Expanding beyond birth work into postpartum care
This reflection is by Dusk Liney, as part of the series: How the Newborn Mothers team became postpartum professionals.
Read more here: The journey to becoming a postpartum professional by Julia Jones and From patchwork career to postpartum care professional by Antonia Anderson
Even within maternal care, our culture’s binary way of thinking creeps in. We feel called to support mothers and birth givers, then are quickly siloed into either a ‘birth worker’ or a ‘postpartum professional’.
Our Instagram feed fills with images reflecting ‘the good birth doula’ or ‘the good postpartum professional’. So before we’ve given ourselves the chance to explore, we may count ourselves out of one or the other, thinking we don’t fit that mold.
In this blog post, I share my journey as a birth worker who never thought I could work in postpartum and how I found my way there.
The good postpartum professional myth
I am a terrible cook, my house is often trashed, and I am not a baby whisperer. So when I became a birth doula, I never thought I could be a postpartum doula too!
When I imagined postpartum professionals, I genuinely pictured a modern-day Mary Poppins. Whilst I can drum up quite a bit of creative fun for kids, the rest feels out of reach. There is no way I can clean a house, settle kids and have dinner on the table with a click of a finger and a song. I mean…can anyone?!
Contextualising my Mary Poppins expectation into the modern-day doula, I pictured a put-together woman arriving at a new family's house in a linen dress, with a wicker basket full of homemade food and hand-picked flowers. Without realising, I had a view that ‘the good postpartum professional’ was a good cook, a cleaning whiz and amazing with babies. All the things I couldn’t do. So I counted myself out of the postpartum game.
What I didn’t realise at the time was my view of the good postpartum professional was just an extension of the good mother and the perfect wife myth. I was actually limiting my view of myself and my career based on my cultural shaping. Even though it didn’t align with my values.
Letting go of the good mother and perfect housekeeper myth
During my early postpartum, I really struggled with the perfect mother myth. Unconsciously I equated a good mother with a good housekeeper/wife.
I was the kind of mum who would rock up to playgroup with a knot in my stomach when I saw everyone’s bento boxes with 17 fruits and vegetables. I would arrive dishevelled, half an hour late, with a bag of rice cakes, a jar of vegemite and a butter knife. And yet, every week, I would feed everyone’s kids as we all packed up together.
For a long time, I felt like a failure for my lack of bento-mothering. What I couldn’t see is that I was actually mothering in my own way, working within my capacity and contributing to the community!
Slowly over time, I began to redefine what I value in mothering and what I uniquely bring to the table. Whilst cooking, cleaning and snack prepping are not my jam, I began to embrace the other things I bring.
It took a lot longer, however, for this to carry into my view of what a good postpartum professional is!
Expanding my view of a birth worker
Before I could expand my view of a postpartum professional, I needed to expand my definition of a birth worker’s role.
When I started as a doula, I focused 100% on the birth. Over time, a few of my families said things like, “I can’t believe I focused so much on the birth. I wish I had spent more time preparing for postpartum.”
This rocked me at first, I won’t lie! I had spent countless hours holding space for their fears and hopes, walking through the deep emotional landscape that birth brings up. I asked myself, “Had I failed them?” Then I realised it’s not either/or. It’s AND.
Both birth and postpartum matter.
I began to shift my focus from just the birth to the whole experience of this life transition. I started my care with a matrescence session, identifying how the family has been shaped to think of a “good mother/father” by their family of origin, culture and institutions. I would hold space for them to identify what they value and redefine the culture they want to create for their unique family.
I then began to include postpartum planning sessions, where they anticipated what they might need emotionally, practically, environmentally, physically and socially. We identified their village of support and then joined the dots from their people to their needs and made a plan.
Somewhere along the way, I began to feel my view of a birth worker expand to supporting families through pregnancy, birth and… then I still felt scared of postpartum!! That image of Mary Poppins’ red lippy still plagued me.
Expanding my view of a postpartum professional
It wasn’t until I began working with Julia Jones at Newborn Mothers that my view of a postpartum professional changed. Let’s be honest, Julia loves to cook and probably has a wicker basket somewhere. However, it was her viewpoint on postpartum that absolutely changed my thoughts on postpartum support.
