You've gotten the happy news—you're expecting! Now what? Beyond planning the nursery and registering for gear, what should you really be preparing for? In this episode, host Jane Dashevsky sits down with Deborah Koumoutsidis, a doula and certified massage therapist who's been part of over 1,000 births. Deborah shares the insider knowledge she wishes every expecting parent had—from creating a crisis plan for labor to building a postpartum support team that actually works.
Note: Information in this episode is based on personal experiences and is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. Information in the podcast does not constitute personal professional advice. We encourage you to independently evaluate any content and consult with appropriate professionals as needed for your specific circumstances.
Getting Started with Baby Podcast
A Few Key Quotes
On pivoting from your birth plan:
"When someone makes a suggestion for you, your baby, or the birth plan, you ask: Is my baby okay? If the answer to that is no, then you're willing to pivot. The next question is: as a birthing person, am I okay? If the answer to that is no, you're going to pivot. But if the answer is yes, you can take a breath… and use that non-fearful moment to ask for benefits, risks, alternatives, and what happens if nothing is done to make an informed decision. That will be the only way you'll feel comfortable pivoting from your birth plan." — Deborah Koumoutsidis
On the postpartum reality no one talks about:
"When someone walks into your house, yes, they want to hold the baby, but if they love you or your husband, they're going to be okay with 'Before you hold the baby, do you think you could start my laundry or sweep my floor?' They're going to be so happy to do that." — Deborah Koumoutsidis
On self-forgiveness in motherhood:
"Your best looks different every single day and you're going to make mistakes. It's okay to make a mistake as long as your baby is safe. But forgive yourself for the things that you mess up on, because motherhood is hard—beautiful, but also hard."— Deborah Koumoutsidis
The Takeaways
- Don't go into birth blindly—preparation is everything: The biggest gap Deborah sees is people entering birth without adequate preparation or prenatal education. Going in with blind trust in the medical system to give you the kind of birth you want can lead to birth trauma. Working with a doula means going through a detailed workbook, discussing everything from what you'll wear to when you'll head to the hospital, as well as having multiple prenatal visits that cover advocacy, comfort measures, and how to protect your relationship in the birthing room.
- Create a crisis plan with codewords and clear preferences: Deborah's own second birth—in which she developed kidney stones at 36 weeks and ended up hospitalized on morphine for a week—changed how she works with families. She now creates detailed crisis plans that cover everything from what you want to hear when you ask for help the first, second, and third time to at what point should the epidural be offered.
- Ask two questions when faced with a birth intervention to enable empowered decisions: When anyone suggests an intervention, first ask two questions: Is my baby okay? Am I okay? If the answer to both is yes, you can take a breath—there's no emergency. Then you can ask for benefits, risks, alternatives, what your instincts say, and what happens if you do nothing. Making decisions without fear and with informed consent is the only way you'll feel comfortable pivoting from your birth plan without feeling bullied.
- Plan your postpartum support as thoroughly as your baby shower: One of the most overlooked aspect of pregnancy preparation is postpartum planning. Who will you call when your partner goes back to work? Who's your backup if you're having a meltdown? What happens if you’re not ok and need medical attention? Host a nesting party where friends cook 20 meals—that's one month of dinners taken care of. Discuss who brings groceries, who does laundry, and have these conversations before baby arrives so you have a plan and build up comfort asking for help.
- Bring up specific concerns at your six-week post birth visit: Providers won't always check unless you ask. You’ll want to consider things like any issues with pelvic floor engagement, scar healing, or pelvic pressure. Thinking about what you should bring up will help you advocate for yourself at the official postpartum visit. Check out Deborah’s free guide here.
- Remember that 500 extra calories and half your body weight in water in ounces is needed for successful breastfeeding: Many women don't know these basic nutritional requirements. If nobody's taking care of you, and you have to worry about cooking three meals a day—especially if you also have a toddler—it's not feasible to maintain good milk supply while feeling good physically and emotionally.
- Build your village intentionally and cut out people who don't support your choices: If someone makes you feel terrible about your parenting decisions, it's okay to limit that person in your life—even if it's family. Seek out mothers you admire, ask for help when you need it, and find resources where you feel validated. Anyone who walks into your house in those early weeks should be willing to help with things like laundry or cleaning before holding the baby.
