Caring for the World's mothers after childbirth
Interview with Jenny Allison
I chat with Jenny Allison, acupuncturist and author of 'Golden Month, Caring for the World's Mothers after Childbirth'. Together we discuss the universal themes of postpartum care we have learnt through interviewing women all over the world. At the core of this conversation, we explore how community support in postpartum gifts mothers' empowerment, healing and transformation.
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About Jenny
Jenny Allison is a Chinese Medicine practitioner, and author of ‘Golden Month: Caring for the World’s Mothers after Childbirth’ and has interviewed many mothers, grandmothers and midwives as part of her research for the book. Jenny has found that Chinese medicine theory in regard to postpartum offers a unique perspective in interpreting traditional practices worldwide. Jenny continues to research different cultures as part of her commitment to preserving a worldwide heritage of women’s postpartum wisdom and to improving the care of mothers.
We explore the following questions:
What do you do and what inspired you to write the book?
How important is it to reclaim being supported and cared for by community?
Where did you find all of these stories? Can you tell us a little bit about the interviews you've done?
How do you find women to ask about their postpartum stories?
Do you have a plan for these interviews? Are you doing some research for another book or anything like that?
What do you see as the two big issues for women postpartum in modern western society?
Additional resources we spoke about:
Book: Golden Month, Caring for the World's Mothers after Childbirth - https://www.booktopia.com.au/golden-month-jenny-allison/book/9780995142329.html
Course: The Postpartum - Self-Cultivation to Empower Mothers After Childbirth - https://netofknowledge.com/Discover/Teacher/Jenny-Allison
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to Newborn Mothers Podcast. Today we have a really special guest. It's an author, Jenny Allison, who's also an acupuncturist in Chinese medicine practitioner. Jenny, your book, Golden Month, is one of my favorite books of all time for new mums. I really love it. It's such a pleasure to have you here with me.
Jenny Allison:
Oh, thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
Julia Jones:
My pleasure. It turns out we have a friend in common, which was very fortuitous. We reached out and here we are, which is very special.
What do you do and what inspired you to write the book? (01:09)
Now you've been doing this work on wellbeing and Chinese medicine for 20 years, I think now, and learned from many different countries. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you do and what inspired you to write the book?
I have to tell you the subheading for the book. it's called Golden Month Caring for the World's Mothers After Childbirth, which I love because again, it's such a visionary title. It really is like doing this for everyone.
Jenny Allison:
That was my discovery when I started to research it, that actually the practices are universal and that really gives them a lot of power. They're very powerful. I kind of first got interested in this when I finished my acupuncture training in 1984. Then I had the birth of my first baby and I sort of knew the bare bones of the Chinese idea of sitting the month “zuo yue zi” it's called. I didn't know the other Chinese name of Golden Month. I said to my mother, "I've got to do 40 days, you have to come and help me." She said, "Yep. Okay." That was fantastic.
I'm a twin and my mother herself has had a lot of help when she gave birth to us. Because everyone gives more attention to mothers with twins. She was really willing to come and help.
Although she didn't know all the ins and outs and the special food, she gave me what was most essential, which was this incredibly supportive environment where I could rest where she and my friends basically did everything for me. It really, I couldn't imagine how the start it gave me. It was just so wonderful. After that I became inspired. Then my mother-in-law is actually Malian. When I talk to her, and actually she's one of the women I interviewed for the book, she was also totally inspiring. I thought, hang on. What they're doing in Mali is almost identical in principle to what Chinese medicine prescribes for the postpartum. Then from that I started to interview women from other cultures. I just realized this incredible wealth of generations and generations of women's wisdom basically.
Julia Jones:
Yes. I couldn't agree more.
Jenny Allison:
How much we had to learn from it. Then I realized too that when the women's movement did reclaim birthing in the seventies and eighties, they didn't reclaim the postpartum because by that stage it was as midwives now say, the Cinderella period. Because it was basically, in western culture, forgotten about. There's no formal recognition of 40 days of postpartum. Yet when I started to go into, just from a western medicine point of view, there were just myriad reasons why the 40 days is a good period to designate. It's the recovery period.
Julia Jones:
Yes, and why it's so important.
Jenny Allison:
Yes, I mean the other thing was is that when I started clinic after the birth of my children, I started to see the consequences of women's lack of support. Mothers were just describing mindless exhaustion. That's what they expected it to be. I was seeing women who were still really chronically depleted months and months and months and even years after they'd given birth. I wanted to explain to them that actually there is this other version where the postpartum is this moment for celebration and for joy. The whole family works really hard, or everyone in the family works really hard to make sure that the mother's basically treated like a queen.
