Learning to laugh again through postpartum
Interview with Amy Marshall
I chat with Newborn Mothers graduate and Mastermind participant Amy Marshall, the Dietician Doula. Together we discuss Amy’s beautiful story of finding her laugh again through creating a supported postpartum and life. We explore how Amy uses the tools of nourishment and support to help mums take care of their families in the way they want to.
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About Amy
Amy is a mother of two young children, registered dietitian and postpartum doula living in Winnipeg, Canada. She supports mothers in nourishing their bodies, so they can have the energy and capacity to thrive in their role as a parent.
Amy found her way into this work through her own challenges adjusting to life as a mother. Amy merges her diverse professional training with her own personal experiences and strengths into a business where she’s honoured to support others on their own parenting journey.
We explore the following questions:
How has your personal experience of postpartum shaped your work?
How did you discover that there was another way of doing postpartum and make this your profession?
Why have you decided to move beyond postpartum work in people’s homes to have a more scalable business?
Within the process of figuring out your online business, what’s next for you?
What else do you picture in your life when you think about your business thriving? What would that mean for you, for your children, for your future?
Additional resources we spoke about:
Amy Marshall’s website - https://www.amymarshall.ca/
Amy’s instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dietitiandoula/
Books by Julia Jones - https://www.newbornmothers.com/books
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to the Newborn Mothers Podcast. Today, we've got Amy Marshall, and I'm so excited to have you here because we've had you in Newborn Mothers training for many years now. You started off with our old training, The Collective, and then over time you've grown your own business. Now you're in the Mastermind, which is for people who have already got a business a website and an audience and are ready to scale their business and do something leverageable. That's where Amy's at.
Amy, your background is you're a dietician and a postpartum doula, and you bring this really nice mix of modern science as well as the traditional wisdom to postpartum care, and I think that's a real winner. Lots of people ask me nutrition questions and I'm not a nutritionist, so I think a lot of people are really interested in learning more about that. It's so great to have you here. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Amy Marshall:
I'm excited to be here. I've been listening to your podcast for years, so I'm really excited to be a guest on your show today. I'm a dietician and a postpartum doula living in Winnipeg, Canada, right in the middle of Canada. I have two little ones at the time of recording, I have a seven-year-old and an almost-four-year-old.
What was your personal experience of postpartum that has shaped your work? (01:31)
Julia Jones:
Amazing. Should we rewind to the beginning and let me know how you actually came to this work, which from memory is about 2019. Am I right?
Amy Marshall:
I think I would even go back further. I think I came into this work through my own kind of challenging experiences, I think as many of us do. I know you came into this work before motherhood, but for me, that wasn't the case. I was a very type A kind of professional woman. I was working as a registered dietician and I really liked to know what to expect and having a plan and following that plan, that's how I approached everything in life, to study and research it and then carry it out. That worked fairly well for birth. I set myself up for success. I did the classes, I researched, I read the books, and went into it with intention and that part went fairly well. It went how I hoped it would go.
I found it went less well for breastfeeding. I had researched and read a lot, but with breastfeeding there needs to be a lot more seeing and experiencing involved in that learning. I did have a wonderful birth doula who insisted that I attend some breastfeeding support groups ahead of time so I could see what it looked like, and to be around other moms with babes. I'm really glad that I did that, and she helped me navigate some challenges. But the postpartum planning and preparation didn't even cross my radar, that I needed to have a plan or to research that or study that.
I didn't have any sort of framework for understanding what was about to happen in my life, to my heart and to my soul, and my identity once this new little person joined my family. I sort of thought that my life was going to be the same, but with this tiny little human to tag along with it. I didn't understand about the need for rest or how to support my healing. I was going out for long walks with my baby two weeks postpartum because I thought that's what I was supposed to do.