Studying Postpartum Education and Care Professional training, my understanding of postpartum mothers and caregivers deepened. When I learnt that historically, a new baby would have 14 caregivers supporting them - it shifted everything for me. It gave me the courage and passion to reclaim this lost knowledge of how to truly care for new families in the postpartum.
This kind of care…
Gives mothers and caregivers the space to act on their brain changes that focus on learning to care for a baby and loving them with everything they’ve got.
Enables the birth givers to honour and heal their bodies after growing and birthing a life.
Creates a village made up of family, friends, community support, and professionals sticky taped together to resemble the ancient way.
Supports parents in feeding their baby in the way that suits them best and finding ways to recover sleep in those early weeks and months.
Reduces the maternal isolation experienced in our modern culture, acknowledging mental health challenges and centring the mother/caregiver’s wellbeing.
When I realised that being a postpartum professional is about supporting families to draw in that kind of care…I was like, “Sign me up!!”
Stepping into postpartum work
Once I let go of the ‘good postpartum professional myth’ and saw the fullness of what a postpartum professional could do - I could finally see myself in that role. Then my first enquiry came in! As I met with the mother and listened to her hopes and concerns for postpartum, I was able to identify all the ways I could support her unique situation.
I could support her in…
Mapping out her village of support
Exploring her well-being - particularly around breastfeeding and sleep,
Asking for help
Planning out certain scenarios
Sharing her plans with her family
We did not discuss cooking, cleaning or baby care. Whilst they might naturally be woven into the care I provide (because, hey - it’s always easier to clean someone else's kitchen than your own), they were not the prerequisite.
My first postpartum visit
My first postpartum visit with a family I supported throughout pregnancy and birth felt so different after studying Postpartum Education and Care Professional training!
Alongside doing my usual birth debrief, I was also able to…
Encourage the mother in her connection with her baby, pointing out when she was responding to the baby’s cues and increasing her confidence in her growing relationship with her babe
Affirm the father in how he was supporting the mother-baby dyad through sleep support, nutritional nourishment and relational connection
Discuss their challenges with loss of sleep, normal infant sleep behaviour and ways to increase support for parental sleep
Check-in on how their village was supporting them and where they could draw in more assistance
All whilst holding their precious little babe between feeds, who I had the privilege of seeing born into this world.
Why expand into postpartum work
There are many reasons why expanding into postpartum work can be life-giving for birth workers.
Financially
Whilst birth work can limit your financial income due to the maximum number of families you can take on, postpartum work allows you to support families for longer or take on more families by providing postpartum care.
Physically
Being on call in birth work can impact your nervous system. Having the ability to bring in an alternative income stream without taking on more on-call work can provide the opportunity to step in and out of birth work as you need to.
Sustainability
Depending on your life or family circumstances, having the choice to step in and out of birth work as needed can feed into the sustainability of this career in the long term.
Emotionally
Whilst all perinatal support requires emotional energy as you hold space for families, birth work requires a unique emotional output. Adding in the variety of doing postpartum work alongside birth work creates a different emotional dynamic.
Career Satisfaction
You may find that having a more diverse set of offerings brings a deeper work-life balance and career satisfaction, where you can support people at different stages of this transition and provide continuity of care.
Questions to consider about postpartum work
If you are a birth worker who may have discounted your capacity to provide postpartum care, here are some questions to consider:
What is my definition of a postpartum professional?
Is this aligned with the expansive scope of the role?
What skills do I have that I could bring to postpartum work?
What changes would I like to see in the families I work with?
What do I need to learn to facilitate this?
How could offering postpartum care support my career?
There is a generation of new families who are longing to have a positive birth AND be honoured and cared for in their postpartum experience.
Are you ready to expand your perinatal career?
If you want to become a postpartum professional, check out our online, worldwide Postpartum Education and Care Professional training. It is one of the most comprehensive courses for professionals in postpartum care in the world. The training provides world-leading and evidence-based postnatal education to professionals. It teaches people how to provide practical, emotional and informational support to new families.
Julia Jones leads the training from Newborn Mothers, it is the culmination of 15 years in the industry where she has trained over 1500+ students in 60+ countries. The training is developed in collaboration with three other educators each with decades of experience in their focus area of postpartum support.
