 2: 1:10:40

And so healing gut microbiome, running a couple of labs to see what's going on with your gut? Do you have gut dysbiosis? Do you have an overgrowth of bad bacteria and not enough of the good bacteria? Do you have loose, tight cell junctions in your gut where all the bad stuff is literally escaping the lumen of the gut and through the bloodstream and kind of implanting into extra intestinal sites like the joints or the brain? Really understanding that before pregnancy and also balancing minerals are two of the most important things that you can do, not only to have a healthy pregnancy but a healthy baby, but also a healthy postpartum where you aren't struggling with anxiety and depression and those kinds of things that seems to be rampant today.

Speaker 1: 1:11:28

Yeah, that's so important. Well, Maya, thank you so much. I feel like I've been overloaded with information, but it's great information and I can't wait for my listeners to hear this and get started on finding their way to health through nutrition and functional medicine.

Speaker 2: 1:11:46

Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.