Nutrition-wise, I didn't feed myself well. This was hard because I was trained as a dietician and I thought that I should be able to handle this better. Looking back, first of all, I didn't know about specific postpartum nutrition needs. But aside from that, I felt completely overwhelmed. I thought that figuring out what to make and then execute all of those tasks in the kitchen while simultaneously caring for a fussy baby who just wanted to breastfeed and sleep on me all of the time just seemed crazy and overwhelming to me, "How do people do this?"
I really struggled with adjusting to this new role as a mom and figuring out how to care for this baby. Then also at the same time, figuring out what my needs were as a new mom and who I am in this new role and how to take care of my basic needs within this chaos. It was a really tough time, and I struggled a lot.
Then, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant with my second child during a particularly hard chapter in my life. I did a lot of reflecting and soul-searching and thinking around, "How in the world am I going to do this again? My first postpartum experience was so hard for me, how am I supposed to do this with two babies?"
I remember this one moment, I was sitting with my son and he was playing on the floor beside me, and he was only two at the time, and he just sweetly looked up at me and directly asked me, "Mommy, what does your laugh sound like?" And I just thought like, "Oh, buddy." And I realized that I wasn't the mom that I wanted to be for my child, and that my mood and my mental health was having a direct impact on my son. And that really hit hard and really sat with me.
I also had some medical complications that were directly related to nutrition. That became a very strong motivator for me to start paying attention and putting more effort into learning how to care for myself and my body better during this really important phase of life, because I could see that it was really directly impacting my kids, and that was very motivating.
Julia Jones:
It just sounds to me really lacking support. I remember when I wrote my recipe book and everyone asked for one-handed snacks, and I was like, "Well, that's good. That's a start." But also, I think you need someone else to feed you. I mean, it's such a big job feeding a baby and caring for a baby and recovering from birth. It's really hard to even remember to eat. I know lots of people who forget to eat for a few hours, and thenalmost passing out from hunger. They might not even feel hungry, they just feel dizzy and low blood sugar. You just need someone else.
In some cultures, people actually feed the mothers with a spoon, as though they're a baby. They'll literally bring the soup over to the chair and hold the spoon up to her mouth. So, that gives you a little bit of context for no wonder it's so hard. What you were trying to do is, it's a really big ask. It's almost impossible.
So, how did you get from there, I guess, to not only discovering that there was another way of doing things, but then also thinking that you might want to do that as well, as your profession?
How did you get from discovering that there was another way of doing things - to making this your profession? (07:16)
Amy Marshall:
Interestingly, one of the saving graces I think for me was that I have a brother and a twin sister, and we all had our first babies within three months of each other, which was very cool. My twin sister, Tabitha, and I are particularly close. It was so incredibly helpful to be able to talk about motherhood and these really intense experiences and emotions that we were feeling, and to be able to walk through these things together, even though she lived on the other side of the country from me.
I have an interesting story about how my sister and I both got introduced to postpartum care. When my sister had her second baby, her firstborn wasn't even two yet, she was only 20 months old. She had really taken on, as many of us do, this culturally prevalent belief that after you have a baby, you just pick right back up again and carry on. She hadn't deconstructed that yet or been exposed to the idea of postpartum rest and recovery. So when her little one was only two weeks old, he was a fresh newborn, she decided to take them on an adventure out of the house. It was winter, it was February, and she lives in Ontario, and it's very cold there. So -10 to -20 Celsius, snowy and in her community, there was a little ice fishing event happening near her, and she lives right on a lake.
So she bundled up her little ones and she put them in a sled and pulled them across the frozen lake to go join the event. While she was there, there was a Chinese couple that kept giving her this side eye. Eventually, they approached her husband out of concern and they were asking about, "Why is she out of the house and how old is her baby?" and they were really surprised. They said that in their culture, a mom and a baby would never leave the house at that age, and she shouldn't be out exercising, especially in the cold, and that she was supposed to be home, resting and staying warm inside the house.
That interaction really impacted her. She had never heard about postpartum traditions before, and she was really curious. So she went home and then she immediately started Googling postpartum traditions. Then your website and your training had popped up. So she went down the rabbit hole of your podcast, she read your book, she took your webinar, and then signed up for your training, and that was in early 2019.
