➡ DrTomCowan talks in this conversation with Ayla Cuenca, a birth doula with over a decade of experience. They discuss the importance of postpartum care, which is often overlooked in conventional medicine. Ayla explains the role of a doula as an emotional and physical support person during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. She emphasizes the importance of self-advocacy for women during the birthing process and the need for more comprehensive support for women post-birth.

➡ The text discusses the challenges faced by new mothers, including birth trauma, lack of support, and societal pressures leading to feelings of disconnection and overwhelm. It highlights the importance of proper education and support for new mothers, and criticizes the common solutions offered, such as bottle feeding and hiring a night nurse, which often lead to more problems. The author emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to postpartum care, including self-reflection, personal growth, and taking responsibility for one’s own health and well-being. The text also criticizes the medical system’s approach to postpartum depression, arguing that it often fails to address the root causes and instead focuses on medication and separation of mother and child.

➡ The text discusses a method called ‘birth alchemy’ used by a lactation consultant to help new mothers overcome breastfeeding challenges. This involves asking the mother about her feelings and past experiences, and suggesting that her current struggles might be influenced by her own upbringing. The consultant then helps the mother to rewrite her ‘story’ and create a new, positive narrative. The text also mentions a training program for postpartum doulas, which focuses on helping them resolve their own issues so they can better support new mothers.

➡ The text discusses the over-complication of parenting due to the convenience movement, which often neglects the child’s needs. It criticizes the excessive use of technology, such as ultrasounds and baby monitors, and the constant filming of children, which can lead to privacy violations and potential developmental issues. The text also highlights the importance of genuine connection and presence in parenting, and criticizes the trend of parents being constantly distracted by their devices. It suggests that this lack of attention can lead to attachment disorders and problematic behaviors in children.

➡ The text discusses the importance of understanding a baby’s cues and responses, especially after events like vaccinations or circumcision, which may cause discomfort. It emphasizes the need for parents to trust their instincts and observe their baby’s behavior to understand their needs. The text also talks about the concept of baby-led weaning and the importance of not rushing the introduction of solid foods. Lastly, it introduces a course that provides resources and training for parents to better understand and respond to their baby’s needs.

Okay, thanks, everybody, and welcome to another edition of conversations with Dr. Cowan and friends. And today, and I’m going to try to get the name correctly pronounced. That’s always a challenge. But a friend who I’ve known for a while, Isla Cuenca. Is that close. Ayla. Cuenca. Ayla. Oh, Ras. I got that. But you got the last name. I got the last Ayla. The last name’s always hard, especially in English. And I remember being in gymnastics competitions growing up, and it was like the ultimate butchering every possible way you could say my last name. And I didn’t know they were calling me up half the time, so it’s okay.

It’s interesting because people always mispronounce my last name, too, which seems weird because if you say, what is. How do you say C? O, W? Say cow? And Anne. And do people say Cowan? They say Cowan, which is weird. So I. I don’t know about you, but every time I say my name, I. I spell it. Oh, yeah. When people on the phone, like strangers ask me, I don’t even pronounce it the first time. I just spell out my first and last name. I don’t even bother. Yeah. Anyways, that’s not what we’re here to talk about, but so what we’re going to talk about is a subject that I would say I don’t know very much about, and that’s an overstatement because I may not know practically anything, which is the whole birth process, and then particularly postpartum care, which is something that never gets talked about in conventional medicine.

You know, after you have the baby, you’re either at home or you go home, and that’s the end of you. And unless you have a medical problem like mastitis or something, you’re basically done. And yet, from what I understand, lots of women have issues postpartum. And in fact, I would venture to say that we don’t do it. We being the American culture, we don’t do birth like anybody else who had any sense did birth. So this is one of those things that’s, to me, a huge problem that nobody talks about. It’s just under the radar now.

I can tell you that we had my three children. The first was born in a hospital because the midwife freaked out, and the next two were born at home. And. But we didn’t do anything after. I mean, I made dinner and that was it. So, anyways, welcome. Well, I’m going to. Ayla. Yeah, thank you. And give us a little bit about what you’re doing and particularly Interested in this upcoming and ongoing course in helping women get, you know, get help and help others during this postpartum period. So welcome. And tell us a little bit how you got here, who you are and what, what you’re doing.

