Dr. Michelle Gerbi: A Chiropractor's Tale of Birth, Advocacy, and Postpartum Triumphs

When Dr. Michelle Gerbi recounts her transformative birth experiences, it's as if every emotion - from vulnerability to victory - paints a vivid picture for our listeners. Join us as she bridges her journey from unexpected hospital transfers to the very personal decision to fire a bullying doctor, unfolding the resilience and advocacy needed during childbirth. Dr. Gerbi, not just a mom but a seasoned chiropractor specializing in maternal health, offers a rare glimpse into the raw and empowering tales of her own deliveries. Her stories are a beacon for mothers navigating the unpredictable seas of childbirth, highlighting the importance of informed choices and the strength found in adaptability.

As our conversation unfolds, we're brought into the heart of postpartum recovery, where Dr. Gerbi sheds light on the often-overlooked struggles new mothers face. From the physical aftermath of difficult labors and C-sections to the emotional whirlpool of early motherhood, Dr. Gerbi emphasizes the dire need for a more nurturing and specialized support system for women. Breastfeeding, a natural yet sometimes fraught process, serves as a focal point for our in-depth discussion on the challenges and triumphs of feeding our little ones, reminding us all of the stalwart endurance and unwavering dedication that motherhood demands.

The episode culminates in a passionate call to action, as Dr. Gerbi advocates for a revolution in women's healthcare. We explore the systemic barriers within the medical field, the promise of cross-disciplinary collaborations, and the grassroots movements striving to fill the gaps in maternal support. Through Dr. Gerbi's eyes, we see the potential for change - a future where communities rally, education is accessible, and all mothers feel empowered to embrace their wellbeing with confidence. As our chat wraps up, the excitement for what lies ahead in women's health care is palpable, and the commitment to continue these vital conversations is unwavering.

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

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hello, today I have with me Dr Michelle Gerbe. Dr Gerbe is a mom and baby chiropractor, certified prenatal and postpartum health coach, international board certified lactation consultant and a tummy time method educator, and holds a number of other licenses and certifications. She is the mother of two and today she is here to share her birth stories and how that inspired her to, both physically and emotionally, help moms and babies in the perinatal space. Dr Gerbe, welcome and thank you for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting. I'm really excited to hear the full birth stories, because it sounds like you experienced a little bit of everything between the two and managed to have a positive experience, which I think is so key and what I really want not necessarily what moms to have all of the experiences, but I definitely want them to have a positive experience for their birth so that it's not something that they look back on with stress, regardless of how it happens Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Yeah, thank you, I did. I had two really different birth stories. My first birth was just really absolute polar opposite of what I intended, but it still ended up being amazing and really empowering and ultimately it really made me focus in on my niche. I've always worked with moms and babies as a chiropractor, but really, really, really commit to working with women postpartum, because I felt like gosh if I am so knowledgeable about all these issues and have so many resources and so many friends in this field.

Speaker 2: 2:10

If this is happening to me, what's happening to women who don't know how to advocate for themselves or don't know what direction to go in. And I really do think the way our healthcare system is set up, we really focus on women prenatally and at birth, which we should. But then I feel like that focus sort of drops off and that is often when I see again we look at things through the lens that we have right, but that's where I see some of the biggest challenges and hurdles physically, mentally, emotionally that women face and everybody sort of moved on a little bit Like they're there but they're not, and so that's sort of where my practice has been really focused for the last 14 years.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Yeah, you mentioned that it was an attempted home birth, so I'd love to know what made you decide that, what made you feel safe doing that, and then what happened to get where you ended up.

Speaker 2: 3:00

So I grew up on the East Coast, right outside of Washington DC, and my school was next door to my mom's hospital and she worked in a high risk perinatology clinic. So we would literally go to work with her, walk next door to school, walk back to the clinic, listen to the babies on the fetal monitor, watch them do amniocentesis Like this is way before HIPAA, right. So we were just kind of like in the clinic and I was like I will absolutely never work with pregnant women when I become a physician. Like heck, no. And I thought I was going to be an MD and I was like no way, no, can do.

Speaker 2: 3:32

So I, long story short, got really hurt, taking a year off between undergrad and medical college and medical school, and broke my neck snowboarding and was really helped by a chiropractor. After I exhausted, like where Western medicine could help me, I was like well, this is, this is kind of cool, maybe I'm going to do this instead. So ended up going to chiropractic school and then in chiropractic school I still was like I'm never going to work with pregnant women. And then we had OB class and I was like oh God, it's genetic. Like like it hit me. I was just like who else needs hands on care for musculoskeletal pain. That's non-drug and non-surgical. It's pregnant women, right, and like all of my classmates were men, all of their partners were having babies. So even in the student health center from school on, I always focused on kind of maternal fetal medicine within chiropractic care and that's all I've ever done. I'm the worst chiropractor to see. If you have an acute knee injury, I'm like I don't know. But if you have like a grade four tear and delivery mastitis and a baby with colic, I'm your woman, like you know. But I'm like oh, I have no idea about that knee. So I just sort of always focused on all things pregnancy. People would bring me their babies. I went and got training creating a sacral work. I worked with infants and I just kept learning. I got really into it. I got really excited about childbirth classes. I was certified in clinical hypnosis and really interested in self-hypnosis for pain management. I became a hypno birthing instructor and this is all out in Portland, oregon and so we were like pretty crunchy out here and there's a wide variety of, from my understanding, safer home birth options than other parts of the country. It's really well-regulated. We also have naturopathic physicians out here who go to four years of medical school. They do a two-year residency, they have full medical licenses, they can prescribe drugs, they can run tests, and so I ended up having a naturopathic midwife as my provider for my first kid.

Speaker 2: 5:32

And when I taught childbirth ed, I always said to everybody I think the safest place to have your baby is wherever you feel safest and wherever you feel most comfortable and for whatever reason because I'd sort of grown up in a hospital clinic it just didn't resonate with me Like I just I wanted to be at home. I felt cozy, I felt comfortable. I also was just like I've got this in the bag, I'm not going to have any problems. I'm broad-shouldered, broad-hipped, I look like. I'm just like made to pop out babies. I was going to the chiropractor, I was doing all my prenatal yoga. I was like I don't know why I'd have any problems and I worked in birth long enough to know that anything can happen. It's not like we have a magic wand, but I just really I felt safe and I felt comfortable being at home and I really had an excellent provider. You know, I was not into the idea of home birth with somebody who had been in practice for four years and was like oh, trust birth. You know, my midwife had been delivering babies for 20 years and had seen everything under the sun happen and still loved it and did it. And my second the second midwife, because there was always two of them and a student. The second midwife was like a dear friend, my cranial instructor, and I just had all these amazing women. And then my doula was a labor and delivery nurse who was actually one of my hypno birthing instructors and mentors. So I felt like I just had this amazing crew. I had a really uncomplicated pregnancy. Everything went really well.

Speaker 2: 7:01

Labor began spontaneously. I was around I think I was like 40 and six or something like right around 41 weeks. We were talking about like, oh, I'm probably not going to let you go past 41, but labor began spontaneously. And it was so funny because I've heard women say this for years. But I got up to go pee in the middle of the night and, walking back to the bed, thought I hadn't wiped well enough and was peeing down my leg and I was like, oh, I'm going to go pee again. I guess I just didn't empty my bladder and walking back, you know, felt pee running down my leg again and I was like, wait a second, maybe my water is leaking. You know, maybe I'm going into labor Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm having contractions.

Speaker 2: 7:39

But kind of went back to sleep and then woke up and things were really getting going and because you know, I had really wanted to do this whole home births then I had the first tub and we set my husband set that up and for anybody listening to this, if you're renting a condo, don't set it up on the second or third floor. There's a lot of weight. And we had like I think we permanently damaged the floor choices. But we moved out. There was like always this squeak, squeak, squeak. So I was like, oh, nobody ever mentioned that Probably the birth tub needs to be on the bottom floor.