That was around when I found out that I was pregnant, and it was just divine timing. She was in the middle of training with you, and she sent me a gift package in the mail. I remember opening it up and seeing this lovely book, and it was your Newborn Mother's book. She had pressed a flower inside of it, and it was just such a beautiful gift. I remember just curling up in my bed and reading your words, and they just felt so compassionate and gentle and offered me a different perspective around how to approach postpartum care. I really wanted this postpartum experience to be different, dramatically different than my last one.
So, I did a lot of things to change my postpartum experience. I moved across the country to be surrounded by my immediate family, and that was so key and so important in creating a supported environment and a supported experience. I worked intensely with my therapist to stabilize as much as possible emotionally and mentally. I worked with my sister, Tabitha, in the role of a postpartum doula. She was learning about postpartum care and traditions from her work with you, her training with you, and we created a really solid postpartum plan. She flew across the country to be with me for a couple of weeks after my baby was born. She cooked me delicious food, like your Nepali rice pudding recipe with ghee. I remember eating that. It was just delicious.
Then she also got me connected with a book called Real Food for Pregnancy by Lily Nichols, who's a dietician who specializes in maternal nutrition around pregnancy. I really devoured that book, and I worked on transforming my eating habits to optimize my nutrition intake and better support my body during pregnancy and postpartum. That made a profound impact on my health during pregnancy, and also significantly shifted my perspectives on nutrition as a nutrition professional and as a dietician as well.
My postpartum was dramatically different. It was a very different experience than my first one. I rested, I nourished my body, I was surrounded by support, and it felt like instead of being sucked down into a dark vortex, as time went on, it seemed like it had the opposite effect. I was actually increasing in capacity and energy.
So then, I decided, I was so impacted by this experience that I wanted to become a postpartum care professional as well. So I started binge listening to all of your podcast episodes while I would go for walks with my kids. When you opened up your next round of training, my daughter was around nine months old. I joined, I signed up, and that was in 2020, during pandemic lockdown. I just dove headfirst into it and just devoured the content. It was great.
Why have you decided to move beyond postpartum work in people’s homes to have a more scalable business? (13:21)
Julia Jones:
I love it. Then, I guess, from there, I'm interested in, how come you decided to move? Because I know you do postpartum work in people's homes right now, but why have you decided that you want to do something more to have a more scalable business?
Amy Marshall:
Originally, I wanted to do in-home postpartum doula work, but it was during 2020 and nobody was allowed in other people's homes. I also had two little ones at home that I was caring for during the day. I needed to get a little bit creative around how I was going to serve people. I took an additional business training that taught me how to create an online education program. My first focus was on postpartum planning, supporting mothers as they plan for their upcoming postpartum experience, and then walking through them through those early months. I really loved doing that. I loved the wonderful women that I had the honor of holding space for, but I found that it wasn't generating the type of income that I needed or wanted. I needed more regular hours and more reliable and stable income.
My first step was thinking about what kind of supports would I want for myself as a busy mom, and I remember listening to a podcast episode that you did with Denise Duffield-Thomas about your hired support people that you have, and it was so inspiring. I remember imagining what would it be like to have someone come into my home once a week and just prep some veggies and fruit or bake a batch of muffins and cook a pot of soup and clean my bathroom for me, wash my floors, how incredible would that feel.
So that's what I decided to market. I branched out to offer in-home support, by this time it was allowed again, but to busy families. It was regular hours and I was offering an extra set of hands around the home, and I'm particularly good at cooking, meal prepping, cleaning. So I marketed those skills to the families who need help with those care tasks and those care tasks tend to be pretty all consuming for busy families. That side of my business really took off, there's a big need for that, and it's really satisfying and rewarding, but it's not scalable, so there was a cap on the amount of clients that I could see in a week.