Yeah, thank you. I’ve been a birth doula for over a decade now, and that’s really where. Just say what a birth doula is, because people may not know that. Yeah. So technically speaking, it’s an emotional and physical support person who understands birth that can hold the space while you move through the pregnancy, the birth, and then the immediate postpartum. So it’s not a new thing. It’s been around since the inception of humanity. There, you know, there are accounts cross culturally where women were supported by other women in the process. Whether it was the wise woman or the medicine woman or the elder in the village or the community.

There was always a woman in assistance and there were always other women who would come into support with various roles. So we can kind of see the origins of the midwife and the doula when we look at all of these accounts. So I’m not a medical, you know, support person. I don’t do any exams or take blood pressure or anything like that. And doulas are not trained in that. And there’s no. There’s no training for diagnosing anything. So, you know, people often say a doula is different than a midwife. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, people will say, I want to have a home birth.

Can you come to my birth and be my doula? I said, well, is there a midwife? They’re like, no. I thought that’s what you do is not the same thing. So it’s not. And I have worked with women who opt out of medical support, and they do a free birth. And I’ve been there to support them in their process. But they’ve taken full ownership and responsibility over their process. They’ve done their education, and they feel that medical support of any kind is not necessary for them. I’m not saying I think that that’s wrong or right. Either way, you know, it’s just their choice.

But then, in working with a midwife, midwives are similar to doctors in the sense that they offer prenatal care and testing if you want it, if that’s important to you. And they hold the very minimally when it comes to the labor and birth itself. They come in, they’ll do some checks, check the heart tones, you know, step out, place a doku in the other room, you know, come back later. It’s and then if there are complications, they’re very well trained to handle that, like shoulder dystocia or something like that. And so if I were to see that happening, I wouldn’t touch that or have the skillset to resolve shoulder dystocia.

So it’s distinct. And we spend doula. Spend significantly more time with the woman in the pregnant. You know, we’re doing prenatal visits, we’re talking on the phone, getting to know their home space, where we’re going to labor, sometimes coaching them through limiting beliefs. It really depends on what their needs are and what the doula’s skill set is. And then there’s the postpartum doula that focuses specifically on holding space in the postpartum, which involves nourishment, cooking, supporting the home and the mother so that the mother can then be available to connect with the baby. So it’s not a night nurse where they take on responsibility of the baby and take the baby away and the mother sees the baby eight hours later or bottle feeds the baby.

Those are very distinct roles. And so I’ve, you know, I want to make that clear because I think sometimes people think I want a postpartum doula and I’ll get rest and I’ll go sleep and they’ll stay with the baby. But the doula is really there to create opportunities for the mother to, to restore the mother baby dyad. So I’ve been in post, I’ve been a postpartum and birth doula for a long time and do a lot of. Is there a training that you did for this or is this the training? Is this life? Yeah, well, it’s.

It’s both. Right, so it’s life. It’s my own experience with my own birth. And yes, I did a formal training with an organization that’s international. And it’s funny because it was a three day training and I remember being so excited, thinking I’m gonna, you know, learn. And then I, by the third day, I said, I barely know anything. Like what? Like you. Now I’m supposed to go do this. And like I, you know, without sounding dramatic, I felt like I became an accomplice for the conventional birthing system because everything I learned was how to work with the doctors and find a middle ground for the woman and the doctors.

I didn’t actually learn much about how to inspire self advocacy in the world. Can you give an example of that? Yeah, I remember it so clearly. I’m sitting in the room on the floor. We’re watching this slideshow and the trainer said, you know, and I really. She was an incredible, incredible teacher. However, she’s, you know, doing her job. And she said, so when they come in to do a vaginal exam on your client, it’s not going to feel comfortable for her. And often she’s not going to want to do that. But the best thing to do in that moment is hold her hand.

Hand and help her breathe through it. And I said, like, what if she doesn’t want that thing? And then the teacher said, well, you know, she needs to do it because the doctor needs information. And I said, yeah, but if that, you know, what if she has a history of sexual abuse? What if she’d rather have the doctor assess dilation a different way? You know, like if we’re really watching the behavior of a laboring woman, we can look at her breathing and the amount that she’s sweating and we can kind of deduce where she’s at in her dilation without having to physically assault her against her wishes.

That was my kind of deviation away from that doula organization. So I said, you know, so it sounds a bit like how to comfort a baby after they got a happy shot. Exactly. After a circumstance. Yeah. It’s like, how do we like inflict abuse and then like gaslight someone into believing that it’s okay so. And be nice to them. Yeah. And confuse them for the rest of their lives. So it’s. That’s when I started doing my own research. I, I started working with the Dr. Bradley American association of Husband Coached Childbirth, which was like the closest thing that I could find to an in depth training on interventions, the side effects of a lot of medical interventions, advocacy and understanding.

