The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The impact of a good doula. Interview with Bianca Sprague
This week I am over the moon to be joined by Bianca Sprague from Bebo Mia
Imagine having a support system that empowers you through every stage of parenthood, from preconception to the early days of postpartum.
Bianca and I talk about the impact doulas have on birthing individuals and families. She explains the role of a good doula; how doulas offer nonjudgmental, continuous support, enabling parents to make informed decisions and navigate the often overwhelming landscape of pregnancy and childbirth.
We also talk about the vital advocacy role doulas play in medical settings.
We explore the fear surrounding medical statistics and the crucial support doulas provide in helping parents trust their intuition and make measured decisions during labor.
Looking back on the 2020 pandemic, we discuss the detrimental effects of excluding doulas from birthing spaces and emphasize the long-term benefits of trauma-informed, compassionate care.
As we delve into family dynamics, Bianca also talks about the crucial role doulas play in mediating prenatal conversations and managing generational parenting practices.
We explore how doulas help navigate the often stressful involvement of grandparents and other family members, ensuring a harmonious postpartum environment.
And finally, we discuss the expansive training opportunities available for those interested in becoming doulas, highlighting a comprehensive 17-week program designed to empower future doulas with the knowledge and confidence to support their clients effectively.
Bianca is an absolute marvel in the doula world and if you've ever considered a change in career, or doula training in general, then I would look no further.
You can find Bianca and Bebomia in all the usual places;
Their website
Instagram,
Facebook
And if you're getting a course on Bebomia use Code HPNB15 to get 15% off (as always, I get no commision and no referral cut).
Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions or comments or want me to interview a specific person
As always; HPNB still only has 5 billing cycles.
So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!
BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.
Though I'm not terribly active on Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!
Playing us out; "Breakthrough” by Gee Smiff
Hey, welcome to the A Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert, Pe Laap. This is the podcast for the 13th of July 2024. And you know, the date before music means t have a guest on, and today I am talking to Bianca Sprague from Bebo. Mia Bianca is, to be fair, she's a doula, but she trains doulas and all that sort of stuff. There is no person in the world who knows more about doulas than Bianca does. So what we're talking about, what doulas do, what kind of doulas there are, how doulas benefit people, how you can become a doula Like I said, she trains doulas and all that sort of stuff.
Peter:This is a phenomenal conversation. You definitely want to listen to this, especially if you're sitting at home and you're thinking. You know what I fancy. A change in career career and becoming a doula always felt like the kind of thing that I should do. Then Bianca is the person to teach you all about the ins and outs of doulaship and doulahood and all that sort of I don't know what you call it Doulaship and doulahood. Yeah, that sounds about right. Anyways, without further ado, here we go. Let's start with the basics. So what is a doula and what are some of the benefits of working with one?
Bianca:oh, there's so many benefits, um, so a doula is a trained professional who, I mean, depends what silo of doula work, because they just keep adding them on. Now there's like death doulas, there's divorce doulas, there's all these things, but, um, the type of doulas that I train are ones that work in the preconception, fertility windows, um pregnancy and birth and then the postpartum period, and so it's a practitioner who is really there to support, um, parents and parents to be with, uh, emotional, physical and informational care. And the really great thing about doula care is that they're not attached to their client's choices and it's magic. I don't do a ton of postpartum work, I mostly do birth work. But my students, you know, and the experiences I have in that postpartum window is it might be the first time that somebody hasn't had to scramble to defend what they want to do. So if they're like I'm thinking about maybe moving the baby to their own room, or like I'm thinking about supplementing, or like I don't really like using my carrier I love my stroller and you can see like right away they start scrambling. You know, because I think this and I know that this is a risk and I'm just like, I just wait, I'm like great, do you want to talk about how we can supplement? Do you want me to teach you how to use your pump? Like, what do you need from me? And so to have somebody provide that nonjudgmental care.
Bianca:It's profound for them because, as I say, it might be the first time, and when we're looking at births, like within births with doula care, when I do prenatals with my clients, they're shocked to know that their doctor or care provider will not be in the room.
Bianca:Like we'll pretty much only be in the room for the last two minutes, and so when we're talking about birth doulas, you might be the only person with the couple or the or the individual. Um, until that like final stage, and and so you know, we want to make sure that they feel safe. Um, and for partners to like, doulas take care of partners so that they can rest. They have all the information, they eat, they call family members, they, like you know you need to have that decompression time because the doula is going to go home and now the partner's up. If the birther or new parent has a partner, and then they're the ones who have to be the primary parent, while the person who just gave birth or recently gave birth, is resting. So you know, I like to say a doula is like a best friend in a walking Wikipedia, all wrapped into one.
Peter:Yeah, because, like you said, there's an awful lot that's happening there and I think you're right A lot of the misconceptions around giving birth, what the actual process is like. I think a lot of women expect their health care professional to actually be there for longer than and push and go and Au revoir, we've done, there's a baby here. Good luck to you. And because anything unexpected to do with birth has a tendency to very rapidly become well, traumatic is a rather drastic word for it.
Bianca:A little too traumatic. Yes, exactly.
Peter:And therefore having more realistic expectations and having someone who guides you through that process seems to make complete sense to me.
Bianca:Yeah, well, because what happens in our preconception journey informs our pregnancy and what happens in our pregnancy informs our postpartum period. And so you know, I firmly believe how babies come into this world matters and how we support birthing people, and it's one of the most important ways I believe we can heal these like major social wounds that we're carrying around, because I want people to feel empowered in their birth and I want my students to go out. I want people to feel empowered in their birth and I want my students to go out like I have a doula school and to know that I send students. We're in 48 countries now to know that there's like all these doulas like proliferating the world, to have people feel really empowered to reflect on their birth and know that they chose things.
Bianca:Because informed consent, this informed decision-making process, has been like a race with practice-based care in healthcare, whether we're talking about pregnancy, birth or the postpartum period. Most doctors are like just because everybody does that, or like I don't know, we just do that and we're not, we've lost evidence-based practices, even though the SOGC or ACOG or you know the governing bodies in the UK, like everybody, has these things being like stop doing this, stop doing this, stop doing these treatments. Stop like interrupting feeding from their body, stop having these recommendations for new babies. But practitioners are just continuing to do it, and so doulas get to come in and bring back that evidence-based care and say here's the research, the actual research, not what's word of mouth passed on that is completely flawed.
Bianca:But here's hard facts from reputable sources. And what does your gut say? What's going to work for your family? What is your heart being called to do? Like, all of those things need to be balanced, and our hospital systems and our postpartum support systems don't factor that in. Like we consider a heartbeat to be quote healthy, and we're sending home these parents into this postpartum window that are traumatized big T or little T traumatized and they're feeling disempowered and they don't know what to do. They're getting bombarded with misinformation and and, like you know, they're completely depleted.
Bianca:And so I'm more like now go take care of this little person, or people, 24, seven, and so that's where birth doulas can kind of catch it in time, and postpartum doulas come in and are changing the experience of parenting, which is a it's profound, like it matters. It matters so much. And this is from somebody who quit medical school. My plan was OB-GYN and I was like no, I cannot perpetuate the harm that is happening in the system. I need to actively work against it, and that's what I've been doing for the last almost 20 years.
Peter:Because you're quite right. It is quite funny because I had a chat with one of my clients this week they're a bit older and they went to the doctor and the doctor did a blood glucose test and they said yeah, I'm quite concerned about your blood glucose levels. At half past eight in the morning it was. So first appointment of the day, let's take a blood sample and you know and see how it goes. And immediately they were given pills right. First thing they did is half past eight in the morning, blood glucose test. At no stage was the question asked we can have for breakfast I know it's just gonna say it's the first thing right.
Peter:So this person went, went to their gp for a better breakfast early. Better grab an almond croissant on the way in, so a croissant for any french people listening, stuffed with almond paste. I know, classic french right also insanely insane.