Speaker 2: 8:14

So we set up the birth tub, we called the midwife and I was laboring at home and things were going okay and then, but I was having like a lot of back labor and I knew what back labor was and we did a whole bunch of different things to try to reposition baby and my midwife was like, yeah, he's sunny side up and I think he's a little acynclinic, so his head was a little sideways. You know we were doing the ribosal and lunges and walking up and down the stairs and different positioning and I was just having more and more and more back labor and it was to the point where I was so uncomfortable and my poor partner was doing hip squeezes, every contraction, to the point where his arms were numb and the tub wasn't giving me any relief and I was in back labor for like 27 hours. And well, and I was in back labor for so long because I will also say that I'm really stubborn and I still really felt like I was going to have this baby at home and my midwife the whole time was like if we can get this baby to turn around, if he'll flip, you know, from sunny side up, you know you're going to be fine and he's going to. We see them to kind of tuck his head and move. The rest of this will go really smoothly. And she was great. She was monitoring my vitals the whole time. You know I wasn't in any distress, baby was doing fine. But over that period I really just started running out of coping tools and so that we had done some sterile water papules and you name it. But I was just in agony and then she said you know, let's try to start pushing. You're close enough, let's try to start pushing. You have a little bit of an anterior lip that she was trying to reduce because he wasn't. You know, he didn't have that nice perfect round head on my cervix and we pushed it home for about four hours and at this point I felt like I had been to enough births.

Speaker 2: 10:20

I used to attend births as sort of like a doula and, you know, taught enough childbirth classes, like I knew that my baby wasn't in an awesome position and that it was probably just going to be harder and I was still up for the job. And my midwife, she knew that I taught hypnobirthing and I hadn't. When I taught hypnobirthing I hadn't had a kid yet. But I really and I still do subscribe to some of the main tenants of it, where being fearful about birth creates tension in our bodies and that tension in our bodies creates pain and that pain creates more fear in this whole circle. And hypnobirthing is it sounds so woo, woo, it's really not. It's hypnosis and pain management is one of the oldest accepted forms of pain management, actually by the American Medical Association. But I wasn't expecting to have a pain-free birth, but I did really feel like my body no-transcript did know how to do this, and you know, and that I could kind of keep facilitating the process of the baby.

Speaker 2: 11:20

And I did have a stumble where my midwife told me we decided to go push in a different room, you know. Here's where I differ from you, michelle. I do really think moms still have to push out their babies. And I just remember feeling really disempowered. It was like she had sort of all along been kind of tongue-in-cheek, going along with me in my birth plan, and then was like well, this is actually how it really happens. And and I don't think that she meant it that way I was just in that really vulnerable space of you know, I was already exhausted. It was already. I was never scared, but I just knew that this was like a harder road and it felt really disempowering.

Speaker 2: 11:57

And so I pushed for four hours at home and really still didn't make any progress and the whole time, probably starting 12 hours into it, she was calling and checking in with the local hospital saying, hey, we've got a mom here, I'm going to send over her charts, we might be coming in. We're not going to come in in a flaming emergency. I know what I'm doing Should a good rapport with our hospital, but I'm just going to keep giving you updates every two or three hours as to our progress. And so I just at that point, was kind of done and she was like, you know, I just think that like you need an epidural and you need to sleep, and I at that point I would have walked myself to the hospital for an epidural.

Speaker 2: 12:37

And anybody who is listening to this and is like, oh my God, 27 hours of back labor at home and four hours of pushing, that was just me really clinging to how I thought I wanted to deliver. And you know, she really was very good about talking about options and you know, here's what we can do at every stage. And I kept making that choice of like no, I just really want to be here. I also just didn't want to get in a car. At that point I felt like if I could have walked downstairs and had a full birthing suite at the hospital, that would have been different, or you could have teleported me. But I also just didn't want to get in the car and the hospital is like a six minute drive from my house, and so she called them and she's like, hey, we're going to come in. And so we get there and the first thing they do is they do an intake and then they give me an epidural.

Speaker 2: 13:24

And I and I always said, even when I taught childbirth classes I was like, don't, don't be the epidural hater, it's a great tool for when you need another tool. You're going to use all these tools and it's just yet another tool. And I was out of tools like mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing all of that had been out the window for quite a while, and so I needed that tool. And I wanted to marry the anesthesiologist. I still see his face when I close my eyes and I love him deeply with all my heart because he made all of that discomfort go away and I will forever be grateful to him. And he doesn't even know who I am. But he was amazing. And so I finally got to rest. I just wanted to rest.

Speaker 2: 15:53

I was hoping maybe they could reposition baby and we could try again, and at that point too, my mom lived a couple hours away and she was really freaked out about the idea of me having a home birth, so I didn't want her at home just because I felt like she would just be really nervous the whole time because she's used to having her whole staff and she did high-risk deliveries. But I said, mom, if I did go to the hospital, I want you by my side. And so when it looked like we were going to maybe go to the hospital, I called her and was like, hey, can you head out? And so she was like 45 minutes away and she was telling my dad I guess she had wanted to call the midwife and see how things were going, because she hadn't heard anything and she knew she delivered thousands of babies. She's like something's going wrong. She's like I wanted to head to Portland. I wanted to get closer to you, and your father told me this was your journey and not to metal, she's like. But I knew. So she was headed over to the hospital and my nurse was amazing. She was so compassionate. She was like, hey, I'm so sorry that this didn't go the way you wanted she goes.

Speaker 2: 16:59

I wanted to have a home birth too and ended up at the hospital. She's like we're going to take really good care of you. And at the time now I know our hospital staff super, super well, but we were in the process of moving, so I was living where I live now, but still working in Portland and commuting an hour. So I just my whole practice had been in Portland. I didn't have that close relationship and I didn't have any problem with going to a hospital. It just wasn't what had resonated with me. But she was so, so kind and she was like we're going to take great care of you here and I'm sorry your plans fell through, but you're in good hands. And she was, she was just so awesome. And so she said you know, the doctor's going to come in and talk to you in a little bit and we'll make a plan from there and get you taken care of and have this baby.

Speaker 2: 17:41

And so at this point I was exhausted. You know I had been at home laboring, pushing for you know total of what 31, 32 hours, and all I wanted to do was take a nap. And so my mom was about half an hour away. I just wanted to sleep. I was so tired and I felt like I, just without a little nap, wouldn't have any reserves to for whatever the next step was at this point and the doctor walked in and he looked at me and I knew he disapproved of the fact that I had started at home and he just was going to teach me a lesson and I just had that sense like he just seemed upset and so he was kind of gruff with the nurse.

Speaker 2: 18:23

And then he just looked through my chart, looked at the strip, so I was on the fetal monitor and he said well, time to start pushing right now. And I said I understand that. I said, is there any medical indication that I couldn't please just take a 30 minute nap and rest? I really would love my mom here. This has been a lot. I'm exhausted, I'm too exhausted to even push at this point. Can I just please sleep for 30 minutes? Is there any indication medically that the baby or I is in distress and can't have 30 minutes? Because I had taught enough childbirth ed at this point to sort of know what questions to ask. And so he looks at the strip again and he goes nope, you and baby are doing amazingly well, you guys are doing great.