Your Birth and Postpartum Checklist
- Create Your Crisis Plan: Before the birth, sit down with your doula or birth partner and map out your crisis plan. What do you want to hear when you ask for help the first, second, and third time? At what point should pain relief options be offered? What's your love language? Do you want loud cheerleading or quiet whispers of encouragement? Establish code words. Write it all down so everyone knows the plan when labor begins.
- Build Your Postpartum Support Team: Identify who you'll call on day one when your partner goes back to work. Who's your backup for emotional meltdowns? Who can you trust to care for your baby the way you want? Make a list before baby arrives so you're not scrambling in those early, overwhelming days.
- Host a Nesting Party: Instead of (or in addition to) a baby shower, host a nesting party. Invite friends over, order pizza, and cook 20 freezer meals together. Twenty meals will get you through one month postpartum. This practical support will serve you far better than another outfit or gadget.
- Learn the Questions to Ask During Labor and Delivery: When any intervention is suggested, ask two questions first: Is my baby okay? Am I okay? If both answers are yes, there's no emergency—you can take a breath and then ask for benefits, risks, alternatives, what your Instinct says, and what happens if you do nothing. This framework helps you make decisions without fear.
- Prepare for Nutritional Needs Post Birth: Know that successful breastfeeding requires 500 extra calories per day and water intake of half your body weight in ounces. Have easy, nutritious snacks prepped and a good water bottle always within reach. If you're managing cooking while caring for a newborn (and possibly a toddler), it will be nearly impossible to maintain good milk supply and feel good.
The Full Conversation
[edited from audio transcript for clarity]
Jane Dashevsky: You've gotten the happy news that you're expecting. What now? Maybe you start thinking about what you want your delivery and labor experience to look like. But if this is your first time, or even your second or third, there might be things that you haven't even thought to think about. Today we're talking with Deborah Koumoutsidis, a doula and certified massage therapist and the founder of Pelvic Love Massage Therapy. She's been a part of more than a thousand births, so she's seen basically every type of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.
Welcome to the podcast, Deborah.
Deborah Koumoutsidis: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to open some doors about doula care.
Jane: We're excited to learn more. To get started, could you share a little about your background and your family?
Deborah: I've been a massage therapist for 20 years now. The year after I graduated, I became a doula and got my certification. I've assisted with somewhere over a thousand births, though that count was a few years ago, so we've kind of lost track. I work with pregnant and postpartum women in the clinic, and I'm part of their birth even if I'm not present. I'm the mom of two grown daughters—they're 19 and 23. With both my births, I had doulas with me. My first birth I had one doula. My second birth I had two doulas, and it really changed how I took care of my own clients. Having two doulas in my second birth changed my doula practice in a lot of ways.
Jane: How did you start on this journey of getting into doula, pregnancy and postpartum care?
Deborah: When I was in massage therapy school, there was an older woman in the class who was pregnant, and she always asked me to do the bodywork on her so she became more comfortable being treated by me. I started to see that a lot of what they were teaching us had no modifications for pregnancy. It was just "do not touch, do not touch." So as a new graduate, I registered for a prenatal massage therapy training. I didn't choose it—it kind of just fell to me.
Jane: It chose you! You said that your perspective on your own doula practice changed pretty significantly after your second birth for which you had two doulas assisting. How did it change your practice?
Deborah: I ended up with kidney stones at 36 weeks during my second pregnancy and was hospitalized for a whole week in excruciating pain. They were waiting for me to get to 37 weeks to induce me. With my first child, I went into labor on my own—no drugs, perfectly physiological birth. But then I was in the hospital on morphine for a week, trying to avoid it as much as possible. I didn't get a chance to work one-on-one with my doula to talk about how this week of being hospitalized had depleted my resilience. As soon as I asked for help, they offered me the epidural, and I took it.
From their perspective, I had a beautiful delivery, but I had trauma because nobody said to me, "Let's get you in the shower" or "Let's try this." They just said yes to the epidural, which wasn't on my plan. That changed the way I work with my birthing families. I want to know exactly what you want. I want to know what you want to hear when you ask for help the first time, the second time, the third time. At what point should the epidural be offered?