Peter:That will spike your blood sugars like nobody's yeah, fast burning carbs and sugars which is fine to have for breakfast, if you're grabbing a bite, if you're going to get a blood sugar test, maybe it's not the ideal food, um, so, anyways, they got the test done and they were given some pills and a month later I said to them I said so are you going to go back to get your bloods tested again, like no doctor never said I should, but we can't, did you know what I mean? It just it tries, yes, doctor. The doctor just went with the and I know this is a completely different situation from pre and postpartum. But what I mean is the doctors in the UK. The point I'm getting at the doctors in the UK only have 10 minutes to see most people.
Bianca:That's a lot of time relative to North America. To North America we get one.
Peter:It's insane 10 minutes to make notes, to read notes and all that sort of stuff and therefore they have no time for follow-up. They have no time to to just give you a bell and say, hey, are you feeling better on the medication? Let's try something else, let's. And this is why the question wasn't asked right, what did you have for breakfast? Right? That is, they don't have the time. You're just, you're here to get your bloods tested and off you go and here's some pills and and all that sort of thing. So I said, yeah, okay, you need to go back to your doctor and ask, make another appointment and get it all done and, you know, explain to your doctor that this is what's happening. Of course, doctor immediately took him off the pills. Right, it wasn't, it was a no-brainer, there was no blood sugar spike and all that to the point that they needed medication. Um, and all that to the point that they needed medication.
Peter:But the point is more that if you have someone guiding you through that process, like what you're talking about, especially prenatal and postpartum someone who can advocate on your behalf, who knows the system, who knows the science because a lot of doctors and GPs, like you said, they're kind of used to working the way they're working and quite often studies and you'll notice as well a study comes out that you'll be aware of, but it'll be 20 years before that actually makes its way through the medical system into any sort of ground like NHS or any sort of healthcare system system. It takes an age and you yourself are not going to have the time to read the studies and to read the latest science. So having somebody there can advocate on your behalf that says actually it is much formula is like what you're talking about. Supplementation, all the sorts of it's completely fine, it's.
Bianca:It's huge to have that in your corn well, yeah, there's, I mean there's so many things, um, I mean even just I know recently you've been on a kick talking a lot about infant feeding on the on the podcast and I think that, yes, yeah, how you do it um, but like the charts, for example, are, are provided by infamil or Nestle or like all of these things.
Bianca:And so, you know, when my clients come back and they're like I went to the doctor, they're concerned about the weight loss and they're, you know, suggesting supplementation when there's no other indicators for it. But doctors are using a chart of formula fed babies. So if they've only been fed human milk, like they're not going to be on that scale, and so these are the things that our goal is never to challenge doctors. I mean privately, I do all the time, but um, it's really to, you know, encourage the, the accurate information, and I mean a lot of this is done, um, I do a lot of this prenatally, because the birth room is not the space to start citing research.
Bianca:And and immediate postpartum is not the time to start citing research. So whether I'm working with my clients in labor and delivery or I'm working with them in that postpartum, those first 20 weeks, we make sure we do so much education. And you know, having the conversations around like let's talk about where baby's going to sleep, let's talk about division of labor, let's talk about mental health, let's talk about and to prepare all of it, and so they're actually armed with that information and I recommend that any of my clients bring their people with them. So if it's going to be their in-laws, if it's, they have a partner, a partner, if it's their sister, the best friend to come, so that they also are armed with that information. So if they're driving to the pediatrician or they're taking them to the you know whoever um for the postpartum checkup, which is six weeks later so you don't see a care provider in labor and then nothing for a month and a half, um, but if they have those people that have that information to be like, well, that's interesting.
Bianca:Could you tell me about this, because it's recommended this or there's actually no indicator of that? Or even talking about how we talk about stats? So you know there's certain markers, like age, for example, or week's gestation. Let's go with week's gestation. Providers will say things like your risk of stillbirth is doubling if we don't induce you this week and technically, but it's going from negligible to a little less negligible, but it's not doubling.
Bianca:Where we're, like now people are thinking, you know, there's a 5050 chance that their baby's not going to survive the next week, and so these are the things that happen, but they happen in such rapid succession and like simultaneously there's a bunch of these kinds of stats and scary things and practice-based events happening, and so doulas can really take that and slow it down so that birthers and new parents, they can feel that powerful, they can trust their intuition, they can, you know, take in those experiences and have them be really great practice for advocating for themselves and their babies, so that later when they're like, oh, this spot opened up at a daycare. They go for the tour and something about it doesn't feel right, even though it's the closest to their work and it's the most affordable and their friend really likes it. If they have this like nagging feeling that they don't have to do the self-negotiation, they can be like do you know what we're going to pass on that daycare? Because something in my body is saying I don't want to do that, but they have to have had that through their labor and through their birth. If anybody didn't have that, you can do so much neuro healing, so you're just fine, we can, we can get you there. So don't feel like you're behind the eight ball, but we it will take extra steps right and so you can be working with, with folks to, you know, build up your confidence and build up the intuition and protect yourself and heal from the traumas. But if we can catch it earlier, the better it is.
Bianca:And there was really interesting research, peter, which I mean I'm grateful that we have the research.
Bianca:I'm really sad of how we acquired the research, but I don't know if anybody knows, but 2020 got a bit weird in the world and one of the main things was that nobody could go into the hospital room or the immediate postpartum room, and there was a time, especially in canada, in the us, um I'm assuming it was everywhere, but I just stayed like really hand on the pulse in canada, in the us, um, that there was a time when like partners couldn't even go in the room, like the room was, yeah, like locked down, so people went in and carers, like their nurses and stuff, would like pop in in their hazmat suits but like they were completely alone.
Bianca:And so we now have all this research of this year where doulas weren't allowed and support people weren't allowed, so essentially birthers were left alone with doctors and what happened and it was abysmal, like the outcomes were terrible for birthers and babies, like they were the worst ever, and obviously the more marginalized the birther was, with any intersection around race, class you know, lower income families, under-resourced folks like the harm was just staggering around stillbirth, premature labor, low birth weights, trauma, inability to feed from their body, like like it was so bad.
Bianca:So I'm sad for every person that contributed to that research that we have and we now know that the impact of what happens when you exclude doulas from the birth space is like real bad stuff will happen in there, and so it was really motivating for people to start, you know, telling, telling other people like you need a doula, you need to have somebody to take care of you, and in that birth and postpartum period. So it was it's fascinating research and it's, you know, really heartbreaking and it's really um affirming for the work that I've dedicated my life to.
Peter:Yeah because, because it's funny, because when this, when that started happening and you touched on loads of stuff there, but it's it's with regards to that bit specifically, the when it came in in the UK where indeed they were just like nobody can come in anymore, your partner, I think, could only come in in the same way that your healthcare professional could come in Just for the five or ten minutes before you were due to give birth. Your partner could pop in and then, as soon as you'd given birth, he or they or she had to leave again and everybody knew this was a bad idea and the papers were full of horrible stories of women that said my labor lasted 36 hours and I couldn't see anybody and it was horrific and the, the trauma, you mean it is, and it never made sense.
Peter:And that was what the real problem was. Everybody was saying, yeah, we know it doesn't make sense, but you know these are the rules. And and I kind of get why, because I'm now going to get emails from healthcare professionals saying, oh, it did actually make sense, but it didn't, and you know it didn't. Um, right, the, the partner that someone already lived with, was not all the time, was not all of a sudden gonna kill whoever is having the baby just by being there when they're also in labor. That made no sense whatsoever. Um, but because I I'm with you.
Peter:I'm a big believer that the babies that are born in trauma for want of a better phrase, again, I'm not keen on the phrase, but I don't know how else to use it um, it's better to be born in a relaxed environment than it is to be born in a really stressful environment.
Peter:I'm a rather I don't, so so that makes sense to me that you're going to have more issues from it.
Peter:And especially, I mean I mainly care about the mother than I came, more about the mother than I do about the baby, because you know, that's the world I live in and I have had so many conversations with women that are five or ten years postpartum, that are still struggling with issues from when, from their pregnancy and how they gave birth and all that sort of stuff, which is just as.