Julia Jones:
Yes. You know my journey is very similar because my background was in Indian medicine, Ayurveda, rather than Chinese medicine. But I had a similar experience where I learned about Indian postpartum care and I thought, "Wow, this is amazing. I need to know more about this." But then what really blew my mind exactly like you was once I started talking to women from other cultures as well, I discovered it was everywhere. It was so universal. It was so amazing to me that everyone was doing this except for us.
Jenny Allison:
Except for us.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. We have this big myth in our culture. You wrote about it in your book, so I'm just going to read it from your book. But we have this idea, don't we, that... so from the book, it says, "The myth still exists about tribal women stopping behind a bush to deliver their baby and then going back in the field to work. But in speaking with these women, it was clearly not the case. Even if they gave birth easily, they rested for at least six weeks afterwards, according to their traditions. When the system broke down, it was usually because the women were not near their usual caregiver or if there was extreme poverty and the breakdown of her community around her.”
I would even expand that because you've said extreme poverty and the breakdown of her community, because I know some women who live in extreme poverty and still consider it essential to rest for those 40 days afterwards.
Jenny Allison:
Yeah.
Julia Jones:
Yes. It's only if they've also lost their community as well, which is really what the patriarchy, colonization and globalization, all these things always meant that we have just such a loss of that community now.
Jenny Allison:
I think so, yeah. I agree that it's a really important point. I think there's a kind of wonky construction of feminism around the postpartum, which says women can do it all. It's represented by workplaces saying, "Look, we've got breastfeeding rooms from mothers," but actually this is not supporting women's health. Once anyone finds out the facts of the postpartum, then it's really clear that actually this is a momentous transformation in women's lives. Even the transformation happens second baby, third baby, fourth baby. It's not just the first baby.
Julia Jones:
Yes.
Jenny Allison:
It's a really important period of transition. It needs to be that women's intuition and their needs around it need to be really respected. We need a different feminist construction around it, I think.
How important is it to reclaim being supported and cared for by community? (8:15)
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I think that's really true. It's like we had such a long way to come, didn't we, with feminism. It's like we have to fight for this and then fight for that. Then also I think we're coming back to a more feminine version of feminism now where you are allowed to rest and be cared for and be part of a community and it moving away from those masculine values of independence and competition and yeah. It's very, very different, isn't it?
Jenny Allison:
Yes, I totally agree. Yeah. There's another kind of idea in Chinese medicine too that in going through the process of pregnancy and giving birth, you actually are learning about mothering yourself so that you can be a mother. It's about learning to care for yourself, but just as yourself, not to look good for someone, not to be healthy for someone, just for yourself. Then you can actually give energy to mothering. But it's very, very important to realize yourself that you have to be nourished.
I mean that's where we, in Chinese medicine, we've got this tradition called Yang Sheng which is the art of self cultivation. It's about cultivating your health. But at this moment, it's really, part of the art of self cultivation is actually realizing that interdependence is really important. You don't just do it yourself. That actually what you need to do is make everyone aware around you that they are the support team, that they're enabling this for you. It's very empowering for women I think when they can basically behave like queens and give them and have a feeling of entitlement. Because this is really something that I noticed and you probably did too when you interviewed women from different cultures, is that, of course we're entitled to this. Yes. What goes when I've had my postpartum and my children are a bit older, I'm going to be helping my sister or my friend.
Julia Jones:
I think it's true in our culture, we are not supposed to be demanding as women, but definitely that sense of entitlement exists. In Korea, they talk about being pampered. In Morocco they treat the new mother as a bride. They actually dress her up in wedding clothes and do a whole lot of beautiful facials and massages and hammam. It is absolutely expected that when a woman goes through this, she is like a queen. She's like a goddess that this is such a monumental thing that she's experiencing, that she deserves to be treated in that way.
Jenny Allison:
In Chinese medicine, they say that birth is a watershed so that when you give birth and afterwards, it's a watershed where all the toxins are expelled through the blood and through the placenta, through body fluids, through sweating even. But at the same time, there's also this really powerful psychic opening. Your body opens to give birth and your psyche opens too. It's said that when the mother surrenders to this birth process and she becomes a conduit for new life, she's in a tremendously powerful state. Anything she does to influence her health in a positive way will have this wonderful, powerful impact. Conversely, of course, if she doesn't get rest and is very stressed, this will have an ongoing negative impact on her health. There's a beautiful Vietnamese saying that says a woman is never more beautiful than after the birth of her first child.