Natural, normal, physiological birth. I don’t like to use the word normal, but it’s like what is, you know, it’s not the average birth, it’s the normal birth and how we birthed before all of this. So I spent a year training with them and then it was a pretty rigorous process. Took another year to actually get certified and began to work one on one with people. So I was still working one on one with people, but I, I didn’t feel that I had enough of what I needed to really hold the space I wanted to hold. So that was kind of the beginning of it.

And then eventually after about seven years, I, I created my own training programs because I saw the deficits after being in the birth space, like in hospitals, home births and birth centers, and the fallout of lack of education, the fallout of, you know, challenging dynamics and partnership and how that was affecting the birth and the immediate postpartum and, you know, the fallout of pediatrics too. And like a lot of the injuries that were occurring with my clients, I said there needs to be a full spectrum education where doulas understand everything from infertility, fertility to like six months after the birth.

Right. And everything that can go down and how to remain self sovereign while also being extremely curious and self reflective. And so that’s what some of the problems that you saw in this postpartum. I saw that, you know, we’re. We’re hijacked by convenience parenting, right. We’re hijacked by, you know, the society that we’re a product of, which is like efficiency, disconnection and, you know, maximizing every possible area that we can. And so in that a lot of women are already coming from a more dissociated place, right. Because of either birth trauma or previous trauma or just lack of knowledge on how to be with themselves.

And so their solution is to create more separation. So it’s like, couldn’t handle the closeness. And I’m reeling from the birth trauma. So the solution I’m getting from the Internet family and sometimes pediatricians is, well, you know, bottle feed the baby formula so that you have more time to restore and regenerate. And then what would happen is that separation would actually create more chaos within her. Her entire chemical makeup, her emotions, like shame would pile on because she was feeling worse from the separation than better. And now she’s separated and feeling like a bad mom. And, you know, she’s got a sick baby besides, and she’s got a six sick baby who, you know, is going through different types of formula to find the right one.

And none of them are sticking. And now they’re not gaining enough weight. So now there’s a concern from the pediatrician’s office that ounces aren’t enough. And it becomes kind of a disaster. And it. And the woman is not able to even be present in her own home with her husband, for example. And then the husband has no idea how to access any of this because it’s like, wait a minute, like. And then we get this story, right? We start to build momentum in the story that birth is hard. Postpartum can be very dangerous. Postpartum is this mysterious phase in our lives and our trajectory where we just have to get through it and like, we’ll get to the other side.

So no one’s enjoying it, no one’s thriving. And everyone feels confused and overwhelmed. It should be a celebration of Life and family bonding. Yeah. It becomes, we got to get through this and to get to when they’re 18 and go to college and then we get our life. Yeah. It sets the tone for, like, we want to get our life back because there’s. It seems impossible to understand, like, how do we understand what integration of this new human means when it’s all so hard. Yeah. So, you know, you know, even if the birth goes great and there’s a great dynamic between the woman and her partner, roles are properly assigned.

Now she has a baby demanding a lot. So just dealing with that alone is a lot for a woman. And that learning curve is quite steep because you go from no demands to 24, seven demands like this. Right. So imagine you have a traumatic birth. You’re already deficient in nutrients. You know, there’s a lot of inflammatory markers from poor health before the pregnancy. Uh, you know, there isn’t proper communication between the woman, the partner and family members are crossing boundaries. It just becomes so much. And the first thing to go are always the needs of the baby.

So it’s not like, let me get rid of that toxic family member or let me change my lifestyle and diet, or let me hire a house cleaner so I’m not overwhelmed. It’s like, no, let me bottle feed the baby, or let me get a night nurse and get the baby away from me. Because that seems to be the solution that we’re being given. And you. And you see that even in women who maybe have home births and are more sort of holistically minded, I do see that, simply because there’s a lot of marketing about how, you know, if we get this type, you know, if we get the baby, you know, more stimulated over here, you have more time for yourself, or you can keep your freelance business going at home.