It changed my prenatal visits. I make a crisis plan with you. We follow that crisis plan specifically during the birth, because at no point should your first pain-relieving option be the epidural unless that's what you want. There's so much more planning in the prenatal visits when you work with me as a doula now than I ever did before, and more than most doulas do. We sit, we make a plan and we talk about code words. We talk about your love language. We talk about how you like to be comforted. Do you want loud cheering with pom poms, or do you want to be silently whispered in your ear that you're strong and powerful and you can do this very hard thing?
Jane: That must have been such a disorienting experience—having one perspective of how things were going to go and then seeing things go a different way. I think that happens to so many moms with birth.
Deborah: Absolutely. You don't know how that day is going to go. Things change, and when something medical comes up, you have to be primarily thinking about the health of the baby and the health of yourself.
Jane: You talked about crisis planning being part of what you do now. What does it look like to work with you as someone onboarding for the first time with a doula? What can they expect?
Deborah: One thing we do differently is we send out a workbook. It gives us an opportunity to meet you where you are, rather than teach every single person the same thing. Some people are highly educated on birth—maybe they've given birth before and have birth trauma and want to do things differently. The workbook gives you all the options. It talks about things like: Do you want to wear a hospital gown? Do you want to wear your own clothing? Do you want to labor at home? Do you want to go as soon as your membranes rupture or at the first contraction? Then we get to meet them where they are, and that changes my first prenatal visit.
That first visit is about going over that form. The second visit is always about advocacy and comfort measures and how to protect your relationship in the birthing room. We all know those stories where the way your partner is comforting you is not the way you receive comfort. We have these expectations of our partners. There was this TikTok trend going around a few years ago about "my husband was a badass in birth and he was so amazing." Then there was all this shaming about birth partners. There was the one about shooting the Nerf gun while the partner is napping. I'm thinking, why do we have this expectation of our birth partners to show up when they don't have any idea what's going to happen that day? We don't know what we need.
That last prenatal visit is almost always about how we work together as a unit. How do I protect your relationship? I teach the partner to only speak between contractions, use language that the mom needs, ask her about her love language, and we put it on paper so they feel ready.
Jane: It's interesting because on one hand, even if you've read up on things, the reality of how birth goes may be so different than whatever picture was in your head, especially as a first-time mom. And to your point, we expect the partner or whoever's in there with you to know exactly what to do, but the partner is also experiencing it for the first time.
Deborah: We talk about that. We talk about physiological pain versus harmful pain and have the expectant parents fully comprehend that this is a pain that is needed and is not fearful. I love the way my onboarding looks. After the second prenatal visit, I usually get "I'm ready, I'm not nervous anymore. I know that my partner is ready." And the partners feel like "Okay, now I feel like I can take an active role."
Jane: How often do people feel really confident about what it is they want? Does that change over time?
Deborah: I like to tell moms that if you really have a perfect picture on paper of how things are going to go, chances are it's not going to go that way. What you have to do is be able to pivot from your birth plan. There's a BRAIN acronym that's used all over the world to measure the suggestion or intervention that any primary care provider is suggesting. You ask for the benefits, the risks, what are the alternatives, what is my instinct telling me, and what if we do nothing for every intervention. It's known all over the world.
I've modified the BRAIN acronym. When someone makes a suggestion for anything to you, your baby, or the birth plan, you ask: Is my baby okay? If the answer to that is no, then you're willing to pivot in any way because you want your baby to be okay. But if the answer is yes, the next question is: as a birthing person, am I okay? If your partner is advocating, he's going to ask, "Is my partner okay?" If the answer to that is no, you're going to pivot to save the birthing person's life. But if the answer to both those questions is yes, you can take a breath.
All the fear has gone. Nothing is wrong. Now you can use that non-fearful moment to ask for benefits, risks, alternatives, instincts, and what happens if nothing is done to make an informed decision. That will be the only way you'll feel comfortable pivoting from your birth plan—because you made the decision without fear and with informed consent. If you don't have the ability to ask for that, you'll always feel that you were bullied into making that decision.
Jane: I think what you said about how if you don't have that space to ask the question, you end up in retrospect feeling like you'd been bullied or like you hadn't really been working off complete information. I remember with my second, my son's heart rate started dropping and suddenly the room was filled with doctors and everybody was starting to panic. It turned out that the answer to "is anyone in danger here?" was sort of "I don't know." So what happens in an "I don't know" scenario?