Speaker 2: 19:05

And then he looks at my husband and says but your wife could have a placental abruption and your baby could be dead in five minutes. And that was it for me. I knew that that was a scare tactic and I knew to me is like saying, well, we could have like a big earthquake. It was really upsetting and my poor husband had already been through so much and I just saw him turn white and panic and I just, more than anything, knew that that couldn't be the first set of hands to touch my baby. That was so cruel and he was like well, but I'll let you sleep for 30 minutes and then I'm coming back. And he left and I told the nurse. I said I don't know what to do. I feel like he's bullying me and he's upset at me and I couldn't advocate for myself at that point. It took everything I had and she was so awesome. I love this lady. She was like you can always ask for another doctor. And then I took a nap and I was like you know, I'm just going to see how this goes with this guy. And he walked back in and he just had even more gruff energy.

Speaker 2: 20:05

And I work within the maternal fetal medicine field and I work with a lot of physicians and health care providers and everybody who works in our field. Every once in a while you will come across a provider who is usually male, who just sort of has weird energy with women and it's like it's sort of a power dynamic and it's kind of like a going to keep you in your place or teach you a lesson, and I don't even know if they're aware of this, but that is what I was feeling and I just couldn't do it and so I told him. I said I can't remember exactly what he said, but I just was like this person cannot touch my baby, no way. And I just looked at him and I said I'm sure you're an amazing physician. I said but you can't touch me. And he goes what do you mean? And I said I'm politely requesting a new doctor. I said I don't want you touching me at all. And his jaw just dropped and he turned on his heel. He was speechless and he just stormed out of the room and my two midwives were sitting in there with me but they couldn't, you know, they were being very polite. They just were sitting hanging out till my mom got there and the nurse was like good for you. She was just like she did, like a happy dance. She was like she was like that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 21:19

She goes, he bullies women all the time and this person like no longer works in our area. They retired a long time ago, but he bullies women all the time and we have been wanting somebody to fire him forever. He does that all the time and she's like I'm going to get you a new doctor. And so what was really funny is the next and call the woman who came in. She walks in and she hears our names and she goes oh my gosh, my best friend in Portland's an MD. And you, michelle, me. She goes. You taught her hit no birthing. And then my midwife she goes. You were her midwife and delivered her baby. She goes. I know who both of you are because we had heard from the woman in Portland about her best friend in the Gorge. She was a physician and she was just awesome. And she's like let's just get this done, we're good, let's start, let's try to start pushing and I'm going to take great care of you. And and she was awesome and I just really at that point was out of coping skills, like I was just flat out, physically too exhausted.

Speaker 2: 22:15

Lou was still in a bad position. He was sunny, side up and acinclinic and she was also like just out of her residency. So sometimes I wonder if, like, a really seasoned OB had forceps or could have repositioned him, what I maybe have been able to have a vaginal delivery. Probably the guy I fired was actually skilled enough that that was fine. I wouldn't have let him touch me.

Speaker 2: 22:38

And I remember at one point I was so tired I was passing out and nobody was like all of flutter, but they were like, oh, let's check, I'm going to take her blood sugar. And you know, let's do this and let's look at all these stats. And I just remember thinking in my head I'm just exhausted, I can't do this anymore. So then she said you know, I think that your options at this point, really a C-section is going to be the best idea. And I was like, yeah, absolutely, I agree with you. We've tried again, we've tried to reposition and push, but it's not happening. And that was fine. And my mom was there at that point and I just wanted to meet my baby. And so she goes okay, well, I'll call in our surgeon and I'm in a system. She wasn't the surgeon, though, and we're going to get you taken care of and the anesthesiologist came back in. He was great.

Speaker 2: 23:22

The surgeon who came in was just beyond amazing. He was like oh, I've got four kids, I'm so sorry you weren't home and this happened. He's like we'll still take great care of you. I'm on the stretcher and they're prepping me for surgery and I'm talking to the anesthesiologist. I'm like so, yeah, but at this point I slept. I had pain relief.

Speaker 2: 23:41

I was like tell me your thoughts on post-dural scarring and like how long do you think it really lasts for? And he looks at me and he's like what the hell do you do for a living? And I was like, well, I'm a chiropractor and I treat moms and this is something I see and I'm just curious. And he's like we are like talking about the dura and the tube and like where the dural injury can happen, and like we're just nerding out. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to be working out here. And he's like, oh, that's great, like it was just so funny and the surgery went really well, although he was so far down in the birth canal that the next day the doctor who delivered him he was really compassionate, he was, he was so cool, I came in and jeans and Birkenstocks, you know. Yeah, and we're in the Pacific Northwest.

Speaker 2: 24:21

And he's like that was the most stuck C-section child I have ever delivered in my 25 years. And I was like, well, yeah, because I was at home trying to push for four and he was really down in there. He's like, yeah, I had to go and vaginally and push him back up and at one point I could feel like my body coming off the table because they were working so hard to get him out and they had also cut a huge incision because I am like a size 14. I think they see this, you know big lady who's a failed home birth and they're like, oh, she must have a monster in there and you know, god knows how big this kid's going to be, so that he's like I could not get him out. He's like he was so, so stuck and I was like, well, that explains things. But he wasn't, he was. He was eight pounds, one ounce, like. He was big but not huge.

Speaker 2: 25:09

They took him. They saw a little bit of meconium towards the end and they took him and they kind of cleaned him off and swaddled him and they brought him right over and my mom was so funny because she was pushing him so close to my face I couldn't see him and I was so tired. At that point I remember thinking like I'm falling asleep having my first kid. This is crazy. Like I'm so exhausted and my mom was holding him so close that I couldn't enjoy him and I remember saying like could you just move him away a little bit? And then could we unswaddle him and put him on my chest and everybody was like, oh yeah, no problem, yeah, of course. And so then they put him on my chest and we did skin to skin In the recovery room.

Speaker 2: 25:50

I told the nurse. I was like, hey, listen, I was like nothing about this birth has come anywhere close to what I envisioned. I said, but I'd really love to do skin to skin and I'd love to see if he'll do the breast crawl, which, for people listening who don't know what that is, it's like if you put a new baby newborn on mom's chest, they will make their own way to the breast. My background in education it's the foundations of turning on their nervous system because they have smell and touch and loosely sight. But that contrast and that those primitive movements of getting to the breast, I believe really do help kickstart that nervous system and kickstart a lot of those early newborn systems. I was like, if you guys are okay with it, I'd love to do it.

Speaker 2: 26:35

She was so funny. She was so jazzed. She was like all right, and there's nine people in the room. She's like everybody, stop, everybody, listen to me. She's like this mom wants skin to skin and wants to do the breast crawl. She's like nobody is to take that baby away from her unless we absolutely have to. And she's like does everybody understand? They were like, uh-huh, they were scared of her. They were like, yeah, uh-huh, no problem. And then somebody came over to grab Lou and the nurse was like what are you doing? And she's like I'm going to weigh him. She's like no, he's fine, you can weigh him later. He wants to do skin to skin and the breast crawl. She's like do it on the baby or don't do it right now, because he was fine. And so it was just really, really, really sweet.

Speaker 2: 27:17

But I felt like I was able to have some win, you know, like I was able to really do that initiate breastfeeding and they sewed me up, brought me back to my room and the hospital staff just couldn't have been more amazing. The only downside with that birth was I got no rest at the hospital because literally every nurse who heard that story came in and thanked me for firing that physician. They were just like. We just wanted to tell you personally how many women we wish would have done that. And I really credit the labor nurse because if she, I was in such a vulnerable state and I was so tired and I mean, I'm all about medical advocacy and you know asking for what you need, but I just I couldn't thank for myself. And when I just told her he's bullying me, and she saw it and she just planted that seed, you know she didn't say you should fire him, she just said you can always ask for another doctor. You know it was really her credit. And I wrote her a really nice thank you note months later because I just felt like I felt like that could have really gone down a bad road and just felt really traumatic. And the team that came in and how that delivery went, it ended up being really empowering, really really empowering, and it was beautiful.

