Birth in Connection with Mary Jackson

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have some fun.

Hello and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson and today's guest is Mary Jackson. Mary is the mother children who were born at home with midwives, has been married since 1987 and has been in nine books and four movies. She has been a home birth midwife since 1975 and she has attended over 2000 births in the Santa Barbara, Ventura and Ojai, California areas. She is currently co leading the Castalino prenatal and birth training and is participating in cutting edge research about imprints that occur around the time of conception, pregnancy and birth and how they affect us throughout the rest of our lives. And Mary is also our amazing midwife. And I feel so, so blessed and honored to have such an extraordinary, wise and loving human being supporting us in our journey and honored to be interviewing her today. Yay. So welcome, Mary.

Thank you, Alexandra. I'm really excited to be talking with you today.

Yes, me too. As you know, we love you both, Brian, and I love Mary. She's fantastic. I'd love to start off with a little bit on your story, like what inspired you to become a midwife? You've been doing it for over 35 years. When did you know you wanted to become a midwife? Very curious about all of that.

Well, I was quite young. I started when I was 23 and I was looking for my purpose here on the planet. And I knew that I wanted to do something that had to do with health and also something that supported families to stay together and also something that contributed to there being more peace on our earth. And I didn't know how those three desires would come together into a profession. But I ended up observing a birth in the hospital and that really let me know that that was where I wanted to stand in my life. As soon as I saw that birth, something clicked for me. And I also had a big reaction to the way that birth was dealt with in the hospital and decided to pursue other ways or other options that people might have about the way they gave birth. And at that time, women were struggling with the hospital birth because a lot of them were being put out and babies were being pulled out with forceps. Even if they didn't want that to happen and they wanted a natural birth, they had to really fight for it or have someone really strongly be their advocate at their Birth in order to have it happen different. And so I traveled around to different places to apprentice with people who attended women and children in a gentle, aware way in regards to how they were birthing. And that's how I got started.

That's so awesome. And then you did some work with Michel Odont as well. And I know he's such an inspiration for so many people. What were some of the biggest learnings that you. That you got when you were working with him?

Michel Odin was a great teacher. I went to him in France in 1979 or 80, and he definitely attended women's birth in a gentle, aware way. He was a doctor who was really detached from his ego and would mainly the midwives would do the labors and the birth with the women. And if there was a place where the woman would get stuck in her labor or needed reinforcements from some source, then Michel would come in and check out the situation and give his feedback. And he didn't have to be, like, the hero in the situation, but he would just come and see if there was something he could add, and then the midwives would continue to do the birth. And I think one of the things that I loved about learning from him was he has this brilliant scientific mind where he can understand things right down to the cellular level. And yet there's this simplicity to the way that he talks about birth, and he conveys such trust to people who are in the process of pregnancy or preparing for birth. And I think that's a real gift.

Yeah, that's awesome. I love it. He's definitely an inspiration, and I can definitely, as you were talking about him, I feel like that's what you offer as.

Well. I think I learned that a lot from him. I really got that for thousands of years, women have been giving birth and babies have been being born, and the outcomes were really simple. There was not a lot of fuss around birth. And our genes carry the code for how to do that. So that we as women really know from the inside how to give birth, and babies really know from the inside how to get born. And if we just allow the unfolding of that, it can happen.

That's awesome. So then, as you were just saying, that women know how to give birth, Because I know that there's a lot of fear in the birth culture, and people just have a lot of concerns and questions about their body of, like, how will it turn out? Like, can I trust my body and do I know what I'm doing? So can you talk a little bit about that, of how we prepare for birth and how we trust in our bodies.

Yes. I think that, you know, when women have a fear about something that has to do with pregnancy, birth, or mothering, that it's a really brilliant way to look at places in ourselves that we need to search deeper. Because what I found is that a lot of times the place where the woman fears often has to do with something that happened around her own being born experience, where when she was coming into physical form, wherever that fear is about her own birth, often has a connection to what actually happened with her and her mother when she was coming through. So I like to have women find out what their birth story is, both from the inside of themselves and from their mother or father or aunts or uncles or siblings who might have information about their story so that they can look at what their history holds and really work to differentiate what that early experience was from what it is they're wanting to do with their baby and themselves giving birth.

And in your work of doing this for over 35 years, do you see common fears that women have, or is every woman different and unique in regards to how their birth actually occurred?