Deborah: In that scenario, if I had been working with you, I would have had your husband fully trained to say, "Wait a second, I'm noticing a shift in energy in this room. Can someone please explain what is happening?" Or "I'm feeling a shift in energy. Are my wife and my child okay?"
In an "I don't know" situation for me, because I've been in so many births, I'm already thinking: Was there an induction involved? Was there Pitocin involved? Were you already on an epidural? All of those situations would show me there's a possibility for deceleration of the heart rate, and that can happen as baby is coming down the birth canal. It almost always happens in the birth room at a specific point. I know not to freak out. But in a non-physiological birth, almost all primary care providers—because they have to maintain heart rate on the chart—have a moment of panic. In that moment I would have been focusing on the two of you and trying to settle your fears a little bit. In most situations when there's an emergency, they can have that baby out in less than five minutes.
Jane: Something that's come up in this conversation and other conversations I've had as part of this podcast is that as a mom, your experience is like one or two or three—it's not very many. You've been part of so many births, more than a thousand. Is there some sort of common thread that you typically see in pregnancy and delivery?
Deborah: Yeah, for sure. One of the things I really see is this blind trust that happens with us. The majority of us will go for a hospital birth, and we trust that the nursing staff and the OBGYN staff will take care of us and give us the birth that we choose. That is not the picture. It's not accurate. What women don't fully understand is that every single person and every little thing that happens during birth is an intervention. Your husband is an intervention. The doula is an intervention. The nurse is an intervention. The student is an intervention. All of those things can and most likely will stall your labor.
Going into it blind almost always ends up with birth trauma. There are a few women that go in and have beautiful births with no prenatal education and no planning, but that's the biggest thing I'm seeing—this blind trust in the medical system or primary care providers to get you what you want in birth.
Jane: I think that brings up that there's just so many voices when it comes to pregnancy, delivery, postpartum, taking care of the baby, the fourth trimester, all of that stuff. As the mom, it can sometimes feel hard to know who to trust and then also to find your own voice. Do you have any advice for moms experiencing that?
Deborah: Yes. I always ask: Who's going to be part of your birth team and who's going to be part of your postpartum support team? Then I very bluntly say, if the person coming into your birth—let's say you're bringing your sister—if she did not have a physiological birth and that's what you want, your sister's not the answer. If you're choosing your sister to help you with breastfeeding and she didn't breastfeed, that's not the answer. It's so hard to hear because we want our sisters or our moms or whoever.
I talk about building your team. One thing I've started saying in the last two years, which I was uncomfortable saying until about two years ago, is that if you're hiring me, then I'm the expert. Google's not the expert. If you're hiring me to be the birth doula, then I'm the expert in that moment. If you're hiring me for postpartum care, then I'm the expert. Instead of going to Google or all these other resources, choose the expert that you've chosen, or find a friend for each stage of your pregnancy. It doesn't have to be one continuous person—maybe it's a mentor for birth, a mentor for postpartum, or a mentor for breastfeeding. But only choose one person and try to stay off Google.
Jane: In talking to other moms, there are certainly some gaps that they feel, whether in their delivery experience or in the postpartum care and what they were expecting and how things turned out. Having been part of so many people's birth journeys, are there gaps that you see commonly that you think we should be better preparing moms for?
Deborah: The first gap is going into birth blindly and doing no preparation. The second one is postpartum. There's such a major gap, and it's really quite devastating that postpartum is where everything is about the baby. A lot of women don't fully understand that breastfeeding is natural, but it's a skill that's learned by both mom and baby. When you're focusing on breastfeeding, somebody needs to be taking care of you 100% for the first few days because it's hard. It's beautiful, but it can be really challenging.
One thing I do in the clinic is when the mom is seeing me for her last prenatal massage, I ask them to book their new mama wellness appointment before their six-week checkup so we can see what's happening with their body. When they go to their primary care provider, she has all the information. If she's feeling pressure in her pelvis or her scar is not healing from an episiotomy, she can bring it up that day. At the six-week visit, if you don't ask them to check you, they don't always check. They just say, "Is everything okay down there?" And you're like, "I don't know, I'm not a doctor." That's one gap I'm really seeing, and I'm trying to educate women on that more. There's a free resource on our Instagram about your six-week checkup and what to ask.