Speaker 2: 28:30

And then, when we got home, though, I really felt like I kind of was in between both worlds. You know, I had a midwife for care, but she was over an hour away and I had the local hospital to follow up with, but I really wasn't an established patient because we were in the process of moving. I really I had a primary, but they were kind of like oh, go back and see your OB or your midwife. And so I sort of fell into this gray area and I just had a lot of stuff that most postpartum moms who have a really, really really long labor or delivery or dealing with you know. And because I had pushed for so long and they had to go and vaginally like my, it wasn't like this clean, neat, easy C-section I really had a lot of pelvic floor strain, I had a lot of pelvic pain, I was having some urinary issues and it was just really hard to move, let alone even get out of bed.

Speaker 2: 29:27

After that C-section I had a big incision. I had been on fluids forever because they put me on fluids at home and so I had like sausage fingers and I was super engorged when my breast milk came in, you know, and couldn't latch. Lou and I was on antibiotics. As I was group B strep positive, they'd started those at home. So then I ended up with a bunch of gut stuff and a fussy baby and we had a lot of breastfeeding issues that were sort of noted. But I just kept getting told to try harder or keep going and I had a ton of milk. My sister, who's also a physician, jokes that we should have been born like 500 years ago and been wet nurses. She's like you and I can feed the world.

Speaker 2: 30:11

And so I had this big fat baby who was doing great and everybody just looked at that metric of like she's breastfeeding and the baby's gaining well, so they're having no issues. And I was having 10 out of 10 pain with latching. We had yeast, we had pretty much other, I had mastitis a few times, you know, and I just really was like I didn't have anybody to really call with these questions. You know, my midwife was really had kind of moved on to the next people and was like, oh, you had a C-section, so you really need to follow up with the surgeon for the C-section stuff. She was helping me with some of the other issues but she's like, yeah, he's a little tongue-tied, but we'll just watch it. He's gaining so great. And it was like there was just I didn't know who to ask these questions to. Is this level of fessiness normal or what can I do? Should I be on probiotics? Should the baby be on probiotics? Even though I knew a lot of this stuff as a provider.

Speaker 2: 31:07

I was just in this, really this place where I describe after births like that and I think even just a really easy low intervention birth. It's sort of like underwater right, like you're in this really crazy foreign environment and you sort of know you don't belong underwater. But you're still underwater those first couple days and weeks and then it's like you get up and you're like swimming up to the surface and you grab a breath of air, but then you kind of are like back underwater a little and then you tread water and I really realized just how much women need help postpartum and they don't get it. So I had the C-section a really big C-section, a hard C-section, and lost almost enough blood to transfuse me, but not enough to do a transfusion. So I was really anemic and I had to ask can you send me home with an abdominal binder? Nobody told me how to hold my abdomen and support my tummy to cough. Nobody showed me how to get out of bed after having surgery. Nobody gave me a timeline of just you know, this is how long it should take to heal.

Speaker 2: 32:13

A big thing that I really feel strongly about is I think all women who have a caesarean birth should really mandatory go to PT. And I hope in some hospitals that's the policy. But you know, I've all these women who I've treated forever. Then they're like, oh yeah, to C-section. I'm like, well, did they send you for PT? No, usually it's like no. And then sometimes I'm like did they offer? Well, they said I could if I wanted, but I was doing fine.

Speaker 2: 32:38

And my whole big thing with this is that this is one of the last forms of major surgery that we aren't like oh yeah, you should do PT. Like nobody goes in for a meniscal cleanup or a rotator cuff repair. Not only do we know PT is so important, it's mandatory. But now we're all into prehab, right? So, oh, we know you're going to have surgery. Now you got to get strong before. And then C-sections are major abdominal surgery and we're like don't get it wet for four to six weeks. And what a great job you got a baby. You know there is no like here's what happened and here's how long incisions take to heal. And you know, by the way, you have had nine months of altered biomechanics and your abdominal wall is out to lunch. Your pelvic floor is out to lunch. Let's turn these muscles on. So I do a lot of that work in my field.

Speaker 2: 33:31

But when I'm talking I sort of say PT or a mom and baby chiropractor we get that too but sort of like for the whole country I would say, like women's health, pt is the more known niche, but you know, you can do ultrasound to get some of the fluid down, you can talk about abdominal binding, you can talk about exercises and breath work that moms can do in bed immediately those first days after surgery to help move fluid and start healing. And I knew how to do all of this stuff. Yet I needed somebody to help me with it. And like nobody was even mentioning this and I was like I've got like all these friends, all this support, and I still felt like I was sort of in the dark with things. And you know, like the first time the baby got brush is this really brush or not? Is it a milk skin? I don't know. Or the first time I've had mastitis, what do I do for this, you know? And just all the little suggestions of well, now we don't treat mastitis like we did 13 years ago but, you know, put heat on it and just keep massaging and like there's a lot of like gentle cheering on, but there's not a lot of like, here's what's going on.

Speaker 2: 34:36

Like I always believe education is empowering, right. So I always I will like nerd out with people about the physiology of stuff as much as they want. I'm like, okay, here's what's going on. You got all these inflammatory pathways activated, even if the mom's like absorbing half of it. If you understand that alone is empowering, right, and you don't feel like your body is so much. This runaway train of like all these systems like your milk production is starting and up regulating.

Speaker 2: 35:01

And I always tell women, whether you choose to breastfeed or not, physiologically, most women have milk come in and it's not like a switch that you can just turn off. So the feeding stuff for me is so critical to deal with, not because I believe breast is best and every baby should be breastfeeding. That's great if that's your choice, but really it's that that is the first major issue that women need to face postpartum, that they get either not enough help and support, incorrect help and support, well intended advice, but not actionable advice, and some decision needs to get made every few hours. So, even women I will work with women who have no intention of breastfeeding, but I'm like okay, let's go into the delivery knowing the physiology of what's going to happen. Your milk is going to come in. Here's what we can do to help negate that. Here's how we can keep you comfortable so that you're not developing mastitis on day five or day seven and it's catching you off guard. And so I really believe that that is empowering.

Speaker 2: 36:05

And for women who want to breastfeed and are struggling a lot of how I feel we get babies blood sugar stable in the hospital and get them breastfeeding, it's not always like a sustainable way to breastfeed. Like I tell moms a lot like how you watch somebody latch a three hour old baby is very different than watching a four or five month old baby latch. But women aren't quite in that, they're not ready for that. Like handoff of like hey, you're doing better, here's how we kind of things really go. But they don't always go home whether they just can't absorb it, because it's like there's so much going on, right, it's not. I don't feel like, oh, they don't get this information, it's just we have this void right.

Speaker 2: 36:45

Like somebody I wish could go to everyone's house at seven days postpartum, two weeks postpartum, three weeks postpartum and be like okay, we're going to go over infant care, soothing techniques, let's see how your breasts are doing. Let's talk about bottle feeding tips. Let's talk about pumping, like whatever you're dealing with, because it just changes so fast. And so that is like For me why I got so passionate about feeding, because it's not something that you can like put a pin in and set aside For a few days and then figure it out later. Like you have to keep feeding the baby, and I often find moms won't take care of themselves or address their own needs Until that feeding plan is successfully established.

Speaker 2: 37:27

Like I have had women ruptured discs in delivery, come in dragging their leg behind them and then, until that baby is eating successfully which my definition of eating successfully is, whatever method honors mom's mental health the most right Doesn't matter. That's like until mom's feeling good about it, then she'll be like oh yeah, by the way, I have numbness, tingling and weakness down into my foot ever since I heard that pop during delivery and them dragging my leg Behind me, and I'm like will you please now go to the neurosurgeon? Like can we do that MRI? You know, but they won't do it, and so that, for me, is where, like, the feeding comes in. It's so critical to help women. And women may have pelvic floor issues. They might be peeing in their pants every time they cough or move, but they're like I'm gonna wear a sick pad, I'm gonna figure it out tomorrow, but the feeding stuff you can't put a pin in. Like if you're gonna give formula Then you got to figure out how to pump if you're in gorge or, you know, is there's just so much there.