Peter:And then again, if you listen to the podcast and, uh, before, for my listeners, I am still just a middle-aged white guy and therefore that to me was mind-blowing 10 years ago, right when, when I first started 10, 12 years ago, when I first started this whole postpartum malarkey stuff and and then and then it took about six, seven months and before you knew it, I had I only had conversations with women that were saying it was horrible, and very few women who get isolated that way or who give birth in a stressed environment come out of that feeling particularly well within themselves, to the point that they're like scared to have a second child, concerned about whatever, or they have therapy and all that sort of stuff, and I think therapy is a great thing for almost everybody, but we've got our own shit to work on.
Peter:Concerned about whatever, or they have therapy and all that sort of stuff and all that sort of, and I think therapy is a great thing for almost everybody, but we've got our own shit to work on. We don't need a labor period to add to that yeah, for sure, we've got parenting to do.
Peter:Yes, exactly, and that's that goes by the wayside, because a session of hot yoga isn't going to solve, isn't going to solve your birth experience, if, if that was particularly traumatic and it makes sense to me when you said, when you said that you invite family members and potentially like secondary caregivers or or whatever you want to call that into the room with your prenatal, because at least everybody will be on the same page postpartum as well. When you do that, if everybody's agreed on this is what the mother wants to do and this is how we move forward, then you're not going to have the mother's mother-in-law come in, for instance, postpartum, and go. Well, I think we should do it all differently, because everybody has had that discussion prenatal or during the pregnancy, rather than having to deal with the stress of also having you know, air quotes the mother-in-law come in we have a whole plan.
Bianca:Yeah, I, I it's um, like it's a whole section in my course when I teach doulas, because, um, it's really stressful. It hits a whole bunch of buckets, like you know, because you've got one, one future parent who has a different connection to that than the other one, um, and there's a lot of stepping on toes and avoidance and um does it mean? And you know these really complicated cycles, including the grandparents having potentially like a little bit of shame about how they parented, and so they go on a double down defense of you know it was good enough for you, so why wasn't it good enough for our grandchild? And so it's actually part of the service that a doula can do is either facilitate or take over some of those conversations. So, like I have templates, for example, that I'm like you tell me the things and I can send it from, so I'm helping them put together their plan, and here's some ideas we are kicking around and if you want to like bounce it off me so you're on the same page, let me know, and I can actually like be a buffer between grandparents, um, and, and even just saying so, you know it's suggested with the birth plan that they don't have anybody else in the room. So I'm just letting you know we would love if you did these errands and not come to the hospital and then we'll we'll see you at the house three days later.
Bianca:Um, because those things can feel insurmountable for the expecting parents and they're no big deal for me and I have my cutesy way of like. So we're thinking and let's chat, and so I've taken that burden off their plate, because dealing with grandparents is in the top three stressors for my clients. Like if I did a poll like what are you losing sleep over? It's never the things that people think. Like it's not about the birth. It's not about the birth, it's not about the health, it's not like even the scary things that could happen. It's the right now.
Bianca:Crises for pregnant people Are they like how am I going to navigate through the community? Who doesn't agree with me? Or like how am I going to tell the family that I'm whatever, keeping the foreskin intact, or they're co-sleeping, or we're not going to have anybody come to the house for the first 21 days? Like, whatever it is? And so you know this is the. You know how profound and expansive the service of a doula is, that you know we take those kinds of tasks off their plate because all I want is my clients to feel really calm and have the opportunity to practice. You know their core breath, which I know you're a big fan.
Bianca:I love the core breath, yes, and like imagining a really positive outcome and, you know, planning and setting up their space and taking time to, you know, do their last little hurrah before the baby comes, like I don't want them stressing about negotiating over who's taking their dog and if they're going to have a hassle because they're not going to let their kids cry it out like I can do that, um, and so you can see, like the calm and the and the like, so many of the worries can be removed, as well as the ones that are going to come, you know, as we go through that labor and delivery, those things that can come up.
Peter:Yeah, because what you just said, that just makes complete sense from many perspectives because outward pressures that you get from grandparents and all that sort of stuff because I'll be very nice about this the problem quite often is that there's two sets of grandparents Unless you have your kids much later in life, that is quite a regular occurrence and two sets of grandparents from different backgrounds, potentially different cultures and all that sort of stuff. The potential for clashing there is huge. And I just finished doing an interview with Alison what's her surname? Escalante and she writes about this shoot storm right, where you should do this or you shouldn't do that. That's pretty much that pressure that parents feel, woof to that word.
Peter:Yes, it's really just the whole that, that whole. You need to be doing this, you should be doing this. Oh, when I was younger, we did it x, y, z, like you said, that doubling down. But my generation is very still. But my parents generation a bit older than me is older. You know the old. Well, I got smacked and it never did me any harm.
Peter:That type of doubling down, sort of lack of self-awareness that, let's be honest, grandparents tend to have because they're not as enlightened as, say, people a bit younger. And I mean I include my generation. Now I'm almost 50, right, my generation is not the most enlightened generation. If I were 10 years old, I'd be a Trump voter. You know that level of unawareness and it's. If you, then, indeed, if you're talking about okay, you can alleviate that pressure. That is huge. And all the simple stuff you spoke about, like who's going to look after the dog? Right? The answer for all my friends is always me. But it's an important question because those are the little things that people quite often probably don't even think about.
Bianca:Yeah, or overthink about, and I mean the generational stuff. I mean these are complicated. These are complicated concepts because we've systematically, you know, due to liberalism've we've severed these generational support systems and so we've we've been parenting now I would say probably four generations, maybe five. Um, that was like so rooted in the ego, like your children were a reflection upon you rather than the utility of, you know, sustaining your farm or your business or your whatever, um. And so, ever since this has happened and it's only getting worse, um, we keep seeing these like battles of like what this all represents about them.
Bianca:And so I mean, I could talk about this forever and ever, peter. But and so these grandparents have this like they don, you know, their children mean so much about them, and now they're potentially having maybe some redemption, like a redemptive moment, or they're just continuing the same values of like what. What is a good, whether it's income based or it's athletic based, or it's aesthetic based, it's rarely about balanced, healthy, resilient, kindness. You know it's there're. They're these very patriarchal, capitalist markers of what we could be yeah, that's what we love.
Bianca:and so now we're putting in this, um, these essentially like markings of the ego, but without any of the support, because they're popping in to just like they. They pop over to critique and advocate for the things that are important and then they're gone. Like there, there's not a lot of grandparents that are bouncing at 4am so that the primary parent gets a full night's sleep outside of feeding from their body if that's what they're choosing to do. And so you know, these are the types of conversations I really like having with my clients, because they might be the first time, so like when, when they say things like well, I'm, I don't know, circumcision's like a big one, but we'll go there Like I'm, I'm going to circumcise.
Bianca:And I'm always like, cool, why, cause the research right now is not supporting it anymore. Um, it's, it's. Some countries have called it genital mutilation and they're actively not doing it. So like, just tell me, tell me actively not doing it. So like, just tell me, tell me, tell me about it, because I don't, I mean that one's a bit I do care because it's not supported and it's, but it's a surgery.
Bianca:But yeah, but I'm like, tell me about it. And then the number one reason is either males are like I want them to look like me, um, or or the kids in my locker room got made fun of and I'm like, okay, but now your child would be in the minority, outside of religious based circumcision, and they're like no, no, like they just can't accept it.
Bianca:And then again in Europe it's a little bit different because the rates are different, but in North America the rates were very high through the everything, essentially up until the 90s and so, and then in the hetero context we have moms who have some commentary about their sexual experiences with intact or circumcised foreskins, and I'm like neither of these reasons are anything to do with health, neither of them are anything to do with, like hearing that there's a neurotrauma around circumcision and none of you have reflected some of the risk factors, like a history of penile cancer, your family or you intend to move to an area with high HIV and AIDS transmissions, like these factors that would be very much rooted in their child as an individual and not as something of what it means to them about the parents, and so I mean circumcision is just a tiny one, no-transcript, concerned about this, like what about if your child was sensitive, feels upsetting to you, and then when you have grandparents there to be like? So if we now know the neuroscience around cortisol and cry it out and see it as I mean Gabor Mate has now gone as far as to call it a human rights violation, which I echo. It's not your parents' fault, it's not the parents' fault. It's not the parents' fault, it's practitioners that are misinforming you. You're doing everything right and you're doing the very best you can. I see you and I love you, and if you did it, don't take that on. It can be reversed and you can love your children through that. But but as long as doctors are telling you this is healthy and it's not a risk and they've been telling generations of parents and you know so.