You know, there's sometimes a common theme where a lot of women are afraid of the pain of birth or that it's going to be too long and they won't have the strength to do it. But also there's like a unique place of fear where it really connects to their history. And often, you know, that fear of the pain or the long labor is usually something that happened to them with their mothers. So there can be a common theme, because I think a lot of women have had an experience of similarities, but also there's a lot of uniqueness to it.

And then I'm curious, on the pain, what is your take on the pain? Obviously, as I'm stepping into motherhood, and it's a whole new thing for a woman who's never given birth. What are your thoughts on pain and the framework around it? Like, how do you approach it mentally, emotionally, as you're preparing for your birth, if you can?

Well, you know, there's. With labor, I mean, some people call it pain, some people call it strong sensation. And it really has to do with how your brain interprets what your experience is. So the beauty about the experience of labor is that every contraction only lasts about a minute long, and then at the end of that minute, you get a break or a resting period. So you get to regain your energy, catch your breath, and then the next contraction comes, and it only lasts for a minute. And when we keep that in our perspective. Our perspective, it really helps us to know that we can get through just about anything if we know it's going to end in a minute. So that's one thing. The other thing is that in the human body, there's this delicate hormonal connection that happens when we're in labor. And so as the strength of the contractions increase throughout the labor, the endorphins also increase. And the endorphins are the hormones that help us to deal with discomfort in our body. So the body has tools to deal with whatever the sensation is that the woman is experiencing in her labor.

That's great. So the endorphins, the hormones are helping us?

Yes, very much.

And obviously, you've seen so many births, and there's a lot of. In our culture, I just feel like there is a lot of. Around the pain and that it is like a traumatic, intense experience. But there is something beautiful, I mean, and amazing of giving birth to life. Do you have any recommendations of making that shift from pain to joy and gratitude and just in awe that our bodies are giving birth to human beings?

Yes. You know, when I was in labor with my first child, Marco, I had been a midwife for 17 years, and finally it was my turn to give birth. And I remember just sort of, you know, rocking, standing up and holding onto my belly and being in awe of what my body was doing and just really honoring the process because I was really seeing how well my body was working, and I could feel myself dilating and my contractions being strong and working really good with Marco's body as well, and could feel him pushing with his legs, and I felt connected with him, so it felt like we were working together. And I think that when the laboring woman remembers the baby and remembers to connect with her baby, that it really helps her to feel like she's not doing this alone, that we're doing it together. And it's a journey that we're both on as well as with our support team. I think support is crucial for a woman in labor, that she feels supported and connected with the people around her and that she feels understood by them. And I think that really helps to support the balance of the hormones in her body so that her body can work well and birth spontaneously, because when a woman feels supported and safe, it encourages her to relax and open.

I love the idea, too, of really working, like remembering during the labor and birth, remembering that you're birthing your baby like it's a teamwork. It's not just you.

I love that. Yes. A lot of times I think that we get so caught up in the sensation that we lose connection with the baby. And so when a contraction comes, it kind of takes over our whole body, and it's just like right in our face. And that that can be all that exists in that minute of contracting. And if we connect with our baby right at the start of the contraction and connect with that place inside of ourselves, that trust birth, that knows that we know how to do this, that is always in a state of calm, if we go to that place right from the start of the contraction, then connect with the baby and then go out to meet the contraction and really hold the contraction instead of it holding us, it's a lot easier to get through each one.

That's awesome advice. Thank you.

I love that it worked really well.

I'm so happy that I have Mary as my midwife to remind me of these things.

I'm so glad I get to be with you for this journey. I'm really looking forward to it, Alexandra.

Aw, thank you. Me too. Love it. So I know you do a lot of work with imprints that occur around the time of conception and pregnancy and birth. And can you just talk about what are these imprints and how do they affect us and how do they affect our babies?