Speaker 2: 38:26

So after my first, I really really got invested in the postpartum aspects and Helping women recover pelvic floor recovery, diastasis repair. I've developed protocols that I teach other providers of c-section recovery and Always, always, always too. I'm not a mental health provider, but I really address that in terms of suggesting that people you know, hey, this was heavy, this was traumatic or not, it's just a lot right, you know who, who's gonna address that and who is gonna help with the mental, emotional component of all of this. So that was kind of my first birth story and it just really made me Recommit, within this broad field of sort of all things mom and baby and musculoskeletal and hands-on to really the unique needs of Postpartum women.

Speaker 1: 39:13

So that's kind of how I got here, did you start doing all those things before your second birth and then have like a different experience? In terms of all those things for myself, like c-section recovery and no, so, like you said, you're inspired to start working on things like getting like postpartum yeah, the most postpartum specific for your practice.

Speaker 2: 39:33

So I'd always been a craniocacral therapy provider and done body work on babies really gentle, non-force body work on babies and I'd always sort of treated women prenatally all through pregnancy for musculoskeletal issues and postpartum. But it wasn't until kind of going through it myself and being like, oh, at that six-week visit, when they're like you're good, and now you don't need a pap for three years, being like, oh, my gosh, things are just getting real. I have so many questions about how often to feed and I had a lot of feeding Issues. We were still dealing with tongue-tie and my nipples hurt and my abdomen hurt. So then I got really way more interested in postpartum recovery and I thought, my gosh, if this is an area that I've worked in for ten years as a mom and baby Chiropractor and I have a lot to learn, then there's just a lot of the need out there. There's a lot of People who want to know how do I repair my pelvic floor, how do I get my abs strong again, how do I deal with my incision being uncomfortable, and so that's when then I really Reached out and trained with some really amazing people who just sort of specialized in some of those more specific postpartum areas and I would say too, in the last decade. There's just a lot more awareness. There's so much more now, and my son just turned 13. So that was 13 years ago. There's so much more now than there even was 13 years ago. And so I did. I really I did a lot of work on my incision. I worked with my colleagues who were chiropractors. I did acupuncture. I worked with three different lactation consultants for each of my kids my son, to try to kind of like I was.

Speaker 2: 41:11

I Was kind of like hell bent that I was gonna breastfeed because the birth had not gone the way I intended. But I was like I'm gonna nurse this kid and again, just sheer grit and determination kept Going back. What do we need now? What do we need to do? What do we need to figure out? Learned how to sort of rehab my own gut through food, through supplements, and Restore balance. And so then, two years after that, it was really funny. I always wanted two kids two years apart, and when we would have needed to sort of start trying, I was like, oh hell, no, I'm just having one kid. There's no way this toddler is bringing me to my Knees. I'm never having another child. Six months later it seemed like a great idea and we got pregnant with Danny like really easily, and I was like, okay, we're doing it again. And so at that point in our area Some people will try to do a V back at home.

Speaker 2: 42:04

For me it didn't feel like a safe option. We don't have a NICU at the hospital near us and I any of the midwives that were up for it I wasn't comfortable working with, because I just didn't feel like they were experienced enough and I also knew that. You know, I felt like Louie should have had enough room and he didn't and I was just curious About that and so instead I went to Portland. So I drove an hour for all my prenatal work with a friend and provider of mine who's a really amazing OBGYN and she was just great. She's like you know, we're gonna help you have a V back and we're gonna do everything we can. We did a lot of. I did chiropractic care, I did all this CSEC incision work and prep for a V back, and my membrane ruptured right at 40 weeks.

Speaker 2: 42:52

We went into the hospital and we had a plan my dad was gonna take Louie, who was two and a half, my mom was gonna be with me and the drive-in was the longest hour of my life. My husband was like Terrified to go over 60. I was like I'm gonna have this kid on the side of the road if you don't pick up the pace. And my two-year-old Asked me more questions that drive. It was like he sent something would happen Then ever. Like he was like mom, what do you think that guy's drinking? Look at all those birds. Where do you think the waves are going? Why are the columns blue like rapid fire? And I remember being like buddy, I'm gonna have your brother here soon. Like could we just be quiet please. We'll listen to some music.

Speaker 2: 43:30

So we got into the hospital and Labor began and I was doing really well, like I things felt great and I was really excited and and just things were going nice and smooth. But I just wasn't progressing and I could feel him six, eight centimeters kept progressing nicely and I could feel him kind of like moving and trying to get down into the birth canal farther and he just was like he was stuck, like he just wasn't progressing in my OBGYN friend she's has a few masters in functional medicine and she also does acupuncture. So we did some acupuncture in stairs and and, you know, just wasn't really Progressing. And then you know, everybody was like, well, we could just try a little pitocin and see if that helps ramp things up a little bit. And I was like, yeah, that sounds good, let's do that and I'll let you know if I need an epidural. And we did some pitocin and I didn't need an epidural.

Speaker 2: 44:23

And it was really sweet because at one point I had this nurse who was probably like 23 and she was like, wow, like you're having great contractions. This is awesome. Good job, the pitocin's working. I just looked over to her and I was like I want to be super respectful when I asked this. But I was like you don't have children, do you? And she was like no, I don't. And I was like I know that what you're seeing on the monitor looks like great contractions. But I was like I am reading a book and talking to my mom on the phone.

Speaker 2: 44:51

I was like there is no way what's going on in my body is gonna move a child out of there. I was like this is we're not doing anything, like I wasn't even like dropping into the zone. You know, I was like yeah, baby on the screen everything looked great and my body was doing well, but he just wasn't. He wasn't budging and then so that was like a full day, what is doing fine. And then my friend was really funny. When she agreed to see me she was like I will come in and deliver you, no matter when you're in. She's like there's one day I can't do it though. So of course that rolled into the one day when she couldn't and she's like but my colleague will take great care of you.

Speaker 2: 45:22

And so you know, we were, I think, like 20 hours in and basically Everybody was like well, we could give you an epidural really up the pitocin, see what happens, maybe do a c-section if you're not progressing.

Speaker 2: 45:35

And at that point I just had this like innate sense and I went into it very like if it happens easily, great. If it doesn't, I've not, I'm not pushing it, like I didn't want to rake myself over the coals a second time. And I was just like you know I treat women from the fallout of that of like you know, let's just do a big epidural really up the pitocin and see if we can just get that baby out. And I just had this innate sense of I just didn't think he could fit out. For some reason. I was like, you know, I just don't feel like that, it just didn't feel like a good plan and I said, you know, let's just do a c-section, like I just don't think this is gonna happen. And that was just a really empowering experience. I was able to watch most of it in the overhead lights. They let my mom and my partner in the room, because my mom been to tons of c-sections and they let my mom record the whole thing.

Speaker 2: 46:29

The anesthesiologist was also awesome, was picking her brain too about post-drill scarring, because I just nerd out on this stuff and and it was lovely and I said you know, can we just drop the drape and do skin to skin right away? The C-section was just a lot smoother because Danny wasn't wedged in the birth canal at that point and he really never like I never reached to 10, like he never. I'm totally blanking on the stationing, but he never got super low and the OB was who delivered me. She was great. She's like oh, I was just reading an article on this. She's like you have mid pelvic dystocia. And she looks at my mom and she's like we think it's genetic. And she's like did you have C-sections? And my mom's like I had two and I was a nurse, bedwife.

