Postpartum Mistakes
Interview with Maranda Bower
I chat with Maranda Bower, the CEO and Founder of Postpartum University® Together we discuss postpartum maternal health, how our life and identity change postpartum, as well as the significance of the four-year mark. At the core of this conversation, we explore the importance of not only preparing for birth but also preparing for a peaceful postpartum.
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About Maranda
Maranda Bower is the CEO and Founder of Postpartum University®, supporting both mothers and professionals in health and whole body healing. She is a renowned expert and top educator in the fields of functional nutrition and coaching in relation to postpartum and nicknamed the “Womb Whisperer”. Named as a best-selling author, international speaker, and has appeared in over 50+ publications. Maranda also served her community as a doula, and worked as a board member of two organizations, developing tools and support services for aspiring birth workers as well as creating local events and awareness around all things postpartum.
We explore the following questions:
What was the mistake that you made postpartum? What do you think the biggest mistake is that people make around postpartum?
What is the significance of the four-year mark postpartum?
Why is it so important to prepare women becoming mothers about how their life is going to change, and how they are going to change?
Why did it feel like a big mistake to only prepare for birth and not for postpartum?
Where can people go for help when they want to have a peaceful postpartum?
What were your experiences like of having two more children, after having depression and bipolar?
Additional resources:
Download your free guide to your Sacred Postpartum Ritual Journal.
Website - https://postpartumu.com/
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hi, and welcome to today's podcast with Miranda. Miranda is someone I've known online for quite a few years now. She has four children. She is really, really passionate about postpartum wellness. She also does some birth education, and she's a homesteader, and she's just an all round awesome person. What I particularly wanted to have her on the podcast about today is about her personal biggest postpartum mistake and how you can avoid it at home. So Miranda, do you want to introduce yourself and then we can jump into the topic?
Maranda Bower:
Yes. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. It's so much fun to finally get to speak with you. Again, we've known each other for quite some time now online, so it's great to be here. So I'm Maranda Bower, I'm a postpartum bliss coach, and I work strongly with women in the postpartum area, and this was something that I became super passionate about in my own postpartum experience, which I'll gladly share with you here. But it started off with my first and I had postpartum depression, and with my second, it was postpartum bipolar. So I had these really awful feelings and mood disorders and something wasn't right. So my journey began there, and when I was looking at how this is going and how this is playing out, and I just felt deep down that it wasn't okay, this wasn't how it was supposed to be, and that's where everything started.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I think that's a really important thing to say, that this isn't how it's supposed to be, because I think a lot of women have these experiences and think that it's their fault, that they've done something wrong or there's something wrong with them. But actually if we can actually try and externalize that a bit and say, "No, what is going on here? This has to be something big, social, cultural. What's actually happening here that so many women are feeling this way?" So if anyone is listening at home and having a really rough time with it, know that you are not the only one and that you are not the problem. Do you want to start, Miranda, by telling us what was the mistake that you made? What do you think the biggest mistake is that people make around postpartum?
What was the mistake that you made postpartum? What do you think the biggest mistake is that people make around postpartum?
Maranda Bower:
Absolutely. I spent so much of my time preparing for birth and preparing for the labor. I had a wonderful home birth. It was everything anyone could ever imagine a home birth experience being. It was absolutely blissful. The hardest work that I've ever done in my entire life. But at the end of it, to know that I just accomplished the hardest thing ever was absolutely euphoric and empowering in every sense of the word. I had spent a great deal of time preparing for that moment and for those brief hours of time.
Then afterwards, I knew nothing. I didn't know. I spent so much time preparing for labor and birth that I completely forgot about everything postpartum. Of course, I had looked into little things here and there, like breastfeeding, which is incredibly important to me, and those important aspects. But there's so much more involved into the postpartum.
We look at statistics, and I know when I was feeling... When I was in the throes of postpartum depression and feeling that sadness, there's this intense loneliness that comes with it. Then when you're researching, "Why am I feeling this way? What is wrong with me? Something is not right inside," and then come to find out it's postpartum depression and the statistics say there's over 30% of women experience this. That's just the women who actually say something.