Julia Jones:
I love that. It's so beautiful. It reminds me of Ina May Gaskin's quote that if a woman isn't... I can't remember it exactly, but something like, “If a woman isn't beautiful in childbirth, it's because someone's not treating her right.” She's being disrespected.
That's the same thing, isn't it? If you look at a new mother in our culture and she's looking exhausted and overwhelmed, she's probably wearing dirty clothes and hasn't eaten properly and hasn't slept in weeks, but that's not a reflection of her beauty. That's a reflection of our disrespect.
Jenny Allison:
Yes, yes, absolutely. There was this very interesting study done in the Fijian culture about when a mother falls ill in the postpartum, that's seen as the responsibility of the community having failed. It's the same thing, really. There's a name for it. That's kind of a conglomeration of symptoms that you could sort of say be postpartum depression in a mild sense but if this happens to the woman in the community, they gather around and they say, "Look, we haven't done this properly. It has to be remedied."
Julia Jones:
Wow, that's so powerful because you look at our numbers, we're getting women, we're getting mental health problems at a rate in one in five. That is such an enormous failing of our culture, of our society.
Jenny Allison:
There's another lovely concept from Maori culture, traditional Maori culture here, which says that “The mother is the canoe which conveys life from one generation to the next.” That's sort of the same idea of the power of that moment and how much she can be empowered by a good process.
Julia Jones:
Yes, I love that. It reminds me of the Native American story where the woman is thought to go into heaven to bring back the spirit of her baby. Then the 40 days afterwards are to help bring her body and her baby home safely.
It can't be a coincidence that all of these women all over the world who would never have been able to communicate with each other, they all had the same sorts of stories and beliefs about the value of postpartum care.
What I want to say before is I wanted to backtrack a little bit to talking about the brain because you just mentioned that as well with the psyche opening up and that transformation of your personality can be very overwhelming too in a culture that doesn't explain to you what's going on or give you any kind of support.
Jenny Allison:
One woman, one patient of mine said to me it feels like Alice going through the looking glass. Like a disorientation. The more guide that you had, the easier it will be. I always say to women, if you do have a really strong tradition and you are happy to allow your grandmother or your mother to bring you through the postpartum in the strong tradition, then it's a tremendous... It's like something that will hold you. Ritual at times, a transition, of course has this powerful kind of multiplication effect of the positive power of the whole thing. I don't know if I'm putting it quite the right way, but.
Julia Jones:
I know exactly what you mean. One of my Ayurvedik teachers, Isha Oaks, she talks about 40 days for 40 years. The idea that when we care for a woman in that postpartum period, then yes, it does multiply for the baby, the community, the whole family for many decades to come. There's a beautiful quote as well from your book from a New Zealand Maori elder. Her name, I think it's Wei Mason. Am I pronouncing that?
Jenny Allison:
Yeah. Wei.
Julia Jones:
She says, "Giving birth is a wonderful gift, but it hurts both the body and the heart. The job of the nannies, the grandmothers and elders is to help bring the mother back into consciousness so that she can be the source of nourishment to her child." I love that so much.
Jenny Allison:
It's a beautiful quote too.
Where did you find all of these stories? Can you tell us a little bit about the interviews you've done? (17:24)
Julia Jones:
Yes. It's just another way of saying the same thing, isn't it? Where did you find all of these stories? Because when I talk to a lot of women now, they think that this is dead. They think post-partum care doesn't exist in my culture. I can't do it anymore because no one knows about it. Often I really will encourage them to actually go and find their elders, go and find some people from their ancestral background and ask the questions. Because when you do, I think a lot of people are really quite amazed and surprised to find that it's not that long ago and that a lot of it still is in living memories. Can you tell us a little bit about the interviews you've done?
Jenny Allison:
I was surprised at how strong these traditions are. I think some of the problem is that when people immigrate to western countries, often the first generation, their traditions wouldn't have been recognized around the postpartum. They tend to start to discount them or to even devalue them because their needs aren't met, so then there isn't anything to pass on.
But when I took to these women, I actually traveled a bit too, and this is really where the fun began because women are just so excited to share this women's wisdom that really is generations old, hasn't been written down. In some places, like for example in Greece when Greece joined the EU and it was very important to be part of Western Europe, I think that a lot of the fantastic part of their 40 days rituals and whole practices was just devalued, along with midwives as well. But young women I spoke to in Greece are really, really keen to reclaim that again.