I've seen in the last years that people are hosting nesting parties more than baby showers, and I'm so excited about that. We want to do so many things in those first six weeks—have baby photographers, get out for a walk. I have moms who go to weddings within the first week or want to come for a treatment or a date night within the first six to ten weeks. But when they don't feel well, they feel disappointed that they can't do those things. It's almost impossible to do all of those things and feel great and take care of the baby if there's not somebody taking care of you, the birthing person. That means having food prepped, setting up food delivery, having someone come and do your laundry instead of holding the baby, and being strong enough to say, "Yes, you can come by, but I'm not open to a visit today."
Jane: That's such a big reality. I hear a lot of moms talk about how after they had the baby, all the attention is on the baby—which makes sense—but they felt totally unprepared. They didn't have the level of support they needed. When someone is thinking about doula care, what does that look like in postpartum? Are you still communicating with your doula postpartum?
Deborah: I work one-on-one with my doula clients for a whole week to ten days after. I'll be honest, that continuous text support doesn't really stop when you work with me because we offer a free service online. It's every two weeks—we offer Doula Deborah on Demand where you can hop on every second Tuesday and ask any question you like, as long as it's not medical advice.
Jane: Obviously working with a doula can be an extra charge for some families. What would you recommend if someone isn't sure they can afford a doula or if they're on the fence?
Deborah: This question is really important to answer because a lot of people hear a doula's fee and it can be quite shocking. My fees are a little bit higher, but because I'm a massage therapist, I'm able to do special billing. As a massage therapist, one of our modalities is labor support, so we're able to bill some of your health benefits under doula care as a massage therapist. That really helps here in Canada. If a doula has certification in the states, they can get special billing too—it can be paid for by the government or through health benefits.
Let's say your funding, though, is really zero. There are doulas that offer pro bono work. This year I did two births fully free so I could give one of my new doulas more experience. We chose a cesarean birth, a hospital birth, and an induction to really get her that experience. A lot of higher-number doulas or more experienced doulas are mentoring—you can ask them what their bottom line is. Most doulas will do a meet and greet with you for free, so you get a sit-down where you can ask them anything.
Another thing is the Doula Deborah on Demand. There are a lot of doulas that offer classes for free. You can ask me anything and you get me for an hour. You might be the only person on that night, so you're getting a private session. On my Instagram we have links to different free things, like an induction class. If you want to learn about induction, you can download this webinar and we talk about it from start to finish.
Jane: That makes sense. It's helpful to know those resources exist and that there are ways to get the care. How important is a meet and greet in deciding to work with a doula?
Deborah: The meet and greet is mandatory when you're working with me. It's the first step because your energy has to match mine. You have to have full trust in me because your birth partner is the king of oxytocin. My job is to protect that at all times. If you don't feel that energy within me, then it's not going to show up in the birth room. You have to fully feel safe and vulnerable and be able to let the oxytocin flow. That person you invite into your birth room needs to be able to let that happen and make things happen so that can be protected.
Jane: Are there questions that you think expectant parents should ask as part of the meet and greet to get a better read on whether there's a good energy match?
Deborah: I think one of the mistakes doulas make is they tell their own birth stories, because really, it doesn't matter. I'm here to support your birth story. But I do feel like asking them their philosophy on birth, their philosophy on breastfeeding, and just a few questions. They don't have to be very specific questions, but thoughtful questions like: What is your opinion on vaccines? Your opinion on circumcision? Those are all controversial topics. If your doula doesn't respond in a way that you feel supported, then you know that's not the right doula for you. We have to be non-biased. Any doula that is putting those fears or anything about those things isn't being fully non-biased. Of course we all have our opinions, but you have to tuck those opinions away and show up for the birthing family in a way that they feel supported.
I wouldn't say there are specific questions you should be asking a doula. I see a lot of "I've been at a thousand births, so please hire me." I was a great doula when I did my hundredth birth. I was way better at 200, and at 1,000 for the last five years, I don't think my doula skills have sharpened—my preparing for birth skills have sharpened.