Bianca:Our grandparents have now heard this and they're bringing that into the space and then you have the parents you like everybody, with this misinformation and this idea that it's healthy and it teaches resilience and it teaches independence, and so we've got these really complicated concepts that are rooted in mostly social things and have an impact on health. And as long as you can have somebody in there like a doula who's trained to have these kinds of conversations, we can lay out. Let's look at the health indicators here. Let's look at what this means to you and your family. Let's factor in the values, because values are really critical and they do inform how we make our decisions and put out all the pieces and make a plan together that everyone's going to support, because if you have somebody running in the opposite direction.
Bianca:It's really only going to harm the primary parent, which is mostly moms, and then they're not going to be able to be their best, which then indirectly harms the baby. So everybody's trying to do what's best for the baby, but really we're like sabotaging an already very precarious, under under supported system um of this really intense dyad between the parent, the primary parent, aka mums um and their baby or babies yeah, that last bit is is huge, because I'm a huge fan of the idea that if we take care of the mom, if we primarily are, the primary focus is on the mother rather than the baby.
Peter:We're not going to break the kid right. That is just not going down. It's a chat with someone the other the other day, it's it's possible, but you have to really really put some effort into breaking a child yeah, yeah, they're very resilient, yeah, exactly.
Peter:I don't want to phrase that like some sort of psychopath, but it really is important for me to understand, for people to understand, that if the mother is feeling well within herself and is functioning as best as she can and is calm and is relaxed in a way or as relaxed as she can be and feels healthy and feels confident in her choices and is not a ball of stress and, you know, is mentally as stable as she could possibly be, um, because you mentioned the six-week checkup earlier and, as I always point out, there's a reason that's at six weeks, right, and the reason is because after two to three weeks you're still much more likely to feel like you might harm yourself and you feel depressed, and they don't want that in the statistics.
Peter:And those hormones have died down a little bit after weeks four or five. So at week six we can ask you the question. So, do you still feel all right? Yeah, I feel fine with myself now. Thank you, we've done a good job. But you have to make it through weeks two, three and four, quite often indeed, like you said by yourself, which is your most vulnerable, vulnerable time, and therefore I always say you can't. Okay, you could, but most people would not break their baby by getting things wrong in weeks two, three and four you really you just wouldn't.
Peter:If you, if you and I'll be very blunt if you keep feeding that thing, then you keep letting it sleep, it will be fine, it will, it really will be okay. There is you can't. If you, if you love it and you feed it and you take even basic fundamental care of it, there's no lasting damage that you will do at weeks two, three or four. However, you can do some tremendous damage to mother at weeks two, three and four by ignoring her, by always fighting with her, by creating a ball of stress, by creating tension and struggle within the family and, like you said, quite often, you know grandparents butting in two sets of grandparents and and another parent and all that sort of stuff, and you know family struggles quite often start with a baby from the you know, uh yeah, it gets so much worse.
Bianca:Yes, exactly, and if it was bad, it gets terrible, and if it was fine, it gets bad.
Peter:Yes, exactly because, because resentment sit in or set in quite quickly if you don't have that conversation that you were talking about and that you can have with them as a doula, with especially and this is going to sound patriarchal especially with the mother-in-law, because she was likely the primary caregiver of one of the parents. Right, because that's just a generational thing. So she's going to have maybe some set ideas as to how it's best to take care of the baby and she may well, rightly or wrongly, feel a little bit of resentment if you choose to go about it in a different way. Let me put it that way because I don't want to sound like that was very diplomatic, that was good, isn't it?
Peter:yeah, I really pride myself on that one, because you know everybody's seen, everybody loves raymond, right that that show that that was a thing like 20 years ago, so I'm really aging myself here, but it's we're the same, so we're excited.
Peter:Keep going so so everybody, every grandparent, is Marie, as in Raymond's mom, that is. That is a caricature of of a real thing and everybody knows that raymond's wife I want to say deborah uh yes, she could not stand to be around marie and it altered. It was all to do with the prissy marie never thinking that whatever she did was good enough, and that sort of thing really happens quite a bit, um, or I see happening regularly.
Peter:The amount of women that roll their eyes at me when I talk and when they say, oh, my parent, my in-laws, are coming to stay over, and they roll their eyes. I'm like, ah, jesus, you know, good luck, you have them for a week.
Bianca:And it's supposed to be to help and it's never to help, and and it creates these really complicated splits because, um, you know, full disclosure, most people, most husbands, are taking care of their moms and then their wives take care of them. So it's like the new, the new journey of, of who's doing the emotional labor for them and, um and so now they have this like both their carers in the same space, and it's these like, oh man, it's wildly complicated and it's really stressful and I feel, um, I feel deeply committed to changing what this looks like because that was my experience. Um, I built Babel Mia because I brought my daughter home from the hospital.
Bianca:Right then I was like unsupported, under-resourced. I lived with my partner, who was unsafe, and their mom who, so I was like, and my family was 4,000 kilometers away and I was in like a very different familial system than I was raised in, which I was raised in like an attachment, parenting, like kind of hippie parents which was a big deal in the seventies and eighties like vegan, home, birth, homeschooled, like very nurturing, and I was in this opposite. I was in an opposite environment, and I remember pacing with my daughter like just bouncing and bouncing for anybody who can't see me um for everybody who can't see me.
Bianca:And I remember just bouncing, being like what the hell just happened to me, cause I had to work so hard to have an uninterrupted labor and delivery, like so hard, and I paid I call it like the the practitioner tax, where they're if they didn't get you in birth, they'll get you right after. And so they came in and they did an um, unmedicated full vaginal construction, um, and I kept like screaming, obviously because I had no pain management in my labor, and so that's burned in my mind, this moment of like I'm supposed to have that catch your breath and hold your baby, and instead I had this man come in and start sewing up my labia with no freezing. And so I'm now like I'm home, being like what, nobody's helping me. What did I just do? I wanted this to be this like really powerful moment because I'd witnessed home birth, like my sibling brought it home, like I was. I was really excited about my birth. I wasn't scared about any part of it. I was like this is my warrior moment.
Bianca:And I remember thinking like this can't, this can't be like. That can't be birth for people and this can't be postpartum for people. And so I pivoted, stopped my med school path and I was like I have to do something about this. And I just started solving problems for parents based on the things that I had experienced, and I thought it was because I was under-resourced. I was in my 20s. I kept explaining all these things and I was like, oh, I'm talking to people across all backgrounds, all class markers, we're all having the exact same experience, which was so surprising to me at the time.
Bianca:Now it's not at all, because I spent almost 20 years doing this, and so I just started going, going problem by problem, so I started protecting birthers, and then I wanted I needed more help because my practice got so big so fast in Toronto, and so then I started bringing on people, but they were coming in with just weekend doula trainings, which is like it's bonkers to me that people take a weekend training and go out work in a medical field, and so I was like, oh, oh, my gosh, we're all.
Bianca:I mean, I had background in post-secondary school and but I was like, oh, you can't just come and touch my clients after a weekend training. So then I started building a more substantive training and so I built a four month long training that's, you know, full-time in school, and so but I it was again because my new problem was having people qualified to come into the space with my clients that had taken such good care of nurturing this. You know, this bubble of wellness and self-care of like true self-care, not bubble baths, I mean, unless that's your self-care thing, then you do you.
Bianca:But, and so then I was like, well, I should start training people. And then I was like, well, now I can only train people in Toronto. So I started moving and so this. But all of it has been this, my life's work of like we cannot, I cannot know that people are birthing like this and not do something about it. And I cannot send people home into this really intimate time where we're raising the next generation Like this matters, like we're, these are like next stewards of our, of our, of our stories and our planet and our, like our art, like whatever you find important. This, this is the next.