I spoke to this fabulous Druze woman in Northern Israel who said to me the Druze are a group of people who are really strong on the postpartum tradition. For them bringing a baby into the world is also about the quality of the baby's soul. In the postpartum practices that are nurturing and supporting the mother are also nurturing the incarnation of the baby's soul. It helps the mother. It helps the baby.
They were one of the rare cultures too, that also saw the Chinese idea is that this is why it's called Golden Month, because it's a golden opportunity to improve your health. It's not just about recovery, it's about actually long-term improving your health and resolving old illness. The Druze community see it the same way. They see it as this opportunity to improve your health and resolve old illnesses. When I actually started to research about oxytocin, my gosh, it was just so fascinating.
Julia Jones:
That's my other fascination is because it does explain it in a way that our culture can understand. If you can start to talk about brain science, then it's no longer an old wives tale. I hate that word, but it becomes something valid and respected. Unfortunately, this is a really useful path for us to take now.
Jenny Allison:
Yeah. Oxytocin has this ability to dissolve old and traumatic connections and help brain to reconfigure itself, basically in a situation of trust and safety, to feel more feelings of belonging. Of course, in those circumstances, your relationship with trauma or whether it's new trauma or old trauma, your relationship with trauma changes.
Another patient that I can just think of now, she said to me that she had five miscarriages, but they were late miscarriages. She had an autoimmune problem and she lost babies at 20 weeks, 21 weeks. Finally, after the birth of her first live baby, and her mother was with her, and she said she felt the real meaning of that word confinement, that it wasn't like prison. It was actually this beautiful private space, she said suddenly it was like that process of oxytocin reconfiguring her whole brain around all the sadness and the grief that had gone before. She said she just felt utterly refreshed. A perfect example of oxytocin at work.
Julia Jones:
That's a beautiful story. I think that's where feminism sort of threw the baby out with the bath water a bit too, isn't it? Because for a while we thought that confinement was a bad thing and in some cultures it has been sort of taken by the patriarchy as a way of controlling women. I know in England and Catholic societies, they do a churching at 40 days. Churching, I'm sure was originally a way of allowing women to take some time away from their religious duties like fasting, prayers and things for the family. They could just rest for that 40 days. But then it became something where the priest actually had power over the mother to say, "You have been churched, now you are free to do what you want to do." It's got to be something that the women embrace. Like you are saying, she realized that confinement can actually be a beautiful thing, not something that's controlled and put upon them.
Jenny Allison:
Yes, exactly. There's actually been a bit research also done in Chinese communities in Hong Kong and Taiwan, that when in the postpartum, when practices are imposed on women against their will, they have a higher rate of postpartum depression. It's very important that women, we'll go back to the beginning of our discussion, that they're treated like queens and that they're empowered as such.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. If anyone listening wants to learn more about oxytocin research, I did do a podcast with Kirsten Uvnas Moberg, who's one of the world leading oxytocin researchers. That's episode 20 of the podcast, if anyone wants to go back, because it is really a truly fascinating topic. Just as Jenny's mentioning, it ties in so amazingly with all of these old traditions, doesn't it? I mean, it's just like you just read it and you're like, "Yes, yes, yes. That just makes total sense." It's like putting the puzzle together.
Jenny Allison:
Yeah. Basically describing the same thing.
How do you find women to ask about their postpartum stories? (24:51)
Julia Jones:
Exactly. That's exactly it. Now, I wanted to know more about these stories too. How do you find women to ask? I mean, are you just asking anyone you bump into, or do you kind of say, "Who's the local midwife?"
Jenny Allison:
No, no. Most of them were word of mouth. There was one woman who was actually doing her masters on immigrant women's expectations of how they were being treated in the postpartum in the hospital. She said, "I'll gather some people, I'll do some emails." She actually got a few interviews for me.
When I traveled, it was really just like having a connection and then following that through. As I said, one was my mother-in-law. She was so keen, she said, "You tell the women of New Zealand they got to do their 40 days and there's money to be made later. That they must rest." She said, "If you tell them and they don't listen, then you've done your duties."
A lovely thing. But she gathered also two of her in-laws and another friend. We actually interviewed, in the end we interviewed three women together. That was a fabulous moment because we recorded it on camera and the cameraman was just so excited about the 40 days because really it's a strong institution in Mali where my mother-in-law's from. The cameraman was saying, "Yes, we run around and we do everything we can to make sure that the woman gets what she needs. So we play a role too."