And even those women who are more holistically minded, there might still be a lot of programming around. Like, I can do everything and I should be able to, and I can handle it. And I always say, just because you can handle it doesn’t mean that you should. You know, I mean, what does handle it even mean? Like. Like, I don’t know, you’re not. You’re not dead, you’re not thriving. You’re surviving. Right. You’re just not dead. And so when this process has been reduced to survival and outcomes which only give us, you know, survival outcomes, let’s say it’s like, what kind of quality of life is that? Yeah.

So that sounds like that’s. You’ve identified the, quote, the problem or the issue here, which I would imagine, if you wanted to say, what is the incidence of this problem? It’s probably 95 plus percent. I mean, depending on what institution people give credibility to. You know, there it’s reported, you know, in 2023, it was reported that one out of seven women are suffering from severe depression. And that’s just reported cases. So postpartum depression. And so that tells us women who get. Women who get drugs, women who get drugs, and women who are deemed by the government to not be suitable to parent their babies.

So, you know, I worked in the foster care system before I started doing birth work, which is pretty much how I got into birth work. And I remember one of the cases where there was a restraining order placed between the four year old and her mother, and it had been in place since she was about 10 months old because the mother was in such severe postpartum depression, she was deemed unfit to care for the baby. You know, which of course, that system’s in place to protect children, but very often it actually robs the child and the mother of their most primal bond, you know, and it’s, it’s such a slippery slope because rather than getting her the support and reverse engineering what’s going on, which was, I learned later, a traumatic, very traumatic birth, they just take it away and say, well, let’s just put you somewhere else and let’s just put her on meds and that’s it.

Yeah, it’s similar in a way. If your gallbladder hurts, you just take your gallbladder up, right? Yeah, they have kind of one model going. You have a sore throat, remove the tonsils or whatever, Right. It’s weird. Anyways, okay, so that’s the issue. So where, where, what do you, what do you do? How do you come in and what’s the process here of working with this? You know, personally, I have been in this birth alchemy process for quite a while, which is, you know, can you start, by the way, with your own birth or, I mean, your own mother births or, you know, I, that the specific foster care experience I just shared was actually what began, what initiated the alchemical process for me as far as addressing my own birth and my own, you know, initial abandonment wound, those first few years of life, very much so, like, you know, nannies and separation and highly medicated birth and all those things that are imprinted on me.

So I went through my own process of recognition and integration and I saw how powerful it was for me to then prepare for my own birth. So when I entered My own birth experience, it, I mean, I wouldn’t change a thing about it. It was amazing. And it required, I realize now I realize it required me to do a lot of self work, I mean, can’t put it any other way, and take accountability and responsibility. And I never placed the power in the hands of my midwife. I never assumed it was going to be a certain way.

Because of her, I knew it was all up to me. And this is where a lot of us get caught up in that victim loop, which is like, they wronged me. And so waking up to the reality that it’s, it’s in our hands, right, is not easy. But that’s where I began this model of birth alchemy. So it’s like I’d go into a home as a lactation consultant. You know, the woman say, you know, the baby doesn’t breastfeed. He’s agitated, he’s spitting up every time he gets close. He just doesn’t like my milk, right? And so rather than listing all the reasons why breast milk is so valuable and why this is so important, I just, I get curious and I ask questions like, what do you feel in your body when this is happening? And you know, she’s like, I don’t want to be in here.

I just want to get up and walk out of the room and leave the baby here. I just feel so uncomfortable with the closeness. So then I ask, you know what, what other time in your life did you feel this way? Then we kind of started going backwards a little bit. And then I asked, you know, what, what did your mother feel when she was breastfeeding? Do you know, did you ever talk to you about it? And she’d say, well, my mom actually didn’t breastfeed. She went back to work about two weeks after birth. And I had, I was raised by the neighbor, you know, so I was bottle fed.

So then I ask, could it be possible this actually isn’t your story and could it be possible that your mom had that belief and she told you that, you know, you didn’t like her milk and that’s how she was able to resolve whatever was happening in life and are you open to a new story? And so when they agree to be open to a new story, then we can really begin the process of writing a new script. So it’s some nervous system work about. For her specifically, closeness wasn’t dangerous, right. And wanted to rewrite a blueprint for closeness, which she said, I didn’t have that blueprint, I guess, and I’m okay to learn it again or learn it for the first time.

So that’s where some of the things, what the alchemy could look like in postpartum so that, you know, breastfeeding can get resolved if it’s feeling like a challenge, you know, whatever the issue is, we can address it in these alchemy sessions. And so with the training that’s coming up, it’s a postpartum doula training and a lot of it is learning how to hold space for that alchemy. You don’t need to be, you know, trained trauma therapist. You don’t have to be an expert in the inner child work. It’s really just being able to hold the space while asking questions so that the woman who’s in her process can kind of do it on her own.