I refused. I would never wanted to tell my family, never wanted to tell my provider. It was something that I felt I needed to hide and deal with myself. So thinking of all of those other women who never say anything, 30% is just the women who do. I mean, that's an epidemic in our culture, in our societies. There's something going on. So in that moment I knew, even though in my intense sadness, in my intense loneliness that I obviously wasn't alone, it was silent, but I wasn't alone in this and that something was wrong, not with me, but with everything about how we approach this time.
Julia Jones:
I think a lot of people are quite naive and think that if they have a great birth, they'll automatically have a great postpartum. They don't realize that actually postpartum in and of itself is a huge transition that requires a lot of support, and that even if you have a beautiful, healthy birth exactly as you want it to be like you did, you still need that preparation and support for afterwards as much as anyone. It's still absolutely essential.
Maranda Bower:
Absolutely. Then you think about the women who don't have the opportunity to have that or something happens in labor and birth, it still plays a dramatic role in how we have our postpartum in the way that when things don't go as planned, or when intervention takes place, then we need even more support. We need even more to give ourselves in that postpartum time and it becomes more critical that we do those things.
Now in our day and age when hospital birth and high intervention rates and cesarean rates are where I am, at 35%, you look at those and you know that those moms need far more than those who have perfect birth, and those who have the perfect birth, they still need so much on top of that. So when you look at... I hear all the time, it takes six weeks for a woman to heal post-birth, and I think that is so far from the truth. Really, a woman who's had cesarean or intervention takes significantly longer than that as well. Really it takes years.
Julia Jones:
It really does take years and even just the mental health statistics are showing that mental health rates decline in the first year, and actually postpartum depression is the highest four years after a baby is born. Not six weeks, four years. I think that shows that you can battle on for so long. You can run on adrenaline for a little while. But when this survival becomes the norm, that's when it really does become deeply, deeply stressful, and you can only go so long on no sleep, no food, no support, being lonely, being isolated. So the sooner you can get help, the better, but also it's never too late. If you're a year in, two years in, even 10 years in and you're still feeling like this, then now's the time to go and build your village and get the help that you need.
What is the significance of the four-year mark postpartum?
Maranda Bower:
Yeah, absolutely. When I work with my clients one on one, I mean obviously a lot of it is learning to sleep, learning how to nourish your body, because a postpartum body is radically different than what you experienced pre-pregnancy. It's very different from a pregnant body. So having that knowledge to take care of yourself in those ways are really, really important.
But I also feel that we see those statistics where women are really at their low at the four year mark because they've gone on so long, but there's this component. When I work with my clients, the one thing I hear all the time is, "I don't know who I am anymore." We hear that so often. I think that that time, that four year mark, is a fairly typical time when we realize that when that comes to for us, when we come to see that that is where we've been operating.
Because we've been so busy not sleeping and so busy dealing with breastfeeding and dealing with healing our body and dealing with what Uncle Sam told us that was so wrong, that builds inside of us. We take in all of those emotional pieces and we take it to heart, because we're so raw and open and vulnerable in postpartum. A lot of it is we have to learn how to be in that space emotionally and prepare our space for that, which includes oftentimes a village. But sometimes I'm finding that it's not always available to women, or women feel that it's not available to them. That usually has to do with some internal things that are going on about asking for help and about reaching out to the community and about feeling shy and reserved. Of course, if you're struggling with postpartum depression, finding a community can be even more difficult and frustrating and isolating.