Speaker 2: 47:07

I was hell then on having a vaginal delivery and what's really interesting is my sister went on to have two C-sections With like six pound babies, you know, and, and attempted vaginal deliveries, but just both times it wasn't happening. And so she's like yeah, you've got mid pelvic dystocia. She's like he just can't get past these bony landmarks in your pelvis and it's fascinating. She's like, but I think that's what's going on here and that just made so much sense to me because I could feel him with the contractions, like I you know, as a body worker, I have a really good sense of my own body. I could feel him moving, I could feel him trying to tuck and trying different positions and it was like he just kept budding up against something, and so it was just really fascinating. So then we lowered the drape and it was just so funny because I just saw this little purple baby With one eye open and he saw my nipple and reached out with the hand and coming in, grab my nipple, as they were Putting him on my chest, and I was like, wow, god, if that's not like biology in action. It was like his landing zone, you know, like he just was like Boom. And it's really funny because he's my kid, who still will just like hug me and the hand comes over to the chest and I was like he was, he was my kid, that I was like, oh, if I don't choose to stop breastfeeding now, we're gonna be nursing a four-year-old, you know. And so when it was like innate since birth, that kid was just like you know, here I am, and again, they let me do skin to skin, they let me do the breast crawl. It was just a really, really empowering, beautiful, amazing experience and the recovery was so much easier.

Speaker 2: 48:45

I just, even though I had a toddler at home, I hadn't physically Pushed myself past any known limit six times and that's what I was. Whenever I have a mom who has a really really long labor Turned into a C-section, I always say, yeah, and the crazy part is that you've gone harder than you ever knew you could physically. And then you keep going and then you had another whole new level of going past any point you thought you could physically. And then you keep going, you know. And then you keep going and they're like, yeah, exactly, and then you have major surgery, right, and I think that's just such a rough, depleted place to start from that. I didn't want that.

Speaker 2: 49:23

With my second, you know Nobody who's gonna have a hip replacement. That's like scheduled for Friday is like well, starting Wednesday I'm not gonna eat, I'm gonna go run around and stay up, throw up every few hours, not feed myself, all in the name of prepping for a surgery. And I think that's like another little Missing link from the whole C-section thing for women that have a trial of labor ending in a C-section. And again, all of my choices were self-inflicted. You know, if I had asked a midwife to take me in after 10 hours she went up. But I think a lot of women just don't know how that ship is sailing, even in the hospital, just working with lots of women who are having a plan vaginal delivery in the hospital.

Speaker 2: 50:05

So the second one was just so much easier to heal from. I didn't feel so chewed up and spit out and which was good, because I also knew I had a toddler to take care of, like I knew I couldn't be in such rough shape and we had Every breastfeeding issue under the Sun. Again I was like this will never happen to me. I know so much now I'm not gonna slide through the cracks. And I was like I wanted to see the lactation consultant in my first labor and delivery nurse. She's like I am a lactation consultant, he's good, he's latching fine. He's not tongue-tied, don't worry about it, keep practicing.

Speaker 2: 50:38

I was like no, something's wrong. I shouldn't be bleeding and purple trying to latch this baby. And I said I want to see the head of lactation. So I saw the head of lactation. She came in no, he's fine, he's not tongue-tied, keep going, keep practicing.

Speaker 2: 50:50

Again since 10 years ago things have changed. I was like no, I want to see the pediatrician. I was like I do this for a living. I work with tongue-tied babies. This kid's tongue-tied.

Speaker 2: 50:58

My first was tongue-tied. I couldn't latch him at that point. My nipples were so shredded I had to use a shield. He couldn't. He had no suction. Pediatrician came in, said no, he's not tongue-tied either, just keep trying.

Speaker 2: 51:10

I called my colleague who is the head of the Oregon Board of Lactation and I said nobody will believe me that this child's tongue-tied. I'm starting to doubt myself. Can you please come in as a friend and assess him? She was like Michelle, he's super tongue-tied. You know what you're doing. And then she got me a referral on our way home To a big ENT in Portland who was like yeah, this is one of the worst cases I had seen.

Speaker 2: 51:32

And you know he was continually losing weight. Despite feeding him constantly, he couldn't clear his Billy Rubin, he was still jaundice. His oral motor patterning was disastrous and and I you know, and I always go for like sort of a watch and wait, let's see how you're doing. Let's try all the conservative interventions first and I just like I had enough clinical experience that I was like we can wait for this train to go off the rails more or we can Just move forward and I can start healing and enjoying my baby. And so I just opted to do the procedure then, and there a day five or day six, and and then we went on in, breastfed fine, it was great and and I know that there's a lot of different opinions flying around about it but I share that as another example of if you don't know the questions to ask or advocate for yourself with whatever situation, that there may still be stones to turn over or things to think through or think about, and if moms don't know to sort of trust that instinct that something is still going on and keep seeking out answers, I Think they can kind of become disempowered or fall through the cracks.

Speaker 2: 52:39

And you know, if I had no medical background and didn't do that for a living, and I had Three IBCLCs and a pediatrician, all look at that issue and say no, that's not what it is, why would you ever keep looking, you know, and why would you ever keep? You would just go, only just said. You know, some women have pain with nursing and it just isn't any better and and not know to keep seeking out answers. And thankfully, because my provider was a friend, I was able to sort of share my experience of the breastfeeding and how motivated I was to breastfeed. Right, I really wanted to breastfeed that kid in not a three months of pain and mastitis to do it, and so thankfully she was really open ears about it and I was like, hey, can we invite someone to the unit to help train the nurses and the staff and better identify and assess and go over the most evidence-based grading skills? And the provider, who had done Danny's release, he was really willing to come talk and and that was fantastic because everybody got a better education in it.

Speaker 2: 53:37

And you know, I felt like if I could help another mom, even if somebody were to just say I don't think this is it, but I don't know, or here are other ways to look at this, or here is another set of tools, or, but it was just very like nope, that's not it, you know. And so that is something that I really try to instill in women is, I think as moms we have this sort of innate instinct in how things are going or not. And I always really try to cultivate that instinct in mothers and, you know, really have them not Disregard what the medical system is saying, but to also take what they're saying and and tune into your own sort of innate wisdom about how you think your baby is doing both ways. Right, because I've had providers be like, no, this baby's fine, but the mom's like something is wrong, like something's going on and it's beyond.

Speaker 2: 54:29

And sometimes moms have severe postpartum anxiety, right, and you're like this is like a just a raging mental health issue and let's help you with that. But other times, though, I've seen those moms be really correct and they keep Seeking out answers because they just knew in their gut something was off. And I think that is like that piece of us where we're mammals, you know, and mammals are tied to their young, and mammals are know how they're young, are doing, and that's how all Mammals survive, like. I think we have sort of this wisdom in us and if we can, as healthcare providers, help cultivate that and I think that you do a lot of that like just looking at some of how you talk in your podcast and you know when the things you put out there you know, with birth it's a blend right of just listening but also balancing. Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1: 55:15

I think that the more informed we are, the better we are going to do, but also, the more we are able to talk about the things that are coming up for us, the easier it's going to be to communicate with our team and find people that can help us. Absolutely, I really think it's so interesting. What's coming up for me. This is tongue ties. The last thing you talked about is there is such a controversy. I feel like oh, yeah, oh.

Speaker 2: 55:42

Gosh, we should do a whole separate episode on that. Why do people deny?

Speaker 1: 55:47

I know I see so many babies that I look at them. I used to just be like, oh, I don't know. Because people would tell me oh, you're a nurse, you can't diagnose a tongue tie. So now I don't diagnose it. I say something looks funky, maybe you should ask someone about it. And if you're having pain with breastfeeding, continue to ask about it. And that's what I can say without having a diagnosis. But if the tongue's not coming out perfectly, or even if you can't see the tongue tie, because you can see if it's too far Hard-shaped tongue, yes, yeah, like you know what not I know.