You know, she’s resolving this on her own as you ask questions and as you invite her to feel safe in asking those questions. And then there’s of course, the practical side of, you know, how do you prepare nourishing foods, how do you prepare the postpartum cave so that the woman feels very safe in her physical space and can then drop into this new dynamic with the baby and, you know, if there was birth trauma and how do you hold the space for that? And then what are the boundaries you need as a postpartum doula? Right. Because you’re not a baby nurse, you’re not a house cleaner, you’re not, you know, so there’s a, there’s a very distinct sacred role you’re playing.

And how do we as women hold those boundaries when we ourselves are people pleasers? We’re fawning. We, you know, we don’t have our own boundaries or whatever, so we have to do our own boundary work too. So it’s not just an outward training on how to arrange the environment, it’s also a training on how to restore a lot within ourselves as women. And I think that’s really what’s missing from all the trainings I’ve done for birth work. That’s what’s missing in all of them is the self responsibility of the doula. I was going to say, I don’t know if you would agree with this, but my guess is you will.

The. If I was going to say if, like if somebody asked me what is the main requirement for being successful in doing this, I would say it’s the, it’s the amount or the ability of that person to have resolved these issues within themselves. Yeah. Because if you can’t, if you haven’t resolved the issues. And in particular, you’re afraid of. Oh, my God. If somebody speaks about separation from their mother, like, I’m out of here kind of thing, you. You cannot help that person. Right? That, that is the key. That’s the key. You have to come to a place where you realize it’s not scary anymore, it’s just what happened.

It’s not scary anymore, it’s just what happened. We aren’t going back to it in order to revive it and, like, keep opening the wound, but it has to be, like, properly sealed, you know, where it has to be properly addressed so that it can then grow. You know, something new can come. And you do that in this training you’re talking. Talking about. Yeah, yeah. So that’s through doing it for ourselves. So you can’t actually, like, put something into practice unless it’s, you know, you felt it in your own system. Right. So women come and they say, I want to become a doula because I had this really challenging birth experience.

And, you know, the system needs to change. And so there’s a lot of fire there. Right. And so part of the training is addressing where that fire is coming from. And it’s usually like, like, sometimes it’s a punishment energy, sometimes it’s like, I’m seeking redemption, whatever it is. And so there have been women who come in and, you know, we talk about C sections. They get super triggered. They’ll write to me separately and, you know, privately, and they’ll say, like, this was a really hard class for me because. And then we end up doing our own processing in our group.

It’s a, you know, it’s a private group on telegram, and they’re held in that space by, you know, 30 other women who are listening. And maybe it’s the first time she’s not being gaslit when, you know, people say, oh, just be happier alive and you have a healthy baby. Right. It’s like the ultimate gaslight. You know, just be grateful, be in the present. You know, a woman doesn’t get better when you just tell her to be stronger. So when we hold that space for her in the training, she’s then self healing. And then it becomes really clear how she can hold that space for her client.

Yeah, got it. Okay. So that’s a. Sounds like a big part of this training is working with the women to help them resolve the reasons why they want to do this, which are often interesting, let’s say, like that informative as to what’s really happening with them so they can get To a place where they can help other women to hold the space so they can go through what they need to go through. Yeah, yeah, it’s like a babushka doll, let’s say. Or what are those matryoshka dolls? It’s like you just start to see how it ripples out, you know, the doula to the mother, to the baby, to the rest of the family, to the community and it just starts to, to go outward and outward.

So yeah, it’s a really, it’s a really fun, like I really enjoy every time we begin the training. It’s, it’s, I always am such deep pleasure with it. We also have the birth doula training where we focus primarily on the pregnancy and birth and then the birth educator training for those who just want to teach about birth, how to advocate, you know, in the hospital, at a home birth, how to advocate for themselves, like how to understand testing, like what even is testing and like what does it do to the psyche. And you know, that’s, that’s something that we do in the birth educator training, which is also a lot of fun.

So in other words, you’re giving people the tools to understand because, you know, I know from being a doctor, you don’t typically they don’t, they don’t tell people why we’re doing this test or what, what even you’re going to do about it. I mean, I used to wonder, these amniocentesis tests, like, why would you know? So and if you asked a woman, so if we get a funny test which has a certain percentage that the baby might be something, are you going to abort the fetus? And they say no. Yeah. In which case, what possible reason is there for doing the test? Right.