Jane: Yeah, so I imagine you've just seen every variety of thing that can happen at this point.
Deborah: Yeah, and I'm also comfortable saying "I don't know that" and "I'm not comfortable talking about it." I know that's not going to impact their trust in me. When you're younger and newer in that situation, you're more prone to be uncomfortable saying "I don't know" because we think we're supposed to know everything as women. Of course, that's not the way it is. I don't know everything about birth. I'm still learning. I'm very thankful that I'm still learning.
Jane: So if I were to ask you, what is your birthing philosophy?
Deborah: That every woman deserves to feel seen and heard, and that she deserves to have the power to advocate for the birth that her and her birth partner have chosen.
Jane: That's an empowering message.
Well, switching tacks a little bit—one of the things we do here, as this podcast is sponsored by a service called the Starter Set, is we try to help parents sort through the noise of all the stuff that comes along with having a baby or being pregnant. I'd love to hear your perspective as a mom, as a doula, as someone who's seen so many pregnancy journeys. Are there things that you think are particularly helpful for moms to have?
Deborah: A village, 100%. And the other thing I would love to be able to give to every pregnant person is the ability to forgive themselves when they make a mistake and ask for help, and to know that this is not a journey of womanhood that is done well alone.
Jane: Yeah, that's such a big one.
Deborah: I think we have this mindset that "I should know this. I'm pregnant and I'm having babies, so I should know this." No, that's not accurate. Finding a community or a place where you feel validated is imperative.
Jane: You mentioned when you moved to your community that you didn't have that village initially and you had to build it. A lot of us are living further away from our families these days, right? And some of our close friends and all of that. So what did it take for you to build a village? Do you have any advice for people who are finding themselves in a situation where they know it's important but they're not really sure where to get started?
Deborah: I was new to this town, and my husband's friends were really friends from high school and they weren't very welcoming. I fully understood—they had their own friends, so why did they need another friend? My family lived on the east coast of Canada, and I was now in this new town. One of the things I did was I became friends with other mothers that I admired. I actually asked for help when I needed it, things like "Can you stay with my older daughter while I go take a shower and a bath with my newborn baby?"
Anyone that made me feel crappy about my parenting choices, I dropped really fast. It was really hard to do, but to be able to say to someone, "Your parenting values don't align with mine, and unfortunately I can't be in this relationship"—and it took a lot. One of them was my sister-in-law, but I was not willing to bend on that. I wanted people who were raising me up instead of making me feel like I was doing everything wrong. I chose that. It's not easy. I'm not saying this is the format to build a community, because I feel like recognizing when someone makes you feel terrible about your choices and your parenting and being able to limit that person in your life is probably the first step. Then finding some resources to feel supported, whether for breastfeeding or pregnancy.
Jane: That's a really powerful sentiment and a reminder that it's almost as important to know what you don't need as what you need.
Deborah: I think that's one of the biggest things. It's important to teach that in pregnancy—if you learn how to advocate for yourself during pregnancy and during your birth, it'll be easier postpartum to say, "Yeah, we're up for company, but between these hours. And also while you're here, this is going to happen—you're doing a load of laundry or we're going to make some lactation cookies."
Jane: Yeah, that's really helpful. What about things that you think parents are gravitating towards that maybe just aren't necessary?
Deborah: That's a good one. I feel like anything that makes you feel empowered or educated, whether I agree with it or not, is important. I don't laugh at anyone. But when people get so caught up in their showers and don't do a nesting party or postpartum support plan, I'm like, "Okay guys, we have to stop here. Slow this down. Let's spend as much time planning your postpartum journey as you did on your shower." That's something I have feelings about.
The other thing that really gets me is all these really expensive breast pumps—the non-electric ones that are battery-operated so you can go everywhere with them. That sets moms up for feeling like a failure when they can't do that. I feel like buying a $500 pump when you're pregnant is really not the answer because you don't know. You could get just as much milk from a hand pump. Wait until you've tried a pump. Most hospitals and doula agencies have pumps you can rent—you just buy the tubing and flanges specifically for yourself. Or borrow one from a friend and see if that's the one you like and that works with your breast and your milk flow.