Sure. Well, imprints, they're. What happens is when we first experience something for the first time, it's sort of like, you know, when the goose cracks out of the egg. And the first moving thing that the little baby goose sees is what they bond with. And for us, when we're coming into physical form, the most likely places for there to be an imprint. And, you know, where we're going through it for the first time, at least this time around would be like at conception, implantation, discovery, when our mothers find out that we're there during pregnancy, when any big event has a strong impact on the mother, like if she experiences a huge sensation of love or if there's a loss of a loved one or a big stress or some diagnostic testing, all of those things can leave an imprint. For the unborn baby, birth is a huge place of imprints, as well as in the postpartum, in those first weeks after birth. And so what it is, we come in as this fresh, clean slate. We go through the sequence of conception, pregnancy, birth, and then growing up into adulthood. And whatever big thing happens along that journey, it can impact us in a big way. So the sequencing of birth happens in the same order as any sequence that we do in our life. So if we are thinking of, like, going on a journey, we have to have the idea that, oh, it's time to do something fun. Let's go on a journey. And then the preparation is that we have to figure out where we're going to go, what we need to bring, we have to pack, how are we going to get there, Are we going to fly, take a train, a car? And we do the preparation steps. And then there's the beginning of the journey when we leave home and we travel there. The middle of the journey, we're there and we have experiences that we do. And then there's the end of the journey where we complete that experience. We pack up and we get ready to return home. We come home, and then we do integration, which is to really digest what it was that just happened. And that sequence there repeats itself over and over and over throughout our lives. And however the imprints land in there from our coming into physical form can leave information. So, for example, say that I'm a woman who was struggling with conceiving, and I needed to see an infertility doctor. And, you know, I took some hormones to ripen my eggs. So right in the beginning, there was a situation that needed sort of a boost or, you know, a push behind it to get started. It wasn't a natural conception. It had to have support around that in order for it to happen. So that can leave a really big imprint for the egg and the sperm and the little being that's created from that conception. And then you go through pregnancy, the little baby grows, and then say that same woman had a hard time beginning her labor. Maybe her water bag broke, but the contractions didn't start. So the baby knows that there's this feeling like it's time to go. But the timing, maybe there wasn't enough time for the baby to really release the hormones so that the mother's body could respond to that hormone and begin her labor. And so there's a drug that's needed called Pitocin to start her labor. So, again, there's this, like, push to get the beginning of that experience going. So that can be two layers of something from the outside needing to do something in order to get that little baby to go. And so when that baby's out of the womb and starting a journey or paper or a business or going into relationship, it might be that they have a hard time connecting with the knowing inside of themselves when it's really time to do that or how to do that, or they might feel lost in, you know, choosing which direction they want to go. And so the how the imprint shows up is there's a sensation that they need sort of a push from the outside. And so they might need support from a friend or a partner. They might need to connect with somebody who cares about them. They may just simply need more time for that to arise in themselves and to know, oh, this is the time. That's just an example of how the imprint can play itself over and over. That's amazing.

So then, as parents, it's wise to kind of look at what challenges we have and what imprints we may have. I find that so fascinating how everywhere, from, like you said, conception to the birth to early phases of life can create habits and imprints and neuro pathways for the rest of our lives. That's just stunning and exciting.

Yes, it's amazing. I love that. And, you know, a really important part about it is that it's never too late to heal those places that were challenging for us. So when an imprint is showing up in our lives the way that we know it's there, is that often in a situation, our reaction would be much bigger to the situation than what the situation actually calls for or in an imprint. So say, you know, a little toddler who was induced with Pitocin. You know, the little toddler and mother are getting ready to leave the house, and the mother lets the baby know, we have to go now. Come on, we're going out of the house. Got to go to the car. And the little child falls apart and has a tantrum and lies on the floor crying, because there's a memory that's triggered about what happened at an earlier place where the baby might have been rushed out of the womb, but not completely ready to go just then. And so if the mother sees that happen over and over and remembers the history, she can talk to the toddler in a way that lets the child know that she's remembering that place, too, where there was a push, and that right now, it can happen in a really different way. They can slow it down. They can take their time to go out the door. They can do it in connection. So sometimes when labor begins, the mom's not feeling connected with the baby. And so if that was missing, if they add that connection to the present experience, it helps to bring something to the memory that settles the nervous system down. And then they can go out in connection at a slower pace and with warning. You know, the mom can prepare the child ahead of time that that place is coming. And now we're going out the door, we're going together and nobody's going to rush us. And here we go to the car. And it can be a really different experience for both of them.

That's so inspiring too, because just like the integration that you talk about, you know, and it's kind of just a moment to moment awareness of our children.

Right.

And then being able to integrate and heal these. So it's not about being perfect or doing every. Having the perfect pregnancy and the birth and being the perfect parent. It's just about knowing these imprints and being willing to do the work to kind of heal them.

Yes, it is. It's just being aware like we can look at something in our life that comes up over and over and over again and we've therapized about it and we've talked to our partner, our parents, or, you know, whoever it is, and we've done a lot of work around and it keeps showing up. That often is an imprint that needs to be recognized and for us to realize where it originally is coming from. And once we have that understanding, it allows us to make different choices in that situation when it comes up the next time. Because when it's an imprint, it feels like there's only one choice, it's not a great one. And we're just repeating the same history over and over and over. Right.