This is a perfect example. And I use this a lot myself. Right. So they say, I don’t know what to do about that because, you know, everyone’s saying that I should do that 12 week test. It’s like a third 30 minute ultrasound. And then also they’ll do the additional step of the amniocentesis, which many people don’t know can actually threaten the pregnancy itself. And so, you know, I’ll ask them, would you terminate the pregnancy? And they’re like, no way. And I said, then what are you hoping to get? Some people have told me, well, if there is an issue, I want to like be financially prepared for, you know, lifelong care, something like that.

Okay, sure. You know, some people say, no, I wouldn’t abort. And I, you know, I guess I don’t want to know so I’m not going to put myself through that. I’m not going to expose the baby to ultrasound wave technology and, or myself. And I’m not going to potentially threaten their life in that sense. And how about I’ll just be in bliss and enjoy this pregnancy? So, yeah, I would probably have told them, why don’t you just make more money anyways? And if, if you don’t need it, you can someday buy a new house or something.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Allocate it allocated to your postpartum. Yeah, get. Get some better food or something. Yeah, yeah. I mean I used to do that with ultrasounds. There was. I. I almost could say I don’t. I’ve never seen a single reason to do an ultrasound. And people give you all kinds of, well, I want to know the sex of the baby or whatever. Like why? So you can buy blue clothes or something. It’s like exactly why. It’s like, you know, I want to prepare and I want to know what to put on my baby registry. So then people buy me gifts, then they know, you know, the gender of the baby and I’m like, well, let’s talk about that registry in general.

Like half, more than half the things you’re going to either return or re. Gift or never use. So what kind of parent do you want to be? And I actually have a PDF of like what you actually need for the first few months with the baby and what the mother actually needs for the first few months. And it’s actually equipment stuff. Stuff. Yeah. And it’s like $4,000 less than what’s on the typical baby registry, like on different websites and what women think they need. You know, it’s like when you like these Bluetooth cameras. Right. Like I need to be able to go around the house and be productive and leave the baby in the.

But make sure he’s not choking. So I’m going to have all these cameras on him and I’m going to put this little sticky tape on his heart to make sure his heart is stable. And that’s all going to go to my phone. So I can go, I don’t know, be on TikTok in the other room or I can go work or from home or whatever. And I’m like, or instead of spending the 600, just buy a baby sling and wear the baby while you do all your stuff. Or get a book and sit in a room or get a book and sit in the room and let the baby roll around, you know, like, so there’s like over complication Which I’m.

Again, it’s. We’re dominated. The realm of parenting is dominated by this, like, convenience movement. Like, what serves the parent ultimately. And we’re not realizing how it does not serve the child in the short or long term, you know, and then we’re like, why are there speech delays and why are there, like, severe behaviors and, you know, dopamine addictions and all these things that we are, you know, creating through the guise of convenience? Yeah. I mean, I’m. I’m gonna date myself here because I’m from a little bit different era than you, but I still remember when I was growing up, up, the extremely rare times that somebody wanted to take my picture, like, with a camera, and I did not like it.

I. I did not want them to take my picture. And I would run away and hide, and I just. I don’t know why. It was just I didn’t like it. Yeah. My daughter is the same way. And now you see parent babies who are like, their whole life is filmed. And I. I cannot imagine that. I cannot imagine, like, it’s such a, like, privacy violation, but it’s now normal. Yeah. And if the parent’s not actively filming the child, the child is on a device even. I’ve, like, I saw a baby at my daughter’s ice skating practice this week.

It was in the little car seat, and it was. There was a. Like a clip on the little. Whatever that handle is that’s on the car seat. There was a clip, and then it had a phone. So the baby was just staring up at the phone. And it must have been about five to six months old. And I’m like, your baby is also being recorded through the camera of your iPhone. And on top of it, your baby’s brain is being rewired to, like, handle these colors and cuts and the speed of this animation. And, like, where is the parent? You know, the parents, like, on another phone at the bench sitting next to the baby.