I wouldn't say there's anything I see parents gravitating to that I totally disagree with. I think some of the sleep stuff is really taking over. People are feeling like they should have their babies on a sleep schedule at a certain stage when that's not going to happen until a certain age. Sometimes whoever you're being taught by might not have enough experience to fully understand when something's medically happening with your baby or your breast milk supply is off, and that this sleep training is not going to be successful. Those are probably the only two things I feel like people are gravitating towards that I might have an opinion or two about.
Jane: You mentioned spending time thinking about postpartum care, which I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone talk about as an intentional step you should be taking. That seems like a really important one in retrospect. Why didn't we think about that period? Who are we calling on the first day that dad goes back to work?
Deborah: Totally. Yeah. Who would've thought about that? If something medically happens in those first two days, who's the person in the community that you trust to come take care of your baby in the way that you want? Cook 20 meals. Have your friends over, buy a couple bottles of wine or make sangria or whatever it is. If you drink, if you don't drink, have a fruit punch. Order a pizza and let them cook for you. Make 20 meals minimum—that will get you one month.
Then learning little simple things like you need 500 extra calories a day to breastfeed successfully, and the amount of water you should be drinking is half your body weight in ounces. That's something women don't know. Half your body weight in ounces is what you need to successfully get a good milk supply. If nobody's taking care of you and you have to worry about cooking three meals, especially if you have a toddler you also have to feed, it's just not feasible in a way that feels easy or good and that you can manage. That postpartum support needs to be discussed during pregnancy. I wish that people spent as much time on that as they did planning their shower.
Jane: Yeah, that's such a big deal. I just think back to that time in my own life and how valuable that would have been. And I did it twice and still didn't do it the second time.
Deborah: No, no. But generally you weren't aware. I think that if every mom could learn that, the gap in care for mom in the postpartum would be so different.
Jane: If you had this ideal world where people are really thinking about this postpartum period, what should they be thinking about?
Deborah: They should be thinking about when there is a crisis. I don't like the word crisis, but it is a crisis when you're having an emotional day or moment because your spouse is leaving you and it's the first day you're home with one newborn baby, or a newborn baby and a toddler. It is a crisis. I think talking about who's the person we call here? Who's your best friend? That's definitely a big one.
When mom starts to struggle emotionally—at day three is when the hormones hit the basement, and those are the hardest days for mom—what if she is not okay? What are we going to do? Who's coming in to take care of the baby? Who's coming in to take care of them together? Who do we call? Are we even familiar with the Edinburgh scale to see if this is a moment where we call a crisis center or bring her to a primary care provider? What do we do in those moments? That's one of the things I think people are not educated on.
The nutrition piece too—understanding when we slipped up and how do we backtrack it. I really wish people fully understood that when someone walks into your house, yes, they want to hold the baby, but if they love you or your husband, they're going to be okay with "Before you hold the baby, do you think you could start my laundry or sweep my floor?" They're going to be so happy to do that.
Jane: I love that too, just because it feels like having that conversation before baby arrives is also really useful. I think it can feel easy to also feel uncomfortable asking for certain things, especially if it's spur of the moment. But if you've thought about it and you have that in place, it probably also makes it feel a little bit easier. And people in your life sometimes are also looking for the direction of what you need from them.
Deborah: Yes. And you're more comfortable saying it, right? Like when they call you the first week and say, "We would like to drop you something. Is there anything you need?" You've already had a conversation with me or someone else who's talked to you about postpartum support, and you know to say, "I wouldn't mind a meal half-cooked for tonight."
Jane: Yeah, absolutely. That's such a great thing.
Deborah: Or "Can you stop by the grocery store and pick up my groceries? I'll give you money." Or "Can you stop and get me flowers?" Whatever it is that you need to make you feel like you got this day.
Jane: So if you had one thing that you would want people to take away from this conversation, what would it be?
Deborah: Oh gosh. First of all, that your best looks different every single day and you're going to make mistakes. It's okay to make a mistake as long as your baby is safe. Then just do everything that you feel is right for you. But forgive yourself for the things that you mess up on, because motherhood is hard—beautiful, but also hard.
Jane: Well, thank you so much. I learned so much from this conversation.
To hear more from Deborah or get in touch, reach out via her website PelvicLove.com or follow Deborah on Instagram at @deborahthedoula.
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