Bianca:These are the people coming up, and I knew that as I started doing my work, I saw all the ways I did it wrong as a parent and I've I can't tell you how many times to my daughter I've been like, okay, so I just want to clean this up. I know more now. I thought this was a good idea. It wasn't because of this reason, and she's just like, oh, thank you, okay, yeah, no, great, I mean, she's a, she's a big, going up to university next year kid, but I was, you know, just to to see like the more you know, and as you and as you know, and as you and as you go, and and having these conversations that people aren't having around, like these, like what is important and how, how did we get here and how do we get out of here? Because the, the stats are just abysmal. I mean, looking specifically in north america, the uk actually they're way better than canada and the us.
Peter:The low bar I would.
Bianca:Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. But like the rate of us surviving is is so low, let alone thriving, um, and and if we do have a birth, that we make it through, um, the rates due to, to, to mental health crises in the postpartum period I mean suicide's the top, one of the top causes of death of new parents like in the first year. Like we have to talk about that, that's a problem. And and if we don't get to that state, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody that doesn't remember like the darkness of that first year.
Bianca:Like the, the, the darkness, the loneliness, the loss of identity, the like brown hog day of hell. Like you're just like the, the darkness, the loneliness, the loss of identity, the like brown hog day of hell. Like you're just like the same thing over and over and over again. And this spans all class markers, because I remember I've had clients that are like like the uber rich of canada, like the uber, uber, uber rich, and and so I'm like you have to be protected from this. And where they take me aside, me, like I hate him. I hate every room in this house. I don't like my baby, what did I do, and these fully staffed homes, these are people that, like, don't think about anything of like fueling their car or what's going to be on the table, or their clothes being clean, and they are.
Bianca:They sound exactly the same as somebody who is you know not who's under resourced um, because the worry is not those pieces now being under resourced has a whole other level of stress and I see you under resourced parents and you're doing an amazing job with not enough, and I'm sorry that you're parenting in that condition, but the and the heart and the like, how they're feeling about their life and their partners and their intimacy and their safety is was the same across everybody, that they were like this is, this is hell and I don't know. I just think it. I believe it can be better than that. We need to keep, even though I in my lifetime I probably don't see that big of a difference of the system changing, but I know that I've protected already hundreds of thousands of parents, so like I could fill a stadium with people whose lives have changed, which is amazing for me. But when I look at the big picture of this, like beast I'm pushing up against.
Bianca:You know, this medical cycle that is designed to harm us Like. It's designed to make us feel bad. It's designed to do have more interventions. It's designed for more pharmaceuticals. It's designed and none of it is taking, is taking care of this, this relationship of parenthood, not the work of parenthood, the relationship of parenthood which has been lost and it's been forgotten. And um, and I, you know, I want us to remember. I literally have signs all over, like it's on my phone, it's on my, it's up above my lamp. It says women remembering.
Bianca:Like I want us to remember this, this, this power of this act of of us having children and being the people who can bring forth, and, and how terrifying that is for to to know that and how hard these systems and policies and you know, the patriarchy has has robbed us of that and made us feel so small and, you know, made us doubt ourselves and our ability and our strength.
Bianca:And, no surprise, we can pull out stats being, like, you know, failure to progress or labor dystocia is on the rise, failure to feed and our strength.
Bianca:And, no surprise, we can pull out stats being, like you know, failure to progress or labor dystocia is on the rise, failure to feed from our body, like we have all these markers that just keep using the words that we're failing. But it's because we're in this condition that it's designed to have us feel dependent upon somebody else to feed our babies and get our babies out of our bodies and get us pregnant. And and I think that if, if we just continue to have these kinds of dialogues, we can depersonalize the things that happen and and like, circumvent that, that feeling of low, and and go step into the feeling of like. Oh, it wasn't my body, it was generational use of Pitocin that changed my brain structure and therefore I couldn't get pregnant on my own, I couldn't go into labor on my own, I couldn't get the baby out on my own, I couldn't feed from my body on my own. Hat tip there to Michelle O'Donnell's research.
Peter:Right, yeah, because it's because there's a again, you covered a tremendous amount of it. That is pretty much how I feel about this whole postpartum recovery malarkey that I kind of do. It is, you know, when Meghan Markle and she lived in Canada for a while she's borderline Canadian, isn't she Borderline Borderline Canadian. She lived there for six weeks with Harry. I'm not sure whether she's Canadian or.
Bianca:American. Yeah, she lived in Canada for a long time Because she filmed Suits is built in Toronto.
Peter:Yeah, so there you go she lives there right now she lives back in Canada. I thought they moved to California. Oh, there you go, she's basically Canadian. So when she came out and she did the interview with I don't know if it was Oprah or before that, but she said something along the line of everyone was asking about my kid. No one asked how I was doing.
Peter:I know, and the press went nuts, right, the press went how dare you? You are so privileged and all that sort of stuff. And, much like yourself, I've worked and I'm working with some people who have more money in their bank account than I will ever see in my lifetime and it's just sitting there and they're very comfortable. They've got two nannies and they've got. Financially, they are well off, let me put it that way. Um, that does not mean that you, as a mother, cannot struggle with the situation. That is my experience, as in yeah, you have two nannies. As in that can look after the toddlers and drive them to school and all that sort of stuff. You don't have to clean your house, which is, like you said, a whole other layer of stress, but that does not necessarily mean that you, within yourself, are doing well. Um, yeah, a huge bank account doesn't protect you from that.
Bianca:None of it, especially women, exactly.
Peter:And it's absolutely insane that people think it does that. It even registers with people that, because most of the people criticizing there that had a pop out at Meghan Markle were probably parents themselves and, admittedly, it was probably mainly guys, right, because you know that's what they do. But also it's something other mothers would then say you can't be struggling because you have more money than I do, and I struggled more. And I always tell people listen, just because someone is in a deeper hole than you can't be struggling because you have more money than I do and I struggled more. And I always tell people yeah, listen, just because someone is in a deeper hole than you doesn't mean you're not in a hole.
Bianca:Well, especially because the money piece. Like women, we live in a constant fear of our safety. Um, like and and and. For most women if you're listening and you're like I don't think I do it's become just like a hum that's always going in the background. Um, but there's a precarity to our existence, um, and so when we make it through another day alive, there's a little bit of a like. We made it through alive, but nighttime is the scariest time, so it's like any bad stuff happens to us, like, so we live in that state and money does not take that away. And so once we become a parent, we have a personal precarity, and so now we're the dependent on, like, trusting that nobody's going to harm us with a dependent, and so that state is like money does not remove this.
Bianca:And I mean I've lived in a very significant like. I was raised with financial privilege and then I left my family nest and had, like, complete severance. It so happens when you're gay and you get lots of tattoos and so, and so I lived, I raised my daughter in poverty, and, and so I've had a lived experience of a very wide range of socioeconomic status, but the feeling of lacking safety and hoping that I'm going to be okay, hoping I'm going to be okay financially, hoping I'm going to be okay physically, emotionally, and that's a state that's really, really stressful. Now it is a bit easier when the work of parenthood, like I talk about those silos, the work of parenthood, the work of motherhood and the relationship of motherhood, but the relationship of motherhood also comes with all the strife of all the things we're talking about, and so these are the things that can't be contracted out. And, unfortunately, whether we look at our romantic relationships because most people boil their romantic relationships down to a division of labor and and and like who's responsible for what money, things, um, and and to me I'm like, if you can contract it out, it's, it's not going to be a thing that can, like it, impact your heart space, um, and so you know relationships like if you're just, if your relationships have been boiled down to negotiating who's going to pick up groceries, there's, there's not a lot of intimacy and you'll probably feel really sad, even if somebody else does do all of those things.
Bianca:And it's the same with parenthood and I just like we've just we've focused on all the wrong things and so much busy work and not a lot of support and and not we've just like lost sight of our emotional and spiritual health. I know it's going to sound real woo, woo, and if anybody should do me, I'm like really type A, I love a list, I love research, I'm very pragmatic and as I get older and I'm getting, you know, getting closer to that 50 mark, um, I realized that we've been doing it all wrong and, um, you know, I've I've since even just like having I probably have my daughter living under the same roof with me for like maybe one more year, and I know that I'm now for the first time, experiencing the joy of parenthood, because I've stopped even considering it, about any of the things that I thought it was about and I was. It hit me last summer when I was doing some writing and I was like, oh, I have one year, let's test this out. And so I'm three months in and it's, I can say with confidence. This has been a completely different experience for me, cause I started looking at all the like. I stopped looking at the markers that I thought were important before, and I know when you guys are in the thick of it all the listeners here who have you're in that zero to five, five years old bucket. It's very different than almost 17.