I love learning. So while I was getting that side of my business up and running, I was also studying and learning about different practice areas around nutrition that I was interested in. I took a nutritional psychiatry course. I learned all about herbs and postpartum support and hormone support and dove more into postpartum nutrition and learning about postpartum depletion and different angles like that.
I had kind of collected and percolated on all of this knowledge, and I really saw a huge need for education around postpartum nutrition with moms, and not just after birth, but during the first six years or so after birth, when so many of us are feeling really exhausted and overwhelmed and depleted. And it's so hard for us to focus on our nutrition when we have so much on our plates.
That's the other part of my business, is providing one-on-one coaching, and also group coaching to support exhausted and overwhelmed moms who would like to have more energy and improve their health, so that they can do a better job of taking care of their families. So, that's what I'm doing.
Julia Jones:
What I love about so much about where you've landed is you do really have that experience of struggling. A lot of people, I think, misunderstand really what a nutritionist can do for them. I think a lot of people feel ashamed, that they're going to tell their nutritionist about what they eat, and the nutritionist's going to tell them off and say, "Oh, here's this really elaborate meal plan and all these weird ingredients that you have to go and find and you have to spend hours in the kitchen." But actually, I think most nutritionists are not really like that. But I think you are especially the opposite of that. You are really good at being able to understand where people are at in their lives and give them sort of healthy options to take care of themselves, that really have minimal steps and are easy, even the most overwhelmed and busy mom can put something in her mouth, that's really what you're aiming for.
Amy Marshall:
Yeah, I remember working with a client who just ate rice. She would make herself a pot of rice and just eat that every day. I meet people where they're at. I don't have high expectations or demands on people. I meet people where they're at and we make small little tweaks and changes, and I find that works very well for busy moms.
Within the process of figuring out your online business, what’s next for you? (18:43)
Julia Jones:
I love it. So, I know you're still in the process of sort of, because I know you do a lot of the in-home work, but you're still sort of in the process of really figuring out that online business part of things. Do you know really what's next for you?
Amy Marshall:
I'm not sure. I'm going to continue trying to find my footing and my place, working with postpartum moms and parents. I also feel a little nudge and feel drawn to working more with parents who identify as neurodivergent, and exploring ways that I can support that parent group as well. There's a lot to learn and a lot of opportunities for growth in running a small business. I felt really grateful that I've had an opportunity to work in your Mastermind group and to be nurtured within that group and grow and learn alongside other business owners in the same space. That's been very helpful for me.
Julia Jones:
Something we talk about in the Mastermind a lot is about putting down these energetic anchors. I've kind of heard one of your energetic anchors at the moment is the idea of having more support around the home for you. I think it's really interesting that we often create the service that we actually want for ourselves. That's obviously something that you look forward to. What else do you picture in your life when you think about your business thriving, however that lands and wherever it ends up, I guess, what would that mean for you, for your children, for your future?
What else do you picture in your life when you think about your business thriving? What would that mean for you, for your children, for your future? (20:10)
Amy Marshall:
More time and more space to care for my needs and to connect with my children. I think that would be some big goals for us.
Julia Jones:
So, it's a long way that you've come already from when your son asked you, "What does your laugh sound like?" It's a big change.
Thank you so much for sharing your story, that you are very good at telling that story, and I really have appreciated hearing it. I love being involved in your business, and also your sister as well, seeing what you have been up to over the years.
Where can people find out more about you? (21:00)
Amy Marshall:
The best place to find me would be my website, so that's amymarshall.ca. I usually have a free download on my website. Right now, I have a guide up there right now about some really gentle strategies about nourishing yourself on struggle days, those days when we have low capacity and your tank is super low, but you also need to feed yourself and you feed your little ones. So that's what I have available right now on there.
Julia Jones:
Excellent. Then, you're the Dietician Doula across socials, and I think that's such a great mix to bring together, both that realistic understanding of postpartum and the cultural needs and care, but also bringing that scientific knowledge of what nutrition do we actually need. It's such a magical blend. I really look forward to seeing where the next few years take you, Amy. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