Yeah. So it’s like, you know, I think it’s incredibly normalized. And I. And that’s one of the things in the postpartum work is creating opportunities for connection. And some of the doulas I’ve trained say to me, you know, like, they’ll write to the membership and they’ll say, today was a hard day because I was there holding the space, you know, doing this, doing that, so that she could be with the baby. And she was on tick tock, you know, the whole time scrolling. And she was, you know, a home birth mom. She, you know, did Things the quote unquote natural way and still faces her own addiction.

Yeah. So these are the kind of things you actually talk about in these classes. Oh, yeah, big time. Right. No, I, I, you know, I, I, you may know this, but when I was doing doctoring in our clinic, the question I always asked was, what would I do if I was this person? And especially with children, and if I was there and my parents, the time we’re together were looking at a device, I would scream at them. Oh, yeah. I mean, and so that’s not a disease called, you know, infantile screaming disorder or colic. That’s a perfectly normal response to a absent.

I’ll be a little judgmental here, clueless parent. Well, imagine being in a, in a marriage, and if your partner is on the phone every time you’re trying to connect with them, like, you’d be done with the marriage, but a child can’t be done. So they scream, right. Because they’re like, I have nowhere to go and I’m, I have to be here with you. And like, you’re ignoring me. Right. Like, and this is where the attachment disorders are also. You know, one of the places that we could say they might be originating is the constant ignoring. You know, this thing is more important than you.

And I’m only going to acknowledge you if maybe you’re starving and screaming or you are crying or you’ve, you know, peed on yourself. Right. So it’s like your presence, the only reasonable solution is to pee on yourself and cry and scream. Yeah. Because that works. Yeah. So we, we develop this kind of rescue, rescue identity in order to have loving connection. And then it’s like, why is this teenager so problematic? You know, and why are they getting into these challenging, risky situations that we have to bail them out of? Well, it’s like maybe that’s how they learned to get your love and connection.

And love is conditional based, based on suffering. So. And you also get into things like, you know, I’m sure vaccines and food and screening tests and, well, baby visits and all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we, we, they learn all of this in the training. Right. So it’s like, and I’m very clear from the beginning, the language that I use, like, we don’t, you know, even though the birth world has really been hijacked by these political ideologies and gender neutral language is being used, and they no longer say breastfeeding, they say chest feeding, you know, all of these national organizations, I’m very clear from the beginning that that’s not what’s available in my containers.

And so I. Everyone who comes in is very aligned and knows that, like, we’re where we’re preserving something that is really for the woman and the family. Yeah. And so we do address vaccines and we say, you know, we have to. We have to learn how to toe the line, because you might work with a client that is pro vaccine, but when she asks questions, you’re available to answer without judgment, you know, so that’s the thing there, because our goal is to make the mother feel safe, but we also have to be honest about what’s going on.

So if she says, I don’t know why my baby’s so irritable and doesn’t want to breastfeed. And every time I pick him up, he cries. Every time I put him down, he cries. We have to say, well, you just circumcised him yesterday, so that’s probably what’s going on, you know, or he just got the Hep B vaccine. This might be why his body’s now flooded with baby acne. There’s just like a separation conflict happening. You know, they feel assaulted. However, what we can do is, you know, let’s. Let’s get your nervous system down, regulated a little bit so then the baby can.

Can mirror that. And then let’s get comfortable. Let’s walk outside. So it’s like how we’re going to be very honest about the possibility of why the baby could be behaving this way without shaming and then offering a solution. So, you know, it’s not to go around holding that kind of charge about wrong or right or some sort of meritocracy. But we do want to be honest, because I think it’s unfair to have this happening in front of you as a postpartum doula. And the woman’s like, what’s happening? And you don’t want to say anything because you don’t want to bring up the vaccine topic, but you also know they just were vaccinated yesterday, and that’s probably why they’re screaming their head off.

And every time you touch their arm, it’s like they. They shriek. It’s not even like a cry of like, I’m hungry or I need affection. It’s like a type of shriek that a mother can really. If she’s listening, they know it’s like. Like, I’m in pain and I’m scared and my cortisol is elevated, so. So, yeah, we don’t shy away from that at all. But we also learn how to talk about it so that we don’t get, you know, we don’t get the contract cut. Yeah. And the same with food. You, you get into what, what a woman needs to eat and what a baby eventually needs to eat.

Yeah. And we’re a little bit more, we, we support more of like the, you know, skip the spoon so that the baby’s curiosity is what leads the feeding. It’s kind of like baby led weaning and, you know, very real. With some of these women, I say, you know, like, if the baby’s not showing interest and it’s nine months old, leave it. Like, they’ll let you know. And we have to support our client in having the confidence to say, okay. You know, the pediatrician told me four months and I say four months. And they could, they might be able to handle it.