Speaker 2: 56:18

So there's a big thing where you know. Now we have anterior ties and posterior ties. There's been a lot of debate over the grading scales, over who has the best grading scale. There is accusation of over diagnosis and over treatment, of it just being a money-making vehicle. I used to teach courses for people on how to identify tongue tie but. But the way I look at it is, I do think, actually my c-section right, this sort of genetic predisposition in our pelvis. The one of the more compelling arguments I've heard is that we're a few hundred years into now. Clean water, good baby feeding devices and decent formula Right. And if you were so tongue-tied that you couldn't eat 500 years ago, you more than likely weren't gonna make it.

Speaker 2: 57:00

Mm-hmm you know, and so I do think that this is a trait that is not getting selected against anymore, and so I do think that is reasonable. If we're just going back to like evolution 101 and science and biology, you're gonna see those traits not be selected against. You're gonna start seeing more of them. I mean, that's just how genetics works. I'm oversimplifying it.

Speaker 2: 57:20

Yeah geneticists listening to those. Don't get mad at me, but you know what I mean. So I think that's a very real kind of component of it. And then I think the hard part is that what I always say, or in when I teach about this, is I always say it's a functional diagnosis. Right, and so it's.

Speaker 2: 57:35

You need to put your hand in the baby's mouth, you need to palpate the muscles around the jaw, you need to feel how the tongue is moving, you need to check the reflexes of within the mouth and you need to watch the baby. There's kids that are really tongue-tied, that can still functionally nurse because they have a lot of elasticity in that connective tissue. There's other kids that have a tiny little tie and are doing terribly, and so I always really, when people say, oh, they looked and they said it wasn't a tongue-tie, I'll say, well, what did they? What did then? When they saw the baby feed, what did they tell you? And they'll say, well, no, they didn't watch the baby feed. And so To me and this is again we look at the things through the lens that we have with our professional certificates and degrees. But for me To say that a baby is or isn't tongue-tied without putting your hands in their mouth, assessing the tongue and watching them eat is like me looking at somebody that might have a nasty purple ankle and just saying yeah, yes or no, that's broken, like well, that's a good guess based on what I can visually observe. But we have really good the Ottawa ankle rules and we have imaging and you know, so you can actually test it and feel it and move it and watch the person walk. That's gonna give you due vibration, you know. That's gonna give you much more clinical information to know is this really broken or not? That's not like a great analogy, but there's just so much more that can be done.

Speaker 2: 58:55

And my other big thing, too that I always say is you know, there's, like you know, 10 different things between both mom and baby that can impact feeding success and anything that involves an intervention like treating a tie. For me it should be bottom on the list. But if we've done all the other nine things and mom's really motivated to breastfeed and this is the last thing that's there Then why are we not treating it? Another big thing that I haven't heard talked about, but I see in practice and when I connect with my colleagues, a lot of my continuing and that I stay up on now is is really more within the world of like neonatal OT, neonatal PT, feeding specialists at lactation.

Speaker 2: 59:35

But if you talk to people who've been working hands-on with babies for the last decade or two, we have more babies with more Fragile nervous systems, is what I would say. I see more babies that are just a little lower tone than I would like or a little too high tone than I would like, or you know that tongue doesn't have great stamina or their reflexes are a little sluggish, and we just have these more Delicate nervous systems. And so I also think that it's a culmination of looking at that whole baby and like the integrity of that Baby, like how are they actually doing? And I think some of these Horror stories that you hear are that the baby has something else going on too, you know, and yes, they may have a tongue tie, but treating just the tie isn't addressing it. And if I had a dollar for every kid that you know, even when we're going into the tie, I'm like okay, I think this is what they need to breastfeed.

Speaker 2: 1:00:29

However, we have got a little bit of a flat spot because we don't have as much neck tone as I would like and we're gonna work on all these other things and these kids sometimes graduate to like what I lovingly call the best horse nurser. I and I'll say to them you know, hey, listen, when this baby should start making bowel sounds, if they're delayed, or when we should see them rolling or crawling, if they're delayed and anybody else tells you, oh, let's just watch him, wait another three months. I always say no, come back, and I'm going to refer you and we're going to go in and we're going to go get an OT workup or PT workup and we're going to start early. And I think that there's there's so much amazing development going on and we can take advantage of these nervous systems being so malleable. But sometimes I think that these manifestations of feeding issues are the first manifestation of a nervous system that it's either going to need more help or be a little more fragile or just need a little bit more coaxing, and so I think that really muddies the clinical waters right.

Speaker 2: 1:01:28

And then we're also in that 15 year gap where we say that between research and clinical implementation is like 15 years, and that's like what I've really witnessed is the research is really there to support the origins and the ideology of tongue tie. But the clinical adoption is hard. And the other part I think is really tricky is a lot of physicians. I feel so badly for them because their main outcome marker that they're sort of told to look for, like in a pediatrician's office, is blinking right, and so if the baby is gaining, ok, but there's no other indications, like they don't really know how to advise moms and they don't know how to say like oh yeah, I get it. You know this kid is slipping off the breast a ton and this is looking really sloppy, and what do we do? And so I think that's a tricky part as well.

Speaker 1: 1:02:18

Yeah, I agree, and I also feel, like the issue with specialization silos, like you're only looking at the ENT aspect and not you. But you know I think that it doesn't cross over. So when you have somebody like you that looks at all the different things and is able to look at the whole baby versus just looking at the tongue tie, I think it's really important because everybody's just really specialized now, and that is good and also bad, because you have a whole body to work with.

Speaker 2: 1:02:44

Yes, and you have to, and with moms and babies, you have to look at the whole package. Right, I've had moms come in for a tongue tie, console and assessment and I'm like, yeah, this, I see this tie, but you have no milk, your supply is in the toilet. That's what's causing all. What I think is the tip of the iceberg of all these feeding issues. And now you know we can like do a whole episode on what causal supply was inadequate removal secondary to the tongue tie. But I think if you just have a provider who's like, oh, you don't have enough, let's clip the tongue, and then the baby doesn't have a good outcome because there's no positive reinforcement at the breast, because there's not enough supply, that person isn't going to have a good outcome. Yeah, you know, it's so it really. You really do have to look at at both of them. And I think what's really hard for the nurses is their hands are tied. They see it a lot, but they're not allowed, like you said, to diagnose. They get their hands slapped. And the the MDs, I will just say I think are not the most savvy at the functional diagnosis of oral motor mechanics because they don't get a lot of education in it and it's. I have some really amazing colleagues in this area and they're like, yeah, I want to learn, like let's talk through it. But it's also really hard if you're a speech language pathologist or neonatal OT or chiropractor, to say, hey, you know, do you guys want to learn from our community? Some MDs are really open minded and others, I think, because they're used to sort of being the top of the food chain, feel like they know enough and if it's not their clinical interest, it's not something they focus in, until they have a baby and they have breastfeeding issues and then they're like all over it. You know, they're like I really want to learn more. This is fascinating, and so, yeah, I think I think that's a piece of it too.

Speaker 2: 1:04:32

And I don't blame the physicians like gosh. I stick up for them every day, because I have moms coming in saying why didn't they do this or that? And like the health care system is really overburdened. They are stuck in a system that's really dysfunctional. They would, they're not given. Even if they want to watch you breastfeed. I doubt they get enough time to watch you breastfeed. They're probably allotted six minutes for your visit. You know that is not their fault and so that's a big thing I want people to hear too is that you know, rather than doctor bashing, you need to just seek out additional information. You just need to seek out other providers who can take the time to really suss those things out. But it's hard to put that burden on the physician when the system won't give them that time.

Speaker 1: 1:05:19

Yeah, that's why I'm really fascinated by the thought of how can we start catering to low risk birth and low risk patients so that we can have people that specialize in being able to not just keep someone alive. Yeah, the high risk centers are there to keep people alive, which is great. Yeah, I love that, but we've neglected the people that are thriving in life, my gosh.