So how do these, how do these imprints show up in. I'm sure they show up in a variety of different ways, but in a woman's birth, have you seen these imprints impacting the birth and maybe might be the cause of interventions or complications in a birth?

Yes, I have. Let's see. I could give an example of a woman who was doing great all the way through her labor. And when she started to push, this huge fear came up and she just couldn't go forward with it. It was just so terrifying. And everything about her labor had been so smooth and straightforward and was still continuing to look that way. I had no feeling of fear or like something was wrong. And reassuring her about this wasn't really what it was taking to address where her fear was coming from. Excuse me. And remembering her history, she was a baby that had been born with forceps and there was something terrifying in her that came up and that just. She felt really afraid to move forward in that place. And when I got to just mention that part of her history where she and her mom had a place in their birth where she got stuck right at that point where mom was pushing and the doctor needed to Use forceps in order to pull her out. And what was happening in her labor with her daughter was that she was having a memory appear. And it felt in her body as if something right now in the present situation was threatening her. And when I had her be her current age, look around the room and really connect with present time, present age, present moment, and see who was in the room and that none of those other people who had been there before were there. Now she could come back into connection with her adult self and be in the role of the birthing mother in a much easier way, rather than being in her fear.

Wow, that's fascinating. That's amazing. So that's when, you know, like for an imprint, you know that you're in an imprint when it's bigger than you would normally react. It just kind of seems like it's a little big or extreme. And then do you. Do people actually have memories? Or is it just like a sensation or just like a strong emotion, or does it vary from person to person?

Well, it is a memory. It's more a somatic memory than the memory of, you know, the place that has words.

Yep, got it.

So the first part of your question was, you know, how do we know we're in the imprint? And part of it is to have a bigger reaction. And another way is that the fear part, it feels like. Excuse me. Like what we're fearing is happening right now in the present situation. And really it's not. And usually there's not enough support in the system. The person's feeling too alone. And often there's a feeling of overwhelm, that things are happening too fast, and that there's only one choice through the situation. And it doesn't feel like a good choice. Sort of like a double bind feeling in it. And all those indicate that we're in an imprint memory. Wow.

So cool. And I know everyone.

Oh, sorry. Go ahead and about the memory part. It doesn't feel like we're in a memory because when we have experiences before we have words, that experience is recorded in the right side of our brain. And so it's a somatic memory where we remember the scent of something, the pacing of something, the emotional feeling of something, the temperature, you know, different elements of what were present. But we don't have a sensation that we're recalling. We are recalling an experience. Like the left side of the brain. Memory has words, it has time, it has place, and there is the sensation that we are remembering. So the somatic memory is a really different experience.

Love it. And I love that you said, too, in the story, too, the present moment, like, bringing it back to. Because we get so like in it that we are not aware of what's actually happening. So I love that, too. It's a great reminder.

I love that, too.

And what about the finding? It seems like for a lot of this work, you have to be in a slower rhythm. Do you have any thoughts on a woman slowing her rhythm down or finding her own rhythm so that she can actually be present to her life and to the pregnancy and to the birth and to mothering?

Yes. You know, no matter what's happening in the world around us or in our lives, the slow rhythm always exists inside of our being. And we can always connect to that place if we want to. And what it takes is just putting our awareness and our intention to do that. Being able to go inward and just be still and sit with that place until we find where it is again and then moving from that space into whatever the activity is that we're doing. So if a woman is giving birth and she's caught up by the pressures of maybe her support, maybe the birth team has some anxiety about what's happening, and there's a speed up in everybody's pacing, and they decide that there's an intervention that's needed that they're not really taking the time to explain well to the mother, it can really increase her internal rhythm. It can speed her up inside as well. But if she has support with her that can remind her to go inward and connect with that place that's always at peace, is always at a slow rhythm. And the person who's supporting her is able to do that. She can reflect with them to that place more easily if that person is holding that place in themselves as well.

I like that, and I love Brian and I talk about this with you. Like, just being with you is like an entrainment to a slower rhythm. Like an actual physical slower rhythm. And then there's like a. There's. You have an amazing ability to, like, you're never in a rush. You never are. Like, looking at your watch, like, there's just like a transcendence or like such a spaciousness. And we. Every time that we see you, like, usually we come home and we're like, so relaxed and we take a nap and we're like, Mary has the magic mojo.