So all of those components can play a significant role, but not just the physical part. I think that we always look at the physical side of things. One thing that I hear all the time is, "Oh, I am preparing for postpartum. I'm getting all my meal preps ready. I'm freezing all of my meals." I think that's wonderful, and that's certainly a big part of it. But you have to know what meals. Know what things that are going to nourish your body and then extend that even further into the emotional wellbeing and your spiritual wellbeing, all of those things coming together as a whole.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I agree. And I think that identity crisis is really a lot of the time where women hit rock bottom, because often our goal as modern educated women is to not be changed by motherhood. A lot of women are like, "I still want to be able to go surfing and I still want to have my career and I still want to have my freedom and independence." Whereas if we were preparing women more in the way that, "You know what, your whole life is going to change, but not only that, you are going to change, but we're going to have some initiations, some rites of passage, some sharing of stories and support to normalize this experience for you to be able to embrace who you're going to become and how your life's going to be changed." It would be a very different experience then, as it is now where everyone's expected to be back at the supermarket three days later and getting on with their daily life as though nothing's happened.
Why is it so important to prepare women becoming mothers about how their life is going to change, and how they are going to change?
Maranda Bower:
Yeah, so true. And one thing I do with my clients is share with them and teach them about how different... I mean, it's not just the birth of a baby. We hear this often. It's always the birth of a baby and we celebrate baby and we go see the baby after the birth and all of these things, which are beautiful and wonderful, but it's often forgetting the mom and the birth of the mother. The maiden passes and the mother becomes born. That transition for a woman is often where we get stuck, because a lot of times we expect that we are able to make this for ourselves, that we're able to come in and create this new being and just go on about our lives and do what we want and force it.
And oftentimes it's a matter of taking a step back and just living in that space. And that can be a hard space. It's a space of unknown. We don't know who we are, we don't know where we're going. And to be in that space is really challenging for women of today's go, go, go society and can be just really challenging and being okay in that space and recognizing that you're changing and growing is absolutely huge.
Julia Jones:
So back to this big mistake of preparing for birth and not for postpartum, there's also obviously a cultural role in that, because I know you had studied a fair bit before you had a baby. You learned as much as you possibly could and still no one really introduced you to these concepts. So can you talk about that a little bit?
Why did it feel like a big mistake to only prepare for birth and not for postpartum?
Maranda Bower:
I was a childbirth educator, and funny, as I was certified by two different agencies, one being one of the biggest certifying agencies in the world. I had taught in hospital settings and home birth settings, independent, and I had been teaching for years and working alongside other women who have been doing the same thing. So I've had hundreds of clients under my belt and was right there along with women in labor. I was doulaing for quite some time. I was traveling to different conferences about birth. There's, again, components of postpartum. There's talk about breastfeeding, there's talk about the placenta afterbirth and the first hour after birth and how critical that is for you and baby to bond.
We hear those pieces, but that's it. There's nothing more to that. So it was really exciting when I came across your information, that there's somebody else out there, after I had really gotten involved in studying that, who are really representing postpartum and what that is separate from birth, in a much bigger way, in a much more intense way, which is what I think women need to see a lot more. Unfortunately, there's not very many of us who represent this time and all that it is. I'm excited to see that change. I see the shift, I see the women starting to take notice. Especially I've seen your work and there's another mama who works in postpartum, and my business as well is just blooming and growing and people are starting to really take notice that this is important information.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I agree, I agree. In the general doula and birth and midwifery community, until fairly recently, postpartum was just an afterthought. Sometimes when I'm invited to speak at things, it's like tick the box, we've got one postpartum person, that's done. Really what I'd love to see is an entire conference of postpartum speakers. This kind of thing, I do think it's coming. I definitely am seeing this happen more and more. So it is really exciting times.
Where can people go for help when they want to have a peaceful postpartum?
What would you say to people listening who are like, "Okay..." Because this is part of the problem too. "I want to have a natural birth, so I know that I'm going to have a doula and I'll try and choose a medical care provider who's aligned with my values," that sort of thing. You can get childbirth education. There's a way of actually giving yourself the best chance of getting that outcome. But say someone wants to have a peaceful postpartum, there's still very little that they can actually do. There's very few resources and professionals and education. It's just hard to find. So once people realize this mistake, where do they go? Where can they go for help?
Maranda Bower:
Yeah, that's a very, very good question because I feel like it's kind of underground, right? It's like this secret society. Nobody talks about postpartum until you're already there, and then oftentimes it's too late.