When I asked her, I said to her, "What's the role of men in all this?" and she said, "Oh, we can't do anything without them. They provide everything for us." Then he elaborated by saying, "And we run around really respecting that this is a very important moment for women."
Julia Jones:
Yes. They go around doing all the practical things so the mother can rest.
Jenny Allison:
Yeah. That was a lovely interview too. I think the people who want to come forward to be interviewed are people who are really wanting these traditions to keep going. They're very proud of their traditions, which makes it a complete delight to interview them.
Do you have a plan for these interviews? Are you doing some research for another book or anything like that? (27:27)
Julia Jones:
Do you have a plan for these interviews? I mean, are you doing some research for another book or anything like that?
Jenny Allison:
I'm actually recording a webinar and there are a few vague ideas in the pipeline. At the moment I'm focusing on the webinar. But I think that it's just really, really important to keep recording and hearing the women's stories. I mean, all of it gives weight to our discussion basically.
Julia Jones:
Yes. I love it. It's just so close to being lost at the moment in many parts of the world. Like you said, when you find someone who still knows about it, they're usually just so happy and proud that someone's noticed this important work that they're doing. They're usually very happy to share.
Jenny Allison:
Honestly, I find that, yeah.
Julia Jones:
Well keep us posted on that webinar because I'm sure there's a lot of listeners who would really, really love to learn more about those stories when you're ready to share them.
Jenny Allison:
Sure. I will. I'm really interested to watch your podcast episode 20 on oxytocin. Because oxytocin is the key.
What do you see as the two big issues for women postpartum in modern Western society? (29:00)
Julia Jones:
It is and Kirsten's one of my huge influence on me. I've got all of her very heavy scientific books on my bookshelf. That was an honor, and I think you'd love everything she had to say as well. Tell me, is there anything more that you want to share before we wrap up today?
Jenny Allison:
I think that there's two big issues for women in modern western society. One is this really powerful, kind of skinny imperative that you've got to get back into skinny jeans and back to work. I think it's really strong and that if women who are trying to do something around their postpartum are aware of the strengths of the internal messages that they also are giving out about that particular situation of women can do everything, then once you become more aware of actually how deeply entrenched it is and how strong it is, then you can kind of take a deep breath and go, "Okay, well, and I want to do the other version."
Then the other thing I think is that it's important to really, because most women that come to me in clinic don't come from a strong tradition. Some do, but most don't. It's really, really important to plan well in advance and to educate all the people around the woman that this is the importance of it. This is how I as a mother want it to be done. Because I think the last thing to say really is that once you know the facts of the postpartum and then you tune into your own feelings and needs and your own intuition around what you need, and you put those two together, then you can't go far wrong.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. I love it. I think your book is a really great place to start. I mean, your book is a beautiful overview of those postpartum facts and the traditions and stories. Anyone who's interested, is called Golden Month Caring For The After Childbirth. It is available, pretty much everywhere, isn't it? I mean, it's widely published.
Jenny Allison:
Yeah, I think so.
Jenny Allison:
Thank you.
Julia Jones:
Oh, my pleasure. It was genuinely one of my favorite books for mothers. You are also an acupuncturist, so people can actually come and see you in Auckland, is that right?
Jenny Allison:
In Auckland, yes. In Central Auckland.
Julia Jones:
Do you have a website?
Jenny Allison:
I don't have a website.
Julia Jones:
All right, so they'll just have to find you somehow.
Jenny Allison:
I think I can be Googled.
Julia Jones:
Good. So just look for Jenny Allison.
Jenny Allison:
I can be Googled. Auckland, I mean, it seems big, but it's not such a big place. Most midwives in Central Auckland know that I'm there and know who I am.
Julia Jones:
Yes. Wonderful.
Jenny Allison:
Because I work closely with them.
Julia Jones:
Yes. Thank you so much, Jenny. That's really been such a joy to finally talk to you and meet you. I read your book many years ago. I think it came out in, is it 2016 or so?
Jenny Allison:
Yeah, 2016.
Julia Jones:
It's really lovely to actually talk to you now.
Jenny Allison:
Oh, thank you. Thank you, Julia, for the incredible work that you're doing.
Julia Jones:
Oh, my pleasure. I look forward to-
Jenny Allison:
Which I've heard all about.
Julia Jones:
Yes. Good. Well, I look forward to and hope we can share and collaborate more in the future. I really look forward to hearing more of these stories that you're gathering too. So keep us posted.
Jenny Allison:
Yeah, that will be wonderful.