Well, you know, I found that if people practice being in that space in their pregnancy and they're familiar with it before they go into their birth, it's so much easier to find it in labor and pushing and birth and, you know, postpartum, if they've had experiences of that along the way. So when somebody comes for prenatal, I model that with, with them. And, you know, I work to do my best to do that in my life as well. Just to go at a rhythm that allows me to integrate what it is I'm going through while I'm going through it, rather than speeding through it and having to integrate it after the fact.

Right. And it's such an amazing, powerful. I love it and I love just. I naturally feel like I go to a slower rhythm than a lot of the modern world. So I love it. I love the space to kind of integrate and I love taking naps and I love sleeping. I love all of these things.

That's great. I know you do it so well.

It's like so awesome. But I do find that as I talk to women, which I'm sure you see too, that there's the challenge of living in the modern day world and being go, go, go and super active and not having time. But I love that you recommended doing that while you're pregnant. And obviously it's great for the baby, but then also preparation for mothering and for the birth.

Yeah, I think it's great just to have pregnant women do that with their child at home alone, when they're just starting their day, to just sit quietly and connect with the baby and connect with the slow rhythm and the babies go at that rhythm. So when we're in it, it allows the space for connection to happen. Right. What creates a traumatic experience is that things were going too fast so that we couldn't integrate it as we went through it. What were you going to say?

No, I was just going to say babies do babies, they just have a naturally slower rhythm and we're trying to a lot of times speed them up and then they're not able to integrate.

Yes, they have a slower rhythm and it takes them about four times longer to integrate an experience than it does an adult. So if we're moving really fast and say the baby's fussing a little bit and we're, you know, bouncing them on our knee or patting them over our shoulder on their back or, you know, trying to do things to change their emotion that's coming out. We're not giving them space to see if the first action that we did is something that's supporting them where they are. And a lot of times what the babies are doing is just trying to communicate something to us and they need a Space to release their emotion. And they do that for a little bit, and they open their eyes and they're making contact with us every minute and a half or two, and they are just telling us the story about what the feeling is they are having. So rather than trying to get them to be quiet, it is just to slow down, connect with the slow rhythm, be present with that little one and give them space to tell their story.

Wow. Very, very cool. So I definitely want to talk about the stories. I want to talk about the. And hear your amazing wisdom on breastfeeding and the supported attachment of babies making the journey up to the breast, and how they integrate their story and how we can support them in that.

Ray Castellino and I have been researching this area. We started probably 10 years ago, and. And then I've been to lots of births since then. And what I see is that when we stay out of the way of what a mother and baby would do right after birth if nobody was there to tell them that, what they do is they put their attention on each other and they explore each other and they discover how to come into a new relationship. This is the first time that the baby is outside of the mother's body, and it's a whole new dance that they have to learn how to do together. And so what I do at home is I'll often, just when the baby is born, just lie the baby on the mother's thigh, or the mother maybe catching the baby herself and just bring the baby to her lower abdomen. Or if she births on her side, the baby lies beside her. And if we wait just like 15, 20 minutes, what the baby will do is just take that time to integrate. As well as the mother, they both went through a birth journey, and it takes a lot to do to be born, and it takes a lot to give birth. And inside the baby's body, there's a lot of physiological changes that are happening. Like the baby is oxygenating their lungs for the first time from the outside of their body. Rather than having the oxygen piped in through the umbilical cord, the little shunt in the heart closes, and they're pumping circulation around their body, and they're not getting nutrients from the mother anymore. So the baby has to find a new source of nutrients, which will be the breast or a bottle. And so, you know, the baby is discovering where they landed and what this new place feels like and sounds like and smells. And they see light for the first time without it being muffled through the womb. And they're having a lot of experiences all at the same time, for the first time ever in their life. And after a period of about 15 or 20 minutes, if the birth has been pretty straightforward and simple without a lot of interventions, what the baby will do is there's sort of like this awakening, and they know that there's another place to go. And so if you just make space for them to show us, they will, like all mammals do, crawl up the mother's body and find their way to the breast. And what Ray and I think we're seeing is that babies are telling their stories on the way to the breast right after birth. So, for example, if a baby were to be born with a cord around the neck tightly, and right after the head is out, you know, we discover that it's there. We work to get the cord over the head or down over the shoulders, or rarely. Sometimes we have to put a clamp, two clamps on the cord and cut it. That place can be a scary place for the baby. Right before the baby's born, right before the baby gets here, right before the baby's intention is completed to do the whole birth journey, something happens that can imprint the baby with a fear. So as the baby's crawling up the body to the mother's breast, right before they get to the next place, which would be toward her nipple or areola her breast, that baby who had the cord around the neck can have a memory triggered, the somatic memory of just before getting there, something scary happened. And so the baby might go into a bit of a cry or fussing or have something to say and to show us. And often, as new parents, our first instinct is to do something to get the baby to be quiet, to make the baby happy. That we should know all the answers and be able to figure it out every time the baby starts to cry, what the baby needs to settle down. And truly, often what the baby needs is just space to say what it is they're experiencing. So if we give space for that baby to give out a cry and tell us a little bit about the feeling, we can feel inside ourselves as to what that cry is making us feel. And often whatever we feel is what the baby's communicating to us. So if we feel sad or it sounded like a fear cry, or impatient or hurt, and just let the baby know, oh, that sounds like a really scary cry. And I'm remembering a place where I was afraid, and I bet I might have felt a similar thing. And when we hit it right on the head, often the baby just settles right down and you know, snuffs up the tears, and then they settle, and then they go ahead and they crawl right up to the breast and bob their little head and taste around the nipple and latch on and nurse. So it's allowing the space to integrate what might have happened in a hurried way, in a scary way, that the next time they go through it, it can slow down. They are given the space, and there's plenty of oxygen now, so there's no hurry to get them through that place. They can integrate it more and then move on up to the breath. And often doing this, like two or three times, having two or three storytelling sessions, the baby works through that place, and then they can just crawl up to the breast, go to the nipple, and latch on.