Julia Jones:
And then everyone goes, "Why didn't anyone tell me?"
Maranda Bower:
Yeah, right? I wish I would've known. How often I hear that. It's very unfortunate. So I have a website that's dedicated to moms, serenitygrows.com. I also have a Facebook group, which is linked on my website. It's fairly large. You can find a lot of information there. I work specifically with moms one on one. I don't do doula training or anything like that. My objective, my whole goal is to really educate the mother and empower her, and oftentimes in what she already knows. This is innate wisdom. A lot of times it's innate wisdom, but a lot of times it's about shedding all of those ideas and things that we have about how it's supposed to be. Then going beyond that, really understanding the postpartum body and all of its glory and how it really affects us and how we need to eat and sleeping and all of those fun topics, and going well into the emotional aspect. So I talk about all of those different things there on my website, and within my group. So you can always connect with me there.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, that's great. And then you have this postpartum plan, which I think we'll pop a link up for all the listeners, which is a little download that's free for anyone who wants it. And I do really recommend, if there's anyone pregnant who's listening, this is probably the number one thing that mums say afterwards is, "Why didn't anyone tell me? I wish I'd known. No one prepared me for this." So here you are. This is the secret. This is how you can prepare.
And what about you? You have then gone on... You said you had depression after your first, bipolar after your second. You've gone on to have two more children. What were those experiences like?
What were your experiences like of having two more children, after having depression and bipolar?
Maranda Bower:
I've had a third and that was absolutely blissful. I was a foster mom, so for a while it was four, but I am pregnant with number four.
Julia Jones:
Oh, wow. Congratulations. I didn't know.
Maranda Bower:
Thank you. Yes, thank you. So that will be telling, but my third experience, with that knowledge in my background and that understanding and letting go and having the support that I needed was absolutely phenomenal. I was on cloud nine for a very long time because I had the tools that I needed to really listen to my body and understand what I needed in those moments, which is kind of a learned skill. It's something that you have to learn over time, and that's what I help moms do.
Julia Jones:
It's a skill that we don't value in our culture. I always say it's a feminine way of doing things. This idea of surrendering and innate wisdom and listening and being in the moment, all of that kind of stuff is very feminine in terms of the archetypal energy. But in our world, we are all about action and information and planning, and all of those things are very masculine in energy. So I think often in traditional cultures, there would've been perhaps, at certain points in history, in certain parts of the world, a little bit more balanced between those two energies, both for men and for women. So the transition would've been such a sudden shock. But yes, what happens to us now is we go from this totally masculine environment into being a mum, and we try and apply all of that stuff and it doesn't work, so it can take a long time to learn how to do that, this other approach, this other way of being.
Maranda Bower:
Yeah, absolutely. And preparing for postpartum starts in pregnancy. It's something that we really prepare in third trimester, and you look at other cultures, and that's exactly what they practice. Third trimester is about preparing for the fourth, and preparing for the birth as well. But it's really important that you get a headstart and you start working there. Because once you're in postpartum, once you're in the throws of postpartum, it's really hard. You have the postpartum brain, the pregnancy brain. It's not meant to hold all of that information and do all of the things and check off all of the boxes. That's not what it's there for. So really starting in pregnancy is going to be critical to having a blissful postpartum.
Julia Jones:
Awesome. I love it. And it's always so lovely to chat to someone who's paths are so aligned. I think our work is just so great together.
Maranda Bower:
Absolutely. I totally agree. I'm really excited to be here with you today.
Julia Jones:
Do you have anything else you want to add?
Maranda Bower:
No, I don't think so. I think we covered a lot. I don't want to be too overwhelming, there are so many aspects, and I can go really deep.
Julia Jones:
We can talk for months.
Maranda Bower:
Many hours. But I think that's a really good start and a really good place to begin the journey if you haven't already.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, wonderful. I love it. Thank you so much, Miranda. For everyone listening, we'll have the website links up below so that you can check out what Miranda's doing for mums, and thank you so much for being here.
Maranda Bower:
Thank you, Julia. I really appreciate it.