Bianca:But the things that we're stressing about are probably not actually our worries that. They're the worries of being being. You know how we're being judged as a parent and what we think it means about us as parents, whether it's like you feel like you need to drop off snacks at the, at the daycare, or it's your turn to volunteer in the classroom. If you don't want to do it, just like, look at you don't have to make that decision right now, but look at what are you like. Why do you not want to do it and why are you doing it? Um, and just have that conversation with yourself as a, as a good starting off place, um, which I know went wildly on a tangent yeah we were talking about it basically.
Peter:It basically boils down to that, that same thing, what you mentioned earlier that a doula can help with, which is just to question why you want certain things to be done, just to just like a sounding board, to just not not necessarily challenge you, but to just go. Why is that like a almost like a therapist, without having to lie flat on the couch, where you can just go? When you're talking about circumcision, where you're talking about nighttime sleeping, nighttime routines, uh, crying, or when you pick your doctrine, parenting, any of that sort of stuff where you just go. And why is that and why do you like? Just so you can, uh, do I really want this or do I not really want this? And that sounds like a really.
Peter:There's a lot of stuff we do in life, but in general in life it's on automatic pilot, right, we go, we go to school, maybe go to university, depending, if you want to do that sort of thing. You go, get married, you have a couple of rugrats, you raise them and before you know it, you're 60 and miserable, right, and that is pretty much how, because if you do pilot, that that is how. That is how that goes, if you never stop at any stage to go, and I was the same. I had a pretty decent career about 15 years ago and I was miserable, but I had a couple of nice holidays a year, right, new york and may dubai in january, that type of stuff. And you know this is the way life's supposed to be.
Peter:Yeah, I work. I work 80 hours a week and you know I always want to punch a wall. But you know this is again my generation middle-aged white guy. We used to punch walls a lot, right, that type of Billy Burr, boston-level anger, always just under the surface because we were miserable in our existence, without ever asking why we were miserable in our existence. An automatic partner for too long. You're not creating a happy environment for yourself or for your kids. So it's really powerful that someone like a doula and I think a lot of people listening to this will be thinking actually it sounds like a more powerful profession than they thought it was going to be, as in I know me too.
Bianca:Peter, I agree. Anybody thinking that right now I had to go through such a paradigm shift when I pivoted from doctor, which I held way up here, my hands way up in the air, and then I was like doula? And I was like, is there another way I can change the world and have a better thing? And and I felt like that probably till my mid-30s, until I was like my mission is not to to participate in any part of the patriarchy, including a hierarchy of careers, and I can hit my revenue goals if I made more money than a doctor did being a doula. And I did the mission that I wanted to do.
Bianca:And so one of the things if people are like curious about doula work is it can be really magical.
Bianca:So like we have two streams of folks that are really drawn to this work or just found themselves being like, oh, I didn't actually know, this is what I wanted to do, but one of them would be kind of a practitioner.
Bianca:You know people who are chiropractors, massage therapists, prenatal yoga teachers that they come into our training because they want to be able to answer questions better and understand the scope of doula care all the things we're talking about right now, but they might not necessarily do hands-on care, they've just integrated that into their practice, um.
Bianca:But our main, our main channel of students that go through our program um are here are new parents who either had this birth that they want to make sure nobody has, or they had a birth that they loved and they want to make sure everybody has. And it can be so healing and redemptive that you know I talk so much about how I became a better parent and how this is reported by many of my students. Because the skills of being a doula, they get to take it home with them and do that healing at home. You get to protect birth, especially when you weren't protected. And we do have therapy. That is, all of our students and alumni have access to free therapy with their tuition because we want people to be healed healers Like we don't want you to.
Bianca:You know as soon as somebody makes a suggestion that you can identify, as was like the tsn turning point or like where your birth went off the rails, and so now, when they suggest it to your client as a doula, we don't want you to either. Have you know, relive it, have flashbacks, guide your clients some way one way or another.
Bianca:Like we need, yeah, like we need you to to keep this neutrality.
Bianca:That is critical for the role, and you can't do that when you're carrying around stuff that you might not have even identified as a trigger for you or a trauma or a reminder of a crisis in your life. And so you know, we want to make sure. So because of that, we have students coming in that for the first time, get to process that, get to normalize, that, get to be right or angry at the right source or people or system or agency or hospital or whatever it is, and and stop internalizing that. Um, and then you get to go out and you get to do the thing that nobody did for you or that you wished you had, um, and and like I can't, I can't even express how grateful I am that I found this career and this, this life's work and this mission, um, because I know what it's done in my family, my, my family here, um, where it's allowed me to do even healing from my family of origin stuff, um, how I've built a chosen family and how I've passionately protected parents.
Bianca:Whether it's at a cocktail party or in a hospital room, I show up the same way of, just like you know, amplifying them and making them feel really confident and challenging them on on the things that have just become part of the water that we swim in. You know, just like I don't know, sometimes people talk about birth nonstop around me and I'm parenting.
Bianca:You probably have the same experience like, no matter where you are everywhere, grocery store lineup, whatever it is, and the number of times that people say things like, oh, I love my doctor because I asked her a question and she's like I'm sorry, when did you get a medical degree since I last talked to you? And those kind of things where I'm like so tell me, why did you love your doctor about that? Because their doctor is essentially saying I know more about your body than you. You cannot challenge me. And so just being like tell me about that. And asking questions and having them land at a place of like wait, why did my doctor say I can't have a boundary around my body and shut me down, because I'm also not a doctor and but I don't want to go in guns blazing with that. And these are the skills that I've acquired through, you know, building my doula practice, training other doulas and and being out in the world um supporting, with a nonjudgmental trauma, informed lens.
Peter:And, like you said, it's interesting. Someone I know was um, gave birth and immediately wanted to become like a lactation consultant and then was on her way to wanting to become a doula um, but was going to do like the weekend course. Right, and we all know anybody listening to this. If you're in the health and fitness industry, oh man, it's rife with weekend courses that can turn you into a specialist. Right it is, it is full of that.
Peter:It's terrible they're all terrible but dire starts with rectal specialists. I was. Someone asked me to go on to their diocese of rectal course not that long ago and I do that. They do this for 12 years and I know what I'm doing because of the basics, the basics, um. But then now you pay me 600 bucks and you know you'll be a real specialist after 24 hours of learning.
Peter:No, because you know I've got 10 000 hours under my belt and I'm barely I mean, I call myself an expert because I've done the 10 000 hours, but even now I'm learning on a daily basis and I've last two weeks ago or last week or whenever this thing comes out um, I did my 250th episode about things I've changed my mind about over the last 10 years. Right, and I've been a postpartum person for the last more than 10 years, but it's it's a staggeringly long list of things that I've been wrong about, things that science has moved on from, things that I want to believe that I now know. Ah, yes, I have some unlearning to do, as, as my uh, my uh friends would would call it um, you know, we are very much you know when you come into this type of space as a middle-aged white guy. I wasn't always middle-aged, but even at the time.
Peter:40 is middle age right as a white guy or a white woman or whatever. You have some unlearning to do when it comes to this oh so much but what you spoke about with regards to statistics and all that sort of stuff that you, if you come from a position of privilege, you can't necessarily see because you just assume that it's the way for everybody, or my generation has really been told that. If it's not that way for you, it's probably your own fault.
Bianca:Yeah, neoliberalism at its finest.
Peter:Right. And you know I'm big. I was a big fan of the patriarchy right. We make 20% more than women and that's a win for me, but not so much when my wife temporarily became the main breadwinner and all of a sudden now it's not so nice.
Bianca:Not so cute, huh.
Peter:It's not so cute, but it actually financially impacts me, and that's. The nice thing that I liked about your doula training is that it's significantly. To go back to my original stupid point of the weekend courses it's not a weekend course, so you can actually come out of, was it three, four?