So you just keep doing or allowing them to tell their story until they don't have any of those or you're not noticing any. Maybe an imprint being triggered. Just. They just go straight up.

Just go straight up? Yeah. And, you know, then they get done with the need to tell their story. Like all parents need to tell their birth story over and over and over, and the baby has that same need. They need to know what happened at their birth, and so they need to be given a chance to do that. And after a period, parents are done telling their birth story for a while, and maybe some months will go by, and then there's another need that comes up where they want to tell it again. And it's the same for the baby. Often, whenever they go through a developmental phase, like rolling over, sitting up, crawling, standing, walking, that memory can be triggered again so that they need to show and tell their story again for a few days. They may need that. And the cry for storytelling is really different than the cry where they go into this deep cry. They close their eyes tightly, they clench their fists, they curl their legs up, and it's a cry that sounds like it could go on for a really long time, like sort of the bottom of the well cry. That cry means it's time to soothe the baby. So you do want to get up and, you know, walk to the window, let the baby look outside or step outside, go into the water with the baby, do something soothing, and let them know that they don't have to tell the whole story all at one time, but they can tell us little parts at a time, and we'll have more time tomorrow to do more. What the storytelling cry looks like is they'll fuss, fuss, fuss, and they'll open their eyes, look at you, connect, settle, and they see that you're there with them in connection. And then they go, oh, good, you can handle this. And then they cry a little bit more and come back into contact. They cry another minute and a half and they keep their eyes open and they are looking right at you like they are telling you something. That is when it is healing and soothing and integrating.

It's so amazing, too, just to hear that and to imagine that experience of communicating with your baby right from the start, like learning their language. It's so beautiful.

Wow.

I love it.

Yes. It is about learning their language, really understanding what it is they are trying to do and to show, trying to say. And we are trying to understand their language.

And I like that you said too, that not every cry and every whimper is something that we need to soothe or something that we as parents need to do. That it's just part of them telling their story. And we all have emotions and we all have our own whimpers and cries as adults. And how do you know we need to tell our story too? So how do we give that to our children? It's very, very exciting. It feels very empowering, too, that you can connect with your baby in this way.

Yes. You know, it's. I think most of the answers are similar to what we would want in the same situation. So if we had a hard situation in our day that we went through, when we come home, we want to tell our partner about it. And if our partner is going, it's okay, you're all right, don't worry, calm down, it's all right. And we don't ever get to get the story out. It sort of bottles us up and would make us more upset. But if our partner or friend at home goes, oh, I'd love to hear what happened, just tell me about it. And they sit and they listen with presence. And we tell our story, they take it in and they really get what we went through. Something in us settles and then we can relax, you know, have a meal together, digest our food or just be in the moment a lot more than if we had to hold that experience and not speak it or show it.