Speaker 2: 1:05:49

Yes, I say this all the time. We have amazing sick care in this country. Yeah, Sick care has gotten even better, but I feel like it's been at the expense of health care.

Speaker 1: 1:05:59

Or wellness, Just like? Why are we not focusing on keeping people well.

Speaker 2: 1:06:03

True health care, yeah. And then I feel like people have to pay out of pocket for, like your services and my services as coaches. It's not covered, but we have the time and energy to do this, and that's why doing things like taking the time to come on this podcast feel really important, because I want to have information that is free for anybody to listen to, and even in my coaching business, my longer term plans are to have a 501c3 so that for every course that gets purchased, or every woman who does have coaching, I'm donating. I feel like it shouldn't be something that's just available for people who have the disposable income.

Speaker 2: 1:06:44

You know it's like I want. This is information that should be accessible for all women across all demographics, and I don't think we can look to the traditional model to fix it.

Speaker 1: 1:06:56

No, we can't.

Speaker 2: 1:06:57

I think it's like it's got to be. It's got to be like these smaller grassroots movements that slowly pick up steam and people who just really want to see women succeed and thrive. And you and I, both in our businesses, have seen it. You just see women who make going to birth so empowered and they just get so rocked and it negates their confidence and their ability to take care of the baby and they just go into motherhood feeling so caught off guard right, and it doesn't have to be that way and they're caught off guard and then they feel lost and then they have this total crisis of confidence and they just are like I'm not even cut out to be a mom.

Speaker 2: 1:07:33

I don't even know how to do this and I think just good education and saying everybody struggles at some point, we all have low moments, we all go through this, like normalizing some of it but also having really actionable resources. And that's where you and I are both saying the healthcare system is so attuned to. If your baby has a congenital anomaly and needs surgery, no problem, like this country is amazing at that. But if you're in that gray area of you're not sick but you're not thriving, we've got nothing for you.

Speaker 1: 1:08:03

Yeah, and what I love that you brought up the 503C A, 501. 501. I'm like, what are the letters and numbers? Again, I might be butchering it too. Yeah, because I'm so. I have spent gosh, I don't even know how long like probably 30 years, working in making sure that people that don't have resources get the resources. So to start doing something like coaching is so foreign to me Me too and the only way that I can just that I can do that is to say I'm catering to people that have the resources so that I can later help the people that don't have the resources. Because I look at this, as I didn't have the resources when I was pregnant with my kids, I wouldn't be able to afford a birth coach.

Speaker 2: 1:08:48

No, me too. I wouldn't have been able to afford a postpartum coach. Yeah, but it's doing this. Then we can take that and help more women. I love the community that we both work in and that it really is about women helping other women and women empowering other women, and I've met so many amazing providers and mothers. It's great and it's fun, because my main degree is in chiropractic care and it's a very male dominated field and you go to conferences and it's a statistics and numbers. And what are you billing? What is your AR? What are you collecting? Like that is does not get me excited. The same way. That like watching somebody who really struggled to call me and be like we're breastfeeding or bumping into someone at the grocery store. They had a five and a half pound bird baby in a C section and all these struggles and they still there's like giant six month old who's in like 12 month clothing and they're like can you believe that Like this is so cool and like that is really what gets me excited.

Speaker 2: 1:09:47

And I do think that there's ways with creative thinking to sort of help rebuild the system, but from the ground up and even like I used to own a big medical practice with other physicians and providers and we build insurance and the medical system wants chiropractors to treat acute issues only. Everybody should get better in four to six visits and your visit shouldn't take any more than 10 or 15 minutes. Well, like 10 or 15 minutes, like someone is crying or needs to be fed in my office. And you know, when I sold my big clinic I stepped away from the insurance world and that was really hard for me because I do want people who can't afford my services to still be able to come in.

Speaker 2: 1:10:26

But I told everybody it got so bad that I had to leave medicine or leave insurance and I love practicing medicine. I didn't want to leave it. But you know I do have a sliding scale and I donate my time and I'm able to do it in different ways. But it just took some creative thinking but it was that bad. You know. It was like I just I had to. I had to separate from it because my demographic of clients I can't serve in four to six visits, in 10 to 15 minute visits, like I mean, we're just getting into it, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:10:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so great, and I love talking to women that are also entrepreneurs, because we put our heads together and figure out how to help other women, other moms.

Speaker 2: 1:11:07

Yeah, it's scary. It's scary at times. It's like it's really gonna work, you know, but at the same time it feels really good to be able to help other people. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:11:15

I have a couple of things that I wrote down. I love your analogy of feeling underwater after delivery. I felt the same way I, even though I was a postpartum nurse, when I had my daughter, who was my first. I was just just floored by how much I didn't know, even though I had prepared. And then, with my second, I prepared for the birth, but then afterwards I wasn't able to really navigate the breastfeeding alone, even though it was my second. I mean, it was fine, I did fine, but I still had questions. You know, I still was like well, this isn't working as well as I wanted it to. He's feeding every five minutes. Why is this happening? And I found myself texting my friends and I'm just like my gosh. How do you know? How do moms that don't have the resources and the friends that I do do any of this?

Speaker 2: 1:12:04

It seems impossible. I know, yeah, I felt the same exact way. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:12:08

I felt the same exact way. You know, I remember watching one of my best friends, who's a labor and delivery nurse and an IBCLC, curling her toes, telling me breastfeeding her son was going great, and I was like you're miserable, you're having a ton of pain, and she just started sobbing and she was like I know she's like, but I feel like I should know all this and know how to do it. And I was like it's okay, we can park all of that. But if those of us who are in this business are struggling, I'm always just like God.

Speaker 2: 1:12:36

Just imagine what every other mother is going through and how much help that women need. And I think it's just hard. Because I've had friends who've had births in other countries and they're like oh yeah, well, a nurse comes to your house and there's community lactation support and free clinics and we send doulas and you know it's just, our system is not set up for that, you know, and it's like the. I feel like the pediatric, like the baby, has a pediatrician. If they're gaining okay and meeting your milestones, then they're fine, and then mom's cut loose after six weeks and that's when I think most of those things just start snowballing.

Speaker 1: 1:13:14

Well, that's where they just don't know who to go to. Yeah, that's where my doubt came in, because people that I respected were telling me that everything was fine. I'm like okay, well, it was just me, so I just discounted that. Or we say it's normal.

Speaker 2: 1:13:26

Yeah, we say it's normal. But I always say, just because it's common doesn't mean it's normal. You know how many women you know are like I still feel a lot of pelvic heaviness or fullness, or I'm having hemorrhids, and we're like, oh, it's, it's normal. I'm like, no, it's common, it's common.

Speaker 1: 1:13:40

It's not normal.

Speaker 2: 1:13:42

And there's actually stuff that you can do to treat it. So many things that we tell postpartum women in their own bodies carpal tunnel, nerve pain, chronic headaches oh, it's just common. You just had a baby severe low back pain. Well, it's normal. It's normal, it's like. No, it's common. And it's actually super treatable. It's really actionable. There's a ton of things you can do for free at home, you know, but you just need the information. So that's my goal in launching the coaching is to get that information out there for people.

Speaker 1: 1:14:10

I love that. That's amazing. So many things that I want to talk to you about, but I know that you have to go and my kids just came home We'll stay in touch. Okay, is there anything else that you wanted to say before we wrap up?

Speaker 2: 1:14:21

Oh, I think that was it. Thank you so much for having me. This was just a. This was awesome. It was just a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 1:14:27

Yeah, thank you so much for coming and I'm excited to talk to you about more fun things in the future.

Speaker 2: 1:14:32

Me too, I'm excited to stay in touch.