Bianca:months. Yeah, it's 17 weeks of school.
Peter:And it's not live, so not like watch a bunch of videos.
Bianca:It's you're in live classrooms but online, yeah, but you can ask questions you can participate.
Peter:So you're not live classrooms but online. Yeah, but you can. You can ask questions, you can participate, so you're not just watching youtube clips for four months and then you pick something up at the end and just you know, because you have a lot of it's very intense yeah, and they come with.
Peter:You know, you may well have one I'm not sure but like facebook groups and all that sort of stuff that people become members of, but you'll have an active Facebook group rather than the. I will just let people watch videos and they can discuss it amongst themselves and, you know, hopefully at the end of that I make money. All those courses are money-making machines, right, and I always tell people listen. If you look at HPNB HPNB is a prime example for this I give three months postpartum stuff for free and then after that they pay maximum five months. So you pay 50 bucks for like limitless year-long accent. That's my little plug done, but that's not the point.
Peter:It is not it is not that I have several thousand people sign up to that thing and most of them cancel within the first three months because you know, why would you not? That's a free bit, that's what you come for and I'm okay with that, but it's not like you can't make a living from that, and it's exactly what you're doing. You've put together a really good course and a really good training program and the easy thing to do would have been to just start up a 24 hour, become a doula after 24 hours, because that's what people buy more, right? That just is. Yeah, you guarantee special hands down. I mean, that's the easy sell, uh, and after 25 you can call yourself, uh, a specialist. Do allow, you get a certificate emailed over to give, to print out yourself or whatever. You get a little book, yeah, and and all that. That's where the money sits, the easy money, yeah. It is much more difficult to convince people to sign up for 17 weeks then yeah, can I brag here, peter?
Bianca:yeah sure okay, ready for my bragging. So, because my goal is actually to change the face of reproductive health and justice, um, the things that we've built into our course, so, um, it's so comprehensive, like our doulas, learn leave knowing about your, you know, pelvic girdle and they know about medications.
Bianca:They know like there's very little that you couldn't answer the question. If anybody's curious about being a doula and this is actually making a bit nervous we do it in the most gentle baby steps, assuming everybody has too much other stuff on their plate. So the course has been very strategically designed for very busy mothers and queer folks. Okay, so we have our peer mentors literally will like call you as often as you want to help you, like week by week. If you want, like an amazing team, we have our free therapy. That's all included. All the classes are live. We have it in multiple languages.
Bianca:So if you need support in Spanish, french I'm trying to think about that oh, we have a huge pocket in Southeast Asia, so there's multiple dialects there if you live in Southeast Asia and it's just it's bonkers to me to think of the other things out there, because we also teach about running a business. In case you don't work for a hospital program or an agency and you do want to go the entrepreneur route, we teach you like in bite-sized chunks and and we moved online in 2012. So we've really mastered creating a real live experience in the digital space. But what sucks is not only is there a bunch of weekend trainings which cannot teach you everything you need to know, but also everybody moved online so there's so much more noise that people who are like I don't know, I threw it up on Kajabi and now it's a thing and not like a really intentional community that has multiple touch points that people can participate to comfort.
Bianca:So if you're like I just want to come to class and be done, but I don't want to come to office hours, I don't want to come to practicum sessions, I don't want to come to book club, like whatever, I don't want to go to therapy, then you don't have to do those things. But to have the option of a fully immersive experience, especially knowing you know women and queer folks are typically have so many barriers to access education, and so to remove those barriers and to create the opportunity to. For some of you, this might be the post-secondary school that you never got to go to, and so it's that somebody put up on a site and it got a lot of traction that they called Babel, mia, the Harvard of dual schools.
Peter:I have a lot to say about. Harvard and all of it, but it's highly regarded.
Bianca:Yeah, and so I was. You know it was. It was profound for us to see that, because, um, we want people to feel empowered and to feel healed and to feel, um, really confident in going out and serving your clients. Because I was pre-med and I still went to my first birth being like I don't know anything about this, and I remember holding my notebook from my weekend training in the parking lot and this was pre-smartphones because that's how old I was and so I couldn't even text or whatever.
Bianca:And I was just standing there being like what do I, what do I do first? And and we spend weeks being like, so here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna walk in, take off your shoes, put your bag down, just witness, go wash your hands, say this, and so, like, by the time you get there, you have until you can branch out and like, make your brand, your own flavor and do the things you want, but like, we literally hold your hand to that kind of level, all while teaching you these um and you know these concepts that span everything from you know types of products to understanding the patriarchy and neoliberalism and how it's impacted parents and like, everything in between them.
Peter:I'm very proud of it I actually actually actually should be like I said it is. It is one of the few things that I've come across online that I genuinely believe. You know, if you're not not this kind of like a no brainer, and I know some people, I'm on threads a lot. You know the, the, the meta, sort of Twitter version cause you can't go on Twitter anymore, especially not when you look like me.
Peter:You know the, the, the meta sort of Twitter version go on Twitter anymore, especially not when you look like me. You're six foot four and bold right.
Peter:If I still had an ex account, I would be very quickly rounded up as a dodgy character, so I'm on threads and a lot of the talk amongst the podcast communities now that everything is an ad right, and I want to stipulate that this really isn't, but it is.
Peter:It is one of those things that you know. You look online, you see the courses and it's the. If you are interested in being a doula, you need to become a good one, right? It is that simple 100, yeah, and you can't take the shortcut, and there are only a few courses then that actually qualify, um, that you can take and feel relatively confident within yourself that you can just go, because as soon as you qualify, as soon as you're certified, you know nothing, but at least you know you know nothing the first couple of months. You stumble out, yeah, just stumble through the things and it'll be fine, you'll be all right, you have the knowledge, but you don't, but you kind of you don't know how to do your own thing. Um, this is one of those courses that you know. If you're going to do it, this is what you do, do you?
Bianca:know what I mean.
Peter:Thank you for saying that, same way that my neighbor is a plumber and he's awesome with apprentices. If you want to be a plumbing apprentice, you go work with my neighbor. You don't go work with the guy around the corner who just says, after a week you know enough and off you go. You need to really, because changing career and starting a new business and pivoting your life and all that sort of stuff. Cause let's be honest, like you said, most of the people that are listening to this that might consider this will be postpartum women and they likely have done something before they felt pregnant. That is the way of the world. So it's usually a career change and a pivoting of a business.
Peter:And that's a scary time, yeah, which I understand, because you don't know whether you'll make the money and you know you might have a successful but stressful job right now or a not so successful job, and it's still. Whatever you do, it's still an investment of time and money and all that sort of stuff. And is it going to work? It can only work out. This stuff can only work out if you do it, if you're, if you're investing in the right opportunity. If you go to the weekend, doula course, it's not going to work for you. It just isn't. It's a nice way for the course provider to sell a lot, but it's not good for you to become good at what you do and have the confidence.
Bianca:I think for moms, too, one of the things that I feel is really important is we're wildly creative, women are wildly creative, and so one of the things that I feel is really important is we're wildly creative, women are wildly creative, and um, and so one of the things that I thought a lot about when I did my built a training was um, the, the creative way we can use these tools of doula care. That's not necessarily in a birth suite or doing hand over hand infant feeding, and so every week that they in my, in my training I also talk about this on my podcast and blogs like there's lots of ways, because I think this information is important. Like, when I went to my doula training, they were like you're going to be this type of doula and this is the job you're going to do and this is the rate about you're going to charge, and one of the things that I started implementing was what, what job did you have before you came into this training? What skillsets do you love doing and what traits do you have that, like, you might not even recognize, but people always call you to fix X, y, z, and I want people to start imagining how all the rules around protecting parents and changing the face of reproductive health and justice, and so you know I've had people that are like I know I'm called the doula work and I'm in the training and I'm not sure how it's going to work because I have whatever five kids at home and I was a copywriter before and I'm like, well, be a copywriter in the field of reproductive health and justice, whether that's grant writing, whether you ghost write for doulas, you write a book, and so we go through and talk about skills. Whether you worked in a kitchen before you did housekeeping services, what can you do that doesn't feel like such a dramatic 180. That can work if you just had a baby and you're working from home. I teach so much about again. You can come to class. You can also hear this on my podcast. You can write. I write about this all the time because I'm like let's gather all the things you love and let's see if you're feeling called to protect babies and bellies on with those parents.