So on the breastfeeding moving, letting them tell their story and then up to the breast. I'm very curious. You have a very high success rate of breastfeeding of women, babies latching successfully in women, you know, having a happy career, breastfeeding career. What are some of the challenges that women face or what are people missing in breastfeeding? And are there actually some women who just physically cannot biologically breastfeed and share Some wisdom on that. Help guide us, please.

Well, this supported attachment that we call it, you know, the baby crawling up the mother's body to the breast, we have found that it is also, it supports the baby's breastfeeding to happen in an easier way. So if there's a challenge about the baby suck not being real coordinated or too much milk, not enough milk, when the baby crawls up the mother's body, and especially when they do it skin to skin, it's giving the mother's body information as well as the baby, so that by the time the baby gets to the breast, often it helps to correct a breastfeeding challenge. Yeah, so we found that just making that journey, often there's a resolve in whatever the challenge was between the mother and baby in that relationship. And yes, there can be things that are absolutely physiological. You know, sometimes the mother may have an inverted nipple and it's just really hard for the baby to latch onto the nipple. And so the mother might need some support to get the nipple to be more erect so that the baby has an easier time latching on. You know, maybe the woman had a type of breast surgery that interferes with the milk really getting to where it needs to go in order to go into the baby's body and the baby's underweight. And it's not about the mother not being able to make enough milk, but that parts of her breasts have been taken out, so it's physiologically impossible for her to do that. Yes, there can be things that are truly physically in the way, and often it can just get resolved by doing supported attachment.

That's interesting. So there's no, like, you haven't had surgery or you don't have inverted nipples. Have you ever seen an instance where a woman gives birth to her baby and like, literally just doesn't produce any milk?

I have not seen her produce no milk. Almost all women will have colostrum, which is the perfect food for the baby's first meals. It's high in antibodies, it helps the baby's heat regulation. It's just really good for the baby, helps them clean the meconium out of their intestines. And then after three or four days, the milk comes in and, you know, you want to look at what might be compromising the mother's ability to make enough milk to meet the need of the baby. If there's an under supply, which could be stress, lack of support. If she's too speeded up inside of herself, she may just need to have somebody sit with physical contact. While she nurses her baby and just reflect that slow place that she can come from in order to feed her baby. That will often just allow a letdown to happen in a better way. Sometimes when a baby cries, the mother's response internally will be to speed up and quick get the baby and settle the baby before the baby gets too revved up. Because somebody had that reaction to the mother when she was a little baby, like there was a lot of anxiety around her crying. Right. And so if you just work to separate out those two situations, like, you know, there's a memory that you have about how people approached you when you were crying. And right now what you're wanting to do is feed your baby. So, you know, and you want to do it different than your mother did with you. So when you hear your baby cry for food, first just slow down inside of yourself and really connect with that slow rhythm. And then once there from that place, reach out to your baby and bring your baby slowly to you in connection. That will just match the need of the milk just in one breastfeeding. Right.

And then the beautiful calm energy that you transmit to your baby too.

Right.

I mean, that's miraculous. To calm their nervous system with your calm energy.

Yes. The mirror neurons work really well. The way that babies learn to settle is to be held in arms that know. In the arms of the parents who know how to settle themselves, or the arms of some adult who knows how to do that. And that's how we begin to learn it as children.

Wow, that's so. I'm so fascinated by this whole process. It's amazing.

Me too. I love it.

So what about. What are your thoughts? Do you think it's best to co sleep with your babies? Does that help with the breastfeeding as well?