It doesn’t mean at four months that it’s recommended because it’s actually beneficial. It just means that their system might be able to handle it. Now if you need to do it, that’s very different than it’s actually good. And so why is the baby spitting up every time I spood Feed them. Okay. Their gag reflex is not at the stage it needs to be to eat. You know, so do education around that. I wish I could do more in depth, you know, but it’s, it’s just a little under three month training. So it’s hard to go deep, deep, deep into every important element.

But we certainly do cover nutrition for the mother and the baby. I used to tell my parents with young children, they would ask me when to start feeding them and I would say, when the baby crawls on the table, sticks his face in the food and starts licking it. Totally. That’s when you know that they’re ready to eat. They’re ready to eat. That’s such a good one. They’re interested and they can handle it. Yeah. Then they do that. They’ll stick their face right in the food and they start, you know, licking their face. And that means they like it.

Yeah. Like the premise of this, it’s with birth and you know, this newborn phase or infant, it’s like you don’t actually really need to know everything. You just have to watch the cues. And having faith in the cues is really hard when we’ve been like essentially disabled as a society to think for ourselves. So, you know, with pregnancy and birth, like, you don’t need to go get a test for someone to tell you you’re pregnant. Like, you’ll just eventually realize that your cycle has Paused. And your body’s changing. You know, your baby. You don’t need to know every single detail about milestones.

You just have to watch and listen and then act accordingly. But that’s the instinct. I can’t tell you how familiar this is because I. I actually never. Even though a considerable part of my practice was. Was children, I never did, well baby visits because I never gave anybody a vaccine. And so sometimes a parent would come in and say, I’m here to. To. To have you see how. If my child is doing okay. So I would say, how’s the child? Oh, he’s doing great. I think he’s doing. He’s. We’re good. He’s doing fine. I’d say. Is there any problem? No, no prowess, pooping.

Everything’s good. And I. I would say, you know, you just spent like a hundred dollars to. To have me say, I mean, what am I gonna see? Right? Because in. In all the exams when I sort of did that, I never found anything that was worth mentioning. Right. Never that. You know, that a mother who in. In the context of everything’s fine, they breathing okay. The heart seems. Yes. Okay. I listen to the heart and say, no, heart is totally messed up. Never. Never once happened. Wouldn’t you say that’s the product of the convenience culture? Because it’s like I’m.

I don’t. I don’t trust myself. And there’s enough. Trust myself, there’s enough of a disconnect that I don’t even know how to really read the. I can understand my baby’s language, right? Because I’m doing too many other things or I don’t have the confidence, but they’ll let you know. Yeah. And that’s why I always tell women, like, the nighttime is really where you and the baby start to speak the same language. So it’s like, it’s hard in the beginning to be up at night to figure things out and breastfeed. However, that’s like the. That’s like the boot camp time.

And that’s when you can even identify what your baby needs by the way their eyes move or the way they exhale or like the way their hands are creating shapes or their. Their actual speed and movement. All of that becomes really crystal clear when it comes to their needs. It’s just. You have to be available to pay attention. And many women are not. Not. You have to listen. You have to listen. Yeah. All right. I think this is a really good introduction. And if I was 30 and a woman, I probably would take your course But I’m not, so I probably won’t.

But tell us, tell us how to get in touch with you and just the details of how somebody would go about taking this course or what training or, or whatever you call it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we’re@uncoveringbirth.com and we’re on Instagram and Telegram. Ayla Cuenca Birth E Y L A C U E N C A and that’s where we communicate. We share information on, on dates, we share articles, a lot of things that you and I were talking about today. I create content and share resource free resources on how to go a little bit deeper. But any training, any class, whether you’re pregnant or whether you’ve miscarried or whether you’ve had a challenging postpartum, I’ve created content to address all of these initiations that we go through.

And then I’ve also created content for men. So if you want to understand how to really step into your role, prepare yourself, you know, independent of what maybe you’ve learned before, you’re ready for something new, there’s content there as well. So uncoveringbirth.com has a lot of resources. Great. Okay. Uncoveringbirth.com Ayla, thank you so much. And I tell you, this is a great thing you’re doing. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Okay. All right.
[tr:tra].

See more of DrTomCowan on their Public Channel and the MPN DrTomCowan channel.