Reconciliation – Why Hearth is Here
Hearth Healing is deeply personal to me. I began treating mothers across four trimesters as a Doctor of Physical Therapy long before I became a mother myself. I taught women strategies to optimize chances of unmedicated vaginal delivery, reduce risk of birth-related injury, and I supported their recoveries from early postpartum to return to sport. So, when I delivered my daughter in a way that looked nothing like the idyllic version I was selling, I had an identity crisis. As a woman, I was grieving the birth experience that slipped away and struggling to accept the vast recovery ahead of me. As a professional, I could not imagine preaching about physiological birth from my perceived failure.
As I stitched myself back together and mental clarity crept back in, I eventually saw this not as a failure but rather an opportunity for self-discovery and service.
I came to three insights.
1) Though I felt grief, I did not feel trauma.
2) The key that unlocks our resilience is knowledge.
3) My daughter’s birth story could be my greatest asset as a healer.
This important distinction - grief, not trauma - was a result of support, inclusion, and information blanketing my birth. I felt respected and informed by my team, and I had choice and time. I attempted everything in my physiological power to spin my baby and progress my labor. In the end, I had an emergency Cesarean. But because I was included in the critical decision making, I understood how I arrived at that outcome, and was able to reconcile it. I then had the support necessary to self-screen my symptoms and safely initiate my healing at home.
Returning to the work of helping mothers prepare for and recover from birth was cathartic. But my lens was fundamentally shifted. Both in person with patients, and just over the phone with friends on Saturday mornings reaching out for postpartum advice, I couldn’t ignore the theme of a glaring void in intrapartum and postpartum support. Birthing parents were not being informed about critical decisions that not only impacted the health of their children, but their own long-term health, and subsequent ability to care for those children. Positions, medications, and interventions were being imposed without explanation or consent, despite underlying best intention. Leaving unrest, trauma, and dissociation as the carnage. Postpartum care was no better. Women were being discharged quickly, with minimal knowledge of the severity of their injuries, or expectations for healing and long-term outcomes. I knew these women could heal if given the understanding and tools to do so. But they were struggling to care for their newborns while in pain, with no guidelines or end game. Some lucky women were screened for pain, bowel, bladder, or sexual dysfunction by their OB/GYN, physician, or midwife at their postpartum appointment. But six long weeks had passed before their concerns were addressed. Even if referred to Pelvic Health Physical Therapy, they were waiting months to be evaluated in person. And just too many women shared that they knew little more than what their elders taught them: this pain is the right of passage, you’ll just pee your pants a little forever when you sneeze, your healthy baby is all that matters now.
Um… I could not accept. And so, Hearth was born.
Hearth Healing is dedicated to the notion that all women have a right to knowledge about their bodies after birth. The birth experience should be laced with information, inclusion, and choice, holding the door to acceptance, integration, and connection to the child, wide open. Then, though there may be grief, there doesn’t have to be trauma. Similarly, the postpartum experience should be fortified with access, answers, and strategy. Hearth is a place to consult with a pelvic health expert from the comfort of your home until you can be evaluated in person by a professional. It is not meant to be, or to substitute, in-person healthcare. But it is a safe place to ask the scary questions and be met with informative, individualized, up-to-date answers. At Hearth, I revere your unique experience. I believe you deserve to understand the changes in your body, have reasonable expectations for recovery, and establish a tailored, manageable plan for healing. My birth did not go as planned. But I am ok. I am better for it. Hearth is my reconciliation. It is my expression of turning grief into growth and ensuring that all women have the opportunity do the same.
Hearth Healing is postpartum support, reimagined. A cultural hearth is an epicenter of societal change. A Hearth represents the fire in every woman that drives her to get shit done in the face of adversity, ensuring that everyone around her is nourished anyway. And a Hearth is the center of the home. The place we gather for comfort and grounding. But, that fire needs tending, and a consult with Hearth may be the spark that ignites the flame.