I do. The mother has been the baby's entire universe for the whole pregnancy, and the baby actually sees the mother as their outer body. There's not a big differentiation there between baby and mother. And so whatever experience the mother has, the baby has an experience of that. So at night when they're sleeping, if the baby were far away from the mother right away, like right after birth, what they've been hearing inside the womb is the mother's heartbeat and intestinal sounds and her voice and the temperature of her body and the scent of her body and the taste of her body. And if that's there with them in the nighttime, it's something so familiar and so settling that it can really help baby and mother sleep better. And, you know, I often I'll Talk to a new mom who's doing co sleeping, and I'll ask her, you know, well, how's your sleep at night? Oh, we're doing great with our sleep. And I was like, we're sleeping the whole night through. And when I questioned her more, you know, I said, well, is the baby waking to nurse in the night? Oh, yeah. The baby wakes every two or three hours and nurses, and then we just go back to sleep. I was like, oh, so you don't even experience that as like an interruption or waking up and staying awake? And the mom will go, no, it's just we go right back to sleep. And I'll even go back to sleep while the baby's still nursing. Wow. And what the studies show is that the reason this can happen is that when the mother is in the deep REM sleep cycle, usually the baby is so in tune with the mother that they are in that deep sleep cycle together. And as the mother starts to surface from the deep sleep, the baby is surfacing also so that their rhythms are running together. And so the mother doesn't experience a lot of sleep loss because she's not being wakened up in the deep rim sleep. And one of the ways to get in tune with your baby in this way is to really, you know, for those first weeks after the birth especially, is to keep your life slow and not filled up with a lot of busyness or doing out in the world, where you're going to meetings or back to work or to the grocery store out in the world a lot, but you're staying quiet and at home and really tending to your needs and the baby's needs. Great.

I love that. And I know a lot of people will be very excited about this and the sleep deprivation and concerns with sleep and breastfeeding and all of that. So that's very, very inspiring for all of us.

Yes. And, you know, also what helps the sleep is when the baby's allowed to have a storytelling telling session in the daytime. If they get at least one period of time to just cry it out and tell their story, they won't have to wait until the night when mom and dad are tired. But they know that they can get that out in the day. So at nighttime, they know it's for sleeping. If the mom and, you know, the caregivers are quieting the baby instantly every time they make peep and they don't have a space to cry, then they will do that in the nighttime because usually it's a lot more challenging for people to do all the things they would do in order to quiet the baby.

So great.

I love that.

I love giving them time during the day so that they don't. I just. I love the storytelling.

It's so.

It's remarkable to me.

Yeah, it's so beautiful to do that with them, too.

So I have one more kind of topic and question for you, and you've given us great wisdom on it as well. The placenta. So the placenta care and what are some of the options for women to do with the placenta? And if you have any recommendations for women on this, because I think it's a very interesting and fascinating topic as well.

Well, the placenta is an amazing organ. And most all mammals eat their placenta after birth because it's loaded in hormones that help to contract the uterus back down to its original size. It helps prevent postpartum hemorrhage, and studies are showing that it does that in women, too. And actually, so it can help to prevent postpartum depression. So what some women are choosing to do these days is to take their placenta and dry it and grind it and encapsulate it. And then the mothers take capsules of the placenta in the postpartum period, you know, for the first six weeks or so, and they're finding that it gives. It boosts their energy and helps to prevent postpartum depression and helps their uterus to contract and to slow their bleeding down. Wow. Yourself? Yes.

Do you feel like that's like. I mean, obviously everybody can do whatever they want, plan it or get rid of it, but do you feel like this is like, a. An important thing for a woman to do?

Well, I think it's nature's gift. And, you know, even vegetarians will do this because nothing has to die in order to harvest the placenta. And I think it's really individual. I mean, some people are, you know, kind of disgusted about the idea of eating their placenta. And so that person may choose to put the placenta in the ground and bury a fruit tree or a rose bush on it as a memorandum for the baby. Some people did just dispose of it. Some people leave the placenta connected and do a lotus birth, which means that they just allow the cord to separate on its own rather than cutting it, because it's a gentler way to. For the baby to disconnect from the mother's body and the whole intrauterine experience.

Yeah, I definitely didn't even. I mean, before I got pregnant, I didn't even know what a placenta was. I was like, what is a placenta? And then I had heard about eating the placenta and I was like, you've got to be joking me, right? Really? You're going to eat that? The more that I kind of researched it and talked to you and read about it, like you said, all mammals do it. So I'm all about it. I'm eating it. Yeah.

Some women are even keeping the capsules in the freezer to use when they go through menopause so that they have their own natural hormones to assist them through that experience as well.

Very cool. Very exciting. There's a whole new world that has been opened up to me and I'm sure, as people have listened to these interviews as well, that it's like, wow, there's so much to learn about pregnancy, birth and parenting and eating placentas and all sorts of fun stuff.

So many layers of where you can go around that whole topic. Yes.

Yes. Beautiful. Well, where's the best place for people to find out more information about you?

They can go to my website called birthingconnection.com and they can also email me at mjmidwife. Fantastic.

Wonderful. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom and your presence and your love.

You are welcome. It's been a pleasure talking with you, Alexandra.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to Mama Goddess. Until next time, Keep rocking it and have an awesome day.