Bianca:People need graphics that are trauma-informed and have the appropriate imagery and convey the right materials, because I only hire my marketing team and my education team and my writing team Everybody that works at Babel. Mia has gone through the program and has a passion for changing the face of reproductive health and justice, because I don't want to hire somebody who's amazing at Facebook ads but they put up stuff that I'm like that's. Those words don't make sense, you're commenting in the wrong threads. I would never. You know, a doula wouldn't say that or that. Doesn't move the needle in the right way, because you can learn how to do Facebook ads once.
Bianca:Like I think those skills are harder to acquire is is our specialties that we have in reproductive health and justice, and so that's one of the things that if anybody's like feeling kind of called I call them birth nerds, like you're, just like I don't know, I just love talking about it, I love watching it, I love reading about it. You can merge the things you love and be a protector in this space, be an advocate in this space, be an educator in this space, because there's lots of different ways that that can look whether you're making digital products, whether you're teaching cooking classes to new parents, whether you're doing batch cooking as a private service, housekeeping for postpartum parents, birth tub cleanup. These are just some of the ideas, business ideas for you guys. But so that you go into that first 12 hour postpartum space and you do a reset at home births and you get rid of the birth tub and the birth tub like it's literally doula's veins of existence, cause I'm always like hey, I'm going to go, but like, what are you going to do about this tub?
Bianca:And I don't really want to walk out the door without this family having a plan, but like I don't have seven hours because I've just been here for 21. And so that's like these are the services and business ideas that and like creativity and it gives this like platform for women and queer folks to stay in a lane that they feel really powerful. And so, if you're curious and you have this birth nerd, I want you to know that just being in the Babel Mia community paid or unpaid, there's so many ways. We have scholarship programs. If you don't have any money, like, come, because we'll pay for your tuition. We don't want barriers to access and we want people to, you know, decide what they want to do.
Bianca:Like we've had scientists come in because they're like I don't know if that's birth, and then they made dehydrated breast milk supplements for from like these things, cause they came in with a background in chemistry and they were like I just feel, called and they've made a product that is so cool, um, because they had all this context and so, um, explore it. There's a reason why you're being drawn to it and and explore it and um just like be in kind of a creative entrepreneurial space where everything is in a commitment to change the face of the parenting experience that currently is existing these now there we're, now we're talking right.
Peter:So because that that is, that is a wonderful message and, like you said, there there's so much cross. If your goal isn't just to, in a very straightforward way, hands-on, help moms have an easier birthing experience and a lot of navigate the health care system or whatever it is, there is a lot you can do around it. That, because it's the same with postpartum care and all, and there's a huge overlap between what, what you do and what I do and all that sort of stuff, right, yeah it's, it's, but it's.
Peter:There is so much more out there and it's like you said. I wish I'd spoken to you before I hired my. I used to have a pr team and they had no idea what the hell they were doing.
Peter:They charged me a lot, but they had no idea what the hell they were doing, so everything that came out was horrific and I paid a fortune for like eight or nine months and I'm like ah, this is because this is where I built my brand and everything was wrong. Yeah, because they didn't get what I was really trying to do. They came from it from the same angle that we spoke about earlier. They were all women, but they came from the angle of the patriarchal type. Success is measured purely in financial terms, or followers on facebook and likes on instagram. So when I left them, they were like yeah, we can have 400 instagram followers that you're working with and all as in influencers that you're working with, micro influencers that you're working with yeah basically we've given free stuff to them that never worked, um, so don't think no, but this is.
Peter:These aren't the people I'm trying to reach, right, we're reaching the wrong. That's what I agree. If I want to help as many people as possible, exactly like what, what you're saying which again is is what I love about the baby me, I think is if I want to help as many people as possible, as many women as possible, to recover postpartum, I can't charge a fortune to absolutely everybody, because that excludes then I'm essentially just helping middle class white women, right, that is fundamentally all you're doing. If I start charging a grand, a course, a grant for, for my online course, that is that those are the only people I reach, whereas now, if I look at my stats and the people I'm trying to reach, again, when I look at the podcast I chart in china which for me is mind-boggling because this is an English podcast, right, and I just talk about postpartum stuff and then I look at my membership for HBNB, and again, mostly free people, mostly free people.
Bianca:About 70% are Eastern Europe, africa or Asia where people just don't have access to this stuff. I'm real hot in the MENA region. I'm like real hot in the MENA region, I mean.
Peter:but that's so cool, right? Because those are the people you actually. Those are the people that everybody, very bluntly everybody, can sell to a British person and an American and a Canadian. They've got money and it's fine. And we all just pitch straight down the middle and we charge a hundred quid for a course and put a crappy course together and these are the easy sales. These are the courses you see advertised on Facebook a tremendous amount. But to actually genuinely affect change, we have to think well outside that particular box. And if you're saying I want to change the face of pre and postpartum care and how women give birth and that whole system, then you can't just focus on Canada.
Bianca:No, it would make no sense. Yeah, exactly, that's just not how it works.
Peter:So it's a lovely thing, cool. We've been going for a while and I've enjoyed every minute of it. But you know we've covered a tremendous amount of ground and I'm not sure how many more chapters I can actually put up. Right, when people see the podcast description and look at chapters, we've covered a tremendous amount of ground.
Bianca:Was there anything else you wanted to?
Peter:cover.
Bianca:No, I just I love that you're continuing these conversations. I'm really grateful for anybody that's giving a platform to you know, question, just question and challenge and as simultaneously be advocating and educating. So I'm really really grateful. Just question and challenge and um as simultaneously be advocating and educating. So I'm really really grateful. Um, if anybody's curious about birth work and there's lots of ways you can come just like hang out in our community. It's, they're free, um, there's no pressure and you can just be in space. We have tons of free events. We we do free challenges courses, we have free workshops, um, and we we have a a code there for you, for your folks, that um you'll be able to share in the show notes and you can um drop that link in and and just check us out on any of our social channels, which are always at babomia inc. B-e-b-o-m-i-a-i-n-c? Um and just be a part of that conversation there's.
Peter:There's great stuff happening yeah, and like I will. Obviously, like you said, I will link to absolutely everything, but you have one of the most user-friendly websites that I've ever seen.
Bianca:Uh, it's better than mine, right so let's spend more time on the website that I did we have a new one coming this year, so look out like you said, there's a lot of stuff on there.
Peter:There's a lot of information on there. I will obviously link to everything and all that sort of stuff. So I'm not happy now I will press stop record here, and press stop record is exactly what I did. Thanks very much to Bianca for coming on. I will link to the website Bebo Mia.
Peter:Like I said, I can't think of a better person to speak to when it comes to doula, doula ship, doula hood, and you guys should have asked that question what do you call it? Doula ship or doula hood? Check out the Bebo Mia page. I will put a little link in and then you'll get a little discount code and all that sort of stuff. They've created a little landing page. I get no pennies right for recommending you check that out. So we're very, very clear. I'd never take any commissions or anything like that. But if you're sitting at home and you're thinking, hey, you know, I always wanted to consider it a career change, how can I do it, how does it work and all that sort of stuff, the Babelmeer page has absolutely everything on it.
Peter:I love Bianca. I think she is one of the people to speak to about this type of stuff and you know she's been kicking them out for such a long time. She's absolutely lovely. And again, for everybody who was listening earlier on, you knew something was coming up about dealership. I'm sorry. Like I said, I'm trying to run a lot by myself and then I tried using somebody else and that didn't quite work. And you know, stuff gets delayed and stuff gets messed about. Check out, like I said, check out the Babelmia webpage Next week. I am talking to Dr De Decker. You're going to love that chat as well. You know what else can you do, right? I just you ask for interviews and you ask for guests, peterhealthypostnatalbodycom. And I try to blanch because that, my friend, is the kind of guy I am. Anyways, you take care of yourself. Cheers, bye now.