You are surrounded by aunties, sisters, cousins, mothers, and grandmothers.
You rest, wrapped up in your own bed.
The baby’s needs are tended by a dozen trustworthy hands.
You have help with breastfeeding, meals, and cleanliness.
Medicines, special foods, and rituals of wellness feel delicious on your disorganized body. You feel as tender as your newborn babe.
Slowly, you learn how to mother this new being. You feel reborn yourself. After a few weeks, you feel ready to rejoin the people. You feel rested and strong—maybe even stronger than before.
Your aunties, sisters, cousins, mothers, and grandmothers welcome you into the circle.
You are a fully-fledged mother.
This all sounds too good to be true, right? A complete fantasy,the invention of someone’s romantic mind.
Well, in countless places and times throughout human history, this is exactly how childbirth and the weeks after it really looked. Not just for the rich, or the privileged. For ordinary people. For everyone.
In fact, birth worked this way for so much of human history, our bodies are adapted to it. Physiologically, this kind of warm, robust nurturing in the weeks after birth is what our species needs for optimal health.
Is this warm, robust nurturing what we get today, in this place and time?
Big nope!
Is it still what we need—physiologically, biologically, undoubtedly?
YES.
The practices of our ancestors were developed over thousands of generations to support thriving good health— not just for mothers, but for families and for society at large. These practices prevented the dis-ease that is endemic among mothers today: mental illness, pelvic dysfunction, hormone imbalance, thyroid deficiencies, chronic fatigue, and reduced longevity. What we do in birth and beyond is enormously impactful to the health of mothers. And when mothers are unhealthy, the repercussions can last for generations.
Traditional postpartum care strives to adapt these ancestral practices to the modern world, building a new paradigm of health and wellness for mothers, for families, and for our human culture, from the ground up.
A conventional doula will come to your home, help you with light chores such as dishes and laundry, hold your baby while you nap or shower, and talk with you about what you’re experiencing. She may help you with breastfeeding, swaddling, or diapering. She will share the knowledge she has with you about challenges you may be facing. In and of itself, this is enormously helpful.
A traditional postpartum caregiver has a more specialized focus, and will care for you with a lens of ancestral knowledge.
In addition to helping with practical matters such as making sure you’re rested and showered, I make nourishing meals, snacks, and drinks that are appropriate to the unique physiologic needs of your postpartum body, as supported by thousands of years of tradition and by current research.
I apply special healing modalities designed by our foremothers to make sure your organs settle into their proper places, your body is supported in its re-organization, and your life force is renewed and strengthened—rather than depleted and lost.
I strive to recreate the deep community, connection, and ritual that our bodies, minds, and souls need. I do this not because of some pie in the sky ideal, but because it works.
It works for your health. It works for your baby’s health. It works for your family’s health. It has worked for human